"it was all their fault"

carneval

The chicken in Vasco de Gama takes an age to arrive. The four of us sit there, chomping at the bit, looking at placemats of Madeira to identify our other selves. We slip in and out of work mode. The telly, as ever, plays too loud. At one point Doctors is on, and smoke comes out of the Tise's ears. Then the channel's switched to something Portuguese. Images flicker. Broad thighed dusky maidens arrayed in feathers and white boots, dancing with sustained vigour. The picture pulls back to show a stadium with a road running through it. The road is lit up with fire and colour and movement. The chicken arrives. It was worth the wait.

grieving

I got the news that George had died just as I was opening up the shop on the King’s Road. I had seen him the night before. He had been peaceful. I knew that he knew that the end was nigh and that it was something he had not only accepted, he was pleased of.

The days that followed his death, the funeral, all that, remains a blur. Throughout that time, the emotion never caught up with me. The fact of his absence did not connect with a sense of grief.

One day (already chronicled below), not long after the funeral, I went back to Rayner’s Lane for some reason, before their flat was handed over to the landlords. Looked around for a bit at a space devoid of the life that had made it what it was.

Heading back to the tube, I imagine, I stopped to call my mother from an old fashioned phone box. With no warning at all, the emotion caught up with me, and I was in floods of tears.

Emotion is a tricky partner. They say ‘the English’ are unemotional. That ‘we’ hide our feelings, don’t let them out. In my experience, ‘the English’ are no less emotional than anyone else. Even if it might appear so when emotion is not displayed at times it might conventionally be anticipated.

I have a distrust of the notion that emotion should be released at the time you theoretically would expect that release. Emotion works off its own clock. It will choose its own time and place of expression. It could be that the more emotion is managed according to expectation, the more it might be being repressed. Emotion that catches you unawares, that drops from the sky like a falcon, has its place. Its intensity should not be underestimated.

hide and seek

ground floor eavesdrop

...My neighbours, chief, they're what they're going to say, Chief? Seriously? I've like never, chief, never talked like this like a slap in the face, like it's, chief, a pleasure and a priviledge, chief, I mean, really, I've never said anything, chief, what're they going to say, they're going to think, no chief, I'm running out of, chief, I'm running out of time and I'm running out of credit, chief, really chief, I've got to, chief, I've got to go, chief? ...

leak

A periodic reminder of the frailty of mortar, the bathroom cieling has a tendency to act the waterfall every three months. It was somewhat reassuring to find it has not lost the habit in my absence.

dubious practices

Of an evening the following terms were defined over nothing more dangerous than a vanilla malt milk shake:

dwarfing: the art of appearing smaller than one really is within the context of intersecting escalators.

chaffinching: the art of disconcerting one's neighbour on a tube train by rescuing oneself from sleep with the utterance chaffinch on arrival in a station.

something from the garden

ideology

There were, essentially two different approaches to the grade. One was that an overall look was imposed on every frame. A bleach bypass or an intensifier. The other was that each shot was assessed on its merits and tweaked according to the needs of the shot rather than an overall plan (but still within the context of the film’s narrative). I preferred the second approach.

hannah

Hannah was going to Oxford. I met her when we both worked at the Royal Albert Hall. She was tall, thin, willowy and black. No one she ever knew had been to Oxford before. I knew dozens of people who’d been to Oxford. I disliked Oxford. It was a toytown. She was excited about going there. We’d talk about it. Not wanting to be negative I came round to her point of view, agreeing that it might be a more positive experience for an inner city pioneer than someone with a privileged background. The unfamiliar spires and towers would have a different effect on the retina.

Hannah and I had a work friendship. The Royal Albert Hall had a shift system. We would overlap once or twice a week. I seem to remember her slightly older, more taciturn boyfriend worked there as well. As is the nature of an unrewarding job, little things make it worthwhile, and I used to look forward to seeing her. We’d exchange a few words, nothing much. Note that we had a youthful bond which set us apart from most of our red-blazered colleagues.

