Chasing the sun in Shoreditch ...

We met Paul in Shoreditch, outside the Oasis Exhibition - a mural across the street depicted Conan, warding off a panther in a Cimmerian jungle - not far from the mighty thewed barbarian, a naked Amazon awaited her fate -

A young creative with an intricate beard strolled by - 

Inside the Chasing the Sun exhibition, I gazed at wonderful iconic photographs of the band - there was one photograph of the two brothers which especially caught my eye - 

They stare at the camera, stony faced, like disdainful angels, wearying of the mean world - 

I thought of all those other furious gifted boys, waiting for their moment - 

We found a room, replicating exactly the one featured on the cover of Definitely Maybe -  

We assumed the attitudes of three of the members of the band - a girl took our photograph - 

Sophie advised me to use the word space in Shoreditch conversations - 

I narrowed my eyes, murmuring the name of the gallery - The londonnewcastle Project Space -

In Dubai, every day is an opportunity ...

I adjusted my seatbelt when told to do so by the olive skinned stewardess - the airbus was approaching Dubai - soon we'd left the icy empires of the stratosphere -

I saw the barren mountains of Oman pass swiftly beneath us - there, gleaming in the afternoon sun, were the cruel soaring towers of the city -

I watched the shadow of the jet moving over the desert - I could have been skimming the surface of Mars -

Once inside the airport's vast shining halls, the illusion persisted that I was a character in some Science Fiction novel - 

We lounged near an indoor garden, sipping iced lemonade - Arabs in spotless white robes strolled past - their cowled wives bought Bulgari watches -

Graceful Filipinas swept the marble floors - 

I remembered how Richard loathed Dubai -  

He'd repeat, ironically, scornfully, the words - In Dubai, every day is an opportunity - 

Reading Simon Raven ...

Whilst I'm reading Simon Raven, I can feel myself, imperceptibly, deliciously, being drawn into a world of card sharps, cads and chancers -

In real life, I'm an innocent, a hull to be emptied to the keel - I skitter nervously in louche bars - I wear a cord jacket and canvas shoes - 

But when, say, I'm whispering in Max de Freville's ear, or skulking in Venice with Fielding Gray, I'm wearing a Guard's tie and smoking a Macanudo - 

The author is depicted on the dust jacket of An Inch of Fortune - there he is, as a young man, a Caraveggio angel - a larger photograph shows him as a middle aged voluptuary, eyes twinkling with wickedness - 

The farewell dinner in Fort Cochin ...

Clearing away moleskines and diaries in readiness for Tony and Jigger, I glanced at one of the pages I'd scrawled, lolling in the Emirates jet, sleepy, yet my mind still zinging with bright memories of India - we'd been flying from Kochi to Dubai - I'd stopped watching back to back episodes of Vikings - my words darted like nervy minnows across the paper -

There, on the page, I'd described, too briefly, how we had walked to The Old Harbour Hotel in balmy twilight - I'd mentioned steamed red snapper -

We'd skirted the Parade Ground, wary of the sinister dogs - the lean boys who'd played joyful cricket there that afternoon had gone elsewhere, perhaps to the waterfront, or to Jew Town or Mattancherry -

Shadows peopled fragrant gardens - I thought of the Jewish merchants whose paintings I'd seen in Koder House - the moon had shone upon their tragic heads - I saw delicate silver leaves upon the branches of a shapely tree - 

Jane and Ken had gone ahead, followed by Paul and Sophie - Anne was wearing a green dress - 

We'd had dinner in the hotel's courtyard - I looked up at the stars - there was a floodlit swimming pool - I wanted every moment to last forever - the next day, we would be flying back to the pale world we had forgotten - 

The table top sale, UFOs and Prince Andrew ...

As always, being in Jean's company was a tonic, like gulping an icy lime and soda - I am immensely fond of this bold ninety year old yachtswoman - 

We'd arrived at the Roman Catholic Church Hall in Swanage before the Semi Colons table top sale had started - on the way there from Wareham, we gossiped about our surgeons - there was a small white statue of a saint in one corner of the hall - 

Angela was pricing up jolly rom com DVDs and foxed paperbacks - there were  jumpers, glass bowls, tagine dishes and photograph frames to arrange on our table - 

Angela is the chairperson of our local branch of Semi Colons - she's a retired Primary School Headteacher, as is her husband, Peter - 

