Gridlock (3 page)

They enquired again after Dr Geoffrey Peason, stating that they had business with him regarding his recent application for a patent. Dr Peason, also attempting easy good manners but blowing it by dribbling a bit, again replied that he was the said Peason, Doctor of Physics and patent applicant, and what could he do for them? Unfortunately Geoffrey still was not making himself very clearly understood and the visitors' tone became impatient.

'Now listen, sonny, we haven't got a lot of time to waste, so you pull yourself together, all right? And tell us where Peason is.'

Geoffrey was suddenly very tired. He hated being patronized and he hated being dismissed as of no importance. It was always happening to him. He turned his back on the men and staggered back to his chair. Plonking himself down rather heavily he knocked his bottle onto the floor.

'Bollocks,' he said, or rather 'Burgles,' an exclamation which he accompanied with an impulsive-looking gesture of despair.

Faced with this incoherent hurdle to their enquiries the two men's tone became markedly more intimidating.

'Where's Peason?' the talkative one barked. 'This is where he works isn't it? Our information is that he's always here Sundays.'

Again Doctor Peason tried to explain that he was the man they sought, but the men just did not have the patience to listen to him. They had been briefed to pay a visit on a brilliant scientist and inventor. A man who had invented something quite brilliant and scientific. Confronted by this slurring, unpleasant, uncoordinated young man in a leather jacket and torn jeans, they assumed that the doctor was out. However, since the dribbling rocker was clearly their only available source of information they had no choice but to continue their clumsy enquiries.

Advancing towards Geoffrey one of the men slipped on the pizza.

'I just did that,' said Geoffrey, trying once more to be friendly, but still failing completely to make himself understood.

'Don't laugh at me, you disgusting little git,' barked the man. He grabbed Geoffrey's cap from Geoffrey's head. Geoffrey was wearing a cap he particularly liked, it was a comedy cap. It had a stuffed arm holding a hammer emerging out of it which appeared to be beating the wearer on his own head. The man wiped the pizza from his shoe with Geoffrey's hat.

Geoffrey may have been having more trouble than usual making himself understood that day but this last gesture confirmed an understanding that had been dawning on him for some time: that he was in the presence of a couple of potentially very dangerous people.

Pizza-shoe roughly crammed the hat back on Geoffrey's head.

'Where's the doc, zit face?' he demanded.

Geoffrey gulped.

'He can't tell you nothing, can he,' said the other, speaking for the first time.

'Look at the state he's in. Let's search the building.'

And with that Geoffrey's interrogators stalked from the room, leaving Geoffrey rather shaken by his unpleasant encounter. Not as shaken as he would have been if he had realized that, had he not been a spastic, he would have been murdered. But none the less, pretty shaken.

Being a spastic had not done Geoffrey a lot of favours in his life. In fact it could be said to have been a total and utter drag from start to finish. However, in that brief moment, being a spastic had actually made up for quite a number of its shortcomings as a physical condition. It had unquestionably saved Geoffrey's life, because if Geoffrey had not been a spastic, or CP sufferer as some people call it, the two thugs would certainly have killed him.

This is not to say that they refrained from such a course of action out of any sense of sympathy; they did not say to themselves, 'Oh look, hell, the poor bugger's been knocking glasses off tables all his life and probably never been able to masturbate properly. Let's give him a break, eh?' No, the two thugs in question were far too hard of heart for that. It was simply that it never occurred to them that the strange, guttural sounding, twitchy chap sat before them could be the brilliant scientist and inventor whom they had been ordered to murder. But he was.

People with disabilities are very used to being looked through, over, and around. Judged by their covers so to speak. They no longer find it surprising when it is presumed that they have little or no potential and nothing to add to a conversation (other than a conversation on the subject of disability). This is not to say that it gets any easier to put up with, spending one's entire life being underestimated never ceases to be anything other than a horrendous strain, but people with disabilities certainly recognize the attitude. Geoffrey did, he was always being either ignored or patronized and on this occasion he was extremely fortunate that it was the case.