Hannah left to go to Oxford. The week before she finished, The Flaming Lips played the Hall. They brought a crazy crowd with them. Hannah and I were working on opposite sides of the pit, which was stripped of its chairs. Officially we were supposed to stop people smoking, keep them calm. Some of the ushers made an attempt but it wasn’t going to wash. The band generated a mighty atmosphere. I saw Hannah across the way dancing like a banshee, breaking all the rules. I couldn’t quite go there. We agreed it was the best night’s work we’d shared.

Hannah was going to study music, I think. We might have made loose plans to keep in touch, but I doubt it. However, Hannah was one of those people, (we are all probably granted a few), who I would bump into every so often. I ran into her when she was still at Oxford, and I remember her telling me she was having a great time. I think I saw her another time, later, when she told me what was happening with her career. Was she finding it hard? These are all details that evade me. When we ran into each other she would always utter a little laugh and say how remarkable it was. Repeated co-incidence being rare within the city.

The last time I met her was underground, in King’s Cross. She had a child in a buggy. There was an awkward patch of stairs between two lines, which I helped her negotiate, carrying one end of the buggy whilst she took the other. She was grateful, but by now the ties which linked us to that peak of the Flaming Lips had been stretched too far, and we greeted and parted as the virtual strangers which, in effect, we always had been.

slate grey

In the grade, the magician recreates the planet, using a set of dials and some buttons. He has learnt how to turn day into night. A clumsy trick. More than this, he can change the pattern of days. A dull overcast English afternoon becomes a sultry Vietnamese memory. Sour greens become vibrant. Harsh pinks are tuned down. What is seen could be a washed out dream of a life or it could be a vivid adrenaline shot. You pick and you choose.

The computer program he works on is called Into The Mystic. During the shoot, whenever there was an issue or a problem, the mantra was: It’ll be fixed in the grade. You walk out of the Soho haven and head home and cook and eat and annihilate some time listening to football and watching something about how to be ‘an ethical man’ as Iraq burns again. You go to sleep and you dream and forget your dreams and you wake up and you are where it says on the tin and you look out the window and it is February again and you want to call the magician. Tell him to spin his dials, hit some buttons, fix it in the grade.

the porn tariff

Back in the early days of the twenty first century, when virtual communication was still a novelty, suppliers fought tooth and nail for subscribers. One of the most effective marketing ploys was something called the porn tariff. This was an extremely cheap subscription, back in those dial-up days, with only one condition attached: the subscriber was obliged to spend at least one hour a day browsing porn sites. Whilst this seemed like an attractive option to many men and women on the planet, the reality was underwhelming. The images downloaded frame by frame, byte by byte. After searching for their most fantastic fantasies (Dwarves, Lady Di lookalikes, Reptiles, Edward Heath, the Empire State Building were among the favourite searches) the images, which the subscriber hoped would in some way correlate to the ones they possessed in their minds, took so long to appear that the thrill had passed, indeed the hour had passed. All that was achieved by some blurred indelible image was anti-climax.

+++

{The porn tariff was in fact no more than the product of a delirious imagination, but the subscribers were not to know that.}

the known unknown

Laurie leaned to one side across the table. He body was angled at about ten thirty, his head tilted back the other way. A strange S of a figure. He was drunk. He had had a few sherries in his office before supper, listening to music, whilst M and I sat with M in the kitchen, helping with the food.

We drank wine with supper. Steak, his favourite. His wife had cooked it as a special treat. My sister and I sat on the other side of the table from our grandparents. Some discussion had blown up. My sister had engaged Laurie in it, was sparring with him. Laurie enjoyed these jousts, by and large.

Tonight, one eye was rolling in his head. He had an angry smile. Tonight he wasn’t telling tales of getting Bob Hawke drunk, or the Communist marches he and his brothers used to go on after the war, before he discovered capitalism.

Tonight he had some kind of dark mischief in his head. The conversation had gone down a different path. One which lead to this question.

You know I’m not your real grandfather, don’t you? Not by blood?

We knew. It was known. He was our step grandfather. He always had been. Ever since we were born and long before that too.

I said that we knew.

Laurie stared at us.

