A group of school children - they must be after-school clubbing - is playing playground games.
They wear high visibility jackets and kick up clouds of dust as they run, in rings, holding hands, round and round.
They tug and pull each other and then two form a pair, link hands aloft, forming an arch and the others form a chain running underneath. Isn't that 'oranges and lemon's?
They have hoops, they have batons and they have beanbags. Of course they do. They look like Tumble Tots. How many ways can you carry a beanbag Thomas?
Always something.
But this is how it is.
group of tourists trudge after an umbrella, almost two by-two. Cameras around their necks, bags of mementos.
Their chocolate will be melting.
The sparrows are bold as brass.
They hop about, just inches away, squabbling, pecking, and having dust baths, pock-marking the sandy path with their little bodies, rubbing, scratching.
Brussels its on its lunch break and the park is full, tourists mix with families mixing with workers escaping air conditioned offices. Again we bake, and the plash of spumy water in the fountains only serves to intensify the arid, hot air.
People don't know how to dress for this - it's unexpected, to locals and tourists. There are shorts, jeans, sweaty, crumpled suits, loosened collars. There are silly, floppy hats on plump ladies, there are old men in baseball caps. There are tights and bare legs, there is pasty, there is tanned, there is burnt, there is roasted. There are miniskirts, sandals, wedges, flipflops. There is gorgeous, ridiculous and everything in between.
They crowd on shady benches eating sandwiches. A few brave the full sun, but
The water in the fountain is green, but it runs clear...as water dribbles at the edges, in the nooks of the walls, the sparrows flock to take tiny sips.
A man sits next to me with his sandwich and takes a bite. The sparrows notice and hop closer. He notices too and throws them crumbs which they fight, bricker over. The victor hops away with his spoils.
Ludicrously there is a big screen showing the Mannekin Pis playing electric guitar.
This city.
Friday, 24 August 2012
Monday, 20 August 2012
Paris....
Mona Lisa, what have they done?
I bet you and your beguiling smile never saw this coming.
Do you enjoy it? It is, after all a hero worship of sorts, a kind of mad pilgrimage..
There's nothing in your eyes to suggest it's bothering you, no sign of tiredness, of world-weariness at your predicament; nothing in your demeanour that betrays a desire for it all to stop, for them all to go away.
Indeed, perhaps you revel in it. Perhaps you hear the incandescent cries of great artists turning, writhing in their tombs as their works go un-noticed, unappreciated by the hordes who blindly stampede past in your direction? Perhaps you enjoy their outrage.
Oh, I came to worship too, of course - but found I preferred to step back, seek a space, a wall to lean on, and watch the watchers watching you instead for a while.
Single-minded, unswerving, blinkered, they thundered for your presence chamber...all the nations of the world, it seems; their target set, their aim true, heading your way...countless languages, countless tongues, melded and stirred into a meaningless, senseless noisy thrum.
They move in a speedy current, carried along by each other - and I see why Giotto, why Botticelli, why even the blessed Fr Angelico - who have the unhappy circumstance of being on the route to your domain - might grumble. How it must wound to be so ignored! For them, THEM, to be relegated to 'D-list', dulled by your red carpet A-List celebrity....
I see you, first, from quite some way away. It is a disappointing anticlimax of an introduction - you over there, me over here and in between us the mass moves, convulses, clamours. The air smells of sweat.
There are many, many smaller versions of you in the viewfinders of cameras and smartphones, held high by their owners. Each device identifies a face, your face, boxing it in red, zooming in, beeping, pinging, buzzing as the auto focus finds its subject.
There are even flashes where none are permitted - but I see little evidence of your modesty being protected. There are security guards present, though none runs to your aid.
I move closer, join the throng. We bump, push, pull, nudge; there are exchanges, exclamations. It is like the Tube: there is no consideration for personal space, there is no eye contact for that would then require an acknowledgement, politeness. It would demand an 'after you', or a 'please, go first'.
There is a sense of urgency, of neediness, impatience. Each wants a piece of you all to themselves at the speed of a shutter. But do they think you will run away if they are not fast enough!
You seem to bear it well, in your bulletproof case, aloft, aloof. But this melee cheapens you, for all your reputed allure.
Too many want to see you, the hordes must be satisfied - and quickly - and it's clear your custodians have decided there is no time for contemplation, for consideration, for dignity, for respect.
They need to keep the queues down - so you have become the 'wham, bang, thankyou ma'am' of the Louvre.
Doesn't this horrify you? It should. Your name makes superlatives drip from the tongue, you are myth, you are legend, you are wife, temptress, secret-keeper, enigma, there are a million facts, a million figures, a million stories. You are Mona Lisa....
But you have become a cheap thrill, La Gioconda, for a quick-hit, list-ticking mob who - and you must believe this - seem to care not a jot for the genius of your creation. You think they love you? That they are lost in you? They do not. They are not. Why would they behave so if that were the case.
I've watched them. Point. Snap. Done. Next....
And those who do care...do pity them. Those who have come to see and wonder, who arrive, throw up their palms in helpless futility at the snapping hordes and turn on their heels, preferring not to meet you at all rather than to meet you like this.
You don't believe me? Your eyes tell me you know better. Well wear your smile then Mona Lisa. Enjoy the mob.
Pretend it is not the case that you are betrayed...
I bet you and your beguiling smile never saw this coming.
Do you enjoy it? It is, after all a hero worship of sorts, a kind of mad pilgrimage..
There's nothing in your eyes to suggest it's bothering you, no sign of tiredness, of world-weariness at your predicament; nothing in your demeanour that betrays a desire for it all to stop, for them all to go away.
Indeed, perhaps you revel in it. Perhaps you hear the incandescent cries of great artists turning, writhing in their tombs as their works go un-noticed, unappreciated by the hordes who blindly stampede past in your direction? Perhaps you enjoy their outrage.
Oh, I came to worship too, of course - but found I preferred to step back, seek a space, a wall to lean on, and watch the watchers watching you instead for a while.
Single-minded, unswerving, blinkered, they thundered for your presence chamber...all the nations of the world, it seems; their target set, their aim true, heading your way...countless languages, countless tongues, melded and stirred into a meaningless, senseless noisy thrum.
They move in a speedy current, carried along by each other - and I see why Giotto, why Botticelli, why even the blessed Fr Angelico - who have the unhappy circumstance of being on the route to your domain - might grumble. How it must wound to be so ignored! For them, THEM, to be relegated to 'D-list', dulled by your red carpet A-List celebrity....
I see you, first, from quite some way away. It is a disappointing anticlimax of an introduction - you over there, me over here and in between us the mass moves, convulses, clamours. The air smells of sweat.
There are many, many smaller versions of you in the viewfinders of cameras and smartphones, held high by their owners. Each device identifies a face, your face, boxing it in red, zooming in, beeping, pinging, buzzing as the auto focus finds its subject.
There are even flashes where none are permitted - but I see little evidence of your modesty being protected. There are security guards present, though none runs to your aid.
I move closer, join the throng. We bump, push, pull, nudge; there are exchanges, exclamations. It is like the Tube: there is no consideration for personal space, there is no eye contact for that would then require an acknowledgement, politeness. It would demand an 'after you', or a 'please, go first'.
There is a sense of urgency, of neediness, impatience. Each wants a piece of you all to themselves at the speed of a shutter. But do they think you will run away if they are not fast enough!
You seem to bear it well, in your bulletproof case, aloft, aloof. But this melee cheapens you, for all your reputed allure.
Too many want to see you, the hordes must be satisfied - and quickly - and it's clear your custodians have decided there is no time for contemplation, for consideration, for dignity, for respect.
They need to keep the queues down - so you have become the 'wham, bang, thankyou ma'am' of the Louvre.
Doesn't this horrify you? It should. Your name makes superlatives drip from the tongue, you are myth, you are legend, you are wife, temptress, secret-keeper, enigma, there are a million facts, a million figures, a million stories. You are Mona Lisa....
But you have become a cheap thrill, La Gioconda, for a quick-hit, list-ticking mob who - and you must believe this - seem to care not a jot for the genius of your creation. You think they love you? That they are lost in you? They do not. They are not. Why would they behave so if that were the case.
I've watched them. Point. Snap. Done. Next....
And those who do care...do pity them. Those who have come to see and wonder, who arrive, throw up their palms in helpless futility at the snapping hordes and turn on their heels, preferring not to meet you at all rather than to meet you like this.
You don't believe me? Your eyes tell me you know better. Well wear your smile then Mona Lisa. Enjoy the mob.
Pretend it is not the case that you are betrayed...
Thursday, 16 August 2012
Echoes and Soul Music
Three talented, bright young things....on clavichord, oboe and viol, playing Bach and Heinichen - soul music of an entirely different kind.
Outside the city is crazily hot, crazily busy - but in here, in the faded glory of the Brussels Conservatoire, the world stops. It just stops. There is nothing but the music. And the three young musicians watching each other, in absolute synergy, catching each others' eyes, smiling, anticipating, teasing. A joy to watch, a privilege to listen - €7 for goodness sake.
They were magnificent. And I wish, as I always do at such events that I had pursued the instruments I played so half-heartedly as a girl - the recorder, the clarinet, the classical guitar, the piano...all cast adrift for easier, more social pleasures.
In one of the auditorium boxes sits a boy with a man I assume is his grandfather. He's about 10, big-eyed, long-limbed, rangy. A fidget before the music began, unable to sit still - scratching, chattering, pointing, arranging and re-arranging himself across the threadbare chair.
My first thought was that his hair was like yours (oh always the unwanted but unconscious ever-sought comparisons Thomas)...those tufts at the crown that would never lie flat despite all the coaxing and combing.
As the musicians walked on to the stage to rousing applause his grandfather turned to him and whispered and the boy stilled. I bet grandad wanted him to be inspired.
I kept glancing his way..and as the minutes passed the yawns got bigger, his head slumped lower, until it dropped. Something about the way he rested it on his long, folded forearms, reminded me of you too.
And as often happens when pressed into a chair, no distraction but the music, it takes just a simple echo, and the mind flees, and plays and replays....
I think I always knew that we wouldn't have you forever. Don't tell me how I knew...I don't think I acknowledged it to myself until afterwards. No doctor ever said your time was limited. You were rarely ill, you were as strong as an ox....yet those blue episodes.....
I remember when we arrived home from Bamburgh without you...and a friend had waited hours and hours for our return and as she took me in her arms, a broken mess, my first words to her were 'I knew, I knew...' So I must have known. I must.
I think of all the times before when, in the quiet of an early morning, I would lie awake, waiting, listening.
This is how it would go: first, as it started to get light, a thud as you negotiated yourself out of the bed and on to the floor. Seconds of silence then a faint shushing as you bottom-shuffled your way across the carpet followed by a real crash-bang-wallop as you started on your toy box, emptying it all, picking out your favourite, and giving it hell for leather.
This until you got bored. Then you'd fumble with the doorknob, find your way round the bedroom door, bottom shuffle along the hallway to the kitchen, dragging along your best toy to the washing machine, throw it inside, and generally just bang it around....
I loved this, that you made the decision what to do and when. That your first port of call was the washer! I loved listening for a few moments to your 'free will' in action, waiting to see what you did next, before getting up to start the day proper...and finding you something more sensible to do.
But sometimes this didn't happen. You would sleep in and I would lie there thinking...not today Thomas, not today. And of course it never was....