There is a debate surrounding the word 'spastic'. This concerns its appropriation, by those who do not suffer from cerebral palsy, as a term of contempt. There can scarcely be any able-bodied person who has not used, or at least failed to confront the use of, the word 'spastic' as an insult.

It is normally a youthful insult, particularly beloved of small farty boys ('Cripes, spew face, you're such a spastic'), but it resonates throughout the population. We all know that to call someone a 'spastic' means that they are stupid, worthless and beneath contempt. Hence the debate for those who actually
are
spastics about what to do with such a tainted term. It's their word, it describes a condition from which they suffer, but it has been stolen, and the question is, do they want it back? Being as how the word spastic has come to imply an all-encompassing and extremely negative summation of a person's abilities and personality, is the word any longer of any real relevance to those who suffer from cerebral palsy? Has the very word itself not become yet another cross that people with this condition are fated to bear?

Some say yes. Some say that the word has been debased beyond redemption. Some say that it must be discarded as a lost cause, and that a new, untainted word or phrase must be found. They suggest 'CP sufferer' for instance, a phrase which certainly has the advantage of clearly only describing an aspect of a person, and not appearing to sum up their entire personality. On the other hand, there are those who insist that the word 'spastic' must be reclaimed. It must be wrested from the mouths of thoughtless little boys and restored to its true meaning. These people look to a day when they will be able to say 'I am a spastic' or 'my daughter is a spastic' without it sounding a bit like a gag.

Geoffrey was of the latter faith. Ever since he had first understood the nature of his severe disability, he had laboured to escape from the social stigma that such a condition engenders. He knew he could not escape from its physical limitations but he could definitely try and stop people thinking that he was a thick, useless embarrassment.

His method, not one that would work for everyone, had been to take the linguistic battle to the aggressor. He proclaimed himself a 'spasmo'. He had had the words 'Geoffrey Spasmo: Satan's Hell Dog' written in studs on his first leather jacket and worn it to school. Geoffrey, who always found walking quite difficult, had in his youth sometimes been pushed around in a wheelchair. To his mother's intense embarrassment he had the word 'spasmobile' beautifully inscribed on the back. He had done it in the same lettering as the famous Triumph motorbike company logo, and it looked very cool.

It was at this time, during his wild youth, that Geoffrey had attempted to set up the first wheelchair chapter of the British Hell's Angels. The Angels, who have a highly developed outcast mentality themselves, were quite sympathetic, but Geoffrey dropped the notion when it was explained that besides kissing the arse of a dead chicken, he would be required to piss on his jeans and wear them for ever.

Geoffrey's aggressive confrontation of other people's attitudes to his condition upset and annoyed some people. His parents had been terribly upset when he had wanted to officially change his name from Peason to Spasmo, so he hadn't done it. Other spastics, or CP sufferers, were also ambivalent about it, some considered that it played into the hands of the enemy, and Geoffrey conceded that this was possible. However, Geoffrey wasn't doing it on behalf of the whole spastic community. He was doing it for himself, to create his own style and his own identity. He was Geoffrey Spasmo. Even now, as an eminent physicist, his leather jacket still spelt it out in studs. His shades, his Sex Pistols T-shirt and torn jeans still spoke of the time in the mid-Seventies when he had emerged from his shell and begun his personal rebellion. Geoffrey's had been the only wheelchair to make it to the front of a gig on the Clash's
White Riot Tour
in
'77.
His dad had to hose it down to get all the gob off afterwards.

In another part of London Sam Turk sat alone in his office. Sam had no physical disabilities, unless you counted a copious beer gut, but he did have a seriously retarded soul. It was this moral deficiency that had led him to unleash the killers on Geoffrey.

Sam was not naturally a killer, it was circumstance which had made him deadly. Circumstance in the form of a great sheaf of diagrams and computer printouts which lay before him in his office. The diagrams were complex, and Sam was a good enough engineer to realize that to fully understand their subtle intricacies would take months, perhaps years. However, even a superficial perusal had been enough to convince Sam that what lay before him was a revolution, a revolution that would change the world.

