OK, this isn’t really a microseason so much as an annoyingly common occurance, but I’ve put it in because it dominated the experience of the outdoors for a day or two.
I first notice a throbbing in the sky while I was busy planting out herbs I’d recently bought, the sort my gran used to have near her kitchen window – horseradish, artichoke, borage, lemon balm. Moving seedlings to the garden.
We do get helicopters round here, usually when there’s an Arsenal game, or a big gig at Finsbury Park, or some teen drugs lord is on the run in the warren of North London backstreets round here. But for a few days in early June this sound was amplified by these bigger American copters, appearing as part of the Trump state visit.
It feels like a deliberate attempt to fill the skies with noise, like an angry toddler who no-one is paying attention to. They come around many times in a big circle from the south, over Holloway Road, up towards Ally Pally then back around Hackney and to the city. Reminds me a bit of the flypast you get in Dublin every Easter Sunday, except there people are cheering what is essentially the whole Irish air force. This just makes us angry. Perhaps the only positive in all this is that it brings out a coming together of the people. Everyone seems angry at Trump. Every now and then I meet older people who seem keen for Brext to “just happen” but even they think Trump is a stupid thick wanker. It’s the sort of shared community experience we used to get forty years ago but Thatcherism/modern consumer capitalism has atomised our experience so much with stupid TV channels/stupid internet. We’ve become a society that doesn’t communicate properly. Except on weekend like this.
Despite the noise I build a little raised bed out of the wood from a pallet I’d dragged down the street from outside number 58, then plant my herbs. Some friends come round in the evening and we get pleasantly pissed. Then the helicopters return. Our 16 year old, who knows all the helicopters, comes down to chat.
“It’s a Chinook, with some Black Hawks. And that one’s a white Hawk. The one at the back is a Sea King.”
I remind the group of Trumps brief visit last year when there were those strange aircraft with rotater blades on the wings.
“They are V22 Ospreys” says 16 year old, smiling. Then he heads upstairs to watch them. When they all come round again my wife, a demure and well brought up IT manager, has had enough and stands on her chair and flicks the Vs, shouting “Fuck off! FUUCK OFFFFF!!!” at the top of her voice.
See what you’ve done, Trump.