All of us were there - I chatted to Paul, who'd travelled overland from London to Delhi in the 1960's - he'd seen tribesmen in Kandahar - in Delhi, he'd slept on the roof of Ringo's Palace during the summer months -

One morning, he'd woken up, to find himself being covered with Sanjay Gandhi's election leaflets, dropped from a light aircraft, still circling above the scorched city - 

At nine o'clock, the punters streamed in - 

I felt my heart lurch with pity and love when I saw those pale wrinkled faces, those shabby coats -

On the table before me was a Ladybird Souvenir of Prince Andrew's Wedding to Sarah Ferguson - 

I held the wretched artefact in my hand, hiding it under a splendid breeze block about alien abductions - 

Escaping from a Kashmiri carpet shop, meeting Nancy and Bill ...

After lunch in the Kashi Art Cafe, we were tempted to visit a Kashmiri carpet shop - Azad had to wait outside - he was not allowed to enter -

We'd gazed upon the gorgeous silk carpets, deftly unrolled before us by smiling minions - like Ulysses we had to stop our ears to the patron's siren songs - 

This carpet will be a gift for your grand children - the girls in the mountains would weave this carpet for their husbands - the design of this carpet goes back tens of generations - 

I could have been in Taroudant, or Mugla, or Istanbul - how many times had I heard this oily patter? - 

Sophie had bolted first - I followed, then Anne - I cast a look back at the elegant patron - he was still smiling - the barefoot boys were rolling up the carpets - 

Azad was snoozing in the auto rickshaw - when he saw us, he grinned knowingly - 

That evening, we'd met up with Bill and Nancy - they were staying overnight in Jew Town, before their flight next day to Toronto - 

We sat on the terrace, sharing precious stories -

The Hare in The Salt Pig ...

Easter visitors strolled down West Street, past The Rex, towards the High Street - on The Quay, small boys treasured tubs of Purbeck  ice cream - sinewy girls larked about in rowing boats upon the river - Jim Etherington was playing mean blues in The Black Bear - burly dads parked their Rav 4s in Sainsburys' car park - bold sea gulls swooped down to plunder discarded kebabs - the sun shone in the April sky - I remembered hearing Penny Lane for the first time -

I was lucky that day to find a spare table in The Salt Pig - I sighed over The Independent, sipping my latte - the members of the crossword gang were discussing a polemic in The Daily Mail - 

Suddenly I looked up - a picture, hung on the wall, had caught my eye - there, looking at me with mysterious knowledge in his stare, was a hare -

Penny and I had recently seen a hare - we were climbing up the steep slopes of Hambledon Hill - above us, the ancient hill fort was close to the sky - 

Penny had first caught sight of this magical creature - I looked at him, through her binoculars - he lay, basking in the sun, upon the grass - 

I had imagined how it might be, to race over the wind blown hills, past stone circles, under the moon - 

Now, in this crowded eatery, I felt the wonder of that moment again - 

Remembering Casablanca, saying good bye to Doctor Bagi ...

Listening to John Coltrane in the red wounded beast, driving to a sad Texaco, I found myself thinking about the art of saying good bye - 

Rick, in Casablanca, knew the right words to say - Ilsa had boarded the silver aircraft - Louis Renault had smiled his foxy smile - 

But I wasn't Rick - I never knew what to say - I would clasp a hand awkwardly - I would feel shy kissing a proffered cheek -  

Many of my farewells were melancholy affairs - someone I loved would board a train - I would be left behind, alone on the platform, remembering wild moments - 

When the time came to leave Doctor Bagi's, I wish I'd spoken all of the words that later came to me -

I should have said - this was such a rare experience for me - I feel, at last, at ease with my body - I feel as light as air - 

But all I said was - thank you - good bye -

Perhaps, though, they knew how I really felt - I hope so - 

Thinking about Pushkin, looking for Witch Bottles ...

