11:06am
The early morning grey of the skies beginning to blue. A hint of sun, somewhere I can't see from the office windows. Michelle comes back from Boots, where no tills work apparently. An open notebook on my desk (sketches of Cthulhu, ideas for a retro horror-art project). I put half a pint of milk in my bag when I left for work, which has spilt, though with a minimum of damage. Tom and myself talk about Alice in Chains; 'that's definetly one of the best vocal styles ever'.
11:11am
Thursday 29 April 2010
Wednesday 28 April 2010
Bits of Artwork
These are all the pictures I have up on my facebook page. None of them are my particular favourites, but seem to be the only ones I have a digital record of. I really must get round to photographing some pieces of artwork I actually like at some point. Oh well. I could never get my scanner to work, so these were all photographed using a digital camera.
Hmm. As they say,
Painted in the July of 2008, one of my rare expeditions into the world of painting. Done in acrylics on a really small canvas - the only way I'm actually able to finish anything. Think it was A4 size.
This would have been done during 2008 as well. I have nothing to say about this at all. In fact, I don't even remember drawing it.
This was inspired by the song 'Wooden Leg' by And Also The Trees, drawn in the spring of 2008.
The above three drawings were produced while working on an inbound customer service campaign at my current abode of work. I had so much time, I would just sit and draw all day. Don't have anything else to add apart from that though.
This drawing I remember starting in the Pavilion Gardens, either in the March or April of 2007. I always associate this piece with moving out of the hellhole that was my studio flat on Buckingham Street, and into the palatial heaven of Wilbury Crescent... Now I'm back in a Buckingham Street like place again. Oh well...
2008? It could have been 2007. I have nothing to say about this drawing at all. Can't even remember doing it.
Before I started work at the call centre, I worked in a petrol station for the embarassingly long period of five and a half years. Much the same as working in the call centre, I would sit and draw all day. The above three drawings were produced in very early 2007.
The above two pieces, also drawn at the petrol station, are now somewhere in Canada. Gifts to someone I am now no longer in contact with.
A dreadful painting. Awful, awful, awful. This was painted in late summer 2008.
Despite the limitations of my skills as a painter, I am quite fond of this one. I gave it to my parents as a Christmas present for Christmas 2009. Think I, started this in the winter of 2006, and finally finished it winter of 2009.
The last of the three paintings I did over the summer of 2008. I worked on this at the call centre for a while, but then I realised that perhaps sitting at my desk with acrylics and brushes may well come to the attention of the management, who may not be quite as agreeable to the idea of telephone insurance campaigns combined with abstract surrealism.
Hmm. As they say,
Painted in the July of 2008, one of my rare expeditions into the world of painting. Done in acrylics on a really small canvas - the only way I'm actually able to finish anything. Think it was A4 size.
This would have been done during 2008 as well. I have nothing to say about this at all. In fact, I don't even remember drawing it.
This was inspired by the song 'Wooden Leg' by And Also The Trees, drawn in the spring of 2008.
The above three drawings were produced while working on an inbound customer service campaign at my current abode of work. I had so much time, I would just sit and draw all day. Don't have anything else to add apart from that though.
This drawing I remember starting in the Pavilion Gardens, either in the March or April of 2007. I always associate this piece with moving out of the hellhole that was my studio flat on Buckingham Street, and into the palatial heaven of Wilbury Crescent... Now I'm back in a Buckingham Street like place again. Oh well...
2008? It could have been 2007. I have nothing to say about this drawing at all. Can't even remember doing it.
Before I started work at the call centre, I worked in a petrol station for the embarassingly long period of five and a half years. Much the same as working in the call centre, I would sit and draw all day. The above three drawings were produced in very early 2007.
The above two pieces, also drawn at the petrol station, are now somewhere in Canada. Gifts to someone I am now no longer in contact with.
A dreadful painting. Awful, awful, awful. This was painted in late summer 2008.
Despite the limitations of my skills as a painter, I am quite fond of this one. I gave it to my parents as a Christmas present for Christmas 2009. Think I, started this in the winter of 2006, and finally finished it winter of 2009.