And then it was.
Do you know how many times I thought about it how it might happen? Even though all common sense and reason screamed it never would. Do you know how many times it came into my head while sitting at my desk, or in the car...sitting in concerts like this, scenarios of how it might be...and what if I were far away?
Do all parents carry such dark morbid thoughts with them or was it my subconscious preparing me for something it knew would come?
I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.
I do know that it's a struggle to get through such searing music without a runny nose. I do know that pulling one's self together so you can just get out of your chair at the end sometimes takes a physical effort far greater than anyone can imagine. I do know that even now, it still lands like a left hook far more powerful than any super-heavyweight could muster.
When the concert ends and there is the rumble and roar of several hundred bodies on the move all heading to the same tiny exits, I watch as the boy in the box leaps into life.
I see him again in the corridor and, despite the call of his grandfather, he races past us, bumping and shunting people in his rush to the exit. I want to ruffle his hair as he speeds past.
I feel my arm reaching out, my hand uncurling...and stop as reason and rationality kick in.
Brussels Conservatoire concert, Bach & Heinichen, given by Les Timbres (Benoit Laurent, oboe; Myriam Rignol, viol; Julien Wolfs, clavichord).
http://www.les-timbres.com/
http://www.conservatoire.be/accueil.html
Outside the city is crazily hot, crazily busy - but in here, in the faded glory of the Brussels Conservatoire, the world stops. It just stops. There is nothing but the music. And the three young musicians watching each other, in absolute synergy, catching each others' eyes, smiling, anticipating, teasing. A joy to watch, a privilege to listen - €7 for goodness sake.
They were magnificent. And I wish, as I always do at such events that I had pursued the instruments I played so half-heartedly as a girl - the recorder, the clarinet, the classical guitar, the piano...all cast adrift for easier, more social pleasures.
In one of the auditorium boxes sits a boy with a man I assume is his grandfather. He's about 10, big-eyed, long-limbed, rangy. A fidget before the music began, unable to sit still - scratching, chattering, pointing, arranging and re-arranging himself across the threadbare chair.
My first thought was that his hair was like yours (oh always the unwanted but unconscious ever-sought comparisons Thomas)...those tufts at the crown that would never lie flat despite all the coaxing and combing.
As the musicians walked on to the stage to rousing applause his grandfather turned to him and whispered and the boy stilled. I bet grandad wanted him to be inspired.
I kept glancing his way..and as the minutes passed the yawns got bigger, his head slumped lower, until it dropped. Something about the way he rested it on his long, folded forearms, reminded me of you too.
And as often happens when pressed into a chair, no distraction but the music, it takes just a simple echo, and the mind flees, and plays and replays....
I think I always knew that we wouldn't have you forever. Don't tell me how I knew...I don't think I acknowledged it to myself until afterwards. No doctor ever said your time was limited. You were rarely ill, you were as strong as an ox....yet those blue episodes.....
I remember when we arrived home from Bamburgh without you...and a friend had waited hours and hours for our return and as she took me in her arms, a broken mess, my first words to her were 'I knew, I knew...' So I must have known. I must.
I think of all the times before when, in the quiet of an early morning, I would lie awake, waiting, listening.
This is how it would go: first, as it started to get light, a thud as you negotiated yourself out of the bed and on to the floor. Seconds of silence then a faint shushing as you bottom-shuffled your way across the carpet followed by a real crash-bang-wallop as you started on your toy box, emptying it all, picking out your favourite, and giving it hell for leather.
This until you got bored. Then you'd fumble with the doorknob, find your way round the bedroom door, bottom shuffle along the hallway to the kitchen, dragging along your best toy to the washing machine, throw it inside, and generally just bang it around....
I loved this, that you made the decision what to do and when. That your first port of call was the washer! I loved listening for a few moments to your 'free will' in action, waiting to see what you did next, before getting up to start the day proper...and finding you something more sensible to do.
But sometimes this didn't happen. You would sleep in and I would lie there thinking...not today Thomas, not today. And of course it never was....
And then it was.
Do you know how many times I thought about it how it might happen? Even though all common sense and reason screamed it never would. Do you know how many times it came into my head while sitting at my desk, or in the car...sitting in concerts like this, scenarios of how it might be...and what if I were far away?
Do all parents carry such dark morbid thoughts with them or was it my subconscious preparing me for something it knew would come?
I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.
I do know that it's a struggle to get through such searing music without a runny nose. I do know that pulling one's self together so you can just get out of your chair at the end sometimes takes a physical effort far greater than anyone can imagine. I do know that even now, it still lands like a left hook far more powerful than any super-heavyweight could muster.
When the concert ends and there is the rumble and roar of several hundred bodies on the move all heading to the same tiny exits, I watch as the boy in the box leaps into life.
I see him again in the corridor and, despite the call of his grandfather, he races past us, bumping and shunting people in his rush to the exit. I want to ruffle his hair as he speeds past.
I feel my arm reaching out, my hand uncurling...and stop as reason and rationality kick in.
Brussels Conservatoire concert, Bach & Heinichen, given by Les Timbres (Benoit Laurent, oboe; Myriam Rignol, viol; Julien Wolfs, clavichord).
http://www.les-timbres.com/
http://www.conservatoire.be/accueil.html
Tram 94
The woman on the tram says I should get a dog.
'Tres gentile, tres aimable,' she says to me, the Yorkshire terrier pup in her large expensive handbag sniffing my knuckles.
I have thought about this. But I'm not inclined. The not-having-anything-to-be-responsible-for is...important, actually. For now.
We'd started chatting when I asked her about the dog. I tend to do this. Throw myself into conversations in French inevitably tying myself in knots, grasping, reaching for a word, mouth opening and closing like a trout, as my victim, polite yet ever more embarrassed, patiently waits.
She is giddy to have met someone from Yorkshire - the origins of her beloved pup 'Pepe', as she sees it. She asks me if I like Brussels, and we talk about the shopping, the parks, the weather, the people.
Then there's a pause, a sense of conversation over. We both turn away and the packed tram bucks and veers along Avenue Louise. Everyone too hot, everyone holding themselves in, everyone trying not to move, trying not to make themselves even hotter, one woman holding a small, buzzy, battery-powered fan to her face.
For the umpteenth time I pine for grey Yorkshire mizzle...and I'm thinking of a cool Dales shower when suddenly, surprisingly, the woman, who I'd all but forgotten about, leans for forward and takes hold of my wrist.
'Guess how old I am!' she challenges.
This shouldn't happen, should it? The potential to be offended - the potential to cause offence! No-one, certainly not a complete stranger on a tram in full earshot of the public, should ask a question like that! Certainly no woman who doesn't want to risk being shot down in pieces.
I look at her, trying to decide whether I misunderstood. But she is smiling, encouraging, willing me to speak. So I refuse to guess. I tell her it is simply not possible. I do guess, though, inwardly...sixty-something. Early sixty-something.
Bright eyes, twinkly. The sleeves of her pressed, white, linen suit halt at her elbows revealing tanned, freckled forearms, manicured nails, shimmering-pink polish. She has a dainty silver diamond cross around her neck. Her dark hair is styled and teased to the nape of her neck, a few tendrils around her face. A little too much make-up for such a hot day. But yes, she is beautiful, I think. She has something, a glow.
'J'ai soixante-quinze ans,' she proclaims, quite loudly actually, certainly loud enough to turn the heads of other passengers. 75 then. Wow. 'I am lucky, no?' she says. No smugness in her manner, none at all. No vanity, just joy. She does look incredible. The inner cynic scrutinises for scars.
I can't believe I say this...but after some appropriate oohing and ahhing and agreeing, I ask what her secret is. We journalists tend to blurt this one out. We ask it of people hitting 90 or 100, of couples celebrating a golden or diamond wedding. As if there is some magical formula... when the reality is there is no answer. We all muddle through. We all cock it up. We all find a way..
She reaches for the puppy and pulls him onto her knee, talking more at him than me, stroking his back, firmly. 'I wake up in the morning you know, and I look in the mirror and I smile at myself - and I really mean it!'
She waves her hand with a Flamenco-like flourish. 'There! That is what you have to do. Easy. No?'
I'm at a bit of a loss. Wishing she'd speak a bit more quietly. She continues. 'Terrible things have happened to me....truly terrible. But this is my life, I am still here!'
There can't be a soul aboard this tram by now who isn't listening in.
She goes on: 'If you are lucky you know how to be happy...I know how to be happy, that is why I look so young!''
Blinking good genes too, I'm thinking. I'm also thinking 'how, on the 94 tram, did we get to this?' Yet there is something incredibly uplifting in this woman's vivaciousness, her assuredness..
I say 'terrible things?'...and she waves me away with a smile and the slightest irritated shake of the head. Not to be discussed then. Certainly not the place and, one tram stop to go, not the time either. Or maybe she thinks I'm missing her point. A man behind her catches my eye, rolls his eyes. He thinks she's bonkers.
Pepe the pup pants and does his hot dog routine. The tram welcomes and disgorges more passengers and we talk of other things, mundane stuff: the best clothes shops, restaurants, holidays. Then it is our stop, where the tram terminates, at Place Louise, where Tiffany and Versace rub brickwork with Chanel and Dior. I'm here to meet a friend and her little boy for a burger.
At the stop I can tell she wants to be off. 'It was lovely to meet you,' I say. I'm about to say more when she grabs my arm, pulls me to her, air-kisses both cheeks, waves au revoir, and vanishes in a click clack of slingback heels, little Pepe bouncing and bumping along in the bag beside her. Her strong perfume coils around for a while until a gust carries it off...
Later, after the burger, in a cafe off the cobbled streets of the Sablon, Mozart's Clarinet Concerto through the speakers, I am surrounded by lively chatter; French and English mostly. It passes over like comforting background music. I dip in and out.
My coffee is in a big bowl with no handles, so you have to grasp it in both hands - comforting, drinking like that. There are three older women at a table opposite eating beautiful salads, drinking rose. They look in their 70s which probably means they are 110.
The tram woman lingers. I want to know about her. I wonder, in retrospect, whether her gaiety was all too frantic, forced.....masking something else.
I wonder whether she means it all, or whether she's fooling us, fooling herself..
Or maybe I'm seeing things that were not there. Maybe I'm wrong to doubt her. Maybe she lives by every word, every day.
I hope so.
'Tres gentile, tres aimable,' she says to me, the Yorkshire terrier pup in her large expensive handbag sniffing my knuckles.
I have thought about this. But I'm not inclined. The not-having-anything-to-be-responsible-for is...important, actually. For now.
We'd started chatting when I asked her about the dog. I tend to do this. Throw myself into conversations in French inevitably tying myself in knots, grasping, reaching for a word, mouth opening and closing like a trout, as my victim, polite yet ever more embarrassed, patiently waits.
She is giddy to have met someone from Yorkshire - the origins of her beloved pup 'Pepe', as she sees it. She asks me if I like Brussels, and we talk about the shopping, the parks, the weather, the people.
Then there's a pause, a sense of conversation over. We both turn away and the packed tram bucks and veers along Avenue Louise. Everyone too hot, everyone holding themselves in, everyone trying not to move, trying not to make themselves even hotter, one woman holding a small, buzzy, battery-powered fan to her face.
