Waris from Wolverhampton, seated to her right, is reading Politics and wants to become a Member of Parliament, to re-pre-sent, and will go down the community activism route first, à la Barack ‘Major Role Model’ Obama
Come Back Barack!
Courtney from Suffolk, seated to her left, is reading American Studies because she’s really into African-American men, and she chose her course because of the option to study in the States for her third year where she hopes to pick up a husband
the theatre is predominated by the usual greyheads (average age one hundred)
Mum’s friends and diehard fans are dotted all over, they should be grey but are more likely to shave it off, dye it or cover it up with head-wraps
she looks over at Sylvester, slumped in his seat, scruffy as hell in his tatty blue ‘Communist China’ overalls, his beard makes him look more like an Amish farmer than an urban hipster
way too old for it, Sylvie
his arms are crossed and he’s scowling like he really wants to not enjoy the play before it’s even begun, when he notices her ogling him, puts on a smiley face and waves, probably embarrassed that she’s read his mind
she waves too, putting her nice-to-see-you-face back on
he’s one of her godfathers, but was demoted to the C List when he sent her the same birthday card three years in a row – a cheap recycled charity one at that, as for birthday presents, he stopped them when she turned sixteen, as if she had no need for financial support once she could legally have sex
the A List goddies part with money, lots of it, every year on her birthday, they’re the best as they really want to keep in with her as their conduit to the younger generation
a couple of goddies have disappeared altogether on account of falling out with Mum over some pointless melodrama
Mum says Sylvester should stop sniping at other people’s success (hers) and that as he won’t change with the times, he’s been left behind
you mean the way you felt not so long ago, Mum?
ever since she landed the National gig she’s got very snooty about struggling theatre mates, as if she alone has discovered the secret to being successful
as if she hasn’t spent way too many years of her life watching crap television while waiting for the phone to ring
this is the problem with having a daughter with X-ray vision
she can see through the parental bullshit
Uncle Curwen isn’t with Sylvester tonight because he believes politics is way more dramatic than anything on stage at a theatre: ‘Brexit & Trumpquake! – behold the comedy of errors of our time’ being his latest mantra
as a Lambeth Labour councillor, he’s usually at meetings firefighting, or as Sylvester counteracts, causing them, because he likes to drag the carpet from underneath Curwen’s political self-importance
who needs enemies when your life partner undermines you on a regular basis?
Curwen uses antiquated expressions like ‘right on’ and likes to keep it real by frequenting the dingiest pub in Brixton where the old timers sit around still moaning about Maggie Thatcher and the Miners’ strike, one of the few pubs that haven’t been turned into a wine bar, gastro-pub or champagne bar, as Mum whinges
as if she herself wasn’t part of the gentrification of Brixton years ago
as if she herself isn’t a frequenter of the artsy hotspots like the Ritzy
as if she herself didn’t take Yazz to one of the very champagne bars she supposedly scorns to celebrate passing her ‘A’ levels a year early
just this once, Mum whispered as they entered the part of the indoor market that’s now frequented by posh banker types who looked at them as they walked down the lane between bars as if they were looking at natives on their cultural safari
yet who was it who was spotted at the Cereal Lovers Café in Stockwell by one of Yazz’s mates not so long ago?
a café that specializes in selling over a hundred types of breakfast cereal at extortionate prices
a café that only those who’ve truly sold their souls to Hipster Hell would even think of venturing into
a café that’s so outraged the locals they keep smashing the windows in
as for Dad
(you can call me Roland, no, you’re my dad, Dad)
he’s sitting a couple of rows in front of her, wearing one of his Ozwald Boateng suits – brilliant blue on the outside, purple satin on the inside
his head is shiny, thanks to cocoa butter first thing in the morning, last thing at night
he’s straight-backed, thanks to monthly Alexander Technique sessions to counteract what he calls academic hunchback syndrome
every so often he casually glances around to see who’s recognized him off the telly
Dad’s budget in clothes could pay her university fees for a year, the very fees he says he can’t afford
it’s his thing, prioritizing fashion over the self-sacrifice of proper fatherhood
hers is rummaging through his stuff in search of the large denomination banknotes he leaves in his jacket pockets in his walk-in wardrobe in the (four-storey) house on Clapham Common with its white wooden flooring, yellow walls and the original Cartier-Bresson photographs he chanced upon in a car boot sale in Wembley when he was a teenager and bought for a pound each
as he boasts to all first-time visitors when they walk past them in the entrance hallway
it’s also probably fair to say she was probably too young at thirteen to innocently open the drawer under his bed and come across a leather gas mask type thing with a leather dick attached where she presumed a nose should be, along with associated whips, gels, handcuffs and other unexplainable objects
unfortunately, once seen, never unseen and it was a lesson for her at a young age that you never know people until you’ve been through their drawers
and computer history
Dad
the author of the New York Times and Sunday Times bestselling trilogy: How We Lived Then (2000), How We Live Now (2008), and How We Will Live in the Future (2014)
Dr Roland Quartey, the country’s first Professor of Modern Life at the University of London
really? all of it, Dad? she asked him when he told her proudly on the phone about his latest professorial number
isn’t that, like, a bit of a tall order? don’t you have to be an expert on everything in a world that encompasses over seven billion people and like about two hundred countries and thousands of languages and cultures
isn’t that more like God’s purview? tell me, are you God now, Dad? I mean officially?
he mumbled stuff about the Internet of Things and Pokémon, terrorism and global politics, Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones and then threw in quotes he attributed to Derrida and Heidegger for good measure, which he always does when he can’t handle a tricky situation
what about bell hooks? she shot back, quickly scrolling down the reading list for her ‘Gender, Race and Class’ module on her phone
what about Kwame Anthony Appiah, Judith Butler, Aimé Césaire, Angela Davis, Simone de Beauvoir, Frantz Fanon, Julia Kristeva, Audre Lorde, Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak, Gloria Steinem, V. Y. Mudimbe, Cornel West and the rest?
Dad didn’t reply
he wasn’t expecting this, the student outwitting the master (grasshopper rocks!)
I mean, how on earth can you be a Professor of Modern Life when your terms of reference are all male, and actually all-white (even when you’re not, she refrained from adding)