The last of the three paintings I did over the summer of 2008. I worked on this at the call centre for a while, but then I realised that perhaps sitting at my desk with acrylics and brushes may well come to the attention of the management, who may not be quite as agreeable to the idea of telephone insurance campaigns combined with abstract surrealism.
Tuesday 27 April 2010
The Sunset
Crow stood on the graveyard fence. Black sillhouette against the gathering twilight. Cross the road. Looks at me in a fixed, but strangely heroic way. Remember a friend telling me of when she fell asleep in the Pavilion Gardens, and the crow she didn't hear, fluttering through her dreams. Up the hill, rumours of sunsets I can't see. A sudden rush, overwhelming scent of cut-grass and summers. A father and son playing cricket in the churchyard, between the stones, watched by the crow and the ghosts said to gather here.
Deep-spring bursts banks and floods the air, and walk away from the churchyard. Down the end of the street, on a slight rise, a line of white houses. Like facing an army. Wide windows open onto first floor rooms. Beyond that, wide windows looking out onto another wideness I can't see. Windows facing windows. Usually unnoticed, but now - the sunset. Deep red, a bloody blazing in the living rooms I imagine to be empty. Strangely beautiful and awe-inspiring, the latter meant in it's original sense, almost. These first floor rooms bright with captured sunsets that cannot stay captured for long.
Brings me back. Another spring. No. Summer. High summer. Last year. First night of the canal holiday, and the same song playing on my headphones then as now ('sodore e sangue' by Madre del Vizio). The same sunset also. Leaving the canal boat to walk under this bloodied sky. Searching for Bridge 39. Should have looked on the map. Five miles away. Thought it was around a few corners, twisty towpath curves. Shropshire Union labyrinth. Found myself snaking through fields, walking with the water, in nowhere, and twilight gathering about me. Looking for a haunted bridge in an English summer. beautiful and terrifying.
Walk past the sunset-haunted houses, follow the curve of the road round the gardens of the two buildings that guard the edge of St Annes Well park. Watch the blue-twilight shadow in the bushes, under trees and in the edges of the window frames. Curve and flutter, butterfly-slope creaking down timbers of beached ships, air all electric and half-erotic. Ghosts of June sent backwards, and there, across the road, a small cottage like a church I've never seen before. And in front, a tree, still naked with no leaves, and I think; the perfect symmetry of the tree, flowing river-curves and matchless equations, and behind it, -behind it all- the sunset, spreading across the horizon, reaching outwards, devouring the day, the city, the stars, the grass, the earth, the sea, taking everything.
(Watching it from a scene in a dream, once, a single line, that makes no sense 'we are not of the earth, we are of the moor')
Last road to cross. Night-scented stock. Dark flowers, and they send me falling back through the years. Time-lapsed at the best of times, and on these deep-spring nights, when there is no time -not really- well, I could be anywhere, and everywhere.
A sense of certain victory in rumoured wars.
Out beyond sleep.
And I am home before the street lamps come on, and I think that,yes, summer is here,
Deep-spring bursts banks and floods the air, and walk away from the churchyard. Down the end of the street, on a slight rise, a line of white houses. Like facing an army. Wide windows open onto first floor rooms. Beyond that, wide windows looking out onto another wideness I can't see. Windows facing windows. Usually unnoticed, but now - the sunset. Deep red, a bloody blazing in the living rooms I imagine to be empty. Strangely beautiful and awe-inspiring, the latter meant in it's original sense, almost. These first floor rooms bright with captured sunsets that cannot stay captured for long.
Brings me back. Another spring. No. Summer. High summer. Last year. First night of the canal holiday, and the same song playing on my headphones then as now ('sodore e sangue' by Madre del Vizio). The same sunset also. Leaving the canal boat to walk under this bloodied sky. Searching for Bridge 39. Should have looked on the map. Five miles away. Thought it was around a few corners, twisty towpath curves. Shropshire Union labyrinth. Found myself snaking through fields, walking with the water, in nowhere, and twilight gathering about me. Looking for a haunted bridge in an English summer. beautiful and terrifying.