For the umpteenth time I pine for grey Yorkshire mizzle...and I'm thinking of a cool Dales shower when suddenly, surprisingly, the woman, who I'd all but forgotten about, leans for forward and takes hold of my wrist.
'Guess how old I am!' she challenges.
This shouldn't happen, should it? The potential to be offended - the potential to cause offence! No-one, certainly not a complete stranger on a tram in full earshot of the public, should ask a question like that! Certainly no woman who doesn't want to risk being shot down in pieces.
I look at her, trying to decide whether I misunderstood. But she is smiling, encouraging, willing me to speak. So I refuse to guess. I tell her it is simply not possible. I do guess, though, inwardly...sixty-something. Early sixty-something.
Bright eyes, twinkly. The sleeves of her pressed, white, linen suit halt at her elbows revealing tanned, freckled forearms, manicured nails, shimmering-pink polish. She has a dainty silver diamond cross around her neck. Her dark hair is styled and teased to the nape of her neck, a few tendrils around her face. A little too much make-up for such a hot day. But yes, she is beautiful, I think. She has something, a glow.
'J'ai soixante-quinze ans,' she proclaims, quite loudly actually, certainly loud enough to turn the heads of other passengers. 75 then. Wow. 'I am lucky, no?' she says. No smugness in her manner, none at all. No vanity, just joy. She does look incredible. The inner cynic scrutinises for scars.
I can't believe I say this...but after some appropriate oohing and ahhing and agreeing, I ask what her secret is. We journalists tend to blurt this one out. We ask it of people hitting 90 or 100, of couples celebrating a golden or diamond wedding. As if there is some magical formula... when the reality is there is no answer. We all muddle through. We all cock it up. We all find a way..
She reaches for the puppy and pulls him onto her knee, talking more at him than me, stroking his back, firmly. 'I wake up in the morning you know, and I look in the mirror and I smile at myself - and I really mean it!'
She waves her hand with a Flamenco-like flourish. 'There! That is what you have to do. Easy. No?'
I'm at a bit of a loss. Wishing she'd speak a bit more quietly. She continues. 'Terrible things have happened to me....truly terrible. But this is my life, I am still here!'
There can't be a soul aboard this tram by now who isn't listening in.
She goes on: 'If you are lucky you know how to be happy...I know how to be happy, that is why I look so young!''
Blinking good genes too, I'm thinking. I'm also thinking 'how, on the 94 tram, did we get to this?' Yet there is something incredibly uplifting in this woman's vivaciousness, her assuredness..
I say 'terrible things?'...and she waves me away with a smile and the slightest irritated shake of the head. Not to be discussed then. Certainly not the place and, one tram stop to go, not the time either. Or maybe she thinks I'm missing her point. A man behind her catches my eye, rolls his eyes. He thinks she's bonkers.
Pepe the pup pants and does his hot dog routine. The tram welcomes and disgorges more passengers and we talk of other things, mundane stuff: the best clothes shops, restaurants, holidays. Then it is our stop, where the tram terminates, at Place Louise, where Tiffany and Versace rub brickwork with Chanel and Dior. I'm here to meet a friend and her little boy for a burger.
At the stop I can tell she wants to be off. 'It was lovely to meet you,' I say. I'm about to say more when she grabs my arm, pulls me to her, air-kisses both cheeks, waves au revoir, and vanishes in a click clack of slingback heels, little Pepe bouncing and bumping along in the bag beside her. Her strong perfume coils around for a while until a gust carries it off...
Later, after the burger, in a cafe off the cobbled streets of the Sablon, Mozart's Clarinet Concerto through the speakers, I am surrounded by lively chatter; French and English mostly. It passes over like comforting background music. I dip in and out.
My coffee is in a big bowl with no handles, so you have to grasp it in both hands - comforting, drinking like that. There are three older women at a table opposite eating beautiful salads, drinking rose. They look in their 70s which probably means they are 110.
The tram woman lingers. I want to know about her. I wonder, in retrospect, whether her gaiety was all too frantic, forced.....masking something else.
I wonder whether she means it all, or whether she's fooling us, fooling herself..
Or maybe I'm seeing things that were not there. Maybe I'm wrong to doubt her. Maybe she lives by every word, every day.
I hope so.
Friday, 13 July 2012
Yellowellies
Bare feet on warm parquet.
The windows are open and white voile drapes - pulled across to shade the sun - billow and balloon in the breeze.
A black redstart is singing loudly, his call bouncing and echoing off the apartment blocks and office buildings, his own amphitheatre.
It has been a blazing hot, languid day; the kind where it's an effort to move, even from room to room.
But now there is a restlessness in the air, a tremor, a shifting of something. The sun is veiled in a grey/white haze and the air feels thick and humid.
Inside, listless on a couch, thinking about you. Splashy pale legs in a paddling pool; a clothes horse with bath-sheet towels thrown over it to shade you, brown patches on a lawn sucked dry by the conifers. A crumpled rug with toys on it, sun loungers, juice, tangerine segments, Blowers on the radio: '....and there's no run'. Wriggling toes, suncream, the hat that never stayed on, wrapping you dry, snug in the towels.
Our days in the sun.
Need to shake this off. I wander outside. Everywhere the skies are pale apart from on the southern horizon where purple, anvil clouds bloom and grow. The faintest rumble of thunder, a drum roll, a blink-and-you'd-miss-it flicker of sheet lightning.
Minutes pass.
Louder now and then forked lightning splits the sky and a crash of thunder shakes the building.
Huge heavy raindrops slowly plop on to the hot terrace, on to hot skin. Then faster and heavier. A sudden sharp gust sweeps down the street. You can smell the rain!
The skies are almost black now and street lights pop into life one after the other.
On the road below, people in shorts, sandals and flip flops dash for cover. Half a dozen cram into a doorway.
A woman grabs her sodden miniature terrier and drops him into her basket. A child screams and is dragged along by his mum, hair dripping and plastered to both their faces.
Drainpipes gush torrents on to roads and gardens, and flat roofs have become choppy lakes.
Now the thunder and lightning is constant and there is no counting the gap in between.
It's stifling hot here, seven floors up...but opening the windows brings the rain driving inside. A crazed mosquito flits and bangs against the glass as if trying to get out. One swat and it's done with.
I want to be outside.
Boots on, waterproof jacket fastened and then, hands on the biggest umbrella we have, I am out of the lift, walking through the foyer and out into the cloudburst.
The streets are running rivers; cars and buses have their headlights on full beam; the tree above me is full of roosting, honking drowned-rat Egyptian geese.
The rain falls so hard that drops ricochet hard off the tarmac, bouncing back up to soak legs from below.
Past the lakes where Canada geese and their goslings (less flighty, less hysterical than their Egyptian cousins) wait out the storm on land. There isn't a bird on the water. Place Flagey, a vast bare almost Soviet block-style square, pops and spits with the rain.
How you would have loved this! And in my minds eye you are next to me in mackintosh and wellingtons (very Christopher Robin!), stamping and splashing. I see you in wellies (yellowellies!*). And I remember you could never wear them...your plastic leg splints always too rigid to fit their mould. Your eyelashes are wet and you're laughing, striding out to keep up.
The bus is hot and sweaty, the windows are fogged and all of us steam as we sit or stand. A pair of young teenagers unprepared for the weather shriek as they leap off the bus and run for cover. There is a flash and the thunder cracks again. The woman next to me jumps with alarm, closes her eyes and mutters something under her breath.
The journey lasts about 15 minutes and still it pours. The sky is lightening though.
The Jardin du Botanique is deserted. As I knew it would be. One of my favourite places, right in the heart of the city.
The storm is moving on and while the rain still comes it is gentler here, less aggressive.Tree branches weighed down by the water bow low over the pathways.
I think of the last time I was out in a downpour like this, just for the fun of it: on a pebble beach on the isle of Mull, soaked, numb with cold, binoculars fogged up, watching a white-tailed eagle perched on a rock. I stayed there for hours, just watching. No-one around.
I love the sound of rain, I love being out in the rain. It forms a curtain around my umbrella and there is a slight tear in one part of it, right in the centre, and drops plop on to my head. The sandy paths are muddy rivers and I feel the water seeping into my boots. The air is fresh, clean and smells of lavender. And somehow, it is easier to breathe.
You can be sad and happy at the same Thomas. You can. And that's how it is, as I stroll through this park, the rain spattering, frittering the leaves. Happiest memories of the simplest pleasures...going out in a downpour, getting soaked, just so you could splash in a puddle....
xxxx
* 'Yellowwellies' - From the third stanza of 'First Day at School' by Roger McGough
I wish I could remember my name
Mummy said it would come in useful.
Like wellies. When there's puddles.
Yellowwellies. I wish she was here.
I think my name is sewn on somewhere
Perhaps the teacher will read it for me.Tea-cher. The one who makes the tea.
The windows are open and white voile drapes - pulled across to shade the sun - billow and balloon in the breeze.
A black redstart is singing loudly, his call bouncing and echoing off the apartment blocks and office buildings, his own amphitheatre.
It has been a blazing hot, languid day; the kind where it's an effort to move, even from room to room.
But now there is a restlessness in the air, a tremor, a shifting of something. The sun is veiled in a grey/white haze and the air feels thick and humid.
Inside, listless on a couch, thinking about you. Splashy pale legs in a paddling pool; a clothes horse with bath-sheet towels thrown over it to shade you, brown patches on a lawn sucked dry by the conifers. A crumpled rug with toys on it, sun loungers, juice, tangerine segments, Blowers on the radio: '....and there's no run'. Wriggling toes, suncream, the hat that never stayed on, wrapping you dry, snug in the towels.
Our days in the sun.
Need to shake this off. I wander outside. Everywhere the skies are pale apart from on the southern horizon where purple, anvil clouds bloom and grow. The faintest rumble of thunder, a drum roll, a blink-and-you'd-miss-it flicker of sheet lightning.
Minutes pass.
Louder now and then forked lightning splits the sky and a crash of thunder shakes the building.
Huge heavy raindrops slowly plop on to the hot terrace, on to hot skin. Then faster and heavier. A sudden sharp gust sweeps down the street. You can smell the rain!
The skies are almost black now and street lights pop into life one after the other.
On the road below, people in shorts, sandals and flip flops dash for cover. Half a dozen cram into a doorway.
A woman grabs her sodden miniature terrier and drops him into her basket. A child screams and is dragged along by his mum, hair dripping and plastered to both their faces.
Drainpipes gush torrents on to roads and gardens, and flat roofs have become choppy lakes.
Now the thunder and lightning is constant and there is no counting the gap in between.
It's stifling hot here, seven floors up...but opening the windows brings the rain driving inside. A crazed mosquito flits and bangs against the glass as if trying to get out. One swat and it's done with.
I want to be outside.
Boots on, waterproof jacket fastened and then, hands on the biggest umbrella we have, I am out of the lift, walking through the foyer and out into the cloudburst.
The streets are running rivers; cars and buses have their headlights on full beam; the tree above me is full of roosting, honking drowned-rat Egyptian geese.
The rain falls so hard that drops ricochet hard off the tarmac, bouncing back up to soak legs from below.
Past the lakes where Canada geese and their goslings (less flighty, less hysterical than their Egyptian cousins) wait out the storm on land. There isn't a bird on the water. Place Flagey, a vast bare almost Soviet block-style square, pops and spits with the rain.
