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Those who read Big Website’s UK news edition will have heard quite a bit about “levelling up”, a process currently under the microscope due to an almighty row about high-speed rattlers. Want to travel from somewhere near Coventry to an art-deco station plaza with a glorious vista of Wormwood Scrubs? Step this way, mesdames et messieurs, the Elizabeth Line next awaits, taking you anywhere you like. As long as it’s London or nearby. Want to travel between northern cities, the factory floors of this great nation? Let’s say Manchester and Leeds … “The 9.32 is running approximately 42 minutes late and will be made up of [jerky, computerised voice gets even jerkier] two carriages.” The issue at hand is inequality, of the haves and have-nots, of metropolitan elites in air-con comfort while provincial types chug along in choo-choos Dr Beeching wanted decommissioning.
The prospect of any individual being punished with a night out alongside ‘Emmanuel Eboué at Rowans bowling alley’ (yesterday’s Football Daily) gave me a bone-deep chill that I thought I’d buried with my 20s. As a local Arsenal fan susceptible to peer-pressure, I have tangible sense-memories of both Eboué and Rowans. I just can’t separate them. An intoxicating sense of fun and freedom, barely papering over calamitous mistakes. A carnival vibe that ultimately leaves you empty. The lasting suspicion that the money spent can’t ever be justified. Persistent nausea. I now feel the line between the two has disappeared. Which was the overindulged chaotic tornado? Which was the promise of glory that robbed me blind? Which one had the worse karaoke options? Eboué and Rowans are one, and all I know any more is that I’ve lost to them both” – Will Green.
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