Walk past the sunset-haunted houses, follow the curve of the road round the gardens of the two buildings that guard the edge of St Annes Well park. Watch the blue-twilight shadow in the bushes, under trees and in the edges of the window frames. Curve and flutter, butterfly-slope creaking down timbers of beached ships, air all electric and half-erotic. Ghosts of June sent backwards, and there, across the road, a small cottage like a church I've never seen before. And in front, a tree, still naked with no leaves, and I think; the perfect symmetry of the tree, flowing river-curves and matchless equations, and behind it, -behind it all- the sunset, spreading across the horizon, reaching outwards, devouring the day, the city, the stars, the grass, the earth, the sea, taking everything.
(Watching it from a scene in a dream, once, a single line, that makes no sense 'we are not of the earth, we are of the moor')
Last road to cross. Night-scented stock. Dark flowers, and they send me falling back through the years. Time-lapsed at the best of times, and on these deep-spring nights, when there is no time -not really- well, I could be anywhere, and everywhere.
A sense of certain victory in rumoured wars.
Out beyond sleep.
And I am home before the street lamps come on, and I think that,yes, summer is here,
Sunday 25 April 2010
Pieces of Sunday (A Walk in Ditchling)
Andy and myself finally made it to Ditchling about 2:00pm. Not too bad considering it was a Sunday. Hadn't gone out last night though. Stayed in and couldn't sleep. Watched it get light. Watched a man in the 6:00am gloom try, and fail, to steal a padlocked bike across the street.
Got off the bus. Cold breeze. Wished I'd worn my leather jacket. Greying skies. Got walking though and wasn't cold. Intermittent sun. Fascinated by tiny clumps of woodland in the centre of fields -I have always called them spinnies. Something sinister and magical about the name.
And in the spinneys a silence and the sound of imagined hooves. Barbed wire and bones. Wild country. The sound of cartridges being fired in the distance. Over fence and under bush. Thorn scratched skin.
Woods fenced off. Warning signs left by the fey; 'Private No Footpath' meaning in this bluebell wood, you won't get out.
Coming back, not quite lost but not knowing where we were. Spinnies and trees moving about. 'I don't recognise this bit'. Andy on one side of the barbed wire, myself on the other. Horseriders on the ridge.
Finally back, waiting for the bus.
Watching the ghost-stormy skies light something over England.
Tuesday 20 April 2010
Seven Things Yearned for at Work on a Sunny Afternoon
An October railway station under a daytime moon. Set amongst fields still warm with summer, but the air ice-cube cool, and the sky that deep and vast autumn blue.
Amongst trees at the bottom of a forgotten and ramshackle garden. Hidden from the house by a circle of trees, and the grass covered with old autumn leaves. Bright summer sun falling on the cool shade of a shed, and beyond the garden, over an overgrown hedge the sound of a river that no-one has ever seen.
Returning from London on another summers day. A bag of comics from a second hand comic shop in Harrow. Perhaps an album too, retro-thrash metal, teenage echoes. Looking out of the tube train window as the landscape winds home.
Lost in the woods, and not particularly wanting to be found.
A winters day in an old house in the country. That cold air, and bony wind clattering against windowpanes. The morning after a blowy night, the week before Christmas and not having anything to do that day but read and sleep and wonder about the unexplored confines of the house.
The springtime of my seventeenth year, if only because I would do almost everything differently.
This autumn to come, because sometimes there are glimpses of things on horizons.
Amongst trees at the bottom of a forgotten and ramshackle garden. Hidden from the house by a circle of trees, and the grass covered with old autumn leaves. Bright summer sun falling on the cool shade of a shed, and beyond the garden, over an overgrown hedge the sound of a river that no-one has ever seen.
Returning from London on another summers day. A bag of comics from a second hand comic shop in Harrow. Perhaps an album too, retro-thrash metal, teenage echoes. Looking out of the tube train window as the landscape winds home.
Lost in the woods, and not particularly wanting to be found.
A winters day in an old house in the country. That cold air, and bony wind clattering against windowpanes. The morning after a blowy night, the week before Christmas and not having anything to do that day but read and sleep and wonder about the unexplored confines of the house.
The springtime of my seventeenth year, if only because I would do almost everything differently.
This autumn to come, because sometimes there are glimpses of things on horizons.