How you would have loved this! And in my minds eye you are next to me in mackintosh and wellingtons (very Christopher Robin!), stamping and splashing. I see you in wellies (yellowellies!*). And I remember you could never wear them...your plastic leg splints always too rigid to fit their mould. Your eyelashes are wet and you're laughing, striding out to keep up.
The bus is hot and sweaty, the windows are fogged and all of us steam as we sit or stand. A pair of young teenagers unprepared for the weather shriek as they leap off the bus and run for cover. There is a flash and the thunder cracks again. The woman next to me jumps with alarm, closes her eyes and mutters something under her breath.
The journey lasts about 15 minutes and still it pours. The sky is lightening though.
The Jardin du Botanique is deserted. As I knew it would be. One of my favourite places, right in the heart of the city.
The storm is moving on and while the rain still comes it is gentler here, less aggressive.Tree branches weighed down by the water bow low over the pathways.
I think of the last time I was out in a downpour like this, just for the fun of it: on a pebble beach on the isle of Mull, soaked, numb with cold, binoculars fogged up, watching a white-tailed eagle perched on a rock. I stayed there for hours, just watching. No-one around.
I love the sound of rain, I love being out in the rain. It forms a curtain around my umbrella and there is a slight tear in one part of it, right in the centre, and drops plop on to my head. The sandy paths are muddy rivers and I feel the water seeping into my boots. The air is fresh, clean and smells of lavender. And somehow, it is easier to breathe.
You can be sad and happy at the same Thomas. You can. And that's how it is, as I stroll through this park, the rain spattering, frittering the leaves. Happiest memories of the simplest pleasures...going out in a downpour, getting soaked, just so you could splash in a puddle....
xxxx
* 'Yellowwellies' - From the third stanza of 'First Day at School' by Roger McGough
I wish I could remember my name
Mummy said it would come in useful.
Like wellies. When there's puddles.
Yellowwellies. I wish she was here.
I think my name is sewn on somewhere
Perhaps the teacher will read it for me.Tea-cher. The one who makes the tea.
 |
| Stormy skies over Brussels |
Thursday, 21 June 2012
Of Love and of Loss
A little girl with flaxen hair in pigtails, a gap where her front teeth used to be, a hand-knitted cardigan.
Not a girly girl - a tomboy, always on a rope swing, climbing trees; a rebel, a naughty girl, too often over her mother's knee.
Her name? Virginie.
I was with her little brother in a park today. Such an odd couple we made, sitting in the dappled shade of one of the small parks off Rue Luxembourg near the flash glasshouse of the European Parliament.
I had time to spare, French class not due to start until 9am, so the park beckoned; one corner of it, where the sun shines early in the morning slanting long shadows across sandy paths. A rare moment when there is nothing to be done except sit and, perhaps, write a little.
It's quiet in here. Close by, on the other side of the railings, smart women click clack on heels and the teenage girls are all casual prettiness, perfect mussy hair and flat shoes. The teenage boys have that lop-sided shuffle and cocky-cum-gawky rolling gait while most of the older men are in suits - identikit beings in jackets and trousers albeit in varying shades of blue. They move with that important 'should have been there 5 minutes ago' briskness.
I clock Virginie's brother immediately, walking more slowly than all the others. As the rat race rushes about him he turns into the park, to a bench, to the only bench in the sun, my bench.
Seventies, possibly 60s, difficult to tell. He doesn't look like he's slept well - shadows under the eyes, stubble round his chin, unkempt grey receding hair. A bit of a tremor to his hands and an unevenness to his gait. Perhaps he hasn't slept at all. Perhaps he doesn't have a bed to sleep in.
He sits at the opposite end of the bench and I see the suit he wears is not so smart. A little frayed at the cuffs and the ankles. The odd faint stain here and there. He must be hot in that overcoat.
I'm uncomfortable that he has chosen to sit so near. But there is no threat from him, none at all.
I keep writing but I'm constantly aware of him. He sits for a while, doing nothing, but glances across several times. I nod - a polite acknowledgement - and am not surprised when he speaks.
He points at the book.
What am I doing, he wants to know. What am I writing about?
I pause, just for a second, considering a myriad of options. But can't bring myself to lie.
'I am writing to my son,' I say. 'He died and I like to write to him.'
I immediately regret it. It comes out more abruptly than I intended.
I think I said it half hoping it might shut him up, make him go away.
He doesn't do any of the things I might have expected. He doesn't say he is sorry for my loss, or ask any questions or apologise or redden with embarrassment; he may have crumpled a little, I'm not sure. But he doesn't go away. He simply sits back against the bench.
A blackcap chatters deep in the foliage of the nearest tree. I'm aware of its song filling a sudden, odd vacuum that wasn't there before.
I shouldn't have said what I said. I start to stand up, language failing where an apology should be, but he holds out his arm and flaps his hand, motioning me to sit again, asking me to wait. Something he wants me to see.
He leans forward, loosens the cords of his shopping trolley - a grubby, tartan-patterned two-wheeled contraption he'd pulled into the park behind him.
I see that it quite possibly contains all that is left in his world.
A thin duvet comes out first, then a pillow, odds and sods of clothing, he piles them on to the bench; some packets of biscuits, cans of beer, and then, arm right in, shoulder deep, he hits somewhere near the bottom and emerges, a little frazzled, holding a book.
A photo album.
He nods encouraging me to take it. I don't want it but I have been rude already. So I hold it while he starts gathering his things again. He sees me doing nothing with it and gestures at me enthusiastically, using his hands to mime the opening of a book.
It feels wrong and intrusive and I am embarrassed by all his things. By the pieces of his life. By what people might think. The pillow is now on the ground and it will get dirty. But he seems not to care.
The album is barely whole. The sticky bits no longer sticky, the cellophane torn, some of the pages browning, others missing. It is held together by a few bits of fake leather and threads of brittle cotton.
But in the middle, still stuck under the cellophane, two photos.
Two children, beaming faces, a boy and a girl.
In both pictures the girl is hugging the boy. She is a few years older, possibly 12, maybe 13. She is clearly in charge, holding the little boy tightly across his middle. She has long hair in pigtails, a gap in her front teeth, a slouchy cardigan straight from a knitting pattern. The boy is mop-haired, thin cheeks, a shirt that looks too big for him.
The pictures are black and white and it is impossible to date them. This man's grandchildren, perhaps?
But no.
He leans over and prods the photograph. The boy in the picture is him...and the girl holding him fast, his sister, Virginie. 'My Virginie,' he says. And he pats that part of his chest where his heart beats.
'God took her,' he said. A pause. He visibly gathers himself. Not long after the photographs were taken. A fever of some sort. He shrugs at the detail.....'what does it matter what they called it. She died.'
Then: 'It is the worst......to lose a part of you. It is the very worst. Nothing is the same.'
This shabby man speaks with such dignity and I don't know what to say for a moment. Then I ask about her and he tells me how she liked to run and how he always tried to keep up with her. And how she was disobedient and wild. And he laughs out loud.
We communicate clumsily, using Franglais and sign language. I tell him she is beautiful. I think I say the right things...but it goes to show that in the face of another's grief, we are all made mute, clumsy - even when we have a similar story to tell.
The world scurries around us, yet for a few moments this noisy city is forgotten, the years peeling back as I see Virginie, her life and death, played out in this man's eyes.
Virginie. Who was always in trouble, the big sister who refused to be the tidy, pretty, home-spun girl his mother wanted her to be.
He pulls out a handkerchief from a pocket and mops his eyes and I'm not sure whether he's rheumy or tearful. I wonder at the hold this long-dead sibling, this little Cathy Earnshaw, has on him, still.
I try to picture him as a little boy on little legs chasing the sister he adored. I wonder, did her death at the beginning of his life ultimately lead to him being here on this bench, worn and frayed and sad, with a shopping trolley for a home. I wonder about his mother and his father. Where are their photographs? But he has told me what he wants to tell me and will say no more.
He tells me I am saying her name wrong though. I am saying VirginiA. I ask him to spell it and he is delighted when I write it in my book.
Then he starts packing his things away and I give him back the album. He asks me your name and I misunderstand and give him my name instead.
'Votre fils, Nicholas?' he says (with no pronunciation of the 'S')
'Thomas,' I say. Digging into my bag I show him your picture. 'Voici Thomas'.
'Thomas, Thomas, Thomas,' he says, looking at the photograph. 'Bonjour Thomas!'
And then. 'It is hard..no?' And I want to say yes, it is hard, but that because of you, Thomas, I meet people and hear such stories. But my French fails and I just say 'Oui, mais pas encore'.
There is a little more talk about other things of no importance....and I can tell he wants to be off. He pushes himself up and fastens the trolley. I sit there, feeling useless. Should I offer him money? I can't bear that it might humiliate him. He pats my hand and his palm is raspy and dry.
He says something - I can't fathom it so I say just say 'thank you'. And off he goes.
Near the railings, before leaving the park he turns and gives a mock bow before he sets off for who knows where.
Where is he now, I wonder?
Perhaps in another park, on another bench, talking about the sister he loved and lost? Making friends of strangers just to have the chance to say her name out loud?
Not a girly girl - a tomboy, always on a rope swing, climbing trees; a rebel, a naughty girl, too often over her mother's knee.
Her name? Virginie.
I was with her little brother in a park today. Such an odd couple we made, sitting in the dappled shade of one of the small parks off Rue Luxembourg near the flash glasshouse of the European Parliament.
I had time to spare, French class not due to start until 9am, so the park beckoned; one corner of it, where the sun shines early in the morning slanting long shadows across sandy paths. A rare moment when there is nothing to be done except sit and, perhaps, write a little.
It's quiet in here. Close by, on the other side of the railings, smart women click clack on heels and the teenage girls are all casual prettiness, perfect mussy hair and flat shoes. The teenage boys have that lop-sided shuffle and cocky-cum-gawky rolling gait while most of the older men are in suits - identikit beings in jackets and trousers albeit in varying shades of blue. They move with that important 'should have been there 5 minutes ago' briskness.
I clock Virginie's brother immediately, walking more slowly than all the others. As the rat race rushes about him he turns into the park, to a bench, to the only bench in the sun, my bench.
Seventies, possibly 60s, difficult to tell. He doesn't look like he's slept well - shadows under the eyes, stubble round his chin, unkempt grey receding hair. A bit of a tremor to his hands and an unevenness to his gait. Perhaps he hasn't slept at all. Perhaps he doesn't have a bed to sleep in.
He sits at the opposite end of the bench and I see the suit he wears is not so smart. A little frayed at the cuffs and the ankles. The odd faint stain here and there. He must be hot in that overcoat.
I'm uncomfortable that he has chosen to sit so near. But there is no threat from him, none at all.
I keep writing but I'm constantly aware of him. He sits for a while, doing nothing, but glances across several times. I nod - a polite acknowledgement - and am not surprised when he speaks.
He points at the book.
What am I doing, he wants to know. What am I writing about?
I pause, just for a second, considering a myriad of options. But can't bring myself to lie.
'I am writing to my son,' I say. 'He died and I like to write to him.'
I immediately regret it. It comes out more abruptly than I intended.
I think I said it half hoping it might shut him up, make him go away.
He doesn't do any of the things I might have expected. He doesn't say he is sorry for my loss, or ask any questions or apologise or redden with embarrassment; he may have crumpled a little, I'm not sure. But he doesn't go away. He simply sits back against the bench.
