I was wearing all my new stuff and I was conscious of my gelled hair cutting through the atmosphere, more shark than Hoxton Fin. My honest guess is that I looked pretty fine, by my standards, but then my standards were undeniably low. Some people were definitely staring: a man washing the thirty-year-old Ford Capri he never drove, a lady at her net curtains, some shaven children picking their lice scabs and eating chewing gum off the pavement. I remember reading a poem in school—I can’t remember who wrote it—but it was called “The Donkey,” I think, and it was certainly about one, and this donkey was despised for having the usual donkey bits—big ears, ugly voice, all that—but then suddenly all these people were cheering it and laying down palm leaves for it to walk on. And, in case you haven’t got it, they weren’t really cheering the donkey, but Jesus who was riding into town, but the donkey thought it was all for him. And my point is that so maybe I was just the donkey.
