A Small Man on His Balcony

Fistfighting men and fat, vomiting women in mini-skirts

Billy Playing Johnny a Dirty Trick

“Man, born in a family, is compelled to maintain society from necessity, from natural inclination, and from habit.”

Mother, I have made it. That upper station of low life which you and Father fashioned for me has slipped away, and I find myself now looming over the unwashed masses from my little plinth between apartments 505 and 503. The distinction between the low and the high has never been clearer, never more delicious.

If I had only known that the rise from the lower-station of life to its upper could be effectuated, not by hard work and diligence, as you had taught me, but by a simple relocation to an obscure northern town. Here, a week’s wages in London can fetch one month’s rent in a fifth-storey luxury apartment, with a balcony which overlooks one of its most degenerate, dangerous streets. I packed my bags, reported a change on Universal Credit account, and took flight.

My balcony is parallel to the old, beautiful facades of the surrounding buildings — the church steeples, the old Turkish bath houses and the town hall’s clock tower — which, elevated above the carnage of the streets, remain happily unmolested. Lowering one’s view, the eye is acquainted with the town’s kebab shops, its travel agencies, and a night club in which a man was recently murdered. (I am told it reopened the following week with good attendance). The contrast is like that of the Globe theatre’s starry parapet against the hideous figure of Caliban.

Within eye-shot of my balcony is one of the town’s most notorious pubs. During daylight hours it is harmless enough, patronised almost entirely as it is by octogenarian karaoke fanatics. At night it becomes quite a different beast, and it is not unusual to see the publican wiping blood and spit from the windows with an old rag after closing time.

Fights are common on this street, and provide regular entertainment for the small man on his balcony. Once, having spotted through the dim light of a streetlamp what I thought to be two men lightly tussling in a prelude to a full, tooth-shattering fight, I poured myself a generous glass of Zinfandel, inspected the legs, and retook my place on the balcony. Looking closer, I found that it was, in fact, a single drug addict who had taken to removing and replacing his coat in an infinite loop on the street corner. The eccentric movements of his gangling legs, which thrust him violently from one stretch of pavement to another, were so erratic that they had convinced me that his silhouette represented two men.

He remained locked in this private ritual for at least two hours, while the usual soirée of fist-fighting men and fat, vomiting women in mini-skirts played on around him, and came to seem the most sensible of the lot. Sometimes, as I look down upon these figures from my balcony, I worry that one of them will discover me. Then I remember that pigs can’t look up.

The one disadvantage of renting an ivory tower is that one must inevitably descend from it in order to buy groceries. I am, for the first time in my life, afraid to leave the house. Driving home from the local Marks and Spencer’s, I witnessed a man get his head kicked in on the pavement. I didn't know the name of the street, and so could not report it to the police. Nor did I have the scruples to leap from my car and pull his assailant from him; so I cracked the window open and turned up the Ricky Martin song. I hope that gave him some comfort in his final moments.

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