A blackcap chatters deep in the foliage of the nearest tree. I'm aware of its song filling a sudden, odd vacuum that wasn't there before.
I shouldn't have said what I said. I start to stand up, language failing where an apology should be, but he holds out his arm and flaps his hand, motioning me to sit again, asking me to wait. Something he wants me to see.
He leans forward, loosens the cords of his shopping trolley - a grubby, tartan-patterned two-wheeled contraption he'd pulled into the park behind him.
I see that it quite possibly contains all that is left in his world.
A thin duvet comes out first, then a pillow, odds and sods of clothing, he piles them on to the bench; some packets of biscuits, cans of beer, and then, arm right in, shoulder deep, he hits somewhere near the bottom and emerges, a little frazzled, holding a book.
A photo album.
He nods encouraging me to take it. I don't want it but I have been rude already. So I hold it while he starts gathering his things again. He sees me doing nothing with it and gestures at me enthusiastically, using his hands to mime the opening of a book.
It feels wrong and intrusive and I am embarrassed by all his things. By the pieces of his life. By what people might think. The pillow is now on the ground and it will get dirty. But he seems not to care.
The album is barely whole. The sticky bits no longer sticky, the cellophane torn, some of the pages browning, others missing. It is held together by a few bits of fake leather and threads of brittle cotton.
But in the middle, still stuck under the cellophane, two photos.
Two children, beaming faces, a boy and a girl.
In both pictures the girl is hugging the boy. She is a few years older, possibly 12, maybe 13. She is clearly in charge, holding the little boy tightly across his middle. She has long hair in pigtails, a gap in her front teeth, a slouchy cardigan straight from a knitting pattern. The boy is mop-haired, thin cheeks, a shirt that looks too big for him.
The pictures are black and white and it is impossible to date them. This man's grandchildren, perhaps?
But no.
He leans over and prods the photograph. The boy in the picture is him...and the girl holding him fast, his sister, Virginie. 'My Virginie,' he says. And he pats that part of his chest where his heart beats.
'God took her,' he said. A pause. He visibly gathers himself. Not long after the photographs were taken. A fever of some sort. He shrugs at the detail.....'what does it matter what they called it. She died.'
Then: 'It is the worst......to lose a part of you. It is the very worst. Nothing is the same.'
This shabby man speaks with such dignity and I don't know what to say for a moment. Then I ask about her and he tells me how she liked to run and how he always tried to keep up with her. And how she was disobedient and wild. And he laughs out loud.
We communicate clumsily, using Franglais and sign language. I tell him she is beautiful. I think I say the right things...but it goes to show that in the face of another's grief, we are all made mute, clumsy - even when we have a similar story to tell.
The world scurries around us, yet for a few moments this noisy city is forgotten, the years peeling back as I see Virginie, her life and death, played out in this man's eyes.
Virginie. Who was always in trouble, the big sister who refused to be the tidy, pretty, home-spun girl his mother wanted her to be.
He pulls out a handkerchief from a pocket and mops his eyes and I'm not sure whether he's rheumy or tearful. I wonder at the hold this long-dead sibling, this little Cathy Earnshaw, has on him, still.
I try to picture him as a little boy on little legs chasing the sister he adored. I wonder, did her death at the beginning of his life ultimately lead to him being here on this bench, worn and frayed and sad, with a shopping trolley for a home. I wonder about his mother and his father. Where are their photographs? But he has told me what he wants to tell me and will say no more.
He tells me I am saying her name wrong though. I am saying VirginiA. I ask him to spell it and he is delighted when I write it in my book.
Then he starts packing his things away and I give him back the album. He asks me your name and I misunderstand and give him my name instead.
'Votre fils, Nicholas?' he says (with no pronunciation of the 'S')
'Thomas,' I say. Digging into my bag I show him your picture. 'Voici Thomas'.
'Thomas, Thomas, Thomas,' he says, looking at the photograph. 'Bonjour Thomas!'
And then. 'It is hard..no?' And I want to say yes, it is hard, but that because of you, Thomas, I meet people and hear such stories. But my French fails and I just say 'Oui, mais pas encore'.
There is a little more talk about other things of no importance....and I can tell he wants to be off. He pushes himself up and fastens the trolley. I sit there, feeling useless. Should I offer him money? I can't bear that it might humiliate him. He pats my hand and his palm is raspy and dry.
He says something - I can't fathom it so I say just say 'thank you'. And off he goes.
Near the railings, before leaving the park he turns and gives a mock bow before he sets off for who knows where.
Where is he now, I wonder?
Perhaps in another park, on another bench, talking about the sister he loved and lost? Making friends of strangers just to have the chance to say her name out loud?
Thursday, 7 June 2012
Flamborough
I drove here on impulse.
It certainly hadn't been the intention when I set off this blistering morning. The plan was lunch in Leeds with an old colleague followed by shopping.
The lunch had been wonderful - we'd talked and talked, wondered where the years had gone, hiding from the heat of the day in the coolest part of the restaurant, before emerging, blinking, into unbearable brightness.
The city was feverish and the heat sapped all desire to shop - so instead I went back to the multi-storey and sat for a moment with the engine turning, waiting for the air conditioning to kick in, listening to the busy, busy city; the thrum of shoppers, buskers, sirens, road drills.
And sitting there, suddenly, I knew where I wanted to be...and it was all-consuming, urgent, as if I was already late.
Leeds was congested and impatient and getting out of the city took a frustrating amount of time. But eventually the hire car was chewing up the miles. Through glorious countryside, past fields of yellow, heady, scented rape; swinging round York, around Driffield, through Stamford Bridge, past the Burton Agnes duckpond, crawling behind tractors on the A614, bypassing Bridlington..
Until at last, here I am, finally. In the car park. Beneath the wheeling, spinning mirrors of Flamborough Head lighthouse.
It's 4pm - and the first thing I hear as I turn off the engine is the crunch of car wheels on gravel. Timing is perfect, most are leaving and the car park is almost empty.
The urge that brought me here has become overwhelming and for some reason - there is no logic to this - I need to hurry. I throw open the door and there is the sudden quick blast of a foghorn. Another blast follows - not the evocative tremor of a deep bass, but a higher frequency, and it's confusing to hear it on such a bright day.
Looking seaward though all becomes clear. There is no sea. There is no sky. They have blended in the haze, melded so absolutely that it is impossible to see where one ends and the other begins. There is no horizon.
The gorse and air fizz with birdsong. The skylarks' high-pitched musical trill is constant. It hurts the eyes to look for them but I see one - a dot in the sky, hovering before it loops and swoops, silent now, to the ground.
It is a gentle but exhilarating walk to the cliffs and gradually the song of the larks and the chatter of the pippits quickly fades, replaced the raucous calls of thousands of seabirds.
I sit close to your ledge and the foghorn sounds again, just as it did on the day we let your ashes fly from this very spot. And the air carries and lifts the sound so that it resonates and vibrates long after it has ended. But it is fainter out here, muffled by the waves and the cries of the gulls.
To the left a huge, riotous, breeding colony of kittiwakes hugs a white cliff face and to the right is the famous Flamborough Head stack, domain of the herring gulls. One throws back its head, opens its beak wide and gives that ululating seaside town fish and chip holler.
There's quite a breeze here and below the sea is lively with white horses.
The waves swell, crest and roll, foam dissipating on the surface. The water is blue, azure, almost Mediterranean and the pale rocks in the shallower parts are easy to see. The suck and roar, the pull and push, is mesmerising. It always is.
The air is filled with birds, and on the sea colonies rise and fall, bobbing on the swell. Razorbills - scores of them, their wings churring like the legs of a clockwork toy - guillemots, blacked back gulls, shags, fulmars.
The kittiwakes are unmistakable - yellow bills, black tips to their grey wings and white bodies as pristine and as clear as porcelain. They are tiny compared to the herring gulls and black backs.
They make their 'kitt-eee-wayke' call as a greeting, as one returns to the nest where the other is brooding. Their nests are strong, sturdy cones and arriving birds bring more materials - twigs, tufts of grass - as opposed to fish. No chicks yet then.
Occasionally the wind changes and a gust rears up the cliffs from the sea and the smell, the guano odour of this huge colony catches on the air. It's kind of stable meets zoo, only less....palatable?.
A gleaming roly-poly seal bobs on the surface, glances around with big shiny eyes and then loops and dives.
Further out, gannets, three of them, are streaking towards Bempton Cliffs. They are huge flying darts. And behind them a group of shags, inches from the surface. Their reflections are visible on the water despite the haze.
Suddenly, as if as one, the entire colony of kittiwakes leaves the ledges and take to the air. There are hundreds circling and calling. Something startled them but there's no sign of the culprit, possibly a bird of prey or one of the bigger gulls who are crafty, vicious egg stealers.
I love this. I love the wildness, I love that you are never ever alone, that it's teeming here with nature going about its business of birth, life and death.
Your ledge looks different though. It slopes a little more than it did before. The forces of wind and rain at work, and I know some day it will be gone.
For an hour or so I just sit, watch, listen and absorb until the brisk northerly breeze starts to bite. It's hard to walk away, but not unbearably so, because you are there but you are not there. You are everywhere and I take you with me.
I head to a bench perched on a grassy mound a few hundred yards away, where grandma and grandad used to sit with you. The wood is warm. The wind drops and I hear what sounds like a church bell. It comes from a buoy out at sea and it tolls with a regular rhythm, rocked to-and-fro by the swell.
I've only ever heard it once before - that foggy, grey morning when we came here, numb with cold, numb with grief and we cast you to the winds. And I hadn't expected it today..and it is loud and and resonant and somehow, significant, as I sit in your place amid the pipits, swallows and skylarks.
The bench was placed here as a memorial, as a remembrance, by another family. But it has become special to us too..and I know the words by heart:
"He lived for those he loved. And those he loved remember.
It certainly hadn't been the intention when I set off this blistering morning. The plan was lunch in Leeds with an old colleague followed by shopping.
The lunch had been wonderful - we'd talked and talked, wondered where the years had gone, hiding from the heat of the day in the coolest part of the restaurant, before emerging, blinking, into unbearable brightness.
The city was feverish and the heat sapped all desire to shop - so instead I went back to the multi-storey and sat for a moment with the engine turning, waiting for the air conditioning to kick in, listening to the busy, busy city; the thrum of shoppers, buskers, sirens, road drills.
And sitting there, suddenly, I knew where I wanted to be...and it was all-consuming, urgent, as if I was already late.
Leeds was congested and impatient and getting out of the city took a frustrating amount of time. But eventually the hire car was chewing up the miles. Through glorious countryside, past fields of yellow, heady, scented rape; swinging round York, around Driffield, through Stamford Bridge, past the Burton Agnes duckpond, crawling behind tractors on the A614, bypassing Bridlington..
Until at last, here I am, finally. In the car park. Beneath the wheeling, spinning mirrors of Flamborough Head lighthouse.
It's 4pm - and the first thing I hear as I turn off the engine is the crunch of car wheels on gravel. Timing is perfect, most are leaving and the car park is almost empty.
The urge that brought me here has become overwhelming and for some reason - there is no logic to this - I need to hurry. I throw open the door and there is the sudden quick blast of a foghorn. Another blast follows - not the evocative tremor of a deep bass, but a higher frequency, and it's confusing to hear it on such a bright day.
