Paying Ready Attention

Destination. As a kid I would visit London once a year.   Leaving in the dark of a Friday evening and returning in the similar gloom of Sunday afternoon.   Always in the winter, always in a coach packed to the brim with bags and boy scouts.   We would sleep in loose friendship groups on the floor of a large hall and eat at long shared tables.   On Saturday afternoon, most of the other kids when to watch a game – Arsenal, Spurs, maybe even Chelsea.   In those days Division One was the highest league, and most games were still played on a Saturday. Later we would play five-a-side deep into the evening in a building, which for want of money had a roof, but no walls, and as a result was called The Lid.    I joined in under a kind of resigned sufferance. Given the chance I played solitaire.   Card after card.   Hand after hand.   Today, such behaviour would be labelled odd, and intervention or diagnosis would follow.   ...

Night Driving You could tell it was going to rain. You could smell it in the musty dankness lifting from the soil. You could feel it in the heavy touch of the wind, fast and strong, around the hedges and rough pruned street trees. You could see it in the green tint edges of the clouds above, sealing in the sky, shutting out the early evening stars. As I reversed the car out and away from the house, the first heavy drops began to fall. By the time I stopped at the third set of lights it had become heavy.   Real rain.   Winter rain.   All around me the world was full of mirrors; water sheened surfaces reflecting the light.   Shop lights on the pavement, broken by passing figures.   Car headlights on the road.   The on off flash of my indicator in the paint sheen of the car in front.   Waiting at the pedestrian crossing a man balanced a stack of pizza boxes in one hand and held a wine bottle in the other.   He kep...

It’s only when you go back into the country that you realise now noisy cites can be.   Even if you wake in the night, it’s rare for the background hum of cars to be silent.   You may jolt awake thinking, “what woke me?” to hear the hoo-ha wail of a fire engine or ambulance.   It may be the noisy clatter of possums on the roof, or the animated chatter of party goes, weaving their way home.   But it is rare to wake to anything resembling silence. It was chill outside, but warm in bed.   Unfading bright light leaked through a gap in the curtains.    I could tell that it was a blue-sky day and that the scudding clouds of the day before had blown away.   And by the silence, I could tell we were in the country. Then a cow mooed and the kids laughed at the comedy of the unfamiliar sound.   It did not have the deep resonance of the cartoon moo beloved of TV shows.   It was more a bellow of shock that spoke of ambush or surprise. ...