An extract from Timon, a forthcoming novel …

The event is/was: Hester goes to a known far-right bar—a skinhead band playing, a white riot fest in an outer suburb pub. Yes, it’s ‘working class’ (mainly migrant Brit, essentially… adverb, middle English, from the Latin… you do the trace… essentially English in origin… children of the migration), and you’re going to have to deal with and process that. And Hester IS middle-class, no doubt, though most of her family are, in reality, mine workers and/or farmers and/or business people and cling to (note: cling… and ‘to’) middle-class aspirations while living otherwise. Unravel. Culpability, position you’re reading from—the little tricks of positioning, eh. But she’s a middle-class gal in her manners, thanks to mother and school (another story… maybe eventually, maybe not). She goes to hear the band and drink. She had spiky hair but now it is grown out, though a faint tinge of green is still to be detected. What colour ‘air ya got, will be asked, and she will say, Straw… She takes a ‘friend’ who leaves (a she of the left) after they’ve ‘settled in’, which is strategic. Now the tactics…