3BTs to brighten this dark February

In the evening on Valentine's Day we went to the National Film Theatre to see Truffaut’s delightful Jules et Jim.  The large cinema was packed.  I had seen the film once before, over thirty years ago on a small black and white television with a square screen but I was too poorly equipped then, too poorly experienced and too poorly educated to enjoy and appreciate it.  And for so many reasons: one reason being that it had been gorgeously photographed using an extra wide screen format; another reason being my own lack of personal development, or rather my total maladroitness in the lovelife minefields of jealousy and possessiveness; a third reason being my inadequate understanding of French history and culture, having never visited the country at that time.  I feel guilty nowadays because I was so egotistical then and I had repeatedly failed to see the necessary connection between proper fun and proper freedom as a universal human right.  Now I think I nearly understand !  Some critics say it isn’t a perfect film but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a great one, and if I were running a film school it would definitely be on the curriculum.  At the end of the film the lights “went up” and those luxuriant wide red velvet curtains swished to a satisfying close, their deep folds classically illuminated from beneath, whilst a smart young couple who’d been sitting about three rows in front of us stood and kissed in a long unembarrassed embrace, beautifully top-lit in pale blue from one of the many ceiling spotlights juxtaposed against that blood-red background, a vivid and hyper-cinematic image to memorize with joy, and one that Truffaut himself might have enjoyed.

Dreaming vividly as I often do is still a delight and I enjoy time spent looking for clues about all aspects of real and imaginary life in those dimly recollected experiences.  Sometimes the past is re-invented with cinematic felicity in those few seconds before I wake.  For instance, just before waking on the morning after Betty’s funeral, I found myself lost and entering the vestibule of a darkened village school room and being asked by two lady teachers if I was “here for the funeral”.  I covered my embarrassment somehow and went outside on to the village green, darkened on a mid-summer night just before dawn.  It looked like a battlefield of freshly dug graves and through it moved the shadowy figures of countless schoolchildren in nineteen fifties uniforms.

Driving along the north side of Clapham Common this afternoon, my attention to the traffic was briefly distracted by the oncoming progress of an athletic Greek goddess who was jogging towards me wearing a pristine and loose fitting white rugby shirt.  I’m not sure which myth she represented, something to do with golden apples perhaps, although it might just have been her perfect rhythm and bounce that fragmented my deviant thoughts.  The opportunity for completing a detailed analysis of the phenomena was suddenly curtailed by the passing between us of a large white truck which inadvertently supplied the suitably fruity adjective I might have been searching for, because the name of the transport company was PEACHY.

three beautiful things ... well, moments, really

Driving out of London towards Gatwick every morning involves a gentle but tedious ascent to the gap in the North Downs at Hooley, where the Brighton road at last turns into a motorway, and then swoops down to the left to face the morning sky.  This morning is as deeply cold as any I can remember, minus nine degrees, and in a crystalline sky the brilliant  planet Venus dazzles low in the south east.  But even lower than Venus, directly beneath it and almost couched on the horizon, is an apparently enormous yellow crescent moon.  In the next hour, the distant planet slowly ascends a little way from left to right, whilst our sharp crescent moon turns silver, gradually lagging further behind, until both are obscured in a freezing fog.

In that same fog, towards the late morning, I glance away from the snowy road through a tall hedge towards a descending vista of ancient oak trees, still bronze and leafy but snow laden so that each twisted bough declares its own long fading history until that vista of ancient sunlit trees fades into a seeming eternity of frozen mist.

Back in London and slumping homewards on the bus in mid-afternoon, I listen to an African woman with a mobile phone conversing in a language I’ve never heard, but I cannot fail to enjoy the universal syntax of her husky laughter.  Glancing up occasionally through the dispersing clumps of fog into the pale blue yonder, there are glimpses of shining aircraft on their inch-perfect glide path into Heathrow, brilliantly under-lit by the sinking sun like herald angels.

three beautiful things ... also

at dawn, a big airliner lands during heavy snow and hurtles unchecked along the runway at gatwick for some distance ... until the pilot turns on the reverse thrust and whips up an enveloping cocoon of whirling snow

despite a previous week or more of deep frost and then snow, finding bags of miraculously clean and flawless charlotte potatoes in the supermarket

at dusk, emerging with those potatoes onto a street along which the snow is blowing almost horizontally in an icy wind, but in which the ambience is "tropicalised" by that marvellously ecstatic smoke that comes from roasting coffee

a handful of beautiful things

in the space of twenty minutes ... a kestrel hovering in a sunbeam, an old-fashioned bi-plane making a high circle beneath some raggle-taggle clouds above some raggle-taggle oak woods, and then a red helicopter following the line of the hills between reigate and dorking, followed minutes later by a yellow one

letters from two dear friends laying side by side beneath our letterbox

the loved one steps in from a long day at work, delves in to her bag, then flourishes aloft a brand-new re-print of posy simmonds' subtle masterpiece, "tamara drewe", winner of the grand prix 2009 de la critique bande dessinee

THREE MORE BEAUTIFUL THINGS

Driving through the woods in the early fog which is rhythmically striped and punctuated by veering sunbeams as the road winds around the hills, and is frequently perfumed with different kinds of wood smoke from domestic stoves and from invisible bonfires smouldering in gardens and coppices.

As night falls, the loved one is filling the building with the sweet aroma of baking cookies whilst the Beach Boys Greatest Hits are playing.

Another twenty page letter to a wonderful friend is finally sealed up and addressed, ready to be posted after a whole week of hesitantly laboured paragraphs and too many lip-biting crossings out, and some unbelievably childish spelling corrections.

3BT plus 2

on putney heath, one owl hoots and another screeches as i walk past the black wood to the bus stop at a quarter to four in the morning ... and then they do it again, twice

i pass a shop in haywards heath outside which is an umbrella stand containing about a dozen feather dusters and i try to visualize an allegorical painting involving twelve virgins and michelangelo's david ... if only beryl cook was still alive

near turner's hill, twelve cock pheasants gleam on a grassy knoll

the wide window in peter jones' rooftop restaurant is hung with thousands of tiny white lights, reflected and double-reflected in the double glazing as if it were snowing stars ... beyond them, the sun has set and across the grey rooftops beneath a strip of pink and purple sky is the outline of harrods' illuminated dome traced in vibrant smudges of incongruous golden light

a violinist and a pianist enter the gilded norfolk room wearing deep purple and position themselves so that i often see the pianist's face through the crook of the violinist's left arm during their brilliant recital ... the violinist plays with her eyes shut, the pianist laughs with her eyes at every musical joke

Three more beautiful things

 Emerging from our brick tenement just after the sun has risen, I turn the corner in time to see the last pink clouds fading above the dense woodland called Putney Heath, and wish I’d been about just a few moments sooner to see the show ... but then, for the first time in my six years in London, a little bat flutters from the woods and zig-zags over my head, veering around the flats and disappearing high up beyond a big oak tree.  Sadly, my eyes are no longer keen enough to see whether his fangs are still dripping with the blood of a B-movie starlet.

The 170 bus to Victoria via