4.
Dancing with the man who hates the world

There is only one man who hates the world. There can only ever be one. But if by some fluke there were ever others who considered themselves to be this man, these men could only ever hate the world on their own as long as each of them believed that they were in fact the only man who ever hated the world. Of course there have been impostors and impersonators but these men are laughable and their dubious hobbies only ever take on a hideous kind of replication compared with that of the man who hates the world. The man who hates the world was born a victim. He watched the world grow into accomplices and he knows that we will all soon enough die the perpetrators of it too. 

    I am stood at my usual spot outside the big glass windows of Cavendish House and I’m playing My Melancholy Baby over and over again. I spot the man who hates the world out of the corner of my eye and he’s coming towards me. Coughing and butting his way through the street, he shakes his victims with terrible verbal attacks: ‘This is my town, get out of my town yer bunch of gangy swines!’… And: ‘You’re all selfish, selfish bastards, you only ever think of your fucking selves don’t yer…!’

    I feel the man who hates the world edging diagonally towards where I am stood and he comes in one swift move. All of a sudden he’s lurking there right in front of me and swaying from side to side. His hands are struck deep inside big black pockets and I wonder to myself what this man must think of me? I am the busker, I am the shoppers ‘take it or leave it’ little songbird and I am merely preying on their dithering musts for my own advantage. I am equally a part of this mans baron paradox and I stand knee deep in the greying landscape that he seethes about. I too have been the victim but right now I am also the accomplice.

    Without uttering a word the man who hates the world reaches out for my hand and so I take his thick sausage-like fingers in my own for one brief moment. His eyes stay closed as a milky sediment bubbles away at the corner of his mouth. He turns and walks away, then comes back to me and fishes a ten-pound note into my left pocket. He lurches away again and carries on hating the rest of the world just as he always did before. All of this time I have been hanging on to My Melancholy Baby and I let him disappear from sight before I finally let go of the tune. I grasp for an another melody and all I can think of is Someday My Prince Will Come.

    On previous occasions when I’ve crossed paths with the man who hates the world he has told me that it all boils down to a matter of loyalty. It’s a scarce virtue that maybe only 1.00000097 per cent of the population actually practices towards his fellow brothers and sisters.

    His accuracy is unquestionable but I am possibly more selfish than a single zero in this equation. I am a singular, a busker, a one-man band, a self-publicist just like him, merely a curiosity amongst passive acquaintances but people do not see my hatred. In fact I am here to perpetuate a song and to anticipate an embrace of the world instead. In this occasion the man who hates the world has anticipated the embrace and together we go dancing in the streets of Cheltenham Spa.