Very soon, Tony, the builder, will be removing the low ceiling of the snug, with its mysterious markings and strange civilizations of spiders -

Jigger's delved already under the floorboards upstairs, exposing narrow joists, over a hundred years old - I half expected to find a witch bottle there, wreathed with dust - 

Today I've been taking my books out of the bookcases in the snug, placing them in cardboard boxes - I scrounged the boxes from Sainsburys - Diane and Jimbo put them by for me - I peered into the dark kingdom of the loading bay to seek out Diane - 

I realised that my books marked phases of my life - there was my foxed Dandelion Wine, with its feverishly beautiful cover - there was my View Over Atlantis - I remembered my gaudy nights in Winchester, the man who saw flying saucers over Saint Catherine's Hill - there was my Severed Head - I thought of my own terrible colloquies - there was my Hangover Square and my Life of Johnson - 

I saw myself in Highgate - there I was in a shebeen with a girl from Beziers - I was happy under a Tiepolo ceiling in Venice - I was reading Christabel in an attic room - 

Under a pile of atlases, I found a photograph of Kafka, and an essay by Wilf Self about The Book of Revelation - 

I thought of Pushkin, pierced by the vile d'Anthes' bullet - 

Farewell, my friends he'd said, gazing at his books - 

Dancing across the road to the Internet cafe like Nijinsky ...

The well mannered traffic of gentle Wareham had ill prepared me for the task of crossing the road in Thakkad Junction - even the young fellows, as Beth called them, screeching past The Red Lion in their pimped Peugeot 106s, were models of placid motoring compared to what confronted me here, as I dithered like a shaky gaffer at the cross roads near the Internet cafe - 

I marvelled at the courage, the zen like calm, the balletic grace, displayed by the inhabitants of this Keralan town as they crossed from one side of the road to the other - 

Even the town natural, swaying and skittering past an auto rickshaw, parked outside a cupboard sized grocery, would shame Nijinsky, or perhaps Isadora Duncan, as he danced across the melting asphalt, dodging Royal Enfields, Ambassadors and Tata Divos - 

But somehow I made it - there I was, on the other side - my heart was beating furiously, my nerves zinging - 

I followed Sophie and Anne into the Internet cafe, opposite the A to Z Supermarket - 

We made our way over a narrow plank, spanning a deep trench, a chasm of red earth, into the wardrobe sized cafe - 

The road works had been another peril to face this afternoon - the insouciant workmen excavated their canyons within, literally, inches of spinning tyres - 

There were two booths with primeval PCs - boys updated their Facebook pages - 

Our passports were placed upon the immense smouldering photo-copier - the copies were like delicate palimpsests, patterned with black dots - 

The farewell dinner in Guruvayur ...

I gazed at the stuffed paratha on my plate with shining eyes, shamelessly wolfing it down - to my joy, further dishes were being placed upon the table - I avoided Doctor Bagi's eyes - 

I'd been fasting for two weeks - my wrists were thin and brown - one night, I had a dream in which I'd been transformed into an eel - 

It was Friday evening - the next day we would return to Fort Cochin - 

I sat opposite Doctor Bagi 's two daughters - they were charming and kind - I thought of them, slim and watchful, in their Grandfather's house - 

Doctor Bagi's wife sat further down the table - Anne had earlier spoken with her - I watched them talk, exchanging murmured confidences - 

Jane was laughing and witty - Ken, as ever, courtly and wise - 

Mohammed sat at the other end of the table - he'd just returned from the Gulf - his wife was dressed in black - Mohammed often looked at his I phone - 

At the end of the dinner, I tapped a glass for silence - I spoke from my heart, thanking Doctor Bagi for all he'd done for us - the words that came into my head were like tender birds - I wanted them to do justice to this clever sensitive man -  

The beautiful uninvited guest ...

For Nancy Leach

Reading Dark Back of Time, by Javier Marias, I know I'm being  seduced by long sinuous sentences, pages long paragraphs full of strange digressions and haunting wisdom about the nature of time -

I feel full of a sweet gentle sadness after reading it - I look at the things around me, as this Spanish magician does, imagining them continuing being here, when I have heard an owl call my name - 

There's my magnifying glass, there's my Mont Blanc fountain pen, there's my Harris Tweed jacket, with a five rupee coin in one of the pockets - 

I'm thinking, but not enough, about my own mortality - I want to be ready to greet that beautiful uninvited guest - 

Meeting Sophie in Tate Britain, thinking of an invisible city ...

I met Sophie outside The Tate Britain - it was the day of my birthday - I knew that I must read Paul Auster's Winter Journal soon - how was this possible, I thought, to be sixty two -

Sophie was wearing top boots - she had arrived on time, fresh from a meeting with a Polish artist -  

We ate carrot cake in the Djanogly Cafe - I told Sophie about the nightmare I had the previous night - I still felt afraid - 

We explored the shining galleries, marveling at the spiral staircase - 

Strange temporary structures beguiled us - a huge tube, like a spooky telescope, was suspended within a fragile tower - 

Soon we were drawn towards Ruin Lust - 

Before we entered those white spaces, filled with images of listing gun emplacements, edgelands and riven palaces, I thought, for a moment, of the young woman I'd seen begging near Waterloo Station - 

She had a thin fierce face - the polystyrene cup before her was half filled with dirty coins - 

Her desolate city was hidden from me - 

Removing my watch at Doctor Bagi's ...

