Remembering another summer, much hotter than this. Outside it was nearly a hundred degrees in the shade. I was an office Temp, in the coolness of a dark office, with filing cabinets and electric typewriters that went clackety clack. The office was near Hyde Park. In my lunch hour I ate salmon and cucumber sandwiches there. My dress was blue with white polka dots and there was a bow at the front, by the breast. It was short and showed off my tanned legs. I had a husband I was soon to be separated from. We were twenty-two and decided to go our own ways, live apart for a while. People said, if you do that you'll never get back together again, but still we decided to do it. We'll go on seeing each other, we said.
Heat wave nights, lying under a polyester sheet, talking about who would have the coffee cups, the tea set, the Joni Mitchell records, and what to do with the wedding presents left on ice for the house that we would never buy. We still reached for each other and I woke in the night with a shock, felt him next to me and was relieved: not apart yet. What do you know at twenty-two about the bonds between people who love, have loved each other?
July was our last month living together. We went to parties, danced until three in the morning, joked that we would have a splitting up party and drink champagne. At one party, a group of gatecrashers stormed through the house. The girls who lived there asked my husband to help get the gatecrashers out. They were drunk and belligerent, one of them punched him and he folded up onto a floor-cushion, winded. I fell to my knees beside him and screamed. Stop screaming, said someone, they've gone now, but I had to put my hand over my mouth to stop.
I don't remember how we said goodbye or when it became autumn and winter. We were together in the first days of August, dividing up the things we had, watching Old Grey Whistle Test at night, eating chocolate biscuits in bed in the morning - then we were in different places and everything became cold and quiet. I went to his rented room in south London, we made love on his single bed; in the morning he said, I feel fragmented.
I got a chest infection, then asthma, went away to recuperate, wrote him a letter saying, I love you and I think of you, please come. The letter never arrived. he had no telephone. I waited for him. He waited for me. The moments came and passed and were gone.
Now I think that you can't marry someone and still love them and then split apart, and I can't remember how we did that. When you are twenty-two you think you can do everything. We waited for each other but he didn't get a letter, and he didn't come to me.
Then we met other people.
Showing posts with label the past. Show all posts
Showing posts with label the past. Show all posts
Monday, July 11, 2011
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Ubi Sunt?
Really I would like this to be an intelligent but heartfelt meditation on mortality and life's transcience. But instead I will just say
Hwær cwom mearg? Hwær cwom mago? Hwær cwom maþþumgyfa?Hwær cwom symbla gesetu? Hwær sindon seledreamas?
which, as you undoubtedly already know, means
Where is the horse* gone? Where the rider? Where the giver of treasure?Where are the seats at the feast? Where are the revels in the hall?
Where indeed? And where are the bloggers of yesteryear? You may well ask. For when I first began this game, the blogging I mean, there were many bloggeurs and bloggistes at work whose names I do not see now, or the blogs themselves are there, like monuments to "temps jadis." But the people who wrote the words? Ubi sunt?
On the other hand the blogging itself, as a respectable activity, has now come of age. Everyone who is anyone is at it. Makes you think, doesn't it? Because erstwhile, when we, mes semblables, were young, it was generally sniffed at, not considered a proper pursuit at all for respectable, thinking, artistically-inclined peeps but now those very sniffers are not only blogging for their lives (and to promote their books, obviously) but twitteriing like demented birds, in a cacophony of tweets.
Perhaps not blogging is the new blogging and people who don't do it will be considered a bit, you know. So in order to be cutting edge you have to not do it - but only if you have, already, if you get my drift. If you never did in the first place then you just have to find something else to not do.
And here is the lovely George Brassens, singing about the Dames of Yesteryear. Wait for me George - I'm coming there too!
*you know who you are
Hwær cwom mearg? Hwær cwom mago? Hwær cwom maþþumgyfa?Hwær cwom symbla gesetu? Hwær sindon seledreamas?
which, as you undoubtedly already know, means
Where is the horse* gone? Where the rider? Where the giver of treasure?Where are the seats at the feast? Where are the revels in the hall?
Where indeed? And where are the bloggers of yesteryear? You may well ask. For when I first began this game, the blogging I mean, there were many bloggeurs and bloggistes at work whose names I do not see now, or the blogs themselves are there, like monuments to "temps jadis." But the people who wrote the words? Ubi sunt?
On the other hand the blogging itself, as a respectable activity, has now come of age. Everyone who is anyone is at it. Makes you think, doesn't it? Because erstwhile, when we, mes semblables, were young, it was generally sniffed at, not considered a proper pursuit at all for respectable, thinking, artistically-inclined peeps but now those very sniffers are not only blogging for their lives (and to promote their books, obviously) but twitteriing like demented birds, in a cacophony of tweets.
Perhaps not blogging is the new blogging and people who don't do it will be considered a bit, you know. So in order to be cutting edge you have to not do it - but only if you have, already, if you get my drift. If you never did in the first place then you just have to find something else to not do.
