The Poor List Chapter 7

8/14/2019 The Poor List Chapter 7

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The Poor List Chapter 7

One of the main techniques for breaking morale through a `strategy of terror'consists in exactly this tactic--keep the person hazy as to where he stands andwhat just he may expect. If, in addition, frequent vacillations between severedisciplinary measures and promises of good treatment, together with the spreadingof contradictory news, make the cognitive structure of this situation utterlyunclear, then the individual may cease to know when a particular plan would leadtoward or away from his goal. Under these conditions, even those individuals whohave definite goals and are ready to take risks will be paralyzed with severe innerconflicts in regard to what to do. Time, Perspective and Morale, Kurt LewinOK, youre half way there. Well believe the poor list bullshit for the moment.Tell us about Danny.Danny? Danny wasnt political. Thats all I know.Just tell us what you know or things will get uncomfortable.Who are you people?At the moment, we are the people who own you, McCabe. Thats all you needknow.Just keep talking.OK, like everything else, it started in Held.Northern England right.Of course.

Just letting our American cousins know whats what.He had form though didnt he? Danny. Nothing to lose. History of violence. Likethe others. Even your boss at the time. Its all in the files here. When it all wentup they were all there. So were you.But whats the it you keep talking about?Come along McCabe. You know the score.
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Dannys first appearance in the order of things

The shopping precinct right in the middle of town, too small to be called a mallto big to be called just a precinct, had been largely emptied of big brand namesin the initial phase of the SGD. It was like hundreds of others Id seen all over thecountry. When they were there, before, you hardly noticed them now theyre lostor turned into Gonemalls[ Dr. Kilo Endgerety rather ugly neologism in his Retailslowdown in Kansas: The Gone Malls and Empty Precinct in the post-bubbleAmerican Landscape: in The New Poor Minus Five Publishing House] you noticethem everywhere. It started with an uptick in shop turnover. That Gadget shop hadturned into a kitchen ware place. The Cut price DVD joint that used to be a cutprice jewellers that used to be some travel agent or something. Whod notice. Nextif you had been keeping tabs on it all, youd notice the place shut up shop that bit

earlier on an evening, the people you might have been observing or meeting withno longer turn up as often as they used to or in smaller numbers or not at all, thebar, where you might have sat, closes with just a note on the drawn metal shuttersaying that theyd see you in the upturn. Gather evidence, it was one of the topthree tenets.

They sauntered through the narrow streets towards the Silver Castle, agreeingtactics. Danny led the way through shops, arcades and the main precinct. As theycame up to a corner nearby the empororiumall Coily said,We split up, Lumpy goes in we wait on the opposite sides of the shop, Sharon andLisa do their stuff Lumpys in and out and gives the stuff to one of us. Usual thingafter that. Scars then Superdrug. Youre on your own after that. You two got thelists?Yeh.Yeh.Danny zipped up the wavy styled zip of his purple top and toyed with a bolt justaffront his hairline.Sthe matter Dany? Scared or something? Coily said smiling, slowing them by theold McDonalds corner. They stopped. Lumpy bent down as to tie his shoe lace.Danny said, Scared? Course not. Just feel like shit warmed up today, and scowledfor a second. He then shrugged and said,

Ill go in the side way right. See ya, and was gone.Right Im off knall. See you later, Lumpy said, stood and darted into the roadnarrowly missing a slow moving car. Coily loped after him and the flow of thecrowd swallowed them all up.

Then, all the big names go, one way or another. Kilos law. But you cant knoweverything. Kilo, the crits and the doomers all exaggerated things. The thing wasthe places still got packed. Sometimes. And though that didnt mean things hadreturned to BT it went along with the rinsed eye hopeful mood that collapse hadbeen if not avoided, then delayed enough so you still wouldnt need to talk about ittoo much. These are haunted times [The Haunted psycho-geography of industrial

abandon. Kilo Endgerety ibid] Thats what the crisis had meant. Well, its whatcrisis means. That things can go either way. At any time. A patient is in a crisis


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when an operation or a dose of chemical or electricity will leave it either alive ordead, I guess. Everybody knew it was there.

The three musketeers, as Lumpy thinks of things at the moment, swung into action

as and when instructed. Lumpy was wrong, course, because they were a long wayfrom being knights. Their individual standing in the Great Chain of Theft-beingwas, in fact, still only five or six notches above the Type II (a) disorganisedopportunist thief[1]. And this progression had taken time and effort. They were,though, coming to an end of a form of training. They didnt all know this. And likeall training it had had its ups and downs, runs of form, periods of disillusion and, insome of their cases at least, spells in youth offender units. But, in a few moves,they could take a lot of pieces in a very short space of time and were currently ona bull run. They were, however, up against it. The Darwinian struggle between thetechnology and manpower employed by the retailer and legal enforcement bodieshad coalesced, in contemporary historico-psycho-geographical terms, into a eager

and rapacious predator of upstart shoplifters, organised gangs and opportunistwannabees. It was Coily who knew that they were running out of air, but thethought of attempting anything more ambitious had never yet occurred to any ofthem.