His wife, our grandmother, threw up her arms like a sparrow in mid-flight, and said, in her still accented English, all those years on:

This is ridiculous.

Laurie kept staring. Laurie said there were things he could say. Laurie looked like someone who wanted to cause trouble. My sister and I sat quietly, dealing with this man and this couple who we barely knew. Who had been present all our lives, but at a remove. This was the first time we had spent time with these people who’d we met but a handful of times.

Laurie continued to lean. His wife, our grandmother, said that the children didn’t need to hear these stories. There was no need to bring these things up. At a certain point she got up and walked out into the hot night. Sometime later, Laurie followed her. Sometime later he sobered up and sometime later still it all blew over and the past was forgotten.

M and I went back to the units. There was no-one else for miles around. The kookaburras and the cockatoos were silent. There was little to say. Sooner or later we went to bed.

Australia is a beautiful country but sometimes all that unknown space can bear down heavily on your shoulders.

the fiend

They were playing table football in Piriapolis. The room was vast, a games hall. Full of kids playing pool or table football or slot machines or just hanging out. The games hall was on the promenade looking out over the sea. Above the small town was a vast, confetti-cake of a hotel, and some stubby hills. Below the promenade was the beach. The place had that seaside air. Not too much to do. Kids hanging out in the pool hall. Early evening. He half expected his friends, who were by now his friends, to suggest they stop off for some fish and chips.

The four of them had broken their journey back from Punta to Montevideo. It was the end of his initiation week, which had involved a thousand and one English teachers, several late night ice cream parlours and more meat than he’d ever set eyes on.

He was focussed on the suitably competitive table football game. Suddenly he felt something hit the back of his head. Like a piece of paper scrunched up into a ball. Instinctively he turned to see where it had come from. People were staring at him. Someone was even pointing at him. He felt instantly uncomfortable. A stranger in a strange land.

Danny had stopped playing. He shouted something, pointed at his head. His hair was long, down to his shoulders. He felt something move. He brushed his hand through his hair. Danny was laughing by now. He looked around. People were still staring. It moved again. The piece of scrunched up paper. He ran his hand through his hair a second time.

A cockroach the size of a ping pong ball dropped towards the floor. It regained its balance and lurched out into three dimensions of pool hall. People ducked as it approached. The beast was done with mind games. It sallied out into the night.

Strangers were smiling at him now. He smiled back. He’d never seen a creature as big as that. His friends were doubled up in laughter.

They finished the game. Twilight had snuck up on them. They sat on the promenade and had a beer whilst waiting for the bus. James’ Sit Down was on the jukebox. They played it a couple of times. The air was warm and sweet. The sea tranquil.

In four days time he was back in Bournemouth, signing on.

snippets

I don't believe it's our job to recontruct the country. The Iraqi people will have to reconstruct that country over a period of time...Tourism is going to be something important in that country as soon as the security situation is resolved...

Rumsfeld

Nevertheless, when the decisions are about war and peace one would expect the governments of the most powerful and best equipped states to have mechanisms and procedures in place to ensure some quality control over the materials that experts prepare for them. One would expect that these governments themselves, at the very least, would examine the material with critical minds and common sense.

Blix

It was only a little later in the process that it occurred to me that the Iraqis would be in greater difficulty if, as they had been saying, there truly were no weapons of which they could “yield possession.”

Blix

foucault

It was always cold in York. Ducks were always mating. The season was usually either dank Spring or damp Autumn. A peculiar kind of soggy, weeping willow beauty.

One day in one Summer it was hot. I sat in the fields behind the University and told N something I’d never told anyone. In the background was a red-brick place called The Retreat, which features in either Discipline and Punish or Madness and Civilisation, I don’t remember which.

+++

I’d decided to do philosophy as the secondary part of my degree for two reasons. I didn’t want to have to learn a language and I’d started reading Nietzsche and wanted an excuse to read more of him. However, on the whole, philosophy was either intimidating or tedious. The reading was hard going, and the seminars were dominated by individuals who weren’t scared of saying whatever came into their heads. Circular conversations that never seemed to go anywhere. Democracy and philosophy not necessarily the finest bedfellows.

