“I fought the law . . . the law won”

I wake up this Sunday morning at 2.30—except that it’s 3.30 because the clocks have moved forward, robbing everyone of an hour that will not be restored till next November. Or perhaps the clocks are claiming back the additional hour they loaned us last November: it is pointless to ask which because the notion is illusory. Moving the hands on a clock may be a reality in society’s terms, but I am free to accept its terms or distance myself from them. I can be some kind of outlaw from the norms of society, which may lead to the situation immortalised in the song I fought the law: “. . . the law won”. See, for example, this rendering by The Clash; an article on the song in Wikipedia, which supplied my illustration; the lyrics of the song.

I sometimes wonder what is meant by “freedom”. In the February cold, I had to wait for four hours outside the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square whilst K was interviewed for a visa, not to visit the USA as a tourist or on business, but to be a transit passenger in Miami, for our plane stops there whilst we journey on to Jamaica. Morosely, I tried to get warm, periodically availing myself of toilet facilities in a nearby Starbucks café, which smelt bad (the café itself, not the restroom therein). In the end, against better instincts I bought a mug of hot chocolate there to try and defrost my body, for out in the windy Square I felt almost as naked as mad King Lear in a storm. There’s a statue near the Embassy, erected in memory of Dwight D Eisenhower, surrounded by a circle of polished granite benches, where I was able to shelter a little, but not of course sit down. That would quickly have drained away the scant warmth remaining in my body. On the plinth were incised some quotations, which momentarily inspired in me some distinctly unamerican feelings.

“Soldiers, Sailors, and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force: You are about to embark upon a great crusade... the hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you.”

“The faith we hold belongs not to us alone but to the free of all the world.”

Thanks to America’s arrangements for its own defense (I allow it to retain its own spelling of the word “defence”) I felt ruthlessly deprived of my own liberty. I didn’t want to be there, but I had no idea when K would be out and she had not been allowed to take a mobile phone inside. She spent most of her time in a comfortable lounge on the Embassy’s third floor, waiting to be interviewed, observing my morose pacings back and forth through the window; and unsuccessfully trying to catch my attention.

I remained alone with the towering figure of Eisenhower. Margaret Thatcher was present in 1989 when the statue was unveiled. I am sure sure she approved the brave words inscribed on the plinth. Is the world really divided between those who love liberty and those who don’t? Many think it is. The fact that it’s hardly possible to imagine someone who hates liberty makes it seem more essential to wage war on such people; for whoever they are they must be sinister, inhuman and evil, to be expunged from the world like a plague, even if hosts of innocents get caught in the crossfire. Personally I think the existence of such creatures is a lot less likely than Bigfoot or the Abominable Snowman.

Though I directed my bitter thoughts against poor Eisenhower that morning, as if he were personally responsible for my short-lived plight, I do accept he had legitimate reasons for saying what he said: (a) the Allied landings to drive the Nazis from France, June 6th 1944; (b) his inauguration as President in 1953, six months before an armistice ended the Korean War. His rallying cries of “freedom”, “liberty”, were fit for purpose in those contexts, I guess, considering the plight of the French in ’44 and of the North Koreans even today. None of this stopped me cursing him and his country on that February morning.

As Donovan sang, “Freedom is a word I rarely use/Without thinkin’, mm hmm . . .” The freedom I cherish is not to fight the law—I expect the law to win, and don’t think of it as a worthy opponent, even when it’s wrong. I cherish the freedom to take an imaginary holiday from society’s values. This is a theme worth getting up to write about in the middle of the night. (Though I had no theme in mind when I started this.) It’s as though I live in one of those European cities with trams, which ply back and forth on the same routes, dictated by tramlines embedded in the cobbled streets. Only in imagination, perhaps fuelled by written words (mine or yours), can I get on the tram to take a holiday beyond the reach of those tramlines. Off we go, beyond the city walls, beyond the outermost suburbs, in the direction of the misty mountains, or the great blue curve of a bay, dotted with islands stretching to the horizon.