Conrad Price

I went to a funeral this morning for someone I'd met just a couple of times: Conrad Price. He was the friend of two friends of mine who are currently in Australia; I attended Conrad's funeral on their behalf.

Conrad lived near King's Cross; he had problems with alcoholism and had been more or less rescued, it seems, from insecure housing where he had sustained a head injury, to go and live with the housing association Family Mosaic. My friends met Conrad when they were working around King's Cross; Conrad used to sell The Big Issue outside Caledonian Road Tesco. They invited him to attend fundraising gigs for the campaign we are all involved in: No Sweat. That's where I met Conrad.

Conrad's funeral was at Islington and Camden Cemetery, a large, tranquil and green cemetery in East Finchley. Conrad's was a "local authority funeral": a funeral whose cost is borne by the local authority, because there is no one else in a position to organise one. These take place first thing in the morning, at 9.30am: the least desired slot for a funeral, it seems.

I wasn't sure who else would be attending, was feeling self-conscious, and throughout the journey half had it in mind to go back home. But when I reached the entrance to the cemetery and read the 'order of the day', with Conrad's funeral at the top, I felt a pang of generational solidarity with the man who has just died: Conrad was just 49. I am 47.

In the event, I'm very glad I went. Four key workers from Family Mosaic attended, including Ramona who knew Conrad best, and there was another friend there from No Sweat who had known Conrad fairly well.

I got to play a role in the proceedings, reading out the remembrances that my friends had sent from Australia, which included stories that Conrad had told them about his life, and that the Family Mosaic people had not known.

The vicar seemed a nice bloke; he was the same age as Conrad and it turned out that he, like Conrad, had been a 'scooter boy' (mod) in his youth. I don't think he was just saying it either: he demonstrated a detailed knowledge of the sort of 'uniform' that scooter boys wore!

The vicar said it was common for there to be no real mourners at a local authority funeral. Often there is just him and the undertaker there, the undertaker sitting in the front row to witness the vicar going through the proper protocol. Today the vicar took the time to say a prayer for the housing workers - they don't have enough appreciation for the sort of work they do, he said.

All in all, I can only describe this morning as a thoroughly humane encounter, the sort of pause in a fairly mad life that just might keep you sane.

The Flying Scotsman - a reflection on St George's Day

I do voluntary work with a campaign called No Sweat. We raise money for workers fighting for their rights in other countries, generally in factories doing outsourced work for big corporations, in short, sweatshop workers. Possibly of more interest to my readers, however, is the fact that No Sweat's office is in King's Cross!

I spend a couple of days a week in a top-floor room leased from Housmans radical bookshop. The computer at the No Sweat office is hopelessly slow. The long minutes passing as the screen redraws or the computer performs the most basic task gives me time to gaze out of the window at the flats, shops and streets around about. King's Cross, half regenerated, half degenerate, affords plenty to see and think about.

A key feature of the area is the Flying Scotsman pub. Look this up on beerintheevening or fancyapint and you'll learn, as I did, that this pub is famous for its strippers.

I can see into the first floor where there appears to be a small bar and some stools. The clientele upstairs are mostly women - perhaps they are the turns resting between acts. There is also the men's toilet. Mercifully, that has frosted glass but you can still see whether a man is sitting or standing, and count the number of sheets of bog paper he tears off to wipe his arse.

The pub windows on the ground floor are painted over, a flat brown colour.

The Flying Scotsman is always busiest on a Friday evening; men pitch up in droves from mid-afternoon, desperate for a pint and an ogle.

I'm no connoisseur of strip joints, but according to the reviews (and the testimony of a friend who says he once popped in there when desperate for the loo) a noteworthy feature of the Flying Scotsman is that while one woman performs, the next act circulates around the bar with a pint pot. The more money the punters put into the pot, the more the woman on the stage reveals. It all sounds very depressing.

Anyway, yesterday afternoon there was quite a commotion outside the FS. A large group of white men, sporting little red rosebuds on their chests in honour of St George's Day, had just left the pub. They had brought an "official photographer" along for the day: a girlfriend or wife of one of them, who did her best to take some group photos - but it was not easy, since she was as drunk as her subjects.

The men shouted a lot and made disparaging remarks about some of the people passing, particularly anyone who wasn't white. Then at some signal the bulk of them lurched off in the direction of King's Cross station. One of their number tried to get back into the pub but the pub closed the door on him and there was an argument on the pavement. Two vans of old bill turned up and ticked the drunk man off - but the intervention of the forces of law and order came too late, well after the lord mayor's show had passed.

Everyone should know by now, but for the purposes of this post I still must mention, that the historical figure of St George was probably born in Palestine/Syria, and, of course, he never visited England.

So what did I witness yesterday? A group of white Englishmen too rude to be welcome in a strip joint. Invoking the name of a Palestinian/Syrian-born Christian saint in order to abuse anyone who didn't look like them. With women playing only bit parts in the drama (I use the word advisedly). How far from decency we still are.