Them All

Llameht (in Welsh)

I haven’t been to many malls

or any very mini malls at all

I’ve walked down Pall Mall

and smoked a few

if that’s how you pronounce

Our town’s main street was The Esplanade

That word trips off the tongues of your shoes

We used to wear stuff until it wore out

Then we’d buy others’ used clothes from Affleck’s Palace

I had a black leather jacket that had been through more fights than Batman

I had black denim jeans that didn’t need my legs to help them stand up

My socks were just ankle warmers and my boots talked to dogs

I think now I am also put off malls partly because of the explosion that destroyed the Arndale Center in June 1996 in Manchester.

I used to love that place when I was fourteen. Owney and I would get the train and go at Christmas without parents, buying tat for our aunties and whooping around Debenhams like Bad Santa’s little non helpers. We even joked about not getting in the lift back then, just in case there was a bomb. There was always a friendly threat in those days. Warnings! And we were miles away from trouble weren’t we? So we joked about it. Yet years later they did it.

Two days after the 3,300 pound bomb* I walked down to see the crater. I had a job near Manchester Piccadilly working in a health service office. The most massive IRA bomb to go off successfully in England. It didn’t kill anyone and got rid of the Arndale center, as it was. It changed the city and the country.

I avoid crowds. I get woozy if too many faces are too close. I have dreams that are like a live action psychoactive Where’s Waldo diorama where I am lost in a congregation of constantly moving and questioning physiognomies.

The whole of Manchester’s shopping center was rebuilt in the late ‘90s. Retail the retaliation. It got better, but you know, homogeny just mushroomed.

Today I went to a mall. It was in New York.

The kids and back to school. I had no desire to buy anything

There was a comic store on the third level that was selling vinyl

I think the whole store was made out of vinyl

But as far as the records went

I’d heard them all before