I soon grew used to the daily routine at Doctor Bagi's - we would wake before seven for our early morning walk, returning for a light breakfast, perhaps of dosas or sambar -

At eight thirty, the Colonel would emerge from his room - his was the first treatment of the day - he'd have his breakfast later, eating alone - he'd be wearing a short sleeved linen shirt - 

After wolfing down my dosas, I would scan The New Indian Express, or scrawl appercus in my moleskine - I might even rifle the pages of a mad paperback called The Secret History of the World - 

Anne would return from her treatment, smiling, a bindi decorating her forehead, her skin smooth and scented - Jane would make her way to the treatment room with her two ladies - one for each side -

After the Colonel, Ken would be summoned - when he came back,  I would follow, stretching myself out upon the gleaming table, to be massaged with rich oils, then washed -

The routine of treatments would be repeated in the afternoon -

Each day would follow the same course, the passage of time like the warm slow trickle of oil that was directed upon our foreheads in one of the treatments, so that I felt I had been at Doctor Bagi's for centuries rather than days -

I removed my watch, which had so ruled my life, leaving my wrist bare - the pale band of skin soon grew brown -

Here, I had forgotten time -

The necessity of seeing Ruin Lust ...

I have always found solace in gazing upon ruins - images of broken towers, of shattered masonry, soothe my soul - 

Some of my most precious memories are of roofless abbeys, open to the clouds, haunted by rooks, still beautiful and numinous - 

I can remember, in Split, wandering through the colossal vaults of the Palace - I thought that I was in a Piranesi engraving - shadowy voids opened up before me - water dripped upon ancient stone - 

In Side, the Temple of Apollo entered my dreams - I watched the full moon rise above its pale columns - 

I knew, therefore, that I had to see the Ruin Lust exhibition at Tate Britain - 

Remembering being called a friend of the Russians ...

I can remember once being told that I was a friend of the Russians - 

Those words came back to me, early one morning in Kerala - 

We were on one of our walks before breakfast - a delicate boy was placing a folded copy of The New India Express upon the driveway of a Gulf house - a gentle ancient picked up discarded plastic bottles, gazing at us with milky eyes - 

I then saw, by the side of the road, a red plinth, bearing a swashbuckling hammer and sickle -

I recalled that Kerala had been governed by either Left Democratic Front or United Democratic Front coalitions since Independence -

They had been ruled by kings until then the Colonel said - 

I thought of the sycophantic headlines I saw at home, the faces of Royals depicted in the hireling press - 

Chrysta Bell in Oslo ...

The bar in Oslo reminded me of the one in Stalker - I half expected to see a man with burning eyes standing next to me, waiting to take me to the Zone -

The night club occupied a former railway station - I felt at ease within its distressed spaces - I was soothed by the Nordic aesthetic - 

Sophie led me through dark corridors to the performance area - the air was filled with pale smoke -

She was taking me to see Chrysta Bell, one of David Lynch's muses - 

Standing amongst the rapt crowd before the small stage, I thought of the closing scenes of Wings of Desire - 

I could sense, all around me, shadowy figures dancing slowly - angels were listening to our thoughts - 

The beautiful sinuous chanteuse, her face painted with light, was singing her unsettling songs - drums pulsed - 

Smokey tendrils of desire and imagination reached out towards us through the haunted air - 

The Viking Exhibition at The British Museum, bright gold and Skaldic verse ...

I'm sitting in my parents' lounge, gazing at photographs of aunts - small clouds are slowly moving across the blue sky - the tiny lawns in the back garden are newly edged -

Yesterday afternoon, before I returned here, to feel time congeal around me, I went to the Vikings Exhibition at the British Museum - 

As always, I felt a cool necklace of fear around my neck as I entered the lift at Russell Square Tube Station - 

The Exhibition was very crowded - in some rooms, I had to shuffle along, hemmed in by men wearing gorgeous tweed jackets, shyly sidestepping beautiful women clasping their audio guides like wands - 

There, before me, were the bright gold treasures, carried across wintry seas to smokey halls - 

There were the rust eaten swords, still terrible - 

There were the jewel like words of the skalds, still as sharp as the honed edge of an axe - 

They went boldly 

West for gold

Fed the eagle

Out in the East 

And died in the South

In Saracenland 

- Skaldic verse, about AD 954

London Fields Lido, cappuccinos on Hoxton Beach ...

