Rosso and Blanca

Sunday morning

Recent model Merc pulls into the parking space outside my window. In between me and the car: six feet of pavement, railings, four feet of basement drop and stairway, my window and a net curtain, the table at which I am eating runny boiled eggs on bread rolls. Occupants of the car open their doors, then close them again without emerging. A man and a woman, he at the wheel and closest to the kerb. They are arguing.

It is a louder row than the usual listless bickering that characterises the interaction of so many couples out together and in public at the weekend. Or at least his voice is louder. Then there's a lull and I'm paying more attention to my breakfast and an interview with Jools Holland in which he extolls the virtues of keeping things bottled up.

Now they're out of the car, apparently about to leave for wherever it was they were going. I'd guess he's middle eastern, of the nearer shores rather than the Gulf, well built yet not the bloated prince type. She may be from another country abutting the Mediterrannean. She's well dressed, more likely to be his mistress or girlfriend than his wife. Aside from the intangible clues in her appearance, his argument seems too passionate to suggest a matrimonial dispute.

The discord resumes and they get back into the car. His gestures are more expressive now, he is practically throwing himself about in his seat. The exchange is being conducted in English, and his words "I could kill you right now!" are unmistakeable and lack any leavening trace of humour or figurative intent. Then he punches the inside of the windscreen, near to the top. That he manages to shatter it in that area is quite impressive - slanted, the glass is close to the driver so there's little room for building momentum and the surface is awkwardly slanted. Also, it's pretty tough glass. On the one hand, this would compromise the only act of intervention I had thought open to me if he started delivering on the "kill you right now" option, that of toddling out there and putting my fire extinguisher through the windscreen on his side as a sort of distraction. But on the other hand it's rather a relief to see him taking out on his motor, it suggests to me that his fury is likely to be diverted. And so long as he doesn't start lamping the lady, well, I can watch big expensive cars being trashed all day.

He jumps out, still shouting. Now the entire Sunday morning street knows that the girl in the car has taken the decision to leave him, but how could he have paid her more attention when he had a family to look after? So, no surprises in the scenario there. He punches the windscreen again, from the outside now, and she gets out, looking calm and sad. As she wanders off he gives the glass another clout, leaving a mark that looks pinkish in the powdered glass.

Holding his head he walks after her, out of sight. When they return he is hunched, and for a minute or so crouches at the open door of his car, her fingers touching his shoulder. Then they get back into the car and drive off. Now his blood is spattered about around the corner and several buildings down, but none outside my front door.

Christmas often brings out these tensions. Presumably Ramadan is just the same.

-

We had stopped drinking, after a couple of whiskies.

It was because I wasn't looking at him that I realised who his voice reminded me of: Benjamin Zephaniah. He has a gentle voice, quite thoughtful, with a slight lisp. He looks quite dissimilar to Mr Z, a fuller face (stocky in build, he is often mistaken for Nigerian), and of course much shorter hair.

I don't need a photographic memory as for the inanimate I've a camera and I'm happy with my visual recollection as far as the organic are concerned, but I wish I could capture exact speech. He said something like this, though more colloquial yet more eloquent:


"What's really lovely is being with her when she's getting ready to go out. You know, when they build it up right from the beginning. From the shower on. It's a bit like a striptease backwards but not really. And you're there in the bedroom and she is half paying attention to you but more on getting ready and there's the smells of perfume and hair things and all the clothes here and there and how she does her make up even before she's half dressed and no, I don't think it destroys the magic at all."

He wasn't talking of a particular she, but rather a generic one, though his character suggests that his interactions with women, or anyone, are anything but generic. He was talking of that experience within a relationship, and the wistfulness with which he said this suggested the scenario had not been played out before him for quite some time now. Or perhaps it had just been yesterday. Or that evening if they had then gone separate ways.

