Home life
Some progress
Alice Thomas Ellis
Chicken a la King — twice.' the attempt to forget about my stomach where alien cultures — in, I dare say, several senses — were battling it out that put me into a philosophical frame of mind. Progress, I mused, is a peculiar concept. When I got home I asked Someone where the notion of progress had arisen and he told me but I've forgotten again. The snag in being married to a person who knows more or less everything is that one gets hopelessly lazy. (He of course says that he knows very little: it's just that I know nothing.) I never look things up in books because all I need to do is ask him, and when he gives me the answers I don't properly commit them to memory because I know if I forget all I have to do is to ask him again. It is rather like keeping one's brain in a suitcase. I believe the chaps who originally formulated the idea of Progress considered it to be without question a thoroughly Good Thing and I am far from in accord with them. I am glad that it has brought us Jif and Flash and Vim because the greasy rim on the bath does not submit to mere soap on the flannel, but looking at the stables which constitute a large part of the Camden Lock set-up and have pro- gressed from housing horses to harbouring trestle tables of assorted junk. I felt nostal- gic. I think some stupid bastard has ripped down a lot of the building but I didn't investigate too closely because I didn't want to feel furious on top of feeling sick, and I suppose we should be grateful that so much has been retained even if it does have an air of rather contrived and tatty gaiety. The casual nature of the complex is im- posed and arises from nothing that was there before. The Greeks, I thought, grim- ly keeping my mind off ice-cream cornets, were there and we are here. There is no discernible link between us and it cannot be claimed that what has happened in between is Progress, just a lot of time.
I had never previously deigned to visit this market because if you live near some- thing you don't (I bet Parisians don't go up the Eiffel Tower), but my friend said he was going to buy Christmas presents and I was so impressed by this evidence of prudence and foresight that I went along to watch. I felt rather let down when we emerged with the strap from a Sam Browne belt, a rusty iron wheel that he found in a corner, and a riding-crop. He had intended buying everybody knives with things in them for taking stones out of horses' hooves but the man wasn't there. The riding-crop was adorned at the top with what looked like a wee hammer. `What', he speculated, 'is that for?' Well,' I said, 'it looks to me like a thing for banging things back into horses' hooves. Nails for instance. Idiot!' I suppose it was success of a sort, and it is nice that trappings for horses are still available in their old home but the smell of hot dogs and donner kebab and tandoori chicken and people doesn't measure up to the smell of hay and horse manure.
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