Just emerged from six lengths of London Fields Lido - swimming in the gaffers' lane, overtaken by sleek torpedoes of girls, their arms cleaving the water like the propellers of the Spirit of St Louis -

I lay on my back, halfway down one length, staring up at the hazy clouds - there were two stern lifeguards on duty, watching the fascinating carnival of swimmers - 

The trees in the Fields were all in new delicate leaf - dogs roved about, eager for adventure - 

Outside the Lido , Paul chatted to a young man in dark glasses -

It's kind of much more, about, working with profit - but you can work around it - 

London Fields 

Saturday 12 April 2014

12.39

Waterloo Train, escaping a ghost ...

I've just boarded the 9.34 for Waterloo - the South Western Train is moving swiftly through poignant towns, past trees coming into leaf, green fields bordered by thorn hedgerows, primroses growing on the bank of a cutting - 

Last night I had a frightful nightmare - I dreamed I was in the bedroom I was sleeping in, curled up in the same double bed, waking up in my dream to a thumping noise, the bed being shaken, its sheets rippling, a sense of an icy presence - 

Then I awoke for real in the same bedroom, but I still felt terrified, hearing vague noises, and sensing subtle movement - 

I lay there stricken for hours - even with the light on, I still felt uneasy - 

I kept on remembering my mum saying - there's a ghost in this house - 

Now, in the daylight, sitting in this reassuring train, I'm more aware than ever how there are two worlds, the day world, where I order a latte from the buffet trolley, and the night world, when, for all my rationality, I am helpless in the dark -

10.01

Waterloo Train, arriving at Haslemere

11 April 2014 

The Hedgehog has his own India ...

I was looking at a map of Fort Cochin, wistfully recalling the joyous mayhem of its streets, the beautiful haunted interiors of its colonial mansions, the sumptuous lattes I'd sipped in its crowded art cafés, the gentle glances of its slender women, when something roused me from my reveries -

For there, on the pathway across the lawns of The Old School House, was a hedgehog, moving surprisingly quickly - 

I jumped up, shutting the page of my diary upon which the map was pasted - 

I watched the wonderful hedgehog, with its quivering delicate muzzle, zig zagging towards me over the lichened paving stones -

Perhaps the garden was a continent for this valiant questing creature - 

What marvels was it searching for, I wondered - what deity or deities presided over its world?

Kerala School Buses and The Purbeck Breezer ...

I was always wary of the buses in Kerala - I might be walking down a narrow jungly lane, passing through its silent steamy air like a dreamy ghost, when suddenly, with a crashing of sluggish gears, a growling angry engine, a luminescent bus would storm past me, dizzying me with its cloak of diesel fumes -

I would be lolling in a Toyota, imagining delightful scenes, when suddenly I'd look up, to see a gaudy deity, painted upon the rear end of a bus, inches away from our bumper - the bus was stopping without warning, perhaps a perfunctory blast on a horn, its two doors thrown open, so its dazed passengers could tumble out - 

School buses were the craziest of all the buses, I thought - they raced past sequestered temples, with a holy tree set in a marshy field, guarded by egrets - they steamed through the disordered traffic of the towns, filled with bright eyed pupils - 

I would cast my mind  back, to gentle Wareham, to the well mannered Purbeck Breezer, carrying gaffers to Bramble Bay - 

I was surprised not to feel homesick - perhaps I should spend my final years, barefoot and sun burnt, idling under tolerant skies - 

With Doctor Bagi in the Dispensary ...

We walked carefully through the shadowy rooms with their treasures of mysterious herbs and forked roots - slow burning wood heated large vessels filled with dark liquids -

There were sinister looking presses to grind the roots, smaller presses to mould pills -

Doctor Bagi had told us there were hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Ayuvedic medicines - when I thought of the three Doshas, I was reminded of Galen's humours - 

In his dispensary, ranged upon the shelves, were legions of bottles, each one brimming with a potent cordial - 

We examined samples of medicinal seeds, tubers and dried leaves - they were set out upon a blue glass plate, like strange gifts - 

Doctor Bagi's father was also an Ayuvedic practitioner - he wrote poetry and had been a teacher - I could sense his austere presence, although we never saw him -