where art collides

Alright yezzer, not much luck this morning though them Polish fellers caught a few bucketloads from the top of the breakwater. I don’t know what they do with them. Must sell em somewhere I guess. I don’t really mind whether I catch anything or not really. I just like being here.

Crossing the line means entering no mans land. Its a place where few dare go. It means you are either brave or stupid. A frozen wasteland with little sign of life. I can imagine the line of the trench, the lookout peering out uncomfortably through a gap in his scarf. Watching for nothing. Thanked by no one. The imagination plays tricks in these conditions, especially when you can’t feel your feet. You are almost looking for signs of blood circulation as much as movement out in the fields. Who is going to venture out in this weather?

In November 2010 the snow line divided the county into those who lived to the east of Wragby and those to the clear lands of the west. It was a short lived notoriety for the Lincolnshire market town but one that its residents would remember for days afterwards.

The line soon moved further west leaving Wragby temporarily buried under the snow. Whether everyone coped or not  play no part in this narrative.

The man was reading El Pais. I assumed he was Spanish and imagined him a few hundred years ago wearing the uniform of a conquistador. He may of course have been a Jesuit.

There was no way of telling.

Elsewhere in the compartment sat a few people in varying states of bedraggledness and a woman of indeterminate age. I wasn’t sure whether she was looking good or good looking. It was all a matter of perspective.

The train driver was also a woman.

I was only physically there.

coffee table

The coffee table is functional, though its intention is in the main decorative in its place in front of the fireplace. This is a room seldom frequented by the family because, sad though it may be, the television is elsewhere. As a result I, its only real inhabitant, use and abuse it as I wish within the limits of toleration set by my wife Anne.

I have the fire lit as I sit to write this and the decorative coffee table is covered with the refuse of the family. The contents of a school bag is strewn over it together with a trumpet case and a book, “Silverfin” by Charlie Higson.

The shelf underneath the table is covered with sheet music, mostly jazz that Joe and I occasionally get out and play. Joe is the other main occupant of this room. It is where he practices his trumpet. His music stand is a permanent fixture in the corner near the double doors to the conservatory.

This is a very comfortable room with three comfortable settees of varying sizes. Two of them are big enough to stretch out for a good sleep. It is also a very cool room on a hot summer’s day beautifully complementing the heat in the conservatory.

Anne likes to bring guests in here during the day, at which point the coffee table does become functional, for putting down cups of coffee in fact. She has, I think, grown accustomed to the fact that the underside is now home to the music though this wouldn’t be her preference.

This is not to say that nobody else uses the room. We just don’t typically sit in it as a family. We are fortunate to have a house that can comfortably lose a few members of this large family and even a guest or two. On the Saturday of the Lincoln Christmas Market the room comes into its own as host of the annual Davies carol singing party. Everyone gathers round the fire and sings carols until we have had enough.

Friday night isn’t normally music night in our house. Tonight the younger lads are X-Boxing, Anne is out school PTA quizzing, Hannah is dancing and Tom is radioing. So tonight I have a bottle or two of beer, twitter and Windows Media Player.

The rain is doing its best to drown out the music but I have it on as loud as the little USB speakers will allow.

Everyone’s a Winner, Hot Chocolate
Moondance, Van Morrison
Mustang Sally, The Commitments
Riders on the Storm, The Doors
Sweet Dreams (Are made of this), Eurythmics
Hotel California, The Eagles

I remember during my first year at Bangor University I left my Frank Sinatra’s Greatest Hits LP on the deck on the windowsill. The next day was a hot one and I came back to find the record completely warped. I think I must have gone out and bought another one. Frank was pretty indispensable.

The first two LPs I bought were the Soundtrack of the Stud Movie and Sgt Pepper. Sgt Pepper is still one of the greatest records ever made. The Stud will be long forgotten.

Ne Me Quitte Pas, Jacques Brell
Is She Really Going Out with Him, Joe Jackson
My Baby Just Cares for Me, Nina Simone
Girl From Ipanema, Toquinho E Vinicius
Child in Time, Deep Purple

All classics. Now listening to some modern dance music – no idea what you call it. It’s Tom’s last Friday Night show on SirenFM. Not my kind of thing, the music, but he is my son, and he is leaving home to go to Warwick University tomorrow.

The hard drive whirrs. I could hear humming in another room. Tuneful contentment. The kitchen emanating warmth. Now the humming has stopped. They are all in bed. The brain is clear and the hard drive whirrs, keeping me connected. My lifeline to everywhere.

A few essentials hang from the airer and around the room there are signs of preparation. Supplies for a prolonged trip. The build up to departure. Tom is leaving us. I can hear the clock. For the first time ever as far as I can recall. It isn’t much of a competition, hard drive and clock.