Monday 19 April 2010
No Time for Lengthy Transmission
Time to leave work now. The office is empty. I look out the window, and the sun is still shining. I hear a distant bird call. Not a seagull surprisingly. It makes me yearn for something, I don't know what though. Reminds me though, of something, a sundial covered by ivy.
Time to go, and step out into these new evenings, these light and long twilights, these bright and hazy days.
Time to go, and step out into these new evenings, these light and long twilights, these bright and hazy days.
Shade of a Woodland, Reaching Over Decades
2:30 in the afternoon. Jess leaves the office weighed down with paperwork, Andy comments 'not a green campaign then'. Both leave the office, and now I'm on my own. Jess returns.
Keep smelling bits of my childhood today, summer holidays at Nanny Mole's house in particular. Can almost smell the sun, and the sun on so many things I would have had then; star wars figures, comic book paper, grass, paving stone, water pistols, bouncy balls... More than anything that hot, almost metallic taste of deep, deep summer, feverish and exhausted, but always shot through with that sense of illimitable euphoria.
Lying in the sun on too-hot midday hours, suddenly longing for the shade of a woodland, and the thought of that wood suddenly swamped in mystery and cool uncertainty.
Nan's house was always full of things from childhoods that preceded mine; old toys, old annuals, boardgames with bits missing, photographs of (to me) strangers, the latter both fascinating and disquieting.
Summery out there again today. Why do the weekends go by so quick? Not that I mind so much being at work really.
Ah well.
'Feels really quiet today' Jess has just said 'Like no-one's here'.
Think everyone's lost dreaming of summer holiday woods.
Or maybe just me.
Keep smelling bits of my childhood today, summer holidays at Nanny Mole's house in particular. Can almost smell the sun, and the sun on so many things I would have had then; star wars figures, comic book paper, grass, paving stone, water pistols, bouncy balls... More than anything that hot, almost metallic taste of deep, deep summer, feverish and exhausted, but always shot through with that sense of illimitable euphoria.
Lying in the sun on too-hot midday hours, suddenly longing for the shade of a woodland, and the thought of that wood suddenly swamped in mystery and cool uncertainty.
Nan's house was always full of things from childhoods that preceded mine; old toys, old annuals, boardgames with bits missing, photographs of (to me) strangers, the latter both fascinating and disquieting.
Summery out there again today. Why do the weekends go by so quick? Not that I mind so much being at work really.
Ah well.
'Feels really quiet today' Jess has just said 'Like no-one's here'.
Think everyone's lost dreaming of summer holiday woods.
Or maybe just me.
Thursday 15 April 2010
Thinking of Old Summers
The time-lapsed summer is back again. Felt it as soon as I stepped out of the house this morning; bright, hazy sunlight, the seagull cries, the foamy sea-taste on the air.
Remember as a child, the months leading up to summer. That sense of climax, of things leading somewhere. The summer holidays of course. Each one was different, had their own feelings and resonance and obsessions. The magical summer of 1982 (Scotland, ghost hunting and base building in woods) and 1986 (London, first kisses and thrash metal albums). Then the other summers, the isolation of summer 1987 (no friends living near me - best friend Leighton having moved away) and the apocalypse-tinged summer of 1990 (the heat, just finished school, the future a frightening unknown vortex). Actually, wasn't just the summer of childhoods that had their own identity, their own soul, but those summers of the 1990s, that long decade of colleges and universities. The deep English-fever of the summer of 1995 and 1996, the summer of 1997, living in the 200 year old house on London Road in Worcester. Then the last summer of 1999. In Cornwall, after finishing my degree - another apocalypse summer, Nostradamus and the eclipse. Too much imagination, heat and time...
And then you leave school, or university, or college, and you work instead, and summers don't seem to have their own identity any more. They just merge into one homogenous mass. But then there is that beautiful slipping down into the beginning of autumn during September.
That time never seems to lose its power.
