Cannes

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Long way up, short way down

A rectangle of flat rooftop is visible from my bedroom window, perhaps six feet by twelve, with a raised edge no more than a foot high. In the past few weeks a black and white rabbit has been put out to pasture on that platform. It lollops gently about, raising its head at the boundary and sniffing the air.

At first I was worried it might make the leap, fall to the gardens below. It hasn't yet, so my concern recedes, it must know, its owners must know.

But still. It might.

Placed in similar circumstances who among us can be certain we wouldn't?

"Every time that I look on the first day of summer / takes me back to the place where they gave ECT"

Strange prospect of travelling to the North East in the near future. By which I don't mean Leyton or Chingford. It's been years since I left Z1 other than to leave the country or for filial duty.

Reminds me of an acquaintance, she worked in HMV and I worked on Wells Street and we shared a pub. Early on we established that she could not get me free records and I could not get her free Kevin Bacon. I'd thought our cliques had been overlapping for ages before we met, but she said one day: "No, that's you and me that is. Y'naar." She was from Wallsend.

Seems more natural to accept an invitation I recently received to visit a former colleague in Cardiff. It is at least abroad and foreign, though its nightlife appears thoroughly English to me.

In all your decadence people die! In all your decadence people die!

He was from Ottawa, I meant to ask him about the place, but conversation turned elsewhere. He had curly hair, and brown, kind yet slightly insinuating eyes. He said:

"[Our Host] tells me you're dating an actress."

It seemed so improbable, in multiple. I at first translated it as a misunderstanding arising from Our Host's tendency to declare people's occupations as what he thinks they should be. Perhaps I was now some biographer, and the dating described the process of establishing a chronology in the life of this actress. Maybe that's what we call it in the biography trade, the dating.

He had me confused with someone else, of course. As well as about Ottawa, I wondered who this actress was, but I never found out.

Early on I felt that I wasn't getting enough to drink. Like shortness of breath it wasn't something that could easily be fixed.

Later someone put 'Shaved Women' by Crass on the stereo. I'd no idea so many people were familiar with it. It was a corridor-filler.

And Our Host drew me to him with something to say, slurred, by now he'd had enough to drink certainly. Several years ago another man had said a very similar thing to me, and I later wondered if we held that acquaintance in common.

"Y'know, you 'n me, our generation, may be the last men on earth to have seen pubic hair. On the women. Eh? Like the opposite of growing up, isn't it?"

FFM: Ohne Titel

I was very tired, on the U3.

At Schweizer Platz a young couple sat diagonally opposite me. I could see their reflection very clearly in the window against the dark rippling tunnel wall. The girl clasped her hands together like an opera singer and held that pose for a moment. Then, soundlessly but in perfect synchronisation, she mouthed the words of the next-station announcement as they emanated from the carriage public address system:

Nächste Station, Willy-Brandt Platz.

Aufstieg links.

Umsteigen für den U-Bahn Linien vier oder fünf,
und den Straßenbahn Linien elf oder zwölf.


It was like poetry. Spooky and captivating. It was the most beautiful thing that day.

FFM: She has taken everything but didn't give anything

"Ah, our colleague has returned to the hotel bar for a nightcap... I've got Angela Merkel."

He wasn't my colleague, it wasn't my hotel, but as to the latter, there she was, her face clasped between his knees as he sat down. More than life size, a full colour print on plastic placard, approximately A0 size. He must have hoisted her off a lamp post by gradually easing her up the pole and over the light fitting.

"So what are you going to do with her now?"

He didn't answer, too busy cherishing her magnified visage, pansticked the colour of cooked salmon. It was one of the few that had not been adorned by now with comments, devil eyes, a square you-know-who moustache. She was pristine and I had to agree when he said:

"She has the bluest eyes."

The waiter came over, expressionless at the sight of a slightly drunken Englishman pawing at his Bundeskanzler. We put another double Scotch on someone or other's tab. I pressed my question again, he shrugged and smiled.

"You haven't thought this through, have you?"

He shook his head and smiled again. The next day at 9:15 a.m. he gave his paper, and he left on an early afternoon plane. We didn't see his luggage.

He does nothing, the boy does nothing!

It's not uncommon to wake from a lurid dream still caught in the moment, pursued by the hounds of hell, in the arms of the imagined lover, out in front of the audience, swimming, flying. Eyes are open, can see the room, but at first the creation of the sub-consciousness doesn't recede.

