The Last Day In Brixton

I had to get off at another underground station than the one I was meant to yesterday: someone had fallen in front of a tube train. The train I was one simply drove slowly through the station where it had happened. I could glimpse the train involved in the accident on the adjacent platform as I went past. Its doors were open but the lights were off. It had not entirely pulled into the platform, so the accident must have happened midway on the tracks. I saw a policeman talking matter-of-factly with two maintenance workers in dirty orange overalls. On the platform my train was going through, meanwhile, a sign had been put out for the train drivers to remind them not to stop, while a station attendant sat next to it, apathetically.

Within an hour the station was back on line and no one seemed aware that it had even happened.

Brixton Road was full of people trying to sell salvation. It was either charismatic Christian groups tied in with the many black churches nearby or any number of Socialist groups, either screaming for bent MPs' blood or promising an altogether more secular promised land.

As I sat down in St. Matthews' Churchyard to eat lunch, an open decked double decker covered in Christian Party regalia and full of supporters roared past. They're making a special effort in Brixton, if all the campaign posters are anything to go by. (Meanwhile, UKIP's 'NO To Uncontrolled Immigration' posters, with Winston Churchill thrown in for good measure, are nowhere to be seen for some reason, being more common in the more conflicted East End of London.)

I doubt the Christian Party will do well in next month's European Elections though. The public doesn't want principles or idealism nowadays. They want parties that are bitter and suspicious, that rage and self-pity in equal measure. Politics and religion don't mix anyway, but only in the same way that politics doesn't quite mix with anything.

As I drank my tea, a big mongrel (part-Alsatian, part-Labrador) trotted up to me. With dogs I don't know, it's always a good idea to be friendly and say 'hello'. They seem to calm down if they're growling, or stop finding you so interesting. This was the case with the dog too, which turned away, but stared instead into the Churchyard and at the other humans in the distance, sitting on benches. He seemed to be looking for something. A while later, I saw him walking past nonchalantly, now on a lead and with his mistress.

I then went to Brixton Library. As usual, there were a gaggle of drunks, dossers and generally dodgy looking regulars congregating in the square in front of the building. It's often the place to see the local constabulary, sometimes on bikes, drawing up to resolve a pointless squabble.

Brixton Library was careworn, but reassuringly serene. Outside, the city growled, screeched, shouted and boomed without end.