Mclaughlin - Double-Tracking: Studies in Duplicity

1. I
   THE ORIGINS OF DOUBLE-TRACKING
2. II
   CASE STUDIES

On the throne of the world, any delusion can become fact.

Gore Vidal

People have been talking about it. The little caf, housed in a former upholsterers tucked away behind the high street, is not the sort of place youd ever expect to find among the discount stores and the chicken shops on the Walworth Road. Its a beautiful morning, cold and crisp and clear, the sky shot through with such pretty notes of pink and blue that you can almost taste the sherbet. I button up my jacket, lace up my boots and head out with breakfast in mind. How masonic, I think, looking up at the sign above the door, on to which a pair of callipers has been painted in an antiquarian shade of green, and cross the threshold beholden to the glamour of Olde Labour.

Inside I notice with relief the flour-dusted breads, placed on a rack in distressed wooden crates like a display hoiked from a local history museum: Sculleries Through the Ages. Who could have anticipated how difficult it would be to get a decent loaf around here? And standing in line I casually listen in to the people in front of me discussing the state of British politics the sheer poverty of compassion these days a conversation the entire caf seems to be nodding along to, customers, furniture, food and all, and which, combined with the sound of frothing milk and the Johnny Cash record playing in the background, thrum along to a tune so familiar that the man beside the polenta cake has begun to tap it out on the counter. Tum-tu-tum-tum, tum-tu-tum-tum go his thumb and forefinger, Im stuck in Folsom Prison, and time keeps draa-gin on, goes Johnny Cash, and hes happy to serve his time, tip-tapping those fingers, snug in the atmosphere of the small, over-crowded room like a baby in a blanket.

And wait we must, because everyone knows that in 2019 it takes at least ten minutes for a decent cup of coffee to materialise, time enough for the baristas, those proxy craftsmen of the flat-white epoch, to scribble orders on tickets, grind boutique beans, check weights and temperatures, clean mechanical protuberances, bash metal jugs, flick tea-towels over shoulders and hair from out of eyes, and most importantly of all, scribe their ephemeral signatures in milk and caffeine. Wait, until I am perched on the edge of a wooden work bench with a bitter lukewarm heart dissolving on my lips.

I unlock my phone, and allow my neural pathways to slacken as I cast my mind adrift on the backwaters of the Guardian online. Im not cold, I just dont have any romantic feelings, swish, Was Theresa Mays Frida Kahlo bracelet a political statement?, swish, until finally, and entirely at the mercy of the neo-liberal Fates, who swapped the Moiras golden threads for the digital algorithm (and a large portion of San Franciscos bay area), I arrive at an article detailing the optimum way to incorporate workwear into the readers wardrobe. The trick, perhaps, is the softy-softly approach take two components rather than head-to-toe, advises the writer. Otherwise, well, you risk venturing into fancy dress, and that will ruin the worker look for everyone.

The worker look? My morning cruise through the canals of Sunday journalism is disturbed by the thought of the builders less than a mile from where Im sat, working on a private housing development the size of a small town thats currently rising from the site of a razed council estate like a free-market phoenix. Ruined, for everyone? Surely nobody among the rebar and the concrete mixers is in any danger of over-doing a French canvas jacket by pairing it with a vintage boiler suit, two sartorial choices flatly absent among the tracksuit bottoms and the neon tabards.

The discordance between labour chic and labour proper increases when a waitress arrives with breakfast, placing on the table a single slice of brittle toast with half an avocado on top of it, accompanied by an unidentified sprig of bitter greenery. Sensing that theres been some sort of mistake for I distinctly remember there being a whole host of ingredients I cast my eyes in the direction of the chalkboard. But there it is. Artisan sourdough, smashed avocado, cold-pressed olive oil, garden salad. 8. Artisan? Are the couple to my right discussing their plans for a loft extension not a graphic designer and an events manager but a wheelwright and a cooper, employed as sleeper agents for an ancient guild, deep, deep undercover, eating bowls of pottage cunningly disguised as granola? Things get worse when the sourdough shatters beneath my cutlery propelling a large shard of crust onto the floor, where its pounced upon by a sheepdog miles away from anything vaguely resembling livestock and with nothing better to do than round up crumbs. 8 for this dry slice of phoney rusticism?

Its an observable truth that todays middle-classes are never so politically roused as when they feel that they, personally, are being shafted a pathology of privilege most explicit in the cases of those people who, having flown halfway around the world to luxuriate at the expense of someone elses relative economic hardship, pride themselves on holding to account any driver, waiter, stall-holder, or guesthouse receptionist whom they suspect is not charging them local prices; the claim to righteousness, to the belief that you are an outsider to a corrupt global order and a thorn in the side of the establishment, may be as slender as a midges mandibles, but if challenged, it is likely to prove just as irascible.

Through newly disaffected eyes, the interior of the caf takes on a distinctly unflattering appearance. The stripes, the sailor stripes! Everywhere I turn, long-sleeved and short-sleeved, tucked into jeans cut with hooks to hang non-existent hammers, peeping out from underneath yellow fishermens macs, and an array of jackets that look like theyve been pinched from the lockers of timber merchants, green grocers, and bin men sometime in the 1930s Even that plump, blonde toddler in the corner is wearing them. I really ought to be above picking on children, but all the same, such ubiquity makes it hard to differentiate between the two-year-olds and the forty-two-year-olds. They all look so coddled, dressed in mix-and-match uniforms, ready for a play date at the local One Oclock Club. And looking down I am ashamed to see that I, too, am ringed in white and navy. What is this pattern, that winds about my body? I, who have never scrubbed a deck or mended rigging, who have never signed away my youth on a bockety promise of a career, national duty and a sense of belonging? In the throes of ecstatic clarity, I pull the shirt from over my head, grab a loaf from the wooden rack wisely opting for rye, owing to its unrivalled density and launch it at the window, before leaving hot-cheeked and half-naked, but free at last.

Except of course I dont.

I eat the remains of my toast, stroke the dog that got the rest of it, and politely thank the waitress, wondering all the while whether its time to move on to pastures new. South of here, perhaps where there are still at least half a dozen functioning workshops and garages that havent been bought up by the junior population of the home counties, leafy renegades who have arrived in the city on a quest to convert commercial properties into little Bohemias, places where pudding can be eaten before dinner, glitter-wrestling parties are a distinct possibility, DIY saunas are obligatory and Where the Wild Things Are