Remember as a child, the months leading up to summer. That sense of climax, of things leading somewhere. The summer holidays of course. Each one was different, had their own feelings and resonance and obsessions. The magical summer of 1982 (Scotland, ghost hunting and base building in woods) and 1986 (London, first kisses and thrash metal albums). Then the other summers, the isolation of summer 1987 (no friends living near me - best friend Leighton having moved away) and the apocalypse-tinged summer of 1990 (the heat, just finished school, the future a frightening unknown vortex). Actually, wasn't just the summer of childhoods that had their own identity, their own soul, but those summers of the 1990s, that long decade of colleges and universities. The deep English-fever of the summer of 1995 and 1996, the summer of 1997, living in the 200 year old house on London Road in Worcester. Then the last summer of 1999. In Cornwall, after finishing my degree - another apocalypse summer, Nostradamus and the eclipse. Too much imagination, heat and time...
And then you leave school, or university, or college, and you work instead, and summers don't seem to have their own identity any more. They just merge into one homogenous mass. But then there is that beautiful slipping down into the beginning of autumn during September.
That time never seems to lose its power.
Wednesday 14 April 2010
Kind of Lost on A Kind of Hill
A thick spring day. The summer premonitions have been pushed back, and the sky is white. A hint of rain perhaps. No blue skies. No early August ghosts.
Walking to work this morning, I needed to call in at my doctors to drop a prescription off. I have been to the doctors numerous times over the years, but, somehow, managed to lose my way there this morning. I had gone a slightly unfamiliar way, one that I had walked before nonetheless, and maybe it was the way all the houses looked, well, not the same... but somehow, all jumbled. I mean, the architecture seemed a strange mixture of styles and resonances - for an English seaside town anyway. There seemed to be a prevalence of something fairly meditterenean going on. One building - immediately named the Observatory by me - looked oddly Italian - or maybe Maltese, a childhood echo (I lived there for a while when I was young). There seemed to be a kind of tower - the reason, I suppose, it got named the Observatory. That, and the fact that it is situated on top of a hill. Well, I call it a hill, but it is a hill situated down only one street. A lost hill I found while being (nearly) lost.
I found the doctors eventually though, handed in my prescription, and got to work ten minutes later than normal.
Walking to work this morning, I needed to call in at my doctors to drop a prescription off. I have been to the doctors numerous times over the years, but, somehow, managed to lose my way there this morning. I had gone a slightly unfamiliar way, one that I had walked before nonetheless, and maybe it was the way all the houses looked, well, not the same... but somehow, all jumbled. I mean, the architecture seemed a strange mixture of styles and resonances - for an English seaside town anyway. There seemed to be a prevalence of something fairly meditterenean going on. One building - immediately named the Observatory by me - looked oddly Italian - or maybe Maltese, a childhood echo (I lived there for a while when I was young). There seemed to be a kind of tower - the reason, I suppose, it got named the Observatory. That, and the fact that it is situated on top of a hill. Well, I call it a hill, but it is a hill situated down only one street. A lost hill I found while being (nearly) lost.
I found the doctors eventually though, handed in my prescription, and got to work ten minutes later than normal.
Monday 12 April 2010
Virus Meadow
The second drawing in the Book of Deleriums.
Based on the song 'Virus Meadow' by And Also The Trees.
I did this drawing back in the last week of January, in the week leading up to seeing And Also The Trees in concert in London.
The song 'Virus Meadow' has fascinated me for years, and is inspired by the Worcestershire countryside where the band originally come from, and where I have lived at various points in my life.
The full lyrics are as follows:
Rattled chime, slow ringing echo, roll around in virus meadow
Suck enchanted nightshade twine, hear the bells beneath them chime
Sinking summer, priest-head murmers, holy words across the meadows
Kiss the plagues black rolling hand and from his lips the virus sang
And the rooks seemed to follow him wherever he goes, flapping in the flat sky,
shrieking in the spire, hanging from the lead sky, dangling from the sun
The rooks, they seemed to follow him, wherever he goes.
Nodding thistle, English sun dew, swansneck woman, child-bed meadow
Aching shoulders sink and groan, as the bells from ditches toll
And the smeared skin wrapped limbs of the night-brothers,
struggling, crawling, through the empty crack of morning,
are the night-brothers
are the night brothers
the night brothers
the night brothers...
The song can be found on the album 'Virus Meadow' released way way back in 1986...
