The mournful Italian, Walter Benjamin and the terrified ghosts ...

Jay took me to a quirky Italian eatery after the Paul Klee exhibition at Tate Modern - as we walked through Bloomsbury, I saw before me, superimposed upon calm facades, bright shards of Klee's worlds - 

We sat looking out into the elegant street - opposite were shops with black bow windows - Jay said that once, one had been filled entirely with a wall of books - 

The proprietor had a mournful smile, as though he knew all our secrets - he moved around the tables like a silky courtier - we drank potent coffee -

Jay told me how once he'd gone into a bookshop in Coptic Street - it sold tiny books, the size of postage stamps - 

Jay told the fragile bookseller he was looking for something by Walter Benjamin - ah, he said, with an expression of infinite sadness - my father knew him well - 

Later, we made our towards Jay's eyrie in The Institute - we passed by the site of one of the July 2007 bombings - Sophie might have caught that bus, I thought - if she had , then my life would be one of icy darkness -

Nearby was a beautiful square - I imagined terrified ghosts taking refuge there -

Ballake Sissoko playing the kora, Babane Kone dancing ...

Yesterday evening, lolling in the snug, warmed by a log fire, I dreamed of Mali - I stirred the apple logs with the poker - flames shot up from the fragrant burning wood - sparks flew up the wide mouthed chimney like shreds of summer -

I opened the Times Atlas, looking at the map of West Africa - I marvelled at the strange configuration of Mali's borders - I traced the course of the Niger - I smelt its brackish water, I heard the hiss of oceans of sand -  

I recited the names of remote desert towns, El Mraiti, Aghezzaf, Ti-n-Zaoutatene - these names could, I thought, be the names of djinns -

I imagined Antoine de Saint-Exupery, flying a frail aircraft from Toulouse to Dakar - perhaps he'd seen the lights of Timbuktu from his open cockpit, the white moon over the dunes - 

The day before, we'd heard Ballake Sissoko play the kora - he'd played such tender laments my eyes filled with tears - he closed his eyes whilst he played, his face a calm, archaic, mask - 

We were in The Lighthouse, next to a man with curly black hair - his much younger girlfriend swayed in time to the music - she had heavy curtains of hair, and she looked like a girl drawn by Robert Crumb - 

Other musicians joined Ballake in the performance space - there were two guitarists - one had pointed shoes of scuffed brown leather - their names were Moussa Diabete and Aboubacar Diabete - they played their guitars with a delicacy that reflected great skill and subtlety -  

Fassery Diabete played balafon - he was very tall - from time to time, he smiled gravely - he struck the wooden keys of the balafon with the assurance of a magician, a master of his arcane craft - 

Babane Kone danced with sinuous motions of her hips - her singing thrilled my soul - I watched her, as Odysseus would have watched the sirens - 

Later she invited us to dance - tous, dancez! -

I was in heaven, dancing - 

Edwards' Bookshop in Charing Cross Road, remembering Tom Lubbock & how words are like ropes across voids ...

The Old School House is full of books - wood smoke scents the pages of the novel I'm reading - I throw pine cones upon the fire whilst imagining sucking on a yellow feather - I think of Pushkin, lying on the sofa in his study, shot by the Tsar's assassin - he looks up at his treasured volumes - farewell my friends, he says - 

I love the feel of books, the texture of their pages, their subtle weight - I trace my forefinger over their magic black signs - 

I've got a Kindle, but it's not the same - I lent it to Tessa, when she crossed Anerica - 

A year ago, I read Tom Lubbock's Until Further Notice, I Am Alive - a cruel cancer ate up the language centre of his brain - his wife writes in the introduction to this beautiful memoir - he strung words together like ropes across voids  - 

I started buying books when I was boy - a classmate in the Navy School sold me a science fiction magazine, Astounding Stories - I read the thrilling stories under a Mediterranean sun - Evan Pots had written his name on the cover in a confident artless signature - 

I buy a book every week if I can - last week, I skulked in a second bookshop in Charing Cross Road - I thought I might see my pale ghost, flickering over the foxed classics - when I was a student, I used to buy books here - 

I can still remember the thrill I felt, that secret pleasure, when I first opened Confessions of an English Opium Eater - 

I went down to the low ceilinged basement, crammed with studies of the occult, feverish pulp romance, breezy children's books and the adventures of obscure explorers - 

Decorating a bolted door was a stencil of a Siamese cat - a distressed wall was decorated by bright abstracts, torn out of an art book - my eye was drawn to a collage of a young man - his white shirt had a wing collar, and he wore a mask - on his forehead were the words - ecrivez lisiblement - 

Trafalgar Sunset, fire drakes in The Strand ...

It was late afternoon by the time I reached Trafalgar Square - I glanced at my watch, hanging from my wrist - it was almost four thirty - I felt each second of my life flicker over my skin like a tiny insect - 

As I'd walked down Charing Cross Road, I passed a young foreign woman, kneeling on the pavement - her thin body looks as though it has been fashioned out of wire - 

There was a bit of cardboard on the pavement before her - on it was written, in spidery copperplate - three children - no food - no job - no home - 

Glossy Brazilian girls crossed the road in a perfumed gang, sashaying towards the Hippodrome - black taxi cabs drove past - icy air nipped my ears - 

As twilight fell, a feverish glamour transformed the city - all my senses seemed enhanced - the words of strangers rang in my ears - the scent of spilled ales in The Porcupine made me dizzy - neon signs were like bright corals - 

I looked up to see a murderous sky - above Trafalgar Square, I could see the end of the world - the clouds were like glowing coals, the bed of some celestial furnace - 

I thought of John Martin's vast paintings - any moment, I was sure, I'd see an angel - a fiery blast would topple Nelson's Column - fire drakes would blaze in The Strand - 

Paul Klee ...