This morning, surfacing into the real world, I felt certain that I was instead standing facing the recycling bins that are situated in front of the Hotel Oden, diagonally opposite the Gustaf Vasa church. It was evening and I had nothing in my hands to post through the slots. I had that impression, not for as much as a minute, but all the same for a very long time.

Our dreams give the most free and intense expression to our imagination, yet mine serves me a profound moment of banality.

His bill can hold more than his belly can

One of my favourite book covers as I grew up was that of 'Stylistics' by GW Turner, published by Pelican Books, the more academic imprint of Penguin. It used the encounter between a linguist and a pelican to illustrate the various stylistic approaches that might be adopted to describe it. In differing fonts: 'Linguist sees pelican'; ' "I have seen the pelican" said one linguist.'; 'LINGUIST SIGHTED PELICAN STOP'; 'It was the pelican that the linguist observed.'; and lastly, in 'comic' script: 'As the linguist approached: "Aaargh! A pelican!" '

I looked for a scan of the cover but could only find a tiny example, from which the above is transcribed. I expect I read at least some of the book too, at the time. You can see more of Pelican's excellent book covers here, or here.

-

St James's Park, lunchtime, near the pond, the western end. A man in a suit, an escapee from a nearby office, sits on a bench reading. He is joined by a pelican, the bird waddles across the path and hops up onto the seat, occupying a spot close to the opposite arm. The pelican is a silent neighbour and it does not fidget. The man returns to his book, the presence of the pelican, being only relatively unusually close, does not trouble him. There is a period of peaceful coexistence that is regrettably brief.

Others see the pelican. Their bear down on it with their attention and cameras. Most concentrate on the pelican, they normally congregate on a distant rock and it's an accessible novelty in its chosen position. But some, particularly those with cameras, apprehend the aggregate scene of pelican and man reading his book in passive harmony and each paying the other no attention. It is a Picture and they Take It, repeatedly and from several angles. More people, more cameras are arriving.

I had to leave at this point and alerted by the adjacent movement the pelican turned its bill towards me as if in enquiry. I wanted to say: "Excuse me, it's not you, it's these others, I feel awkward, self-conscious. Perhaps you feel the same, but are more resilient. For me it's too much, you mustn't be offended."

But even with a basic grounding in linguistics there was no real prospect of making myself understood to the pelican.

Can I ask you a question, yeh?

In the field of bait & switch fraud, and outright begging, I wonder if the practices of spiel and strategy are making a return. I haven't heard a good line in ages, or a convincing one in ever and I didn't hear either th'other weekend, but two in quick succession is one short of a trend, no? A journalist would wait for the third, but I haven't need of such principle.

Great Portland Street, Saturday afternoon, in the vicinity of Villandry. It's a wide empty road, and some breed of hatchback is moving down and across with the slow solitude of a vehicle that didn't just leave the lights. Inside is a balding man with eyes so large his spectacles can barely contain them, he hails me and asks me the way to Heathrow. He's keeping it simple, but as they say in football, it's a poor first touch.

Now he has my attention he gets to the point, peppered with interrogatives to create a sense of engagement: 'I am Italian... you know Giorgio Armani? I have... you know John Lewis? I work, I buy... I see you wear good clothes...' Which is the point at which the seams of his clumsy garment of schmutter-patter fully pull apart. I was wearing my thirty-yard coat that day - it convinces at three dozen paces, any closer and its chainstore provenance is evident. Even with his mouth full of suits and jackets and prices those big goggling eyes of his are softening with disappointment. Because I just can't help smiling, and not rhetorically or out of politeness and we both know the exchange is over.

Conduit Street around nine on a Sunday evening, all the retail has died down and gone home. If I'd a dog this is where I'd be taking it for its evening walk - down to the foot of Bond Street and then zigzagging home left and right at random. We're on the lozenge of pavement outside the Westbury. Well made up and turned out she is, mobile in hand, no betraying blisters about the lips. And the opening question this time, reasonable enough for the district is 'Do you speak English?'. Then the cadge is quite well framed and delivered, in tones of contemporary received pronunciation though a trifle hoarse, a mix of ditz and desperation and, gosh, not knowing where to start, but here's the problem...

'My colleague's gone home... I'm just a bit short... need a taxi. You mustn't think... I'm [with? from?] Saatchi and Saatchi... I'm just a bit... short...'