So what had happened to the Silver Castle, like what happened to thousands ofthem all over, was that, once they were unable to pay councils for rent and evenbasic up keep , the directorate of the towns Silver Castle Arcade Project hadpresided over a gradual decline from high profitable zone, polished chrome, musclebound suited security, palm trees and cars on stands to frayed but still high P/E

ratios plateau with slightly scuffed shiny floors with coloured water fountains,second hand cars on stands, bijou coffee bars and gadget shops and gleamingconsumer promise of a place, to a scuffed flooring, empty water featured, onethird full car park, roof parts working loose exposing wires, ducts and pipes forweeks on end and it wasnt tropically warm anymore, empororium. It hadhappened slowly, though, over that eighteen twenty months, like a scar fixing itselfand, in the near-end, the emporium, opened in fanfare that ten years before, hadmorphed into a sometimes echoey place where functional shops sold tea or scoopfood and things for the kitchen. The Castle had entered a littered, continualseeming end-time (an everything must go phase that roamers and the likes ofDanny had interpreted in a literal sense) ever since I got here. Though I dont think

there was a connection.

The plan was stark but only worked in shops where the changing rooms were inplain view of people in the shop. As it had happened, quite a few. Essentially, thetwo women would just get changed. But in that accidentally on purpose observableway. In this, they would distract the security guards (in this instance a recentlyunemployed twenty year old man, nametag Andrew, who had been sent to ScarsClothing (Street style at Street Prices!), very much against his will by the staff atthe local Work Fend, with whom they had long since lost patience, and an evenlarger man who stood wherever he could so as to never see his own reflection)allowing Lump to use the detag to neutralise the magnet alarms and quickly slip

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each garment into his prized and gilded shopping bag as smart and ironed asLumpys nap cut suit.The two of them had dubbed it, The Sexing of the Guard, after trying it out inLondon on a weekend staying at friends a year or two back.

The big name topplers cleared out first, then the space rented to medium to lowersized firms, the tight margin just in timers like Scar, Hempel and Forage(unofficial slogan Cheap - but Rubbish!) and the bargain basementelectronic/computer conglomerates, all reasoning, wrongly as it turned out, thatthe upturn had arrived and things could would get back to normal soon, noteventually. All the clichs and media management had got aired, like we must stoptalking ourselves into depression vicious circles and catch 22 situations wherethe shops become less attractive so people dont go so businesses dont sell evenblaming the immigrants and I know, I had to collate a lot of it.

It was Sharon who was key to the plan. Lisa, a former cell mate of hers, had more

of an apprentices role in the gang, and had become an important feature of thiswhole particular shop-lifting technique, but it was Sharon who played the majorpart. It wasnt a very sophisticated way of liberating merchandise but it hadworked in the five out of six times theyd tried it and the only time things had gonewrong, it had been Lumpys fault and the guards, unexpectedly, had been female.

Danny had half come up with the idea alone in his room, whilst under the effects ofK, a horse tranquilliser, that had left him for a few excruitiating moments but aneurons width away from a full blown psychosis, one Sunday afternoon. Whilsttrying to keep a grip on things, teeth and fists clenched, sweat pouring down hisface, muscles rigid, all the usual, usually wonderful, effects, but this time far fartoo intense, he had hallucinated a way of dodging the unpleasant aggravation ofhaving to physically assault security staff before they, the unshoppers, feltconfident enough to make their way hurriedly out of premises and general area.The malls were an important part of what had happened.Their plan came off smooth as cream on a plate. There was no hitch from themoment Sharon caught the guards attention to the meet up on the car parksfourth floor. No one noticed that had stuff gone missing until much later, from thecashier, to the security guards to the CCTV operators and viewers in a Styro office
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way between the bar and the bottles of spirits, nodding.I can get you some cheap fags. Real ones. Sort that out for ya. He shouted overthe noise.I nodded.Addidas trackies John Fish shirts? He insisted frowning this time.

Not my cut. Look. I just wanted to be left alone to get drunk. He looked like hefelt like hed spotted a mug. I delved into a jammed pocket and hand him a note.Sthis?He had. I didnt know. Well it was a twenty, we both knew that. But thats not whathe meant. Obviously. Things like this dont happen, he meant. No one, but no onegives money away for nothing, especially coin like this, unless there was someconspiracy or other. But there wasnt any plot at that point. It was just a stupidattempt to parachute out of the situation. I hoped that by giving him a couple offolds, that that would be that. Id have bailed out. Id let the money talk andthought it would shield me from unpleasantness. Something against all theprogrammes rules. Sorry Studds. Where ever you are. But then again, I dont

blame myself for what happened. They were your rules. I should feel bad? Well,maybe a little. Yes, that river in Egypt.You fucking queerin me up mate? he shouted.I looked incredulous. Nah, nah. Just had a lucky day on the nags - just feeling abit, generous I shouted back, improvising. He looked at the genuine note, then atme, pulled a face turned and walked off shaking his head through the multi-coloured crowd of drunks.

Sometimes Studds rules were completely abstract and inapplicable. Like theexcracable Random acts of kindness - all a bit BT40s. Id come to the conclusion

that they had been conjured up with the intention that they couldnt be followedat all times with any degree of consistency or without getting into a stupid lookinganalysis-paralysis. It almost compelled you, sometimes, to act randomly. Everything in moderation, hed once said, Even moderation.If I had been lucky that day Id have ghosted out of the place before Id set eyes onDanny Quinn. If not Quinn then not Coily if not Coily then not the branch then not,not the rest of it. Day 466 - it was about three weeks since Id left London.


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[1] T.Govern: Towards a Categorisation of post-Depression Urban Crime across theNorthern Sector in The Philosophy of Poverty: [P. Studds (Ed.): BT8, RichtownPress]

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The Poor List Chapter 7