Dream fragments

Walking down the Balls Pond Lane at night with Ian Saunders, looking for nightclubs. I know only the whereabouts of the many places to hear good traditional music, but Saunders wants something more 'banging' and to take me with him. At the same time, I am lamenting the gentrification of the neighbourhood: the exodus of the small and secretive 'sex and crime' parlours I like to visit... It's late, and we've walked a long way.

Saunders finds his club eventually. It's crowded with young, mainly black and Asian customers; the vibe is aggressive, and in no way communitarian. (No sense of hippy 'togetherness'.) Muscling our way back out to the road, Saunders tells me he's bought fourteen pills for his last night out with his mates; evoking resentment on my part, being unable- through poverty- to participate in such adventures. (Even though the prospect does not really appeal.) Saunders is now transfigured into a cat, and makes a swift airborne exit through the urban foliage; leaving me at the mercy of two muggers, who demand twenty pounds. As I approach their hastily-erected tollgate, listening to their well-drilled calls and jabberings, two discrete thoughts float through my mind: Where are the police? And the ugliness, the tawdriness of crime. Both men are real bottomfeeders... And anyway, all I have is eight quid.

*

Marc Bolan has opened a synagogue in the upper room of an archaelogical site. He applies to the Jewish authorities for the right to preserve and develop it... little knowing that, on the same spot, or beneath it, years later some children will see an apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The site becomes a pilgrimage centre, a religious tourist attraction; but the upper room carries on undisturbed. Uncertain how best to defend it from commercialisation, Bolan takes to living in the room full-time (in the nude), and requests that any visitors first contact him before arriving, thus preserving (and absorbing) the energies of this special spiritual site.