Sam's mind reeled at the almost limitless potential of what had fallen into his possession. Limitless is a word that comes more easily to a copywriter than an engineer, but Sam knew that on this occasion it was apt. Fame, power and wealth without boundary of constraint were his for the taking. First, however, Doctor Geoffrey Peason would have to die.

Dr Geoffrey Peason was considering his position, a broken lemonade bottle at his feet and two extremely aggressive-looking thugs wandering around the building.

Geoffrey was, of course, unaware that these two men wished to kill him, on the other hand it was pretty clear that they were not intending to give him a great big French kiss and a little box of choccies either. Their attitude had been distinctly aggressive. Geoffrey was reluctantly forced to conclude that the two men had intended to do him no good; possibly the beating up, robbing and leaving for dead type of no good. Geoffrey did not know how he had come to annoy them or what they could want. In fact he was quite certain that the whole thing was a mistake and that they were after an entirely different Geoffrey Peason. Possibly Geoffrey 'Chainsaw' Peason who had managed to cross some shadowy 'Mr Big' on some matters of drugs, whores and unpaid gambling debts. Now, however, Geoffrey realized, was not the time to sort the matter out. Now was the time to clear off and have a bit of a think, what's more speed was of the essence. It was Sunday and the research facility offices, the labs and the little tea-making areas were empty. It would not take long for the two thugs to discover this. Then perhaps they might put two and two together and work out that 'dribble lips' in the computer room might just be the person they thought they were looking for. Actually Geoffrey thought that this was fairly unlikely because, as he well knew, changing the first impressions that people form of those with disabilities was well nigh impossible. As far as the able-bodied community was concerned, if you twitched, and spoke with difficulty, you were a retard. People say that first impressions are so important, for people with disabilities they are a ten-foot wall to climb. Which, if you happen to be a quadriplegic, is a bloody difficult thing to do.

None the less, on the off chance that one of the thugs might be sufficiently enlightened to make the chasmic mental leap required to realize that a spastic might also be a brilliant physicist, Geoffrey thought it wise to get out.

Geoffrey scurried out onto the Cromwell Road, which was where he worked, and started looking for a cab. Normally they were pretty frequent around Kensington but on this occasion there were of course none to be seen. Geoffrey waited, nervously glancing back at the door of his office, caught in the classic cab dilemma, should he start walking and look for one? or should he stay put and look for one? Geoffrey agonized. If he started walking what was the betting that ten would arrive where he presently stood? On the other hand, perhaps the same ten were at that moment hiding around the very next corner. This dilemma is in fact a principal cause of urban pedestrian fatalities, because people will sometimes throw themselves under a bus rather than make a decision.

On this occasion, however, Geoffrey managed to pull himself together and had just decided that he would be better off getting away from the two thugs even if it meant walking, which was something that he found quite difficult, when a cab pulled up. Unfortunately, as Geoffrey got into it, the two thugs, having tired of their search, emerged from the office. They had not yet freed their minds sufficiently to realize that Geoffrey was Dr Peason, but they had decided to interrogate him further, and on finding him gone from the office had begun to wonder whether their bird had flown.

'There he is, the little bastard,' they cried unkindly, as Geoffrey's cab pulled away and they ran for their car.

'West Hampstead,' stuttered Geoffrey, 'and step on it' – a phrase he had never imagined anybody actually used.

Unfortunately, in London, stepping on it is a very rare achievement (as opposed to stepping
in
it, which is almost impossible to avoid). London is, of course, the capital traffic jam of the UK and even though it was a Sunday the streets were still very busy. Unusually so in fact, and as Geoffrey's cab drove up Queens Gate things became positively teeming. A great colourful mass of people streamed down both pavements heading away from the park. Some braver souls were even venturing to colonize those parts of Her Majesty's highways reserved exclusively for cars. Geoffrey was taken aback for a moment, as one aggressive youth pointedly lingered in the act of crossing the road, thus causing the cab to stop, and the cabbie and the youth to engage in a brief exchange of views conducted wholly in Chaucerian vernacular.