I know Chas and Mo like to ride their ponies hard [in their lingering spirit], but not normally on either sabbath mine or theirs, and the basic premise clanks like a cracked bell. But this is all irrelevant in any case, because I've only popped out for a stroll and so am holding no folding money whatsoever and can honestly tell her that I'm as short as can be.

Surely somewhere in academia there are studies on strategies for enhancing credibility and exploiting credulity in these circumstances. Because, cold, without reference to need or motive, it's fascinating. There's at least a full PhD's worth in there. Maybe when I retire I'll do that. And get a dog.

f i c t i o n a l

In cheery forenoon tones

For adjacent reasons, I've been reading profile pieces in foreign media. Not the sort I need translated for me, mind. But there's a certain paragraph that so often appears which I can never get used to.

It's the obscenity of the physical description. At an early stage the writer feels compelled to inform us that:

"X is trim and tan and buff. And firm. He has good, strong, bright teeth and healthy, pink gums."

The dental preoccupation I can understand: these are the criteria on which horses are purchased, so why not politicians and heads of multi-nationals? But is 'tan' surely not the same thing as 'buff'? This is a stationery term, no? So why is no-one ever 'manilla'?

There then follows a list of dimensions in imperial units - weight, height, width, girth, length. The arrangement of his hair is commented on (though the fact that he blatantly dyes it is never referred to).

The subject will inevitably have a fitness 'regimen', imparted details of which will include how far he runs and how much he can 'press'. We will hear about his diet, with several sample menus. His hour of waking, and the quantity of work he does before sunrise.

Okay, so I am making some of this up. But not all of it.

Budapest

The seats of the Magyar Állami Operaház are wooden and not well fixed. Despite Szilvia Rálik's fine lungs and the novelty of Fidelio rendered on three tiers of concrete and in costumes of vivid colour, the audience occasionally becomes restive and fidgets. Then there is an ominous creaking throughout the auditorium, as if the timbers of a ship were under the stress of turbulent sea.

Twitching sounds of the trolleybus pick-ups on the wires. Harsh buzzing of the closing doors. Otherwise the electric vehicle silent but for its tyres and the voice of a passenger in emphatic agreement with her companion, 'Igen...igen...', drifting through the open windows.

In the streets at dusk material falls from the buildings as the temperature descends, thudding and cracking plaster leaves at the end of the day.

Eversholt Street

A gaudily dressed and heavily made-up transvestite young man and a conservatively dressed middle-aged lady together at a bus stop. They have Lancashire accents:

TV: "Are we catching this bus or what?"
CDL: "It's got to turn up first."
TV: "I tell you, it were like a baby's arm... holding a tangerine."
CDL: "I know, you told me."

They got on a 253. Regrettably I was waiting for the 168.

He looked a lot like Che Guevara, but with even furrier ears

Walking with an acquaintance the other day, we were talking of the Country versus the Metropolis. He favours the former, and I was inclined to be passive in the exchange as all my arguments against the rustic life are graceless and crude. Then I changed the subject to theology: one of us Believes, the other Doesn't, but it's fertile ground for discussion between us nevertheless.

It was a long, absorbing conversation and afterwards we fell to companionable silence as we walked, until he suddenly exclaimed:

'That's it!'

'...'?

'You didn't look at the bear. That's exactly what I mean.'

He sounded almost aggrieved. This, he went on to explain, was precisely that jaded, blasé way that people had when they had lived in London for any length of time.

But now it was time to part, each to his own office, and I didn't have time to elaborate on my position. If I had, I should have said something like this:

I perceived the bear, just as he had, or rather a person dressed as a bear, passing us on the pavement. I registered the bear sufficiently to notice that the fur of its head did not quite match its body, and to have pondered whether its manifestation was related to the nearby Guard's barracks - they wear bearskins, so genuine that florid middle-aged ladies are occasionally moved to demonstrate opposition to the headgear. But probably not by getting themselves up as bears.

And he was right, I didn't look at the bear directly. Still less did I gawp at it.

