Siobhan O’Donnell on the Eton constitution, Thames Water’s leaks, and why London’s broken plumbing is basically punk infrastructure.
I have a bruise the exact shape of a monitor wedge on my left shin and I could not be prouder of it. It is, in the truest sense, a war wound, earned in service of a song that maybe nine people heard, four of whom were the band. This is the life. Nobody warns you that punk is ninety percent logistics and ten percent transcendence, and the logistics mostly involve carrying heavy things up stairs that landlords describe as a feature.
The Venue Situation
We lost another space this week. It is becoming a bingo card. Independent venue, beloved by locals, suddenly priced out, soon to be replaced by a development of flats that no one who currently lives here could afford, marketed to people who will move in and immediately complain about the noise from the venue that no longer exists. London is eating its own ears.
So we rehearse in Pidge’s nan’s garage now, between a freezer full of mystery meat and a Flymo that has not started since the coalition government. It is perfect. It is ours. Nan brings us squash. Nan is more supportive of the arts than the Arts Council, and her squash is stronger.
The Plumbing Of A Nation
The headline that made me laugh into my pint this week was Thames Water firmly rejecting the radical proposal that it could simply stop leaking everywhere. They called the idea ambitious. Ambitious. Not leaking is now ambitious. We have lowered the bar so far that competence has become a moonshot. I respect the honesty, almost. At least they are not pretending. At least there is no seventh reset, no vision board, just water going where it likes and a company shrugging at the concept of pipes.
Honestly it is the most punk institution in Britain. Thames Water does what it wants, ignores all criticism, refuses to improve, and somehow keeps getting booked. If they put out a record it would go straight to number one and be completely unlistenable. The water regulator Ofwat exists, in theory, to prevent exactly this, which tells you everything about the gap between a regulator existing and a regulator mattering.
School Rules As Constitution
I also clocked the bit about Prince George heading to Eton, the same school as roughly every royal before him, hailed as a bold educational innovation. Bold. Innovative. Doing the precise thing your family has always done. That is not punk. That is the opposite of punk. That is a covers band that only plays one song and charges you a fortnightly direct debit to hear it.
And yet I cannot fully hate it, because at least it is consistent. The monarchy is the one thing in Britain that still delivers on its brand. You know exactly what you are getting. It is the Ramones of constitutional arrangements: same three chords, every time, forever, and weirdly comforting for it.
The Sound Of A City That Stopped Listening
What punk gives this city is the only honest feedback loop left. Everything else launders criticism into consultation. You complain, they form a panel, the panel reports, the report is shelved, and the leak continues. A gig has no panel. If we are rubbish, you can tell immediately, by leaving, or by throwing a shoe. Direct democracy, sole-first.
The historian in me, and yes the punk has a historian in her, thinks this matters. The British Library holds centuries of pamphlets, broadsides, and ballads, all of them basically punk before punk, all of them ordinary people making cheap loud noise about power. I am part of a tradition older than the venue we just lost. That is the thing they cannot price out.
Lights Out
Nan turned the garage light off at half ten because electricity is not free, which is the only piece of fiscal discipline anyone in this story has shown. We finished the song in the dark. It was, genuinely, the best we have ever sounded, possibly because no one could see Pidge’s face. Next week, new song. It is about Thames Water. It is mostly the sound of dripping. It is going to be huge.
The Set List, Revised
We rewrote the set list four times this week, which is three more times than the Prime Minister has reset Europe this month, and we did it for free, in a garage, fuelled by squash. There is a lesson in that about the difference between people who make things and people who announce things, but I was too busy detuning my E string to a note that does not officially exist to write it down properly.
The honest engine of this whole scene is that nobody is getting rich, so nobody is lying. When there is no money, there is no spin. You play because the noise is the point, the same way the divided nation argues because the argument has become the point, except ours resolves in three minutes and a feedback squeal and theirs never resolves at all. I will take the squeal. The squeal, at least, ends.
More gentle havoc available at The Daily Mash.
SOURCE: https://prat.uk/
