Melancholia on the Old Kent Road
I’ve just got home. It’s taken me over an hour – usual time 45 minutes. This is because I had the bright idea to take a different route home. I did it on Friday (by accident), and it was all ok, so I didn’t think that I would have any problems. I got lost. Twice. Cycling confusedly down dark, unlit back streets behind the Old Kent Road is not my idea of a good time. By some miracle (it certainly can’t be my inner compass – I don’t have one), I found my way onto the OKR and whoosh, off I went.
God only knows how I found the right way on Friday night. At 2 am. Pissed. I obviously have a guardian angel.
The Old Kent Road is shabby. There’s no other word for it. I used to think it would be a bit cheap, as it’s only £60 on the Monopoly board, but I had no idea it would be quite as unprepossessing as it is. It’s one of those places that never looks nice, not even in summer. It’s a long dual carriageway, running from the Elephant and Castle (grimness beyond grim – don’t go), all the way to New Cross Gate, with Peckham (shootings on a regular basis) on the right and a long bank of industrial estates and business parks on the left. There are a couple of big grimy pubs – the Old Kent Gin Palace, now The Red Cow, being probably the most famous. MacDonalds, KFC, Toys R Us, hoardings, adverts, empty car parks, run down shops and grey lace curtains. It’s fucking depressing.
Now I know that a lot of people probably don’t feel the way I do about it, but I can’t help it. For me it represents apathy and stagnation, a lack of will to live or to make the most of life. I’m not saying that the people living near or around it are like this, but that if it was a person, it would sit in front of the TV in a grimy tracksuit, drinking Special Brew, eating day old pizza, chain-smoking Rothmans and swearing at its kids.
And this evening, while I was cycling down this road to nowhere, I saw something that made me feel miserable in the most bitter kind of way: a large man in a greasy blue anorak, wandering aimlessly down the road, with his head most of the way inside a family sized bucket of KFC. I don’t know why I felt so sorry for him. I’m not going to say “Far be it from me to judgeâ€, because that’s what we do, isn’t it? We judge people every day, without even thinking about it, and we judge ourselves as well. He may have been just really hungry, and in a hurry to meet some friends. He might have been having a sneaky chicken leg before taking the whole lot home to his (extensive) family.
But something about him seemed so lonely, and so lost. I got caught up in wondering who he was, where were his family, what he was doing? You know sometimes when someone you see strikes you, and you start imagining their life, and what they do all day? (It’s not just me is it?) It didn’t seem as if he had anyone to go home to have dinner with, not even himself. I felt sad for him, because for some reason, he looked as if he was unloved. I thought of all the people I love, and how I never want them to feel that way. It made my heart feel slightly colder.
Anyway, for some reason he stuck in my head, and I feel a little melancholy this evening. And from now on, the Beast and I are going to go down our normal route, round the roundabout that, until recently, smelled of flowers, and down through Deptford, with it’s market and it’s fruit, veg and fish shops, where people shout to each other in the street, and someone always seems to be having a laugh. It’s a little shabby too, but it’s cheerful and it feels like home.