Looking seaward though all becomes clear. There is no sea. There is no sky. They have blended in the haze, melded so absolutely that it is impossible to see where one ends and the other begins. There is no horizon.
The gorse and air fizz with birdsong. The skylarks' high-pitched musical trill is constant. It hurts the eyes to look for them but I see one - a dot in the sky, hovering before it loops and swoops, silent now, to the ground.
It is a gentle but exhilarating walk to the cliffs and gradually the song of the larks and the chatter of the pippits quickly fades, replaced the raucous calls of thousands of seabirds.
I sit close to your ledge and the foghorn sounds again, just as it did on the day we let your ashes fly from this very spot. And the air carries and lifts the sound so that it resonates and vibrates long after it has ended. But it is fainter out here, muffled by the waves and the cries of the gulls.
To the left a huge, riotous, breeding colony of kittiwakes hugs a white cliff face and to the right is the famous Flamborough Head stack, domain of the herring gulls. One throws back its head, opens its beak wide and gives that ululating seaside town fish and chip holler.
There's quite a breeze here and below the sea is lively with white horses.
The waves swell, crest and roll, foam dissipating on the surface. The water is blue, azure, almost Mediterranean and the pale rocks in the shallower parts are easy to see. The suck and roar, the pull and push, is mesmerising. It always is.
The air is filled with birds, and on the sea colonies rise and fall, bobbing on the swell. Razorbills - scores of them, their wings churring like the legs of a clockwork toy - guillemots, blacked back gulls, shags, fulmars.
The kittiwakes are unmistakable - yellow bills, black tips to their grey wings and white bodies as pristine and as clear as porcelain. They are tiny compared to the herring gulls and black backs.
They make their 'kitt-eee-wayke' call as a greeting, as one returns to the nest where the other is brooding. Their nests are strong, sturdy cones and arriving birds bring more materials - twigs, tufts of grass - as opposed to fish. No chicks yet then.
Occasionally the wind changes and a gust rears up the cliffs from the sea and the smell, the guano odour of this huge colony catches on the air. It's kind of stable meets zoo, only less....palatable?.
A gleaming roly-poly seal bobs on the surface, glances around with big shiny eyes and then loops and dives.
Further out, gannets, three of them, are streaking towards Bempton Cliffs. They are huge flying darts. And behind them a group of shags, inches from the surface. Their reflections are visible on the water despite the haze.
Suddenly, as if as one, the entire colony of kittiwakes leaves the ledges and take to the air. There are hundreds circling and calling. Something startled them but there's no sign of the culprit, possibly a bird of prey or one of the bigger gulls who are crafty, vicious egg stealers.
I love this. I love the wildness, I love that you are never ever alone, that it's teeming here with nature going about its business of birth, life and death.
Your ledge looks different though. It slopes a little more than it did before. The forces of wind and rain at work, and I know some day it will be gone.
For an hour or so I just sit, watch, listen and absorb until the brisk northerly breeze starts to bite. It's hard to walk away, but not unbearably so, because you are there but you are not there. You are everywhere and I take you with me.
I head to a bench perched on a grassy mound a few hundred yards away, where grandma and grandad used to sit with you. The wood is warm. The wind drops and I hear what sounds like a church bell. It comes from a buoy out at sea and it tolls with a regular rhythm, rocked to-and-fro by the swell.
I've only ever heard it once before - that foggy, grey morning when we came here, numb with cold, numb with grief and we cast you to the winds. And I hadn't expected it today..and it is loud and and resonant and somehow, significant, as I sit in your place amid the pipits, swallows and skylarks.
The bench was placed here as a memorial, as a remembrance, by another family. But it has become special to us too..and I know the words by heart:
"He lived for those he loved. And those he loved remember.
 |
| Flamborough in the haze, on May 24, 2012 |
Wednesday, 6 June 2012
On Public View
You were always happily oblivious to the stares of strangers. The attention you drew when we were out and about, it passed right over your head. More important things to contemplate, like where the next cafe stop was coming from.
I wasn't though, I felt their eyes on us even when our backs were turned.
I didn't mind the brief glances. Humans are designed to be nosey, born survivors because of our natural curiosity. We can't help but look at a toddler throwing a tantrum, we all turn to trace the source of a sudden, unexpected noise.
Your little quirks and eccentricities, your shoutiness, your puppet-like gait, your habit of picking things out of other people's shopping trolleys, they were my joy. They'd told me you would never walk and yet there you were, striding on thin legs through Tesco's..shouting in that language only you could understand...
But to 'the general public' you were different, a heartbreaker certainly, but not as other children - and so people would look, of course they would.
And sometimes they would catch my eye and smile, even say hello to you.
Strangers at their loveliest? The couple who came to help after you, in a temper, accidentally knocked to the floor with a sweep of your arm most of the contents of a restaurant table - plates, cutlery, sugar bowl, teacups - because your fish and chips hadn't arrived quickly enough.
They got the waitress to pick up the bits and pieces and then, when the chaos was under control, the old man took your hand as if in a handshake and said 'well well young man, what will you do for your next trick?' and his wife said how bonny you were and you looked as if butter wouldn't melt and I was so relieved and grateful.
People got to recognise you and your ways. 'Hiya Thomas' the fish and chip shop man would shout at us ever after, when we walked past.
There were many acts of kindness - but there was the other stuff too.
And I don't know which was worse; the starers for whom a look simply wasn't enough, who wanted to absorb and gawp and stare and stare and stare, only looking away when they realised they'd been rumbled?
Was it them...or was it those who opened their mouths and stuck their size 10s right in?
'We never used to see them out and about in my day'
'It must be awful for you'
And, of course, the one heard more than anything else: 'Isn't it a shame'.
The starers I would deal with differently depending on my mood. Mostly I ignored them, sometimes I deliberately about-turned and started towards them, on a collision course, just to watch them scurry away, scared of confrontation.
I'm imagining a sandwich board we could have worn that would have solved the problem: "Yes, we're interesting aren't we? Come say hello. We don't bite - mostly. *winking smiley* ".
Sometimes I would speak to them, 'can I help?', I'd say. And sometimes I would meet their eye and stare back hoping they'd got the message, hoping they'd registered every ounce of venom I was daggering their way.
And then I'd get in the car, belt you in and drive home. Hot tears and guilt. A sense that I'd somehow made it worse. They were ignorant, rude without meaning to be and yet awkward, not knowing the right thing to do. After all, how might I have once reacted?
Funnily enough I found the other ones, the ones who opened mouth without engaging brain, easier to cope with, hurtful as their comments were. These were mainly elderly folk, of the generations when the 'handicapped' were hidden away by their families or left in 'institutions'.
I would become the journalist, relentless but gentle: 'What do you mean?', 'Explain yourself?', 'Sorry?...'them'??' and then, when they were blushing and spluttering, we'd chat. I'd tell them about you, your happy life, and I think that most of the time we parted with them feeling it wasn't such a shame after all. One of them even gave you a pound to 'for your piggy bank'.
It was exhausting though, always being 'on duty' as your champion, as your defender. When all I wanted was a loaf and something for tea.
A mum* posted on Twitter today about going to the shops, taking her autistic daughter with her in a special needs buggy. 'Why do people have to stare and then look away as soon as I look at them?' she wrote on her timeline.
Why indeed.
I have a friend whose child needed 24-hour care due to her hugely complex needs. The child was a twin, her sister died in the womb. My friend absorbed all her grief, her agony, and converted it into loving her little girl, giving her the best life she could. She adored her beyond words.
What broke her? What reduced this defiant, courageous woman who never gave in, who never gave up, finally, to tears?
A middle-aged woman who glanced into the pram as she was in a supermarket queue one day and said: 'probably best if she hadn't been born love'. The queue was long, those around heard, no-one intervened.
My friend left the trolley where it was.
People have such power to change another person's world for the better Thomas. But they can destroy it in an instant too.
If only they would think...
It doesn't take much..
*Jeannette, a Twitter friend, can be found at Twitter.com/@AutismMumma
I wasn't though, I felt their eyes on us even when our backs were turned.
I didn't mind the brief glances. Humans are designed to be nosey, born survivors because of our natural curiosity. We can't help but look at a toddler throwing a tantrum, we all turn to trace the source of a sudden, unexpected noise.
Your little quirks and eccentricities, your shoutiness, your puppet-like gait, your habit of picking things out of other people's shopping trolleys, they were my joy. They'd told me you would never walk and yet there you were, striding on thin legs through Tesco's..shouting in that language only you could understand...
But to 'the general public' you were different, a heartbreaker certainly, but not as other children - and so people would look, of course they would.
And sometimes they would catch my eye and smile, even say hello to you.
Strangers at their loveliest? The couple who came to help after you, in a temper, accidentally knocked to the floor with a sweep of your arm most of the contents of a restaurant table - plates, cutlery, sugar bowl, teacups - because your fish and chips hadn't arrived quickly enough.
They got the waitress to pick up the bits and pieces and then, when the chaos was under control, the old man took your hand as if in a handshake and said 'well well young man, what will you do for your next trick?' and his wife said how bonny you were and you looked as if butter wouldn't melt and I was so relieved and grateful.
People got to recognise you and your ways. 'Hiya Thomas' the fish and chip shop man would shout at us ever after, when we walked past.
There were many acts of kindness - but there was the other stuff too.
And I don't know which was worse; the starers for whom a look simply wasn't enough, who wanted to absorb and gawp and stare and stare and stare, only looking away when they realised they'd been rumbled?
Was it them...or was it those who opened their mouths and stuck their size 10s right in?
'We never used to see them out and about in my day'
'It must be awful for you'
And, of course, the one heard more than anything else: 'Isn't it a shame'.
The starers I would deal with differently depending on my mood. Mostly I ignored them, sometimes I deliberately about-turned and started towards them, on a collision course, just to watch them scurry away, scared of confrontation.
I'm imagining a sandwich board we could have worn that would have solved the problem: "Yes, we're interesting aren't we? Come say hello. We don't bite - mostly. *winking smiley* ".
Sometimes I would speak to them, 'can I help?', I'd say. And sometimes I would meet their eye and stare back hoping they'd got the message, hoping they'd registered every ounce of venom I was daggering their way.
And then I'd get in the car, belt you in and drive home. Hot tears and guilt. A sense that I'd somehow made it worse. They were ignorant, rude without meaning to be and yet awkward, not knowing the right thing to do. After all, how might I have once reacted?
Funnily enough I found the other ones, the ones who opened mouth without engaging brain, easier to cope with, hurtful as their comments were. These were mainly elderly folk, of the generations when the 'handicapped' were hidden away by their families or left in 'institutions'.
I would become the journalist, relentless but gentle: 'What do you mean?', 'Explain yourself?', 'Sorry?...'them'??' and then, when they were blushing and spluttering, we'd chat. I'd tell them about you, your happy life, and I think that most of the time we parted with them feeling it wasn't such a shame after all. One of them even gave you a pound to 'for your piggy bank'.
It was exhausting though, always being 'on duty' as your champion, as your defender. When all I wanted was a loaf and something for tea.
A mum* posted on Twitter today about going to the shops, taking her autistic daughter with her in a special needs buggy. 'Why do people have to stare and then look away as soon as I look at them?' she wrote on her timeline.
Why indeed.
