They were there yesterday and today, though this time they were lying in the gutter rather than on the pavement. The reminded me of the kind of knickers my mother bought me to wear for tennis. Big pants with a row of frilly lace on the back. They looked ridiculous. I felt reduced by wearing them, as if I’d somehow regressed back to childhood, to babyhood. A fluff of saccharine sugary-ness under my simple white, functional tennis skirt. It was what was done in those days. Not now, the female players wear shorts under their skirts or dresses. These pants clearly belonged to a child, though. They were white with a broderie anglaise-d bottom. Had they just be dropped and forgotten? Or had they fallen out of a pram?
He was at his window again this morning. I do prefer it when he isn’t. It isn’t that I don’t like him, for I do. It is just that I would rather not have to talk at that time in the morning. It is my thinking time, my solitary time (for all the people I see and encounter on my walks, I am still alone). I’m sure he feels the same way. Our conversation seems to be just as awkward for him as it is for me. He wants to stand there and smoke. And contemplate and stare. Cheers now, he says as I make my way down the steps. What did I say? Something inane. My mouth struggles to form words. Sometimes I wait in the hallway until I think he is gone.
The Shoreline Guest House is full. The first one this year. Congratulations.
Two bonfires were still burning on South Beach.
The fog felt wet. Was that rain? A real pea-souper. I couldn’t see the Pier from the Bar.
Would he still call it a coincidence, that Cambridge academic that I heard on the radio? Would he? Shall I tell you of it? I was trying to think of an artist’s name. As I always am these days. Joseph Beuys, I was trying to remember his name. I thought I would look it up in a book on Performance Art that I bought second-hand a while ago. I knew that he was something to do with the Fluxus movement. So I thought I would start but looking up references to that word in the index. It was there. I found it easily because it was highlighted in pink. What are the chances eh? No other marks in the book, it is pristine. And yet, there it was in the one place I need to find. A gentle nudging portent, perhaps.
I’ve agreed to write something down, to have statements there in my book ready to challenge the doubters. Those critics that I’ve invested with knowledge way beyond their years or experience. But it is hard to start. My sense of my own foolishness being exacerbated by the articulation of it. But I will preserve. I am looking for clarity. The fog is apt. A thick whiteness.
I thought of her last night. Thirty years ago. An age and yet a brief flicker.
Happy birthday, my love.
