My trip to the Post Office yesterday was particularly dense with incident. I had to send some trainers back to Hi-Tec because they’d developed an unusual fault. (They were the emergency trainers I bought after I gave away a pair of shoes to a slumbering tramp in Camden.) Cycling along, I was surprised to hear Who Are You? by the who come on my iPod. I don’t have any strong views on The Who, either pro or anti, but I’ve never owned any of their records. How was it here? Perhaps it was on a soundtrack album I’d bought … But of course I knew the song. I pulled up at the traffic lights, and a woman with her toddler walked in front of me. They were Korean or Japanese, and in the way if these things the child was extraordinarily cute, and it was impossible not to smile at her as she skipped by. The mother smiled back. Just then the chorus came on:
Who are you?
Who, who, who, who?
Who are you?
Who, who, who, who?
And without thinking, I found myself singing along, not loudly, but audibly.
Who are you?
Who, who, who, who?
Who are you?
Who, who, who, who?
And I suppose it must have looked exactly as if I was singing it at the couple in front of me. Singing it in a racist way. Challenging their identity, and their right to be here. In my recollection the woman looked shocked and the child began to cry, but I think that’s just my masochistic delight in self torment. I wanted to explain to them that I’m not a racist, and that I don’t even like the Who. I could have pointed out that there’s an attractive Korean character in my book Leopard Adventure.
But it was hopeless, and the lights had changed.
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