I signed up for a course called Sartre and Foucault. Largely because of the lure of discovering what existentialism might mean. That was the Sartre aspect. They let us loose on Being and Nothingness and we swam around in it like brainless cod in the Atlantic. That ‘we’ includes the tutors.

Foucault was something else. I’d never heard of him before. Didn’t realise he was not long dead. One of the first to fall in the great Aids war. Aids was big in the eightees. When Foucault’s fate emerged, it only emblazoned the sense of charisma his books engendered.

Foucault wrote better prose than most philosophers. Some philosophers, including his arch rival Derrida, read like people who suffer language as a necessary tool of their trade. If they could find a way of mainlining their thoughts into the psyche, they’d much rather do that. Foucault seemed to take pleasure out of writing. There was an elegance and a wit to his prose.

That helped. Then you began to grapple with the ideas. Ideas you could grapple with. Although he writes about the death of man, his work is rooted in the analysis of those things that man does. The institutions and the ideas that those institutions embody. Madness, sex, literature, crime. Somehow Foucault took these mainstream, potboiling subjects, and used his alchemy to turn them into philosophy.

A lot of people mistrust Foucault. They claim the facts he used in Madness and Civilisation are inaccurate. They claim he invalidated the notion of truth. That he reduced all things to a fluxus where qualitive judgements were eradicated, where morality was something you manufactured, a world without absolutes or foundations.

I wasn’t looking for these things from philosophy. I wanted it to do one thing and one thing only. To explain to me why the world was as it was. Full of beauty and terror. Where the most beautiful things could become the most terrible. Why it seemed never to be as simple as it should be. How I should cope with this.

Foucault helped. Not a great deal, but he did. He explained, piece by piece, how we’d built up the structures we inhabited. Why I was at University. Why sex was not straightforward. Why literature could help you. Why there were edges to the world that we could cross. At our peril, if we so chose to do. He did it with a kind of rhetorical panache, with a playfulness, which suggested that he didn’t always know if he was right in every detail, but he knew he was onto something. The same rhetoric that probably gets him into trouble with the purists.

I find him hard to read now. You need the time and space of studenthood to wrap your brain around big ideas. A time when you can establish your aspirations before you project them into the world. Everyday culture doesn’t want its citizens thinking too much; it warps their effectiveness as citizens. When the time of struggle is over, and my dotage is approaching, I might have the time and space again. Assuming the cells are still working.

extreme screen

A man dressed in a mac stands bare foot on a wobbly rock. The same man crouches in imitation of tobacco pickers of Salento. A jackhammer blasts Tabacco dock.

Four human figures crawl across an abstract space past a mysterious vaginal centre. They crawl into and out of each other, like multiplying cells.

A man dances naked to Ricky Martin. A needle is injected in his stomach. His blood simmers like wet marble. His radar eye stares out, seeking material.

culture clash

The kid had a bullet shaven head. He was not big. He had a sort of runty meanness to him. He wore a black bomber jacket and Doc Martins.

The kid used to hang out by the Buttercross, looking for trouble. He’d done time for beating someone up. One day one of the posh kids caught his eye and he glared at him. The face stuck.

A while later he spotted the posh kid walking through the cathedral close. The shaven haired kid fell in behind him, stalking his prey.

Then the prey did an unusual thing. Rather than fleeing, rather than just hoping he went away, the posh kid turned and faced him.

It was a violently cold afternoon.

The posh kid said: Come on then. He didn’t say it with menace. He said: If you want to hit me, you might as well do it. Come on. Let’s get it over with.

The kid didn’t quite know what to say. He asked the posh kid what he was on about. The posh kid said that was the only reason he could be following him like that. He acknowledged he wouldn’t stand a chance in a fight. So he said they might as well get on with it.

The kid in the bomber jacket was wrong footed. He said: I wasn’t going to.

As soon as he’d said it he lost the will to hurt the posh kid.

The posh kid looked like he didn’t believe him.

There wasn’t anything more to do or say. The posh kid looked scared, but he wasn’t acting scared. The kid had had enough. He told the posh kid to fuck off. Then he walked away across the close.