Houses in Autumn
Seems that most of spring has been swept away with winter too. Plunged straight into summer. I don't mean the heat, though it has been unseasonably warm these last few days, but other elements such as the light and the echoes and the resonances of it all. The light is all pale and yellow, and the air tastes of asphalt and glass, cars and the late 1970s in RAF married quarter playgrounds. The sky, particularly when clear, seems vast and deep. An upside-down sea. I would like to distill the sky into some kind of wine.
Down on the beach -Andy and myself walked up to the Marina yesterday- there were the summer groups of BMX riders, breakdancers, musicians, families, drinkers, sunbathers and dogs. The horizon seemed to become kind of dulled. A haze beginning to obscure the distance. (I remember Brighton Beach ten years ago, the heat fog as I called it, reading H.P.Lovecraft on the beach whilst between jobs. Just turned 28. Yesterday. A lifetime ago, staring at the sea vanishing into a white void). Andy pointed out to me the amount of times I had to stop for a coffee, or a tea. Less, i think, for the drinks themselves, than for the inexplicable pleasure of stopping at the various scattered stalls to buy them.
Getting back last night. Strange being inside when it's still light outside.
An odd kind of... I don't know. Something in the air I suppose. A kind of nudging. I think it's a byproduct of turning 38. 40 seems to be a lot nearer now than it did a month ago... The passage of time. Chronos, that cruel but consistent god who catches up with us all. That nudging. Reminding me not to let these days slip by, as they do.
Slipping back though. Always easy with me. A generic memory. A collision of different years, but from that one place. Autumn of course. Autumn is a place, not only a season. How can I be nostalgic for autumn at the beginnings of summer? Not really nostalgic. Just aware of it. Walking home through pools of shadows. Rustle of discarded leaves on rainy ground. That dream-like light. Opening the door of a house. Hall-light spilling into the blue twilight, and the house deepening.
Houses in autumn have so many more different levels.
Summer now. Back to the present.
Hold on. Summer?
This is only spring. Just. Just spring.
I have a problem, it seems, with linear time...
Down on the beach -Andy and myself walked up to the Marina yesterday- there were the summer groups of BMX riders, breakdancers, musicians, families, drinkers, sunbathers and dogs. The horizon seemed to become kind of dulled. A haze beginning to obscure the distance. (I remember Brighton Beach ten years ago, the heat fog as I called it, reading H.P.Lovecraft on the beach whilst between jobs. Just turned 28. Yesterday. A lifetime ago, staring at the sea vanishing into a white void). Andy pointed out to me the amount of times I had to stop for a coffee, or a tea. Less, i think, for the drinks themselves, than for the inexplicable pleasure of stopping at the various scattered stalls to buy them.
Getting back last night. Strange being inside when it's still light outside.
An odd kind of... I don't know. Something in the air I suppose. A kind of nudging. I think it's a byproduct of turning 38. 40 seems to be a lot nearer now than it did a month ago... The passage of time. Chronos, that cruel but consistent god who catches up with us all. That nudging. Reminding me not to let these days slip by, as they do.
Slipping back though. Always easy with me. A generic memory. A collision of different years, but from that one place. Autumn of course. Autumn is a place, not only a season. How can I be nostalgic for autumn at the beginnings of summer? Not really nostalgic. Just aware of it. Walking home through pools of shadows. Rustle of discarded leaves on rainy ground. That dream-like light. Opening the door of a house. Hall-light spilling into the blue twilight, and the house deepening.
Houses in autumn have so many more different levels.
Summer now. Back to the present.
Hold on. Summer?
This is only spring. Just. Just spring.
I have a problem, it seems, with linear time...
Tuesday 6 April 2010
The Elephant from the Sea
Took a stroll along the Undercliff Walk with Andy on Easter Day. Busy with families and dogs. The sun over the sea. We ended up walking to Rottingdean, spent some time wondering about the beautifully serene and atmospheric churchyard there. Deciphering descriptions on gravestones (my favourite was 'and to an unknown sailor lost on the above ship' and another; 'artist, musician and troublemaker'). Something nostalgic here. Made me remember - for some unfathomable reason - something from childhood. I wanted to build a model of a country landscape, of lanes, and trees, and hills. A 3-dimensional map of a fictional country. When was this? the late 70s? Maybe. I think it was something in the trees and the brightness of the sky that made me think of Scotland. Strange. It has been twenty five years -a quarter of a century!- since I left Scotland. and I still miss it.