Basel and Bern

Basel

Borders and boundaries and demarcations, territories within territories. At the airport you are given the option of exit left into France or right into Switzerland. Beyond the latter, a sealed umbilical road of a mile or so before Switzerland itself begins. National borders form much of the boundary of the city - customs posts slow the traffic but pedestrians cross to or from France or Germany unregistered. The Rhein Center sits in an opportunistic corner of Germany between the new footbridge to French Huningue and Swiss Kleinhüningen. It takes 9 minutes to walk from France, through Germany and into Switzerland (it took me longer in the other direction on account of the attractions of fish and chips from Nordsee). Several tram lines terminate within spitting distance of the border, though along the intinerary of the outer reach of the no. 10 tram, a single stop is isolated in France. An annexe of the main station, administered by the French railway company, lurks behind a visually impermeable structure, shabby yet intimidating in comparison with the rest of the station. Rather than 'Gare SNCF', the sign makes it clear that to enter platforms 30-35 is to enter France itself. The other big station in the town, Badischer bahnhof is a more solid and attractive structure, being large and designed to declare itself. Its innards are entirely Deutsche Bahn, from the ticket office to the coffee being priced first in euros. This extends to the forecourt, containing a green-banded German polizei van and one of those distinctive green and yellow 'H' bus stops. Nevertheless, numerous trains from France and Germany serve Swiss platforms and stations without bureacratic intervention.

Inevitable to wonder how, and in what circumstance, those borders might be closed or restricted. Reminders of the possibility of this in the SVP's sheep posters everywhere.

Evening. In a country as clean as this, one feels self-conscious just carrying litter. Somewhere around Zürcherstrasse I saw a bin on the other side of the road, crossed between the lights, walking over the clovered lawn into which the tram tracks are set. Bats were tumbling above the grass in the middle of the carriageway, I've never seen them so close before, under sodium lighting. Further down the road a middle-aged man on crutches waylaid me and addressed me in Swiss German, and then in English. He was not entirely sane. Grinning, he said 'I can see you are a game-breaker. Don't be a game-breaker! I am with the mafia, I shoot you, blam!' and with that he lifted one of his crutches to point at me, rifle-like, losing his balance and tottering backwards into the road. Regaining the kerb he assumed a sheepish expression, his repertoire evidently exhausted. We wished each other good night.

Apropos of nothing, Walter Benjamin once interjected: 'Germans, drink beer!' And they still do, on the move, from bottles, it is refreshing just to see it. Ditto the Swiss, at least in the north of the nation, and very brand loyal they are too, particularly in Basel, although the availability of Feldschlösschen in the shop fridges is mainly in cans. I see those blue and white cans in my sleep.

Bern

The River Aare passes around the town, flat but swift moving, a vivid milky turquoise. There was no river traffic but a small inflatable raft. That raft's two occupants lolled in the sun, occasionally maintaining their position in the median of the river with an oar as they were borne along. They were not equipped to make any progress in a contrary direction, nor did they appear to want to. Where they had started from, or where they would end up, seemed not at all relevant. Seen from the bridge, there was only now.

In a shop on Saturday. Queuing, there is a woman in front of me, and a woman in front of her, in front of the till. As she reaches into her bag for her purse her scarf falls from her shoulder without her noticing. The woman in front of me does and picks up the scarf, hands it to its owner. To my imperfect vision and poor knowledge of fabric, it looks like a nice scarf. Thin material, very white. You wouldn't want to just lose it, or discard it.

It's not the sulky undertone in which the scarf owner's 'Thank you' as she takes it that is so striking, but her facial expression, directed at the woman who has handed it to her. A look can be like a whisper audible only to the person addressed. This is not such a look, which I can see and decipher clearly from four feet back and several dozen degrees of angle skewed. It is of something between contempt and revulsion.

The woman in front of me looks in the scarf owner's direction just for a fraction of a second longer, enough to assure me that I haven't imagined the cast of the other's face. I want to say something but can't think of anything appropriate, useful, or that would make it better.

I can look at pictures in the paper of barefoot monks being beaten and ice melting that shouldn't be and while I think I'm concerned it's just an intellectual exercise. But this thing in the shop with the scarf I've been chewing at since. Though the woman in front of me has probably forgotten about it by now or washed it through by telling a friend who replied, 'Yes, some people are like that aren't they?'. And the woman with the scarf has perhaps changed her medication or is possibly on her way to changing herself. It was all in an instant, or it should be.

