My late night walks are getting later and later, so it's still Monday for me. But before I go to bed, there's a bunch of half-thought-out drafts I keep in reserve and the one accompanying this picture seems the most apt to post before #BlackOutTuesday. The picture wasn't taken today, it's me heading into the City to do a Ripper Walk earlier in the year. I love the job. It's nice pay and you're very exposed but you get to be scary, and I love being scary. Maybe because I'm not very active. There's no Point Break-type activity that I practice to feel more alive or in touch with the sea or the air or the earth or whatever, but being allowed to be scary is proper taste of the bigger freedom. I turn up to these walks in "costume" - a long black cheap mac, black shirt, tie, trousers and shoes, clutching a lumpy clanking plastic bag that secretly holds my hurricane lamp, and here's the point about when I did this: every time I took to public transport in this clobber or hovered round the railings of the Square Mile, waiting for my group to turn up and working on my skulk, dressed like a middle-aged high school shooter, I knew that I would never be stopped and asked what I was doing, or where I was going, or what I was carrying, or why, no matter how egregious or inexplicable I looked. And I will pay myself the compliment of saying that I also knew this was what white privilege looked like, that these were the freedoms I enjoyed, freedoms everyone should be able to enjoy: the freedom to raise questions without being questioned, and the freedom to be scary and still listened to.
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