I have a friend whose child needed 24-hour care due to her hugely complex needs. The child was a twin, her sister died in the womb. My friend absorbed all her grief, her agony, and converted it into loving her little girl, giving her the best life she could. She adored her beyond words.
What broke her? What reduced this defiant, courageous woman who never gave in, who never gave up, finally, to tears?
A middle-aged woman who glanced into the pram as she was in a supermarket queue one day and said: 'probably best if she hadn't been born love'. The queue was long, those around heard, no-one intervened.
My friend left the trolley where it was.
People have such power to change another person's world for the better Thomas. But they can destroy it in an instant too.
If only they would think...
It doesn't take much..
*Jeannette, a Twitter friend, can be found at Twitter.com/@AutismMumma
Wednesday, 30 May 2012
The Stray
Typing amid the tannoys.
Leeds station bound for London bound for Brussels. Starting to feel familiar, this.
It's been a bit of a bonkers 10 days in the UK, in truth.
Only natural, I suppose, to try and race about, to see as many people as possible, to catch up with family and friends...but it feels as if I've been moving too fast, a blur sweeping through towns and counties to meetings, lunches, a different bed every other day.
Some strange moments...
Going back to Chesterfield last week was uncomfortable, especially driving past our little house, now the abode of rent-paying strangers. I stopped outside. All was as it should be - and yet a tiny part of me couldn't compute that I was actually there at all. That I was ever there. Brain playing concertina with time again. Does that make sense?
The town was as it always is - right down to the same traders shouting bargains from their market stalls - yet it was if something had shifted, and everything was the same...but different.
It disturbed me, how little it felt like home......as if I were an outsider looking in. I sat there, at the wheel of the hire car, and I thought 'I don't know where home is any more'. Home was always where you were. And you were never here.
A few days ago, visiting a friend in Halifax, we walked through the Stray at Lightcliffe; a pretty park - swathes of green grass, cherry trees lining the pathways, an ancient, tired little children's play area and a new playground being built near the site of some long-demolished, grubby old shelters.
Let the time machine do its work here and you will surely find me at all the ages of my life.
It's where I ran with the gang, swung on rusty swings right up to the bumps, went roly-poly down the grass slopes near the posh houses on Sutherland Road, ruined shoes climbing the low-hanging branches of the cherry trees with Sarah Ramsden.
It's where we played bicycle lamppost tig, hide and seek in the bushes, did cartwheels and walkovers, fell out, made up and all on a permanent diet of penny chews, sherbert dips, ice-pops and icecream screwballs.
It was there where, on rickety roller skates fastened precariously with nut and bolt, we'd fly from the war memorial all the way down to those grotty urine-smelling shelters, screaming, veering and careering, only stopping by about-turning and crashing into a wall. Here, where we would wade through thigh-deep snow to the top of the hill and plummet to the bottom on rubbish wooden sledges, scraping knees and shins on the way.
It was where I nervously, met my first 'boyfriend' after he asked me out at a Hipperholme Grammar School disco. Hardly a fairy tale first love...his friend fancied my friend and we'd had a clumsy, awkward snog to, of all things, Joe Dolce's Shaddup-You-Face. Yes. Really.
So we met in the shelters. He gave me his scarf and then I decided, just like that, that I didn't fancy him after all. And I ran away. Literally. Silly girl. I never saw him again..and he never got his scarf back.
It was in this park where I got about as rebellious as I was ever going to get - splitting a packet of 10 Regal King Size with a friend, smoking five each, then scoffing a packet of Polos to try hide our faggy breath from our parents. We would sit, pretending to inhale, bubble-permed teenagers in stretch jeans and pixi boots, in the shadow of the war memorial, plucking up the courage to go to the phone box to ring whichever boy was flavour of the month.
Then, oh so many summers later, it became our place Thomas.
First, gentle walks with a pram - a new mum, scared to death, worrying, worrying; worrying if you slept, worrying if you didn't, just worrying.
But I found a peace and a freedom there, in the park.
You'd sit in the pushchair and shriek with a laughter punctuated by dirty giggles as funny mummy flew higher and higher on the swings pulling daft faces and singing nursery rhymes.
Then you had a go. Slow pushes on the baby swings, moving on to the big swings once you'd learned how to hold on.
As you got older I could heave you up the steps of the slide, sit you down and let you slide to the bottom by yourself. Remember when it was wet and you got stuck halfway down and got a soggy bottom? And other children and their parents watched as I clambered up the slide to free you, me laughing and crying, embarrassed but drinking in your smiley face as I scrambled towards you.
In summer, you'd wear your shorts, and I'd see from the corner of my eye how others would stare at your plastic leg splints.....noticing your difference.
It meant we almost always had the swings to ourselves. People would circumnavigate us, pretending to look the other way, waiting for us to leave, ignoring their toddlers straining and pulling. Mostly it didn't bother me, but sometimes it felt lonely.
We made them uncomfortable. I know it was because they didn't know what to say. I'll never forget the mortified woman who shushed and slapped her son when he asked why you had 'plastic legs', even as I tried to tell her it was ok and I was happy to answer his question. Stupid stupid woman, dragging him away, scaring him half to death.
None of it bothered you though, which was all I cared about.
I would show you trees - how you loved the texture of the rough bark! I would pick flowers and tell you their colours and sometimes, on sunny, breezy days, when the grass was dry, I would lie down and try and pull you down with me on to our backs to look at the scudding cotton-wool clouds. You always sat bolt upright again though, as if you were worried about missing something.
I would stand you under a cherry tree and shake it and shake it and shake it until the blossom cascaded and you looked and looked amazed as petals and sometimes whole flowers tumbled and showered around you, landing on your head, your shoulder...
And sometimes we'd just take a picnic rug and a drink and a yogurt and a book.
All this I remembered as we walked through the park towards the swings. And suddenly I am 10 years old again, swinging and swinging and swinging, higher and higher. And the tears leaking out of the corners of my eyes are caused by the rushing wind, nothing more.
Every step I take I know you'd taken it before. I put my palms against the trunk of our horse chestnut tree and wonder if it still holds your imprint. The cherry trees are again full of blossom and I pull down a small branch and shake it. The wind catches the petals and lifts them into the air.
I stand for a moment, feeling my own roots plunging deeply into the soil of this park where I played the games of a carefree child..and where you did too.
And I think, here's home...
xxxx
Leeds station bound for London bound for Brussels. Starting to feel familiar, this.
It's been a bit of a bonkers 10 days in the UK, in truth.
Only natural, I suppose, to try and race about, to see as many people as possible, to catch up with family and friends...but it feels as if I've been moving too fast, a blur sweeping through towns and counties to meetings, lunches, a different bed every other day.
Some strange moments...
Going back to Chesterfield last week was uncomfortable, especially driving past our little house, now the abode of rent-paying strangers. I stopped outside. All was as it should be - and yet a tiny part of me couldn't compute that I was actually there at all. That I was ever there. Brain playing concertina with time again. Does that make sense?
The town was as it always is - right down to the same traders shouting bargains from their market stalls - yet it was if something had shifted, and everything was the same...but different.
It disturbed me, how little it felt like home......as if I were an outsider looking in. I sat there, at the wheel of the hire car, and I thought 'I don't know where home is any more'. Home was always where you were. And you were never here.
A few days ago, visiting a friend in Halifax, we walked through the Stray at Lightcliffe; a pretty park - swathes of green grass, cherry trees lining the pathways, an ancient, tired little children's play area and a new playground being built near the site of some long-demolished, grubby old shelters.
Let the time machine do its work here and you will surely find me at all the ages of my life.
It's where I ran with the gang, swung on rusty swings right up to the bumps, went roly-poly down the grass slopes near the posh houses on Sutherland Road, ruined shoes climbing the low-hanging branches of the cherry trees with Sarah Ramsden.
It's where we played bicycle lamppost tig, hide and seek in the bushes, did cartwheels and walkovers, fell out, made up and all on a permanent diet of penny chews, sherbert dips, ice-pops and icecream screwballs.
It was there where, on rickety roller skates fastened precariously with nut and bolt, we'd fly from the war memorial all the way down to those grotty urine-smelling shelters, screaming, veering and careering, only stopping by about-turning and crashing into a wall. Here, where we would wade through thigh-deep snow to the top of the hill and plummet to the bottom on rubbish wooden sledges, scraping knees and shins on the way.
It was where I nervously, met my first 'boyfriend' after he asked me out at a Hipperholme Grammar School disco. Hardly a fairy tale first love...his friend fancied my friend and we'd had a clumsy, awkward snog to, of all things, Joe Dolce's Shaddup-You-Face. Yes. Really.
So we met in the shelters. He gave me his scarf and then I decided, just like that, that I didn't fancy him after all. And I ran away. Literally. Silly girl. I never saw him again..and he never got his scarf back.
It was in this park where I got about as rebellious as I was ever going to get - splitting a packet of 10 Regal King Size with a friend, smoking five each, then scoffing a packet of Polos to try hide our faggy breath from our parents. We would sit, pretending to inhale, bubble-permed teenagers in stretch jeans and pixi boots, in the shadow of the war memorial, plucking up the courage to go to the phone box to ring whichever boy was flavour of the month.
Then, oh so many summers later, it became our place Thomas.
First, gentle walks with a pram - a new mum, scared to death, worrying, worrying; worrying if you slept, worrying if you didn't, just worrying.
But I found a peace and a freedom there, in the park.
You'd sit in the pushchair and shriek with a laughter punctuated by dirty giggles as funny mummy flew higher and higher on the swings pulling daft faces and singing nursery rhymes.
Then you had a go. Slow pushes on the baby swings, moving on to the big swings once you'd learned how to hold on.
As you got older I could heave you up the steps of the slide, sit you down and let you slide to the bottom by yourself. Remember when it was wet and you got stuck halfway down and got a soggy bottom? And other children and their parents watched as I clambered up the slide to free you, me laughing and crying, embarrassed but drinking in your smiley face as I scrambled towards you.
In summer, you'd wear your shorts, and I'd see from the corner of my eye how others would stare at your plastic leg splints.....noticing your difference.
It meant we almost always had the swings to ourselves. People would circumnavigate us, pretending to look the other way, waiting for us to leave, ignoring their toddlers straining and pulling. Mostly it didn't bother me, but sometimes it felt lonely.
We made them uncomfortable. I know it was because they didn't know what to say. I'll never forget the mortified woman who shushed and slapped her son when he asked why you had 'plastic legs', even as I tried to tell her it was ok and I was happy to answer his question. Stupid stupid woman, dragging him away, scaring him half to death.
None of it bothered you though, which was all I cared about.
I would show you trees - how you loved the texture of the rough bark! I would pick flowers and tell you their colours and sometimes, on sunny, breezy days, when the grass was dry, I would lie down and try and pull you down with me on to our backs to look at the scudding cotton-wool clouds. You always sat bolt upright again though, as if you were worried about missing something.
I would stand you under a cherry tree and shake it and shake it and shake it until the blossom cascaded and you looked and looked amazed as petals and sometimes whole flowers tumbled and showered around you, landing on your head, your shoulder...
And sometimes we'd just take a picnic rug and a drink and a yogurt and a book.
All this I remembered as we walked through the park towards the swings. And suddenly I am 10 years old again, swinging and swinging and swinging, higher and higher. And the tears leaking out of the corners of my eyes are caused by the rushing wind, nothing more.