Just waiting for their chips and their pie

There's nothing like the situation of waiting for someone. On the street, in a pub, a station platform, somewhere busy. An excuse to loiter and watch it all go by, the people, the traffic, and occasionally the traffic in people. Of course one can mooch about for a bit anyhow, but after a while I would get self-conscious. For this to work, to get right into it, it has to be the real thing. You might think that occasionally scanning the crowd for one's approaching companion / consort / connection would be a distraction, but apparently not. That's your standing ticket, your loitering licence.

Getting nicely plotted up is more than half the trick. What you want is a window seat, or near the bar, or on a corner, under cover, close to the flow but with a bit of architecture either side of you to keep the bodies from bumping you. Have a think about this before you fix the rendezvous. Some of the best spots already have uses. If you're not buying or selling cracksmackpaddywhack people will wonder why you're sticky about the top of Charing Cross Road by the furthest tube exit - and those people will have an urgent reason for wondering why.

A chamfered corner is useful, giving that crossroads location without thrusting you into the path of the populace. Standing on the steps of a building, so long as one is not impending ingress and egress to the relevant edifice, works a treat since you have elevation into the bargain. Another trick for getting a bit of space around you is to stand directly beside one of those vagrants who sleep at right angles to the brickwork. Or adjacent to a freshly shot or stabbed teenager - no-one wants blood on their Blahniks or Churches.

After a while you'll get to read the street, its characteristics and rhythms. The ebb and flow of the bus stops, the steady stream into the tube station and intermittent gushings out, shuddering cinema queues and the pink provincial mobs outside the theatres. Taxis flagged down, amber gambled, figures bolting through the vehicles. The people, beginning or ending their evenings, the lovers, the adulterers, the escorts and the escorted, the couples, the singles. If the truth could be told to you, of all those passing, most of it would bore you arseless, but in among them you know a few are there doing something Else, New. Have to be, it's in the numbers.

If you do it right, get it, you won't want him or her or them to turn up, not just yet, not until you're good and cold or wet, and really need that drink and the Vietnamese from the new place. You might almost want to skip before they arrive, and find another corner. But you don't and it's usually just enough.

When a man is tired of London, he is tired of gits quoting Samuel Johnson at him.

No excuse for having a go at the canvas, mind you.

You'll all be familiar with Flickr by now, and its splendid tag facility, the potential for misuse of which is enormous. Take 'London' for instance. Here you'll find pictures of Nelson's Column and Bayswater, Bloomsbury and Marble Arch. You'll also find pictures of Stonehenge, Princes Street in Edinburgh, the Eiffel Tower, the interior of a Prague hostess bar, and several pages' worth of the long stay parking area at Washington Dulles. Because people don't tag their snaps for other people, they tag them for themselves, and relevance and association are highly subjective concepts.

On the other hand, it's also disturbing when the subject is more tightly defined. Of those photos that fit the GLA boundary, an overwhelming percentage seem to be from a tiny oval shaped area stretching from the Wheel to Buckingham Palace, as if most visitors had only two hours in town before leaving again. The sheer profusion of views of Westminster Abbey is especially perplexing - most English religious architecture manages to make the ornate seem dull, but WA does it in a way that is actually exhausting to the eye.

Perhaps we just don't have much to take photos of here? I may be biased, because I have had plenty of time to have had it up to here with here, but some of our most renowned public spaces really aren't up to much.

One of our more architecturally underwhelming buildings, Buckingham Palace is more of a house. A dull one at that. In the style of a Town Hall in a West Country spa town, but pointlessly elongated. In summer there are tours - I've never been in but I'm told it's filled with a horrible quantity of tacky gilt.

Piccadilly Circus: there are postcards of this road junction from the 1950s in which the neon ads look picturesque, but now the buildings are clad in mediocre fascias evoking a suburban shopping parade on steroids. Even the smackheads and rent boys have forsaken the place. This vortex of human and vehicular traffic obstructs passage from St. James to Soho to the extent that one is tempted to take the 38 one stop just to cross it. Walk down Coventry Street and past the effluent Trocadero and you find...