'Funny thing, innit?' the cabbie opined to Geoffrey after the youth had flicked his last V sign. 'Here's this lot all wanting to protest about road building plans. So how'd they go about it? Create a bleeding traffic jam, that's what. I mean that's like screwing for virginity, isn't it? If ever there was an argument for building roads, it's a traffic jam. I mean, a traffic jam shows the road's inadequate, doesn't it? London needs more roads, there's just no arguing with that.'

Despite this predicament Geoffrey took a moment to go through one of two stock emotions people reserve for when they are sitting in the back of cabs. Not the one about being convinced that the driver is taking you on an eight-mile detour which will cost £200, but the one about totally disagreeing with some horrendous prejudices that the cabbie has glibly spouted but not having the moral fibre to take him on. Geoffrey did not think that London needed more roads and heartily agreed with the principles of the rally which had been called to make this point.

It was widely believed that the Government had a massive hidden agenda on road building. Nothing was known for certain, but then again nothing is ever known for certain about the actions of the British Government. Whitehall makes a positive fetish out of secrecy. Many a fresh young civil servant has had their first day ruined because no-one will tell them where the toilets are. None the less, despite the absence of any real proof, there was a growing conviction amongst environmentalists and public transport unions that large sections of Britain were in danger of being submerged beneath concrete.

Of course, the Government strenuously denied it. Indeed it went so far as to employ its most open and accountable means of communication: the private, off-the-record briefing. In these private, off-the-record briefings, a senior civil servant (in this case Ingmar Bresslaw, Chief Permanent Occasional Over Under Secretary to the Cabinet Office) hands out a private, off-the-record statement, with which the Prime Minister is in no way associated but which he none the less expects to see in the following day's national newspapers.

The private, off-the-record statement which Ingmar Bresslaw handed out, of course, completely dismissed environmental fears regarding road building, but none the less spoke suspiciously in terms of reviewing the 'infra-structure', reconsidering the 'road to rail relationship' and 'seeking always to protect the inalienable rights of the private motorist'.

It was this rather inconsistent statement that had provoked the protest in which Geoffrey found himself caught up. A protest which, under normal circumstances, he would gladly have joined. Geoffrey, like many people with disabilities, was dependent on public transport and did not relish the prospect of having to hobble half a mile along a six-lane suburban motorway to get to the footbridge (and frog-tunnel) so that he could cross over, in order to hobble the half mile back down the other side, to get to the bus stop. However, sympathetic though he might be, for the time being Geoffrey had more pressing matters to contend with. His cab was still stationary, behind it was a lorry, behind that, Geoffrey guessed, lurked his pursuers.

'I've changed my mind,' Geoffrey said. 'How much do you reckon to Harlow, Essex?'

'In this traffic,' said the cabbie, wincing as if in pain,' 's'gotta be twenty notes, hasn't it?'

'Fine,' said Geoffrey, handing over the money. 'I want you to deliver this hat to Harlow Town Hall,' and, having perched his comedy hat on the back shelf of the cab, Geoffrey slipped out of the door and into the crowded street. Geoffrey was a small man, he sat low in a cab, he felt fairly confident that from behind, it would appear as if he was still in his seat with his hat being the only part of him that was visible.

Geoffrey was soon deep in the crowd, jerking his way past the numerous vans dispensing salmonella in a bun. He passed the inspiring and beautiful trade union banners depicting tools that nobody used any more and solidarity that nobody felt any more. He passed the punky-looking kids surrounded by photo-journalists trying to persuade them to throw bricks. He passed London's community policeman, with his big community smile. The same kindly chap produced by Scotland Yard for all such events, who every year at the Notting Hill Carnival got his picture in the papers, dancing with a black woman who was wearing his helmet. Then there were the coachloads of non-community policemen hiding in the side streets. Confronting these, snarling and spitting at them all the while, were the inevitable knots of anarcho/punk/hippy/ skinhead arseholes, hoping to provoke a confrontation so that the police would overreact, there would be a riot and they could nick a TV from Rumbelows.