The wooden block calendar on the windowsill still says 16th August. Time drags. The pile of papers in my “In Tray” on the worktop has reached unmanageable proportions. There will have to be a sort out. Manyana.

Some bowls have been left out ready for breakfast, and a few plastic beakers. This is a great, lived in, working kitchen. A jumble of utility and ornament, tidiness and random scatter. The jug of water is empty. Time for bed.

I saw it again today. The church. I looked just like it did the last time except, in my mind, more dilapidated.

I had looked out for it on a number of occasions but had not been able to find it. Turned out it was a lot further away from Newark than I had thought.

Seeing it again evoked the exact same thoughts as it had the first time. Questioning thoughts. Where was the congregation? What had happened to the pastor?

I was interested in was the social history. Why was the church out of use, or apparently so?

The ghosts of the congregation, dead and alive, floated over the cemetery in front of the church…

Today it felt as if we were being given one more summer’s day before the onset of autumn for real and with it the slow and inevitable slide into winter. It was the first day of John’s football season. A good morning to be out in shorts and tee shirt followed by a really fruitful afternoon of ticking things off the jobslist. Apple picking, and a goodly crop it was too, contributed to a sense of well being. Getting the crops in for storage to help us survive the long dark winter.

As I was picking apples I saw Adrian over the back fence, looking through a pair of binoculars. He had spotted a hawk eating a pigeon it had caught. Feathers all over the place and very impressive. It was a fine bird and perhaps explains the occasional pile of feathers in the allotment. I had previously assumed it was the work of a fox.

I’ve lit the fire tonight. I didn’t really need to but it felt right. The best of the day has gone and the wind has picked up outside. It is very cosy sitting in our front room in front of the fire.

With the fire lit and the darkness outside I can imagine being holed up for a long artic winter, not venturing out much, perhaps only to get some more fuel or food from the store. At night I can hear wolves howling in the distance and the wind howling around the eaves directly outside.

The gun is prominent in its place above the fireplace. We are not afraid to use it and it certainly helps us to supplement the fairly boring diet we have all winter when some hapless animal strays in the direction of the cabin. The cabin itself smells permanently of woodsmoke, as do we all but we don’t notice it. It is part of our life.

In the kitchen I hear the dishwasher being emptied and refilled by Anne as she gets ready to go to bed. Outside the occasional Sunday night car drives by and I even hear an aircraft coming in to land, presumably, at nearby RAF Waddington.

Yellow street light reflects off the Jeep in the drive outside. The fire has died down now, its purpose well served and I sit cross legged on the sofa, writing.

Once upon a time there was a friendly gargoyle who never had a cross word for anyone and always had a wide smile. His one failing was a habit of spitting, and, because of this, Gordon the gargoyle was never spoken to by anyone except the very youngest of children who didn’t realise that spitting was a nasty, unsociable habit. Then one day a grown up who, up until then, everyone had thought was a responsible person decided to switch off the water supply to save money for the city council and so that he could go on a courtesy visit to their twin city which was in a foreign country many miles away over the sea. All at once many more grown ups decided that they hadn’t minded Gordon’s spitting and if anything they actually liked him doing it (although just because they wanted Gordon to do it didn’t mean that they thought it was OK for all the boys and girls to do it). They kicked up an enormous fuss and paraded in front of the city hall until the grown up responsible for turning off the water relented (he was the mayor by the way) and to everyone’s joy turned it back on.

For a short while people made a special effort to go go and see Gordon gargoyling, but very soon all the hoo hah was forgotten and everything went back to normal. The only people who would talk to him were the children, but Gordon didn’t really mind this, after all he quite liked the boys and girls.

The end.

The Canton cockerel stopped crowing some time ago. A shame really because I enjoyed hearing the sound. Perhaps someone who lived closer to it got a bit fed up though. Or maybe the urban foxes found it. But yesterday was a great day. Yesterday was the day the blackbirds came back into my life. They’ve been largely missing since I moved away from Balham. I used to be able to open the windows at the back of the flat and listen to the evening conversations of the blackbirds across the myriad Balham back gardens. Beautiful. And now they’ve found my garden in Canton. Let’s hope they don’t get chased away by the territorial magpie or either of the two cats who periodically fight over the privilege of sitting on my decking.

Walking back from doing my civic duty this morning I passed a chap struggling, one-handed, to manipulate a large wheelie bin along the pavement. In his other hand was a mobile phone, clamped to his ear.

Chap: “Oh aye, you’re off for a week now aren’t you ?”

Mobile phone: “I’M OFF FOR A WEEEEEEEEEK !!!!!!”

It made me smile