Every step I take I know you'd taken it before. I put my palms against the trunk of our horse chestnut tree and wonder if it still holds your imprint. The cherry trees are again full of blossom and I pull down a small branch and shake it. The wind catches the petals and lifts them into the air.
I stand for a moment, feeling my own roots plunging deeply into the soil of this park where I played the games of a carefree child..and where you did too.
xxxx
 |
| The Stray, Lightcliffe |
Monday, 7 May 2012
Weeping Angels
When I was a little girl, my grandma - your great grandma - used to take me for walks in a cemetery near her home.
Nothing ghoulish or morbid in that - it was a pleasant place, full of trees, carefully maintained pathways and borders, and lovingly tended plots. Her generation had no fear of the dead, Thomas - they'd seen so much of it.
We'd walk among the statues and gravestones, looking at the dates, reading the names aloud, and we'd have our favourites. One in particular I remember: a cherub watching over the grave of a little boy, Rob Roy MacGregor, who died in 1899, just five years old.
I loved going to see him (of course I confused the boy with the cherub)..and don't recall feeling any sadness as we stood before the little statue. Children have a far greater acceptance of things, don't they? I never once thought about his parents Herbert and Georgina...and how it must have been for them, how they must have stood there too.
I went back to the grave a few years ago. It was all so very different.
Rob Roy's cherub had a missing hand, his wing had been broken off and his grave was full of weeds. Some of the statues nearby had been defaced and gravestones had been pulled down.
It felt faded, jaded, tired...it felt unloved and I wished I hadn't gone back there. Some things are, after all, best left behind....
I thought of my walks to see Rob Roy last week when we spent an hour or so in Laeken Cemetery, the oldest cemetery in Brussels. It was a book, 'Secret Brussels', that sent us there.
I love old cemeteries - they have a different kind of peace, a serenity, a semi-wildness where nature flourishes and wild things roam; a quietness, a sense of long-trodden pathways, of ancient lives.....where the past is not such a foreign country after all.
We were met by a cat, a yellow-eyed, chocolate-brown, stocky fellow who seemed to welcome our presence and he stayed in step with us as we explored, padding alongside us, curling round and around our ankles every time we stopped.
It was a dismal day. The sky was a wringing wet, grey dishcloth, and it was chilly too.....but somehow it suited.
We walked, stepping over puddles, avoiding the muddy bits, and we gaped - there is no other word for it - at the funerary art around us.
A woman, a desperate grief-ravaged young woman, draped in flowing robes, arms bare, hair gently coiled, lies across a family grave as if she has hurled herself on to it. One of her bare feet is on the step of the grave, the other almost touches the gravelled path.
She is startlingly lifelike, like one of those high-street performance artists who dust themselves in pewter-coloured powder to resemble a statue.
I wonder at first whether she is meant to resemble a member of this long-dead family, though I think it more likely she is a symbol of a family's grief, mourning for all eternity, on their behalf.
I have never seen anything like it before.
They are everywhere, these weeping angels. It is Dr Who without the horror.
One kneels at the foot of a grave, hands clasped before her. She gazes at the inscription on the gravestone and her bare feet, crossed behind her, are visible through the thin material of her robes.
Along from her is a third statue, her hair flowing free. A beautiful long leg exposed, she lies almost prostrate at the foot of a family grave. Someone has placed lilies in her arms.
Her goddess-like perfection, her grace, her ethereal beauty, are a stark contrast to the utterly ordinary faces in the black and white photographs on the gravestone she watches over.
We find a little boy and girl at one grave - the girl is sitting on the granite slab and her hand caresses the polished stone. Her feet are bare but the little boy (her brother?) standing over her, looking down to her, protectively, wears sturdy shoes and thick socks.
It is raining and drops collect, like clear, bright jewels, on his forehead and lips.
Not far from them, another statue - a woman standing fully upright leans against a tall, stone column bearing the bust of a proud-faced man. A hand covers her face. She is distraught. Does she represent the widow of this man, who gazes to the distance above her, oblivious to the grief around him?
And then, most poignantly, perhaps, we find the sprawled body of a young man, a soldier. He lies resting, exhausted. The grave is that of Max Pelgrims, aged 24 when he was killed on August 19, 1914, just weeks after the beginning of World War One.
And so we walk and walk and the cat follows us on soft paws, and the rain drips on us from the cedars and the yew trees, and blue tits and great tits go 'seep seep seep' in the conifers overhead..
We find ornate family crypts and altars, perfect dainty ceramic flowers and laurel wreaths, we find an original casting of Rodin's 'Thinker' and I vow to return because I need more time to absorb this place.
Before leaving we follow the instructions in our guide book to find the entrance to an underground crypt.
It is not a happy place. It is chilling in all senses of the word..and I find it difficult to imagine any family wishing this as their loved one's last resting place.
It is dank and gloomy and the odd vases of fresh flowers only serve to reinforce the grimness of the place.
One of the long galleries is gated off with a metal grill, but beyond it we see another gallery and another grill. Grainy, filtered daylight from dirty skylights only adds to the bleakness, and suddenly we are all very cold..
It could be a sci-fi setting, a cell, and it feels miserable, without hope and soulless..and it goes on and on. There are puddles on the floor and I hear a rustling and water dripping.
I know for a moment, though we never discuss it, we are all silently thinking with relief of your little place, high on a clifftop and of you flying free across land, sea and sky.
We walk back up the steps glad to emerge into the open, to the trees and the birds, and we head back to the cemetery gates with talk of cafe and coffee - leaving the weeping angels and their silent, anguished, eternal vigils, behind.
Laeken Cemetery: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laeken_Cemetery
Max Pelgrims: http://www.bel-memorial.org/photos/PELGRIMS_Max_2882.htm
Brighouse Cemetery: http://bit.ly/IRy31A
Rodin's 'Thinker': http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thinker
Secret Brussels: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Secret-Brussels-Jonglez-Guides/dp/2915807965/ref=sr_1_sc_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1336382334&sr=8-2-spell
Nothing ghoulish or morbid in that - it was a pleasant place, full of trees, carefully maintained pathways and borders, and lovingly tended plots. Her generation had no fear of the dead, Thomas - they'd seen so much of it.
We'd walk among the statues and gravestones, looking at the dates, reading the names aloud, and we'd have our favourites. One in particular I remember: a cherub watching over the grave of a little boy, Rob Roy MacGregor, who died in 1899, just five years old.
I loved going to see him (of course I confused the boy with the cherub)..and don't recall feeling any sadness as we stood before the little statue. Children have a far greater acceptance of things, don't they? I never once thought about his parents Herbert and Georgina...and how it must have been for them, how they must have stood there too.
I went back to the grave a few years ago. It was all so very different.
Rob Roy's cherub had a missing hand, his wing had been broken off and his grave was full of weeds. Some of the statues nearby had been defaced and gravestones had been pulled down.
It felt faded, jaded, tired...it felt unloved and I wished I hadn't gone back there. Some things are, after all, best left behind....
I thought of my walks to see Rob Roy last week when we spent an hour or so in Laeken Cemetery, the oldest cemetery in Brussels. It was a book, 'Secret Brussels', that sent us there.
I love old cemeteries - they have a different kind of peace, a serenity, a semi-wildness where nature flourishes and wild things roam; a quietness, a sense of long-trodden pathways, of ancient lives.....where the past is not such a foreign country after all.
We were met by a cat, a yellow-eyed, chocolate-brown, stocky fellow who seemed to welcome our presence and he stayed in step with us as we explored, padding alongside us, curling round and around our ankles every time we stopped.
It was a dismal day. The sky was a wringing wet, grey dishcloth, and it was chilly too.....but somehow it suited.
We walked, stepping over puddles, avoiding the muddy bits, and we gaped - there is no other word for it - at the funerary art around us.
A woman, a desperate grief-ravaged young woman, draped in flowing robes, arms bare, hair gently coiled, lies across a family grave as if she has hurled herself on to it. One of her bare feet is on the step of the grave, the other almost touches the gravelled path.
She is startlingly lifelike, like one of those high-street performance artists who dust themselves in pewter-coloured powder to resemble a statue.
I wonder at first whether she is meant to resemble a member of this long-dead family, though I think it more likely she is a symbol of a family's grief, mourning for all eternity, on their behalf.
I have never seen anything like it before.
They are everywhere, these weeping angels. It is Dr Who without the horror.
One kneels at the foot of a grave, hands clasped before her. She gazes at the inscription on the gravestone and her bare feet, crossed behind her, are visible through the thin material of her robes.
Along from her is a third statue, her hair flowing free. A beautiful long leg exposed, she lies almost prostrate at the foot of a family grave. Someone has placed lilies in her arms.
Her goddess-like perfection, her grace, her ethereal beauty, are a stark contrast to the utterly ordinary faces in the black and white photographs on the gravestone she watches over.
We find a little boy and girl at one grave - the girl is sitting on the granite slab and her hand caresses the polished stone. Her feet are bare but the little boy (her brother?) standing over her, looking down to her, protectively, wears sturdy shoes and thick socks.
It is raining and drops collect, like clear, bright jewels, on his forehead and lips.
Not far from them, another statue - a woman standing fully upright leans against a tall, stone column bearing the bust of a proud-faced man. A hand covers her face. She is distraught. Does she represent the widow of this man, who gazes to the distance above her, oblivious to the grief around him?
And then, most poignantly, perhaps, we find the sprawled body of a young man, a soldier. He lies resting, exhausted. The grave is that of Max Pelgrims, aged 24 when he was killed on August 19, 1914, just weeks after the beginning of World War One.
And so we walk and walk and the cat follows us on soft paws, and the rain drips on us from the cedars and the yew trees, and blue tits and great tits go 'seep seep seep' in the conifers overhead..
We find ornate family crypts and altars, perfect dainty ceramic flowers and laurel wreaths, we find an original casting of Rodin's 'Thinker' and I vow to return because I need more time to absorb this place.
Before leaving we follow the instructions in our guide book to find the entrance to an underground crypt.
It is not a happy place. It is chilling in all senses of the word..and I find it difficult to imagine any family wishing this as their loved one's last resting place.
It is dank and gloomy and the odd vases of fresh flowers only serve to reinforce the grimness of the place.
One of the long galleries is gated off with a metal grill, but beyond it we see another gallery and another grill. Grainy, filtered daylight from dirty skylights only adds to the bleakness, and suddenly we are all very cold..
It could be a sci-fi setting, a cell, and it feels miserable, without hope and soulless..and it goes on and on. There are puddles on the floor and I hear a rustling and water dripping.
I know for a moment, though we never discuss it, we are all silently thinking with relief of your little place, high on a clifftop and of you flying free across land, sea and sky.
We walk back up the steps glad to emerge into the open, to the trees and the birds, and we head back to the cemetery gates with talk of cafe and coffee - leaving the weeping angels and their silent, anguished, eternal vigils, behind.
Laeken Cemetery: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laeken_Cemetery
Max Pelgrims: http://www.bel-memorial.org/photos/PELGRIMS_Max_2882.htm
Brighouse Cemetery: http://bit.ly/IRy31A
Rodin's 'Thinker': http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thinker
Secret Brussels: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Secret-Brussels-Jonglez-Guides/dp/2915807965/ref=sr_1_sc_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1336382334&sr=8-2-spell
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