I met Jay at the Millennium Bridge, with the Tate Modern behind me, like a beached surreal Cunarder, full of wonder - I'd walked along the South Bank, up from Waterloo Station - I counted the grey twisted cocoons of homeless people, saw serene jets cross the sky - 

A warehouse wall behind the Oxo Tower bore the names of the Muses - a dandy with tapering sideburns lounged against a barber's chair -

A dark skinned couple looked down upon the foreshore - a man was delving with a spade into a bank of bright yellow sand - I thought it might be a short lived installation - 

Jay strode over the bridge, talking excitedly into his mobile phone - he was very happy, justifiably so - the Institute had got just outstanding for its Ofsted - 

We were there to gaze at Paul Klee's paintings - once within the exhibition we soon forgot the colourless world - 

The paintings were hung in white high ceilinged rooms - each one was a delicate portal to an invisible beautiful kingdom - 

I was reminded of Daniel Pincbeck's recollections of a DMT universe - there, before me, were glimpses of jewelled cities, numinous glowing symbols, benign entities - 

I entered strange underwater worlds, full of calm movement and archaic life - magical fish shone with hidden wisdom - 

I watched mysterious clouds, imagined flying over spellbound islands - I saw the cruel shapes of fear - 

One painting was like a Rosetta Stone for dreams - 

It seemed to me that each painting exhaled a mood or emotion - I was assailed by joy, desire, sadness, fear - I could hear music, too - subtle piano pieces, poignant symphonies - 

Jay looked in vain for Klee's Angelus Novus - I thought of Walter Benjamin, holed up in Port Bou, the unsparing eyes of the Fascist policeman, the bedroom in the Hotel de Francia - 

I remembered that Jane had visited this exhibition before me - she'd gazed at these paintings with her calm eye - I thought of her, painting, in her marble house - 

The lions and nereids of Cottlees Auction Hall ...

“I expect you have seen someone put a a lighted match to a bit of newspaper which is propped up in a grate against an unlit fire. And for a second nothing seems to have happened; and then you notice a tiny steak of flame creeping along the edge of the newspaper. It was like that now.” 
― C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe



While I'm on the running machine, my nerves zinging, my heart thudding, stealing shy glances at lovely Amazons, I watch Homes Under The Hammer - 

Canny gaffers bid for damp end of terrace properties - the auctioneer wears a tight shiny suit - I reflect upon the magic of the auctioneer's gavel - 

When we moved into Allchins Cottages, we visited the auction rooms in Maidstone - we bid for book shelves, two leather armchairs and a writing desk - 

Aunt Ada had the cottage next to ours - she helped herself to neighbours' milk bottles - Norman lived the other side - he had money, he told us - with The Abbey - I can still see their kindly faces, Norman with his large wrinkled ears, Aunt Ada, like a tiny darting bird -

Wareham has a weekly farmers' auction - two stone lions guard the auction hall - they have stern, frozen, faces -

  

Between the lions there's an urn, extravagantly decorated, perhaps removed from the pediment of a shuttered grange - shy nereids form its handles - they bow their heads, flexing their supple scaly tails -

-

A notice reads - positively no dogs pushchairs or unruly children - 

Inside the auction hall, I see swollen pumpkins, trays of farm eggs, the beautiful limp feathery shapes of dead grouse, hanging from a blue string - 

I imagine a spark of yellow life, racing over the lions' manes - they'd leap, roaring, from their plinths, charge down Wareham High Street, scatter the bus stop queues -

The nereids would swim downriver, their long hair unbound - they'd wrap their tails around their lovers' legs, singing their ancient songs - 

Jimmy's Chippy, memories of chips ...

I've always had a fondness for chippies - there was one opposite our house in Palmyra Road - my mum would send me over with our order - I'd stare at the pale lozenges of cod, bubbling and sizzling in the oil - a brylcreemed man would stir the chips - I'd trace patterns in the steamed up windows - 

I enjoy the very act of queuing for my bag  of cod and chips - I stammer out the magic words - small cod, small chips, a couple of pickled onions - the  girl in her base ball cap takes my tenner - a grizzled oldster asks for a battered sausage - I can see members of the Wareham Camera Club going into The Black Bear - there's a picture of a Victorian paddle steamer on the wall, over an appeal for Homes for Heroes -

In Swanage, Tess and I love to snarf chips so hot they scald your mouth - they're drenched with vinegar, sparkling with salt - bold herring gulls, with their sharp hooked beaks, follow us along the esplanade - the young gods in The Fish Plaice grin broadly at the saucy tipsy girls - 

I was much taken by Jimmy's Chippy in West Worthing - I'd passed signs for Curtain Doctors and louche barbers - bedraggled families gathered outside Curryland - thin dads smoked spindly rollies - 

There was a hatch in the front window of the chippy, opening onto the street - a girl with purple hair stuck her head out, snuffing the air - I shied away from the glare of this gorgon - what spells, I wondered, would she cast over her chips? -