Walking up toward Rottingdean, I noticed something on the wall that ptoected the Undercliff Path from the high tide, the sea all wild and Ides-of-March-ish. I thought, at first that it was a paper bag, some piece of discarded rubbish. Other people looked at it too, and passed by. Odd. We drew level with it, at this thing, this object on the wall.
It was an elephant. A small wooden elephant.
Well, not that small, the size, perhaps of a... How do you measure the size of miniature elephant figurines? The size of two clenched fists perhaps? I doubt it would fir into an empty food tin... Surprisingly heavy too. Felt pleasing when I picked it up.
I looked around for any owner. No likely candidates. Should I leave it? Perhaps the owner might return? Hmm. Perhaps it might be washed into the sea. Perhaps it wanted to be found. Maybe it -somehow- got washed up from the sea. A piece of driftwood lost from a ghost ship.
Not the first time I found a random elephant. Back in 1994, stoned on some wasteground next to East Berkshire College, I was scrabbling in the mud. I loosened something. A stone I thought. Working it free.
A small elephant. A beautifully crafted thing. The size of a chess piece.
My parents still have it on their mantelpiece.
And I have an elephant from the sea sitting perched upon a pile of books.
I wonder where it came from, this elephantasm, but I know I shall have it forever.
Things that are found are so much more precious than those that have never been lost.
Walking up toward Rottingdean, I noticed something on the wall that ptoected the Undercliff Path from the high tide, the sea all wild and Ides-of-March-ish. I thought, at first that it was a paper bag, some piece of discarded rubbish. Other people looked at it too, and passed by. Odd. We drew level with it, at this thing, this object on the wall.
It was an elephant. A small wooden elephant.
Well, not that small, the size, perhaps of a... How do you measure the size of miniature elephant figurines? The size of two clenched fists perhaps? I doubt it would fir into an empty food tin... Surprisingly heavy too. Felt pleasing when I picked it up.
I looked around for any owner. No likely candidates. Should I leave it? Perhaps the owner might return? Hmm. Perhaps it might be washed into the sea. Perhaps it wanted to be found. Maybe it -somehow- got washed up from the sea. A piece of driftwood lost from a ghost ship.
Not the first time I found a random elephant. Back in 1994, stoned on some wasteground next to East Berkshire College, I was scrabbling in the mud. I loosened something. A stone I thought. Working it free.
A small elephant. A beautifully crafted thing. The size of a chess piece.
My parents still have it on their mantelpiece.
And I have an elephant from the sea sitting perched upon a pile of books.
I wonder where it came from, this elephantasm, but I know I shall have it forever.
Things that are found are so much more precious than those that have never been lost.
Monday 5 April 2010
Someone Passing By
Weird being back at the petrol station again. Five years I spent working there. Only ended up there because I hadn't really done anything all day. Slumbered through the morning. Read. Popped to the shops mid-afternoon and bought Darkthrone's excellent new album 'Circle the Wagons'. Mackerel, noodles, peas. Porridge in the morning. Slumbered through the afternoon.
The Portugese woman next door had friends over. Loud voices, all cheery and European. Music played very loud. Only one song admittedly. Funky latin sounding music with a chorus about life being beautiful. Was glad when they turned it off and the visitors left, singing the song down the stairs.
An obvious melancholy. Damn. Should have left the house. Done something. Gone for a walk. Met someone for a coffee. Gone down the pub. Idle hours inside lead to melancholy. Should have known.
Ah well.
It passes.
Best way for it to pass quicker go for a walk. 7:00pm when I left? Getting on for twilight. Still sunny though. A cool breeze a tad uncomfortable. Headed down the beach first. Last lingering bank-holidaymakers. Watched the sun over the sea, looping toward sunset. Walked west down the promenade, then up past the swimming pool and the closed playground. Two teenagers jumping on the trampolines, somersaulting and laughing. Looked like fun.
Up Sackville Road. Streetlamps on. Up onto the Old Shoreham Road and turn right. Pass Furniture Village, and there.
Five years in the form of a petrol station.
