February 24, 2003
Minorities Retort : Everybody Smokes by Jim Beresford
Cranes on the move gliding silently on the horizon. Giant jurassic skeletons slowly stooping for prey, jaws drooling with chains. The rhythmic slam of powerhammers and the haunting shift sirens - barely heard here since the seventies - echo across the town. Swan Hunter's shipyard, scarcely operational for the past decade, is once again operating at almost full strength with an M.o.D. order for two aircraft carriers. They are scheduled to launch in two years.
Nearby is the Daisy Hill Estate. Solid 30’s housing with wide streets. The estate is poor but too small to have real problems. Here and there are empty houses with their silver steel shutters and graffiti; the tenants fight back against these decaying teeth by sending their little front gardens way over the top with colour; gnomes; scarecrows with head of a frog.
Derek Jarman would be quite comfortable in some these shingle and herb jobs, but only because he’s dead. Me and me dad deliver a spam local advertiser on a Wednesday morning. All kids here play out on the street. Old tiggy and hide games. No playstations at home. The money has all been spent on REGAL KING SIZE.
A few smallee-boys play cola can polo with golf-clubs. I realise too late that the cans are full and I get sprayed when the can ‘goes off’ and spins like a garden sprinkler.