And here is the lovely George Brassens, singing about the Dames of Yesteryear. Wait for me George - I'm coming there too!
*you know who you are
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Proof of the Pudding
Things are a bit unsettled in the Signs household. Having put these words down I realise that this is not particularly true. The household, apart from the cat giving herself therapeutic grass emetics and leaving mysterious puddles on floors and windowsill, is as normal. I am unsettled. Worrying too much is one of the things I secretly do, and the focus is often my children. Sometimes, though, there is good reason, as when distressed daughter telephones at two in the morning because of a volatile situation with boyfriend. The gremlin in my soul has whispered for a while that there would be trouble ahead and it does so now, but life goes on.
I have, as a direct consequence of the above, made a discovery: Fray Bentos steak and kidney pudding. I can explain. On a recent shopping trip to the supermarket (this kind of excursion being severely rationed at present), I decided to stock up with a couple of Useful items in case of worse to come in the way of M.E. debility, floods, snowstorms or any other kind of disaster, natural or otherwise. Anyone who has been here before will probably have picked up that I am pretty good about organic veg, lentils and such and eat, more or less, healthily and if I buy tins of anything it will tend to be of things like sweetcorn and kidney beans. I last had a Fray Bentos pie in the 1970s and here, I think, is a clue – that since the second series of Life on Mars began I, with Sam Tyler, have been beamed back to the 1970s and feeling a touch homesick for it. It is pure indulgence and escapism, but harmless unless you happen to find yourself stuck there. So I looked up at the flying saucer tins of Fray Bentos pies that I used to eat in the bedsit with the swarms of silverfish around the sink and fungus growing in the corner of the loo, and very acceptable they were too, eaten with Batchelor’s giant marrowfat peas. It would do for my son, I thought, when he needed something quick and substantial. It would be a novelty and I could sit and tell him about the good old days while he ate it. But my hand reached for the pudding instead. It was the promise of “made with Oxo gravy” that clinched it, and it was for me, not my son, that I wanted it. Food as mother never made it. I put it at the back of the cupboard and the back of my mind, but today, weak-limbed and worried about my daughter, with nothing in the house to eat but the hard end of a black unyeasted rye loaf and a jar of organic capers, and feeling hungry in the low blood sugar must-eat-soon way, I ate it. It was wonderful. There was too much of the pudding bit in relation to meat, but still. I wouldn’t have complained if I’d been served it in a proper restaurant with side-dish of steamed veg to accompany (which in this case I did not have). The down side is that I will need to schedule in another trip to the supermarket, and there may still be trouble ahead. I am, for the moment, fortified.
I have, as a direct consequence of the above, made a discovery: Fray Bentos steak and kidney pudding. I can explain. On a recent shopping trip to the supermarket (this kind of excursion being severely rationed at present), I decided to stock up with a couple of Useful items in case of worse to come in the way of M.E. debility, floods, snowstorms or any other kind of disaster, natural or otherwise. Anyone who has been here before will probably have picked up that I am pretty good about organic veg, lentils and such and eat, more or less, healthily and if I buy tins of anything it will tend to be of things like sweetcorn and kidney beans. I last had a Fray Bentos pie in the 1970s and here, I think, is a clue – that since the second series of Life on Mars began I, with Sam Tyler, have been beamed back to the 1970s and feeling a touch homesick for it. It is pure indulgence and escapism, but harmless unless you happen to find yourself stuck there. So I looked up at the flying saucer tins of Fray Bentos pies that I used to eat in the bedsit with the swarms of silverfish around the sink and fungus growing in the corner of the loo, and very acceptable they were too, eaten with Batchelor’s giant marrowfat peas. It would do for my son, I thought, when he needed something quick and substantial. It would be a novelty and I could sit and tell him about the good old days while he ate it. But my hand reached for the pudding instead. It was the promise of “made with Oxo gravy” that clinched it, and it was for me, not my son, that I wanted it. Food as mother never made it. I put it at the back of the cupboard and the back of my mind, but today, weak-limbed and worried about my daughter, with nothing in the house to eat but the hard end of a black unyeasted rye loaf and a jar of organic capers, and feeling hungry in the low blood sugar must-eat-soon way, I ate it. It was wonderful. There was too much of the pudding bit in relation to meat, but still. I wouldn’t have complained if I’d been served it in a proper restaurant with side-dish of steamed veg to accompany (which in this case I did not have). The down side is that I will need to schedule in another trip to the supermarket, and there may still be trouble ahead. I am, for the moment, fortified.
