Where the fruit withers, and does not ripen

An essay by Xavier Chapman

When we speak of the parts of Britain that are left behind, we imagine, in our minds eye, the elderly detritus. The bitterly racist pensioners, in their spiteful little bungalows.

There is nothing graceful about British decline. There are no smart town squares with well-dressed elderly gentlemen drinking cappuccinos in the likes of Preston or Loughborough. Just endless packets of crisps between dreary hospital visits for their multivarious, heavily subsidised chronic illnesses.

But within this picture of ‘the red wall’, and Cornwall when the sun isn’t shining, it is easy to forget that many years ago these creatures were themselves young. That you can find people under the age of thirty scuttling around in these town centres, between the Peacocks and Cost cutters which clothe and feed the poverty stricken.

For those of us who flower within London and the home counties, it is simple to live an entire lifetime without meeting one of these young people.

Of course, at University, you might meet a few from the likes of Clitheroe or Plymouth. Often social outsiders: they are not representative of the sodden swamps from which they have emerged.

These are the ambitious ones. The Grammar School boys. Some intelligence, but awkward. Lacking the refinement that comes with a childhood of extravagant skiing holidays and ‘sun ripened sweet chilli flavour’ sun bites.

And this is a blissful ignorance, one which blesses the minds and hearts of the London establishment. The Journalists, the governing classes. They believe that they can simply hose these backwaters down with endless rivers of taxpayer money. That it will wash off the grime and grease from the vast, grey housing estates. These nests of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and gratuitous sexual violence. Turn Hartlepool in to Hampstead.

They understand Essex as much as the understood Afghanistan.

Now for my own part, having spent the last few weeks on train, after coach, after train, traversing these backwaters, I feel in my heart far more compassion towards the mountain shepherds of Hazarajat, then to the Universal Credit addicts of Norwich.

For in those illiterate shacks in the sand, there is at least some semblance of spirituality. The Muslim faith, with all of it’s demands and restraints, completely beyond the feckless indulgence which characterises the very modern Englishman.

When you speak to them, as they tell you how ‘oh, I don’t know about moving out, that would just be throwing money away’, pity turns to hatred. ‘HOW COULD YOU BE SO IGNORANT?’ you wish to scream.

How do they know so little of Clapham? Of all the beautiful people who live there. Of Flat White Coffees and Monzo. Of Oxford colleges. Of Brandy Melville.

Why, and how, are they still able to smile? With their big, stupid grins in their fetid concrete huts.

But soon, the grin is on your face. As you realise.

This is but a window. The small section of life in which they are permitted happiness. After the brutish, painful childhood of violent recriminations, unobserved bedtimes and failed exams; before the obesity, the child out of wedlock and the substance abuse.

Yes, the provincial young feel happy for a while. The supermarket Vodka and oral sex on the frozen park bench is novel, for now. Some might even be sexually appealing; their muscles and breasts bulge, looking fit to burst from their Slazenger tracksuits, their bodies not yet completely mangled by the endless cigarettes and sour cream pringles.

But as their decrepit lifestyle catches up to them, so too does the freshness fade. The drinking and rutting become routine, and still being human beings, technically, they find it underwhelming.

And there is nothing beyond their narrow horizon. No University degrees, no years working and living abroad. No exploring other countries. Just a slow transition from alcoholic stupefaction to endless Netflix.

Soon you begin to feel restless. Some instinct tells you to keep moving, as if inaction would mean your ankles being stuck in the quicksand of dismal complacency.

So you leave, and leave behind you the nauseating, cloying stench of the living dead.