Day 98. The theatre of hate. (8/4/19)

(Soundtrack: Hal Blaine's 'Psychedelic Percussion' album from 1967. Because it was recommended on Twitter.

I don't believe in the concept of the unlistenable. I love later period Scott Walker, I think Miles Davis's 'Bitches Brew' is beautiful, Beefheart's 'Trout Mask Replica' entertaining and Lou Reed's 'Metal Machine Music' genuinely soothing.

The Hal Blaine album though? Bloody hard going that. 

So I'm on Springsteen. There's a reason for that. You'll find that out tomorrow.)

Out of italics, back in the real world. Social media informs me that today is the sixth anniversary of Margaret Thatcher's death. I'm not joining in with any celebrations. I don't see the point. I've no desire to comment on the day that a sad (in the sense of pathetic, lonely, broken) old woman, who no longer had any idea who she was or what horrors she'd wrought, left the world. Because she hasn't left us and never will.

Her passing seems further away than her existence. Everything that she broke remains broken. The seeds she left in her desire to destroy society have sprouted and engulf us. We are all Thatcher's children. Somebody said that a while ago. Probably in the obituaries. Looking back in a Google search, it transpires that several somebodies voiced the same opinion. Some seemed to mean it as a compliment to her.

I don't. There are no compliments you can pay a woman so evil. The idea that we are all Thatcher's children is as damning a condemnation of this country as I can possibly make.

There are issues I have with Thatcher that I can't talk about yet. One day I'll be able to. Those who know what I mean by that know exactly what I mean. We will bypass that for the moment.

I won't celebrate Thatcher's death. Because it came too late. I would not wish death on many. Thatcher, I spent the eighties wishing it on. When she was forced out by her party, the party who now idolise her once again, when she left number ten finally proving that the only emotion she was capable of was a deep self pity, one of the lads I was working with at the time gave me the news. "She's quit'. My reply? 'It's not enough'.

Does that seem harsh? It's not as harsh as wilfully waging war on the working class, breaking the unions, managing a city into decline purely because it's the one place in the country that has the balls to stand against your misrule.

There's a reason that I start my play Those Two Weeks with an April Fool's gag from the younger brother to the elder (other than setting the time frame for the story and the relationship between the siblings) about the idea that Thatcher has been killed by an IRA sniper. That's because we wanted that at the time. Again, I can't make apologies for that viewpoint, that's the hate we carried for her.

That's okay, it's nothing to the hate she carried for us. As a city, as a class, as a people.

And these feelings are far more present to me than her passing. Her passing seems decades ago and unimportant. Her presence still haunts us and always will.

The Echo tweeted a story this morning. About Esther McVey. A story stating that of all the candidates to succeed Theresa May, McVey is the one that scousers fear most.

We don't fear her. We detest her.

To come from Liverpool, to know what this city suffered and to still hold Thatcher as your hero? That's a special kind of evil that.

I was writing about something else today. Something more positive. Something more meditative. And then Thatcher invaded my psyche and I realised how much of my life is entrenched in the period where she decided that Britain would break to her will.

We'll never be rid of her spectre. Which is disturbing. We have to carry this hate with us for our entire lives.