Sunday, March 25, 2007
day-tripping
The idea of the past being another country (“they do things differently there”) has become well-known since L.P. Hartley’s “The Go-Between”. It’s so eloquent, even people who never read the book seem to know the phrase. Sometimes I think that, other than using a computer and mobile phone, I live more or less in the 1970s. It’s something to do with style – I think my clothes could fit quite unobtrusively into any of the last four decades, but it’s also to do with living out of London and not having a proper job. When I’m in a crowded place back in the Smoke, or travelling there – that’s when I notice how just-landed-from-another-place I really am. In my imagination London is as it was when I properly inhabited it, which was actually pre-children. I am surprised by the coffee shops and kiosks everywhere. I am surprised by the swarms of people and by the expressions on their faces. No-one, I mean no-one, looks at ease.
On the train to Victoria the other day I found myself wedged in with three people, two women and a man, probably in their twenties, all staring at the screens of their mobile phones. The man’s phone went off with the sound of crashing crockery – one of the new ring tones I’ve heard before. He answered in Polish and I amused myself seeing how many words I could recognise. He looked ill; pale with large pink spots on his neck. When he finished speaking he carried on staring at the small screen, pressing buttons. The woman next to me was pressing buttons too. I tried to read over her shoulder to see what message might be there but couldn’t. I love you, it might have said, or did you know there is an unexploded bomb on this train. But most likely it was
Hi what you up to?
I’m on the train nothing much - you?
Nothing much either you seen Tom around?
No, you?
Yes seen him yesterday he didn’t see me.
I imagined she would have a contract that would allow her to send a huge number of these messages each month. Endless hours. The woman opposite looked as unhealthy as the Polish man next to her so at first I thought they might be partners. She had spots on her face as well as her neck and was thin and pale, this last accentuated by her dark brown hair which was lush and seemed not to belong to her, as if a kind but thoughtless benefactor had taken a look at her and said, god you look awful, here – have this, and wedged a thick brown wig on her head. She stared at her mobile screen without pressing any buttons. She just stared and stared. She seemed not to have much in the way of eyelids. Perhaps there was a message saying her mother had died. Or her house was on fire, her children all gone. But she looked up and out of the window, then at the Polish man, then me. Her expression didn’t change and there was no gleam of anything in her eyes that suggested she took in what she saw.
A woman across the aisle suddenly grabbed at the holdall on the floor and rummaged. Looking for her mobile, I thought. But she lifted out a tattered blue A5 notebook and a blue plastic ballpoint and began to write in the book as though something vital depended on it. She carried on until we reached Victoria and even then, with the surge of people moving to get off, she was unwilling to stop. She pressed the tip of the ballpoint tightly with three fingers and covered line after line in blue-inked words. I could see that she had filled most of the notebook. It made me feel at home to watch her. She and her holdall could, like me, be from any decade, and the notebook was very 1970s. All she would have needed was a Bic ballpoint. It was only later I thought to read the signs – what I’m here for any road and decade. With notebook, travelling.
On the train to Victoria the other day I found myself wedged in with three people, two women and a man, probably in their twenties, all staring at the screens of their mobile phones. The man’s phone went off with the sound of crashing crockery – one of the new ring tones I’ve heard before. He answered in Polish and I amused myself seeing how many words I could recognise. He looked ill; pale with large pink spots on his neck. When he finished speaking he carried on staring at the small screen, pressing buttons. The woman next to me was pressing buttons too. I tried to read over her shoulder to see what message might be there but couldn’t. I love you, it might have said, or did you know there is an unexploded bomb on this train. But most likely it was
Hi what you up to?
I’m on the train nothing much - you?
Nothing much either you seen Tom around?
No, you?
Yes seen him yesterday he didn’t see me.
I imagined she would have a contract that would allow her to send a huge number of these messages each month. Endless hours. The woman opposite looked as unhealthy as the Polish man next to her so at first I thought they might be partners. She had spots on her face as well as her neck and was thin and pale, this last accentuated by her dark brown hair which was lush and seemed not to belong to her, as if a kind but thoughtless benefactor had taken a look at her and said, god you look awful, here – have this, and wedged a thick brown wig on her head. She stared at her mobile screen without pressing any buttons. She just stared and stared. She seemed not to have much in the way of eyelids. Perhaps there was a message saying her mother had died. Or her house was on fire, her children all gone. But she looked up and out of the window, then at the Polish man, then me. Her expression didn’t change and there was no gleam of anything in her eyes that suggested she took in what she saw.
A woman across the aisle suddenly grabbed at the holdall on the floor and rummaged. Looking for her mobile, I thought. But she lifted out a tattered blue A5 notebook and a blue plastic ballpoint and began to write in the book as though something vital depended on it. She carried on until we reached Victoria and even then, with the surge of people moving to get off, she was unwilling to stop. She pressed the tip of the ballpoint tightly with three fingers and covered line after line in blue-inked words. I could see that she had filled most of the notebook. It made me feel at home to watch her. She and her holdall could, like me, be from any decade, and the notebook was very 1970s. All she would have needed was a Bic ballpoint. It was only later I thought to read the signs – what I’m here for any road and decade. With notebook, travelling.
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