- Post-Colonial
Blues
- by Ted Slade
-
Sitting alone in a pastiche
Singapore bar, circa 1940,
drinking facsimile wine, circa 1997,
he observed the lack of chic
among the clientele, elderly
shoppers in anoraks and jeans,
tidy office workers, dark suits
and trainers, well-behaved lovers
on a tired lunch date,
and wondered what kind
of operating system
could produce such
a distemporal scene.
Where, for instance, was the band?
That brilliantined quintet fox-trotting
the afternoon away. Music
he could hear, creeping out
from some hole in the ceiling,
up there behind the slow-spinning
fans, but why were they always
playing the wrong tune? As if
they'd been offered the gig
as an afterthought.
He looked around
for plantation managers,
leaning at the bar, or slumped
over gin-slings at the rattan
card-tables; wondered what
kept them away. Probably
the chill drizzle that some
absent-minded prop man
had left running onto
a 1990's South London
backdrop, complete with style
boutiques, Italianate coffee houses,
pizza huts and bright-lit
rumbling buses loaded
with dismal refugees from
a failed show.
Where too were the coolie waiters?
Those Aussie hip-hops were
just all wrong, actors out
of a job taking anything
they could get. But what
he hated most
about the whole dreary scene
was the absence of ladies
of a certain kind,
narrow eyes and slit skirts,
promises of joy
in their slim fingers,
their compact Oriental
bodies.
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