Across the forecourt, busy on the bank holiday Monday night. See Mike working. Still there.
Weird being back at the petrol station again.
Nothing changes here, not really. Mike, now twenty nine, the same age that I was when I began working there, all those years ago. Talk about old customers and old times. Look out of the window at the houses across the road, at the park in the distance.
Nothing changes here.
'You remember that guy from Hertz that used to come in?'
'Which one?'
'Guy with the pony tail?'
'Reg? -No Kai!'
I did remember him. He was a driver for the aforementioned Hertz, a company who had an account with the petrol station. He was in most days. A graying pony tail. In his fifties, but still looked young. Was some kind of musician, but wouldn't say what kind. Lively and strangely shy. Sometimes wore a leather jacket.
Always smiling.
Kind of thing you say about someone who had-
That strange falling feeling you get in your stomach.
Knew what was coming.
He had died, of course. Cancer. Came on quick. Knew something was wrong but didn't want to worry about it. Or was worrying about it. You know how it is. Men and , Doctors. Christmas it was. Didn't know him well enough to be sad about it, but still.
Looked outside the window at the cars passing, and the vans, and the people walking across the forecourt. Nothing changes here. Laughing with Mike about the time we thought the petrol station was haunted, about the time the assistant manager had absconded with £6000, about the exploits of the infamours 'Ginger Gang', most of whom had ended up in prison.
Good catching up.
Walked back through the night to the bedsit, took my old route down the Old Shoreham Road. Summery-smelling night, all hopeful and nostalgic at the same time.
Funny. I can still remember his voice.
I'll never find out what kind of musician he was now.
The Portugese woman next door had friends over. Loud voices, all cheery and European. Music played very loud. Only one song admittedly. Funky latin sounding music with a chorus about life being beautiful. Was glad when they turned it off and the visitors left, singing the song down the stairs.
An obvious melancholy. Damn. Should have left the house. Done something. Gone for a walk. Met someone for a coffee. Gone down the pub. Idle hours inside lead to melancholy. Should have known.
Ah well.
It passes.
Best way for it to pass quicker go for a walk. 7:00pm when I left? Getting on for twilight. Still sunny though. A cool breeze a tad uncomfortable. Headed down the beach first. Last lingering bank-holidaymakers. Watched the sun over the sea, looping toward sunset. Walked west down the promenade, then up past the swimming pool and the closed playground. Two teenagers jumping on the trampolines, somersaulting and laughing. Looked like fun.
Up Sackville Road. Streetlamps on. Up onto the Old Shoreham Road and turn right. Pass Furniture Village, and there.
Five years in the form of a petrol station.
Across the forecourt, busy on the bank holiday Monday night. See Mike working. Still there.
Weird being back at the petrol station again.
Nothing changes here, not really. Mike, now twenty nine, the same age that I was when I began working there, all those years ago. Talk about old customers and old times. Look out of the window at the houses across the road, at the park in the distance.
Nothing changes here.
'You remember that guy from Hertz that used to come in?'
'Which one?'
'Guy with the pony tail?'
'Reg? -No Kai!'
I did remember him. He was a driver for the aforementioned Hertz, a company who had an account with the petrol station. He was in most days. A graying pony tail. In his fifties, but still looked young. Was some kind of musician, but wouldn't say what kind. Lively and strangely shy. Sometimes wore a leather jacket.
Always smiling.
Kind of thing you say about someone who had-
That strange falling feeling you get in your stomach.
Knew what was coming.
He had died, of course. Cancer. Came on quick. Knew something was wrong but didn't want to worry about it. Or was worrying about it. You know how it is. Men and , Doctors. Christmas it was. Didn't know him well enough to be sad about it, but still.
Looked outside the window at the cars passing, and the vans, and the people walking across the forecourt. Nothing changes here. Laughing with Mike about the time we thought the petrol station was haunted, about the time the assistant manager had absconded with £6000, about the exploits of the infamours 'Ginger Gang', most of whom had ended up in prison.
Good catching up.
Walked back through the night to the bedsit, took my old route down the Old Shoreham Road. Summery-smelling night, all hopeful and nostalgic at the same time.
Funny. I can still remember his voice.
I'll never find out what kind of musician he was now.
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