The next time he got picked up, he knew in his mind who’d done it. Who’d spoken to the police. It was the posh kid. The one he hadn’t touched. Next time he saw him, he’d do it right. Only he never did.

a piece of complexity

The piece moved backwards in time, then sideways in time. Sometimes it appeared to move forwards in time but was in fact standing still. The piece confused the actors, the director, perhaps even the writer.

There was only one way to tackle it. Assume nothing. Argue every line. Make mistakes.

After three hours the two actors seated on the white sofa had made it as far as the interval.

3 homes

A blue door and a small courtyard and roses that grew all year round and two single beds in separate rooms and armchairs we never sat in.

+++

A blue gate which opened onto a side door where the payphone which was stolen used to live. A front room dedicated to a drawing board. A bedroom down two steps. A kitchen big enough to cook in.

+++

A spiral staircase leading to a high ceilinged coachhouse leading to a stepladder leading to a bed laid out like a flying carpet, sailing above it all. A wok and a microwave and the art of cooking without a cooker.

home

Home feels like a museum I have been invited to spend time in. Full of artefacts from my own life.

Home feels like a laboratory experiment. Remove the rat from its normal environment. Obliterate any notion of normal. Return it to its former environment. Observe for a month.

Home feels like it is watching me. The objects are assessing my progress or lack of. The floor is gauging my weight. The walls have graphs concealed within their cracks, charting progress. Or lack of.

Home is the camellia waiting to bloom. Green daffodils shoots breaking through to tease on a daily basis.

Home is a waystation. A lightning rod. A diving chamber. A clock.

Home is subterranean.

Home is the sound of the wind and the shimmer of drizzle beyond a bedroom window.

Home is lying in bed. A bed. This bed.

actors

Actors move up and down a food chain of fame. The fact that you might be recognised brings a sense of self-consciousness you sometimes don’t need. I heard a story once about an actor who arrived in the Netherlands and was stunned to realise his face was famous through a commercial he’d done that had taken off. But a light spreading of fame does not pay the bills and can even work against getting jobs. It can typecast you and shackle you to a past you’ve moved on from. It creates a strain between the perception of success which recognition conveys, and the reality of the ongoing struggle all but the very few are constantly engaged in.

rules of engagement

Do not get too comfortable.
Do not become too emotionally attached.
Enjoy but do not covet.
Use time effectively.
Write.
Think.
Sleep.

priors barton front door

If I can only get the key in the lock. If I can only get the key in the lock. If I can only get my hand to the keyhole and place the key in the lock. If I can do this thing...I might get away with it. I might rediscover time. The night might end.

I get the key in the lock. The lock won't turn. The lock isn't turning. I'm turning the key but the lock's stuck. The lock's stuck! I'm stuck. I'm fucked. We're all fucked. There's no way back in. We're trapped out here. I'm trapped with them. The door won't open. I've been here five minutes. Ten minutes. An hour. Two hours. All night. All the nights there's ever been. Trying to get back in. Trying to open the door.

The door isn't open. I'm going to be trapped out here. With the clouds racing across the sky. With the night air eating my face. With one sock on and one sock off. With no way of knowing if I will ever see the light again. The door's shut. They're watching me, laughing, waiting.

The lock opens. The door opens. I step inside. I am safe. For now.

laughing gas

The balloon is filled with some kind of compressed air pump. Only the air is nitrous oxide. The air from the balloon is released into the lungs. Then blown back into the balloon. Then back into the lungs. Some laugh, others feel a brief rush. It's cheaper than wine; it is a throwback to a time when balloons made a party; you walk away with the evidence.

+++

Soup recipe. Cook chicken thigh and two and a half red peppers in oven with fresh thyme and bay leaves. Cook stock. Cook onions gently with one red chile and pimento. Put all the ingredients together and blend. Add stock to determine consistency. Season; add yoghurt and olive oil. Chill before reheating.

