Keeping that Secret

There are days you stand forlornly there in you thigh-length waders, donkey jacket, clutching you ukulele wondering if it is a day even worth making sandwiches for. When you were young, you had such dreams of fame, wealth, suitably-moistened and eager partners of your particular sexual preference all keen to engage in practices you sometimes dared not even allow yourself to think about… at least not too often. You would have a life filled with glory and satisfaction, where the sick, lame and dispossessed would regard you as some kind of saviour and your face would stare back at you from the newsstands your chauffer drove you past as the world’s acclaim seemed to follow and applaud your merest doings.

Although, to be honest, it doesn’t seem to have turned out quite like that, does it?

In reality here you are stumbling through the detritus of a life that rather than actually lived is merely endured as you make your way through a world that can’t even summon up any indifference to your existence, let alone expend any energy on merely acknowledging it. Other people, when they notice you at al, seem to regard you with less interest than the adverts that surround you all as you make your way down these grey indifferent streets. Streets that stare right through you as though you existence is – at best – rather an unfortunate by-product of some of the more distasteful aspects of keeping what passes as civilisation stumbling on, maybe something to do with the sewers or the bins or something like that. Certainly not a celebrity, politician, saviour of the world or anything bright and shiny and new enough to be noticed, let alone acknowledged.

Still, though, you have the ukulele… and the waders and know one really knows why, and that is a secret that you want to hang on to in – possibly vain – hope that it makes you seem far more interesting than you actually are.