Boris

13 Dec Boris

“This is the death of truth”, Rose said this morning. We walk slowly with long faces as though there has been a bereavement in the family. I recognise the feeling that everything has changed, and strangely, normal life continues regardless. We walk by the canal with a sense of collective doom. I sense the righteous anger of the no-doubt-young author of “FCK BORIS!” on the tow path. I feel the sting of the tears that spill from this silver painted eye. Smiles, usually readily available seem hard to offer to passers by. Grief hangs like fog over us as we pace this eclectic city. I dream of escaping to somewhere else. I imagine heading to Scotland with a yurt to keep chickens. I imagine London as an island loosing its tether and taking the Thames with it out into the channel to re-position itself. I imagine I am running sweaty in black T-shirt and khaki trousers working to outwit the engineers of ‘the matrix’. I imagine sand in my eyes as I expertly swish my light sabre to vanquish storm troopers. Instead I eat chocolate. “Telling the truth is a choice,” says the exasperated mother to 7 year-old Hamza, (in trouble at school). “You can choose to tell the truth”. I listen to this mother on the bus pleading with her son to “stop making wrong choices”. How can he possibly know what wrong choices are in this time where truth and lies are so blurred by those in power, where right and wrong is experienced so subjectively?