+++

Brixton market on a Saturday. A young woman with a fag in her mouth sells fruit to an elderly haggling West Indian. The smoker deals with the haggling, saying Summer's plentiful but Winter's always hard. A young black kid is preaching his version of the gospel. An old white drunk runs out of a shop and tells him to shut up.

winchester 6

The adolescent walked into the bookshop. He had an account there. He could buy whatever books he liked, within reason. The bookshop was old-fashioned, slightly stuffy. Quiet and studious. There were a dozen people in the bookshop. He knew all of them. Some of them by sight, some of them he knew to say hello to, some of them he knew reasonably well. All of these people were involved in their own quiet perusal of books.

He looked at the revolving wheel of Picadors. Flicked through Calvino, Brautigan, Pynchon, Hesse. Names he either knew or which would catch up with him. He wasn’t buying. Just killing time.

As in a vision, he saw this space recreated. So that each of the dozen people who were there did not exist in a bubble of their own, but in a communal bubble. Where to participate in each others thoughts, dreams, desires, hopes and fears was as natural as it might be to participate in your own.

He looked at the faces around him. Some glanced back at him. He saw how distant the world he had just imagined was. How removed from the world they actually shared. He left the bookshop with the dream inside it.

saltar

There’s a very large hirsute fat man standing on the terraces. The large fat man is suffering. His beard is dripping sweat. His team, Nacional, are two nil down on the night to the team from Brazil. The Centenario, home of the first world cup, is far from full. It’s a weeknight in the Libertadores. It looks like Nacional are going out. He turns and shouts at the others in the home end. Shouts at them to sing louder and shout louder. One fellow in particular catches his eye. He’s got long hair and he looks like he doesn’t belong. He’s not shouting, he’s not singing, he’s not even jumping.

The fat man’s attention is caught by the game again. What he doesn’t realise is that the long-haired man is an Englishman, who doesn’t speak a word of Spanish. That this is his first ever sultry night in this country, on this continent. It’s also the first time he’s ever been to a football match.

Things are no better in the second half. The fat man turns and sees the long-haired kid, who’s still neither shouting nor jumping. The fat man decides that he’s probably Brazilian. This thought pisses the fat man off. He walks over to the long-haired kid. He asks him what the matter is. He tells him to jump. Saltar, he shouts. Saltar! The kid looks at him, baffled. His friends are laughing. (Friends he has met for the first time ever that very night) The fat man wraps his arm around the Brazilian and shouts in his ear.

The friends laugh. They tell him the kid’s not from here. He’s English. It doesn’t bother the fat man. His team’s losing, the long-haired Brazilian’s not moving: it’s all wrong. Someone says something to the Englishman. They tell him the fat man wants him to jump.

Suddenly everyone’s jumping. The fat man still has his arm round the long-haired kid’s shoulders. The kid starts to jump. The fat man thinks that that’s more like it. He gets the kid to sing. The kid goes la-la-la, but at least he’s making an effort. His friends can’t stop laughing.

It works. Nacional score. Now they’re going to have sing and jump and shout even more to get back on level terms. The fat man moves away to gee up the rest of the crowd. Every now and again he turns to check on the Brazilian kid. The Brazilian kid’s still jumping.

Nacional score again. All they need to do is hang on and they’ll qualify. The final whistle goes. Nacional are through. The Brazilians are out. The crowd celebrate by throwing stones at the riot police. The riot police cower. The fat man melts into the night.

The Englishman has been blooded. This is South America. Prepare for the unexpected.

small town big city

What does it mean when twice in a weekend the city which people treasure for its anonymity shrinks to the size of a pueblo?

vitriol

There’s safety in numbers. You can say what you like. Mild mannered people and aggressive people alike scream: ‘You Wanker!’; ‘You’re Shit; You’re Shit!’ and more and more. Part of the challenge of watching a football match is to find new things to say or old things to say for ninety minutes. The man beside me gives a running commentary. He’s on first name terms with Frank and ‘Ernan and Maka.

Aggression released is a kind of buzz. Exiting in the throng, someone says – You’ve got to give it out. They give it out so you’ve got to give it back. He breaks off to scream at another unspecified Scouse section of the crowd.

