Tilda
Swinton is picking at the corpse of this year’s parade.
They have one every year here. The
village is old, and the traditions follow, where by ancient folklore most of
the village breakfast wetly in the Supreme Being & Templar to sit till
lunch in modern pantomime finery laughing and shouting and throwing stones at
crows. Tractors and drays pull carts whose wheels drop half the local farm in
clods along the road, taking the children to the green to the sound of Lady
Gaga. Three men without any sense of irony are blacked-up. One has lost his
trousers. A woman left outside the pub cackles, crouched, knickers about her
shoes, heels in a puddle of her own piss. Someone is a Spice Girl, he doesn’t
seem sure as to which. And where a Rover drove into Michael Praed’s wall the
engine is still turning whilst Tilda Swinton picks at a brain that just won’t
be missed. There’s ignorance and anger all sticky about her chin.
It’s dreadful, awful, embarrassing and
it will only get worse because those floats that have made the green are a part
of the fair whose travelling stalls and too-bright lights won’t be missed. People
throw wonky darts for prizes they don’t want. The lucky dip isn’t; everyone a
winner and every winning a Meercat dolly given out free with online insurance,
knocked off, nibbled at, but with a catchphrase. The head of Leslie Philips is
pecked at by goldfish. Terry Thomas bloody but exhilarated sneers at the body;
there can be only one.
There’ll be candyfloss and tasteless
doughy buns for tea, the last hiding a single tinned frankfurter, both wet.
I’m locking the doors and closing the
curtains.
Because today Tilda Swinton is picking
at the corpse of this year’s parade.
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