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 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 a 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: 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, but still listened to.
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