Londoners Life – Overheard London

Well I’ve had a good go at reporting on life in London. But to be frank it’s just got to be permanently annoying – broken only with those occasional uniquely great London moments. And I felt I kept being negative which was pointless and of no interest to anyone. But recently I’ve come across something I’d been aware of before. Those half snatches of other people’s conversations. And so I’ve started recording them either by writing them down or leaving some notes in my phone. Just to try and remember them. I feel like a snooper a little. But sometimes you can’t help it. A phrase. An expression. The volume. It grabs your attention. So I figured I’d be more open to those that really caught my ear.
Here’s the first one.
It was one of those bright sunny days interrupted by a downpour of rain. And thankfully the rain had vanished leaving a bright blue sky and bright sunshine. I’d stopped to take a picture with a view down a twisting little alleyway in Covent Garden about 3.00 in the afternoon. It was an old fashioned looking lamppost in black iron with three gleaming bright red phone boxes framed in the shadowy mouth of the bottom of the alleyway. There’s was a tiny pub halfway down it and I saw two guys in their fifties leaning against the wall with pints in their hands. They both looked South American. Tanned skin, jet black hair and that kind of clothes look that you recognise. White shirts. Black jeans. Silver bits on their boots. Fancy tooled belts. So I walked past them and then paused to take my pictures.
Here’s what I caught. The voices were clear and sharp in the cool air.
“So he gets his wish” the other guy nods slowly “They bury him in Cuban soil?” “Yeah that’s what happens. It don matter where you die they bring you back and you get a burial up with the big guys” he nodded again “Really with the big guys”. The taller guy pulled a face “Sure they look after the party guys. He was big in the movement you know. A big Party guy. His old man or sonthing. But the deal is they shipped his body back from Caracas I think via Fortaleza an this other guy he say via Bogota too” the other guy whistled “Sheesh that a long way an so much money huh? Just cos he was a party guy?” His friend shrugged “It’s how I’m saying it. They get to spend eternity in the soil of their home country. It’s like a symbolic thing you know like the Atecs an that shit. Its connections you know what I’m saying. Don’t matter where. If the party say you come home you get to come home. Cuba is the end destination no matter how you fuck up. It’s like they ignore that other stuff you know. Varga he say it’s being going on forever” The other guy scratched his head “But what’s so important about it, you know you’re dead who cares what happens to your body?” His friend shook his head “It’s the Party right. They saying we can get to you. Dead or alive. And if you been with them and even if you thousands a miles away they’ll treat you with honour and bring you back. Stick you in Cuban soil. Like a homecoming or sonthing yeah. Marble grave stuff. Priests. The whole shit you hear. The whole shit” the other guy took a deep breath lost in thought. “Fuck man I be lucky to get a wheelie bin” And they both started laughing in that deep way old friends do. They convulsed and fell against each other weeping and I left them to it.
When I got back home I googled for a while to help me recall my hazy grasp of Cuban history. Che Guevara. The revolution. The fall of Batista. The Communist party. Fidel Castro. The missile crisis. And I thought of the two guys in the alleyway. So far away from it all. Talking about some dead person. Some person who’d been brought back to be buried in the soil he ran on when he was a child. Evidently somehow known to the ruling dictatorship. And despite him dying so far away from his native soil they’d brought him home.
The things you overhear huh?