Every cliche of liberal dissent was milling around Hyde Park that day and Geoffrey felt the inevitable sinking feeling that anyone who has ever attended a protest march feels. That niggling voice in the back of the mind that says, 'Do we all look like a bunch of utter gits?'

Rallies are a very double-edged sword. On the one hand, they can serve as a powerful demonstration of popular feeling, on the other, they can simply make everyone look a bit pathetic, it's a thin line. Some types of protestor are entirely counterproductive. Worse even than the middle-class pseudo-punk demanding class war, is the overexcited student who insists on leading chants that nobody wants to join in with.

'Digby Digby Digby,' Farty would scream, invoking the name of Digby Parkhurst, the Minister for Transport and principal hate figure of the rally. 'Out out out,' a few loyal comrades would shout in weary reply. 'Digby Digby Digby,' Farty repeats in his hoarse yell, clearly feeling the need for further elaboration. Again, a now diminishing gang reply, 'Out out out.' 'Digby,' bellows Farty, honing down his debating style somewhat. 'Out,' comes the equally succinct reply. 'Digby,' repeats Farty, pressing the point. 'Out,' reiterate his pals, as all around them gnash their teeth. Finally, just to make his position absolutely clear on the subject of Digby, Farty returns to the original rhythm, shouting, 'Digby Digby Digby,' and the gang again rewards him with three rousing 'Outs'.

That is the chant as heard on many a march in the last few years. It always emerges at some point – presuming the hate figure in question has been considerate enough to have a two-syllable name, 'Theophilus Theophilus Theophilus' not having quite the same rabble-rousing feel. The problem with the chant is that most 'outers' go along with it only out of a sense of duty and to avoid being embarrassed on Farty's behalf, in the way that an audience will murmur at a joke they find unfunny, just to get through the embarrassing silence. They go along with the chant but they feel pretty stupid doing it, and thank God when they get to the final 'Out out out' and can return to silent anonymity.

Unfortunately, what inevitably happens is that Farty, emboldened and intoxicated with his new roll as cheerleader, rabble-rouser and street-fighting man, tries to go for the whole thing again. This condemns it to an inevitable and eggy petering out which renders the entire exercise so limp as to actually work against its intention. At the end of the chant, any non-aligned observers would definitely be left with the impression that Digby, far from being 'out out out', was more entrenched than ever.

Oh God, thought Geoffrey, please, please don't let anybody strike up 'Here we go'.

'Here we go' is a football chant performed vaguely to a fairground barrel organ tune which, during the Miners' Strike of 1984, did useful service warming people up on 5 a.m. picket lines. Since then, however, it has been adopted as a kind of catch-all anthem of protest and has been heard near missile bases, outside hospitals in danger of closure, inside town halls where new cuts were being announced and at the end of Labour Party meetings. Indeed such a contribution did this chant make to the cultural backdrop of protest in Britain in the Eighties that it is worth recording its lyric in full, that posterity might not forget the depth and subtlety of its message. The text runs like this:

Here we go, here we go, here we go,

Here we go, here we go, here we go-oh.

Here we go, here we go, here we go,

Here we go-oh, here we go.

(Repeat until your cause is lost.)

Where we were going is not touched upon, why we might want to go there is also left to the imagination, the one salient point is that we are off. Sadly, never was a lyric more apt. 'Here we go' would be sung, and pits, jobs, services, etc., duly went.

Compare this turgid, lifeless effort with 'Jerusalem', or 'We Shall Overcome' and it is possible to see what a momentous own-goal in public relations this chant was. Mindless as 'Oompah oompah stick it up your jumper', but without the biting wit. So mindless is it in fact that the only possible explanation for its continuing emergence year after year at every possible protest event, is that it is the result of infiltration by
agents provocateurs.
Just at the point at which the audience at a protest are at their most emotionally and intellectually moved, a right-wing infiltrator in a bobble hat will ruin it by striking up 'Here we go'. It works every time. The hall groans inwardly, but none the less joins in under the mistaken impression that not to do so would give the appearance that the event has no unity, soul or fervour. The impression actually given is that the event is made up of a bunch of parrots without an original thought between them.