Thieves

We went to get breakfast in the new cafe across the road called Bicycle Thieves which we know is called that because they have a big well lit sign inside on the back wall. There is no signage outside, it's just walls of glass and from up here in our apartment looking down it's like that famous American painting of the night time diner. Americans in TV and film love to not look where they're going when they drive. They love to be distracted from the only job the have so they can focus on their one true love, which is communicating their feelings. The cafe across the road communicates it's feelings so clearly that it doesn't need street signs. Or maybe they have some amazing mailing list or it's all done through social media? I don't know, don't ask me what a mailing list is I just wash dishes pick fruit stack shelves load trucks if there is an unskilled job I'm your guy and if there's a skilled job that work dries up very quickly. I was working for an exhibition company, I had some welding skills and I made sculpture and I picked up some work thanks to a neighbour mate who was a puppeteer who told me about it and her partner was a chinese doctor but she wasn't chinese but she became a chinese doctor and then decided chinese doctoring was a load of bullshit and imagine being given a new car for learning how to be a chinese doctor and then deciding this is bullshit and not giving the car back. I'm not saying they should have given the car back but fucking hell if you want to take out the rubbish or chop spuds or be sacked because as an exhibition industry employee I suppose I had no rights, I'm your guy. One day I go into work and they ask me why I'm there and that's how I find out I've been laid off. Out of probably everyone working for that business the work would have been most life changing for me but I guess not being open to endless overtime for not much money didn't impress them. The cafe is called Bicycle Thieves, a movie about poor people but poor people would feel very unwelcome in that place. In London we went to the most working class place I have ever been, a greasy spoon that served horrific dishes that would be perfect if you're about to work eight hours laying bricks but probably an invitation to heart surgery if you're unemployed, which if you're me you have been for a lot of your adult life. You do a lot of interesting things, you have amazing skills, but you just can't seem to get anything going. You were offered a car by your dad if you could save up some money, but the first money you ever saved was “borrowed” by that same father and never returned so you don't have the positive saving money experiences or the habits or the anything that will let you allow you or direct you to save money. In your immature mind your money will just disappear anyway so you spend it was fast as you can, so despite the fact you make money you never have any. So you're in a cafe called Bicycle Thieves and when you used to go shoplifting you came out of the shop and your BMX was missing and you were outraged and your father was not just unsympathetic, he of course let rip with his usual rant about how much of a cunt you were and you were part of a trio of three kids who went shoplifting as sport because our parents were all crazed incompetents of some form or other.

Bicycle Thieves. I have to get out of this country, there's no imagination here and when there is it's all wrong. It's a movie about poor people for fucks sake, it's not a cafe about boring white people. We sit down and a young woman is saying that we are flushing plastic bags into the ocean and I think what's this we shit? You are being paid to worry about plastic bags I can't get paid for anything, it seems. I want to move to Mallorca and make sculpture and be left alone. Maybe I could refuse to learn Spanish so no one can talk to me? Sounds like a brilliant idea.

Bicycle Thieves. Why would you call it Bicycle Thieves? Who is this directed at? Who are the winners here? Why does anything happen anymore? What is reality, other than a shithouse state of affairs imposed on us by driven people who are wanking? Why do anything? Why be anywhere? What is going on? There is a new cafe across the road and it is called Bicycle Thieves. Everything is bullshit.

Humans are storytelling creatures and a lot of them have base or rudimentary storytelling skills and they don't care what it looks like or how it sounds, they just want to get people into their stupid fucking cafe that I will frequent because it is right across the road. You could have called it Fleshlight and I would be in there three days after openinng. You can't take my cool away from me, Bicycle Thieves, I am wearing my Yelling At Racist Dogs t-shirt, I am at the cutting edge, the bleeding edge, I have fallen off the edge, I am the edge, you can call your cafe what you want, but your narrative has no affect on me, your journey, your mission, your fucking vision, none of it can touch me. You can hire staff who have a weird vibe because they've been in hospitality too long, you can hire people who call themselves fucking Hospos, you can actually wank off right there next to my table and I will drink my coffee and scroll through twitter because I am not a cunt. See you tomorrow.