From the Pabs Archives (2)

Two flat tires and no brakes

(Jack, 18.08.2004)

During my month of unemployment I have been getting around on a bike with two flat tyres and no brakes. I thought this was a desperate state of affairs until I saw a beaten up Mercedes belonging to one of Shacklewell Lanes pimps clamped outside the DSS office. The Mercedes has been there for over a week and so has the pimp. He sleeps, socializes and conducts his business from the car. He sits in the front with his prostitutes in the back snorting coke and drinking cider. The police passed the other day to remove a large kitchen knife from the glove compartment. The traffic wardens have shot themselves in the foot because their office is above the DSS’s. The car is like an infected boil – I passed the other day to see the pimp asleep in the passenger seat, a girl in the back and a small pile of sick outside the rear door.

Has any one ever had a vaguely religious experience? Tim and I went to Southwold (a quaint Suffolk seaside town) at the weekend to start filming the Insect Circus with the hope of making a documentary. The Insect Circus is housed in the back of a horse truck and details the history of insects in the circus through artefacts and paintings. Miniature mechanical displays bring the concept to life: wasps being tamed, balancing beetles, dragonflies and butterflies circling in the big top etc. The Insect Circus was pitched on the village green on the outer circle of Ricardo’s Circus; a normal circus with performers under a big top. Having spotted the Circus’ from out of town we went straight to the church to try and get a shot from the tower looking down over the green. We were advised to talk to the warden who was cleaning the altar at the end of the church. As I began to explain to the warden about the Insect Circus and why we wanted to get up the tower Tim and I noticed that his hand was open and outstretched – in it he was holding a perfectly preserved dead dragonfly that he had just found behind the altar.