Leicester Square. Several obscenely overpriced cinemas, streams of adolescents from zones 4 to 6, indefatigable little fellows trying to sell single roses to couples who have already shagged. On weekend evenings, a place where people from Brentwood and Carshalton can meet and kick each other senseless. We do vertical drinking on the pavements outside pubs very well, but otherwise al fresco urban social culture is beyond us. We should give up and Fester Square shows why. La Rambla it's not.

When I lived in Fitzrovia I'd occasionally be asked by visitors for directions to Oxford Street - when we were already on it. I can only sympathise. If Canal Street ever got as bad as Soho's (oursnotyours) northern boundary, it would lose even its PATH-borne custom. Was ever thus: in 1964 Len Deighton wrote 'Charlotte Street runs north from Oxford Street and there are few who will blame it' (Funeral in Berlin). When even spy novels are hitting something with near-Wildean putdowns you know it's low.

Covent Garden: as Time Out will tell you, London is all about shopping, buying things, etc (that and watching telly). The Parisians learned their lesson with Les Halles and so have we - it's when you chuck out the fruit and veg market that the rot sets in. WC2 sucks in the creatures from Burbworld like a big Electrolux that's just had its dust-bag changed. Put a roof on it and most of Covent Garden would be more obvious as the shopping centre it merely is. Or mall. Pronounced 'maul'.

On the other hand, London looks good from the air. It really does. Do yourself a favour when you're next flying in to Heathrow (which, as overcrowded, prone to baggage loss, and grim as it is, is not Gatwick in Sussex, Luton in Bedfordshire or Stansted almost in the Fens) - use the 'change seat' facility to be over on the right hand side of the plane. If your boss isn't paying sit way back (it's not as if you'll beat your luggage to the carousel) so the wing isn't in the way. Usually the plane will enter London from the north and make a sharp right turn over the City, so that your view is exactly aligned downwards with the Bank junction, pivoting around it. Time your arrival for dusk and it will be lit prettily, the bridges like Christmas trees, the parks as dark voids in between. With all the lights on even Hounslow High Street looks like a valley of jewels and precious metal. Try not to dwell on the fact that you're not going to be at your hotel for at least another hour and a half. Even if it is at the country end of the Cromwell Road.

pictures of cars and flowers

As children, we play, and think: 'When I am an adult I'll do this all day - and all night if I want'. We imagine ourselves with an adult's resources and freedom to act. We can take the train to the seaside on a schoolday, paint pictures of cars and flowers directly onto the wallpaper, eat nothing but beef stew, breakfast cereal, and pancakes at the cafe in town.

As we grow older our passions for all these things lessen gradually, so precisely in synchronisation with our increasing ability to act for ourselves that it seems almost mechanical. With the impulses of children, as adults we would be a danger (as they say of the psychotic) to ourselves and others, so perhaps this is all just as well.

But there's an echo or a shadow, or something, that brings a tinge of regret. Now we can do all these things, the wanting has gone and for all this independence those desires have been lost and the real strong soul-filling pleasure has ebbed away.

There's love, of course, but that's not the same.

Interview

Blackmail Years

For a long time I've believed that my demise will be foretold unto me and I will simply not get around to do anything about it - like never putting my the bulk of my savings in an interest-bearing account or topping up my ISA, only fatal. One day I'll get one of those Chinese fortune, ahem, biscuits and the rice paper message will just say "You die."

I'd rather walk around a built-up area wearing shorts and a Bluetooth phone headset than have a presence on F'cebook, so when a friend of mine sent me a link to it recently I had to politely decline. This isn't the first time this has happened, as it is popular with several colleagues (why use a social networking site when we can more easily procrastinate on our employer's e-mail system?) but I'd never followed the link before.

"Blackmail Years"? Eh? Am I just about to enter my 'blackmail years', is that the message? Am I blackmailing? Or do I leave it to one of any number of Feisbook users to do that to me? Perhaps we need to be clear about this, because it's going to last a while.

It may foil the spammers but it scares the sht out of me.