The blur of bodies is dizzying. For a while my head goes walkabouts, lost on a biologically induced E trip. Within five minutes I’ve come down. Head pegged back to feet pegged back to ground. I’m ready for anything now. Whatever vitriol should come my way.

6 x mr p

Last night on my way to the pizzeria, surprisingly called Enzo e Scifo, the following images from the dim distant past sprang to mind.

+++

Sedley, seated upstairs in the Taj Majal. H is on one side of him, Bjorn on the other. Patricia might be there, and others. I am leaving early. He will disfructar the Uruguayan night, never knowing quite when it will end.

+++

Walking through the square in Bari Vecchia. As we move through the late-Summer throng, all kinds of freaks, beautiful women, and other sundry Italians come up to him and greet the professor. Somehow he glides through the square and we escape to the other side.

+++

A night in Bournemouth. Sitting on the probably freezing floor in the as yet unconverted upstairs flat. Drinking whisky. Listening to Sticky Fingers. Talking til the cows came home.

+++

In the Plaza Independencia, sitting on top of Artigas’ mausoleum. The sun’s setting. He’s trying to tell me something that’s very difficult to say. About Frieda. And other things besides.

+++

In York. This one is unspecific. He seemed to spend more time in York than he did in Nottingham. Sometimes he’d stay for months. Come to our lectures and write our essays. Have his whole social life mapped out, completely independently. I guess the first year he must have used my room whilst I stayed with N. We never quite understood why he visited with such enthusiasm. (It was only this week he sort of told me.) But we didn’t mind. He enjoyed our company and we enjoyed his. Which was all that mattered, back then.

+++

In the flat in Wells Street. Richard, of course he does, offers us a gin and tonic and a smoked salmon sandwich. Richard rabbits on about copper and China. He has great schemes. Sedley chomps with impatience. He’s too big for the flat. Richard says ‘you see’ yet again. He says ‘Yeeessss.’ Richard says: ‘Absolutely.’ There’s a pause. He offers to fix us another G&T and goes into the kitchen. We grin at one another.

+++

Written during an exaggerated wait at the very fine Bari airport…

define your location

Last night I was watching and they had these screens up showing pictures and I was thinking that if they had screens tonight the pictures for this song would be somewhere in between Conan the Babarian and the Tibetan Book of the Dead.

professor paradox

Horacio’s English is even more rudimentary than my Spanish. He’s gesticulating like the director he is. The Nobel prize winner, who’s work he’s directed, is listening to him explain in his piecemeal English his plans for a rock and roll Peer Gynt.

+++

It’s sometime in the middle of the morning. The morning morning. About three. It’s not so late for them. I have just about adjusted. They use all of the day and all of the night. Why waste the sleeping hours if there are things to be done or said? Sleep can always wait.

We sit in Ana’s little flat. The conversation is stop start. Sometimes he and I understand each other, sometimes we don’t. He’s a theatre director who works in advertising. Who fills the tiny room. Who shrugs his shoulders and throws his hands in the air, and laughs.

He puts on a video. It’s a series of Party Political broadcasts. From the first election after the dictatorship. He’s there on screen. Looking a little younger. Wild eyed, full of a demonic energy, running around the little screen like no-one you’ve ever seen in a party political broadcast.

He is Professor Paradoja, telling the truths that the politicians could not get away with.

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We get in the car and drive to Stratford. Horacio loves it. They want to see some theatre, but we can’t get tickets. We see everything there is to see in Stratford. Somewhere outside Anne Hathaway’s home, they quarrel, like couples do, but it blows over. In the evening we stop off in Oxford and see Lindsay Kemp at the Oxford Playhouse. Horacio moves around in a blur of energy. England has to try and keep up with him.

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In the last days before I go away, they take me out for supper. We go to a restaurant on The Rambla. It’s a sultry turn-of-the-year night. We eat on the terrace, looking out over La Plata.

Out there, somewhere between river and sea, a storm breaks. Sitting in shirtsleeves, we watch the lightning; listen to the thunder. Tronzos y relampagos. None of it touches us. We are the storm’s spectators. VIP guests of its distant fury.