• If someone is dressed as a bear in a public place it is almost certainly to attract attention, in which case it is the duty of the ambient populace not to encourage such behaviour by staring.
• It is entirely possible that someone has been employed to dress as a bear, coerced into doing so by the regrettable necessity of earning such payment as perambulation in a bear suit attracts. They may even have been trafficked into the country with the express purpose of performing that function. For the sake of that individual's dignity, it is considerate not to look at the bear.
• The bear impersonation may be behaviour symptomatic of psychosis on the part of the wearer. In which case, need I spell out why it is not a good idea to risk engaging mutual regard with the bear?
• The ursine costume might have been the only clean clothing available to the wearer that day, all other apparel being at the cleaner's. No-one's first choice for a weekday in town, but better than venturing out in a soiled loincloth or safety-pinned duvet cover, just. Only polite not to emphasise the unfortunate person's plight by gazing uninhibitedly upon the bear.

I'm sure there are other reasons for wearing a bear suit in a populous part of SW1 at lunchtime and I'm certain few among them justify rendering it a spectator sport. But my companion considers me calloused and insensate, scoured of the capacity for wonder and fascination by the relentless multiple stimuli of urban existence. And when next we meet I'll find it prohibitively difficult to steer the conversation towards an opportunity to explain myself.

There it is.

.

I've only ever knowingly met one Basque. She had that growly voice, and the nose. Possibly the ears as well, but her hair covered them and I could hardly ask if she wouldn't mind...

At one point she reeled off a list of famous fellow countrymen (imagine the growly voice now):

"...Balenciaga: another Basque; Manu Chao: Basque too; Eva Peron: also Basque..."

And so she went on, but then there were names I'd never heard of and I had to nod and smile as if I knew them.

Trelawney doesn't count, because he's only famous for actually being Cornish. So in return I told her about Nigel Martyn, born in St Austell, the first million quid goalkeeper, I saw him at Palace many times, and he played for England...

Then I couldn't remember the name of the fellow who sort of invented steam trains, and essentially dried up at that point.

She wasn't impressed.

f i c t i o n a l

Bilbao

Mornings, smell of the strong detergent sprayed by the street cleaning machines. Doorsteps liberally splashed over with Don Limpio. Women shaking out rugs from upstairs windows and hanging out washing. Is there even a word in Spanish for tumble dryer?

Caged songbirds on the windowledges and balconies trilling. Scents of dark tobacco, frying, burnt milk. Out of town there was the tang of something industrial in the air, familiar but unplaceable, then I saw, mountains of scrap metal: the odour of rust in the noon sun.

Saturday evening in the Casco Viejo and the kids are everywhere, decanting cheap rum and juice concentrate into empty Fuensanta bottles, vodka into Fanta, whiskey into Coke. Acrid whiff of spirits and perfume and synthetic fruit. I'm in Barnsley!

I got there before The Now Show, but could not be arsed: Tiocfaidh Allah!

Following the exhumation of homicidal hasbeens the Real IRA and the Continuity IRA, expect further splintering into absurdly branded factions as they struggle to come to terms with their own irrelevance:

• IRA Plus; IRA Plus HD.
• IRA Lites; IRA Regular; IRA Super; IRA Superplus; IRA SuperAdvance; IRA Apex; IRA Offpeak; IRA Weekend Unlimited.
• IRA Online; IRA Direct; EasyIRA.
• IRA Classic; IRA Unplugged.
• IRA Gold; IRA Gold Top; IRA Skimmed; IRA Semi-skimmed; IRA One-Cal; IRA Sport; IRA Energy; I Can't Believe It's Not IRA; IRA Be Good To Yourself.
• IRA Organic; Free Range IRA; Dolphin-Friendly IRA.
• Southern Fried IRA; Dixie IRA; IRA Shack; IRA Cottage
• Wheat and Gluten Free (may contain traces of nut) IRA; Lemon Zesty Fresh IRA.

Finally all the above varieties will eat each other up in a frenzy of mergers and acquisitions until only three Republican paramilitary entities remain, re-branded by their communications agencies and image consultants as:

"Provisionally Yours",
"We Haven't Gone Away You Know",
and a jumble of punctuation characters that no-one can understand, still less pronounce as a spoken phrase, but is intended to be reminiscent of peat and Semtex.

'The Longest Journey', E.M. Forster, 1907

 

'Oh, Tilliard!' said Ansell, with much irritation. 'But what can you expect from a person who's eternally beautiful? The other night we had been discussing a long time, and suddenly the light was turned on. Every one else looked a sight, as they ought. But there was Tilliard sitting neatly on a little chair, like an undersized god, with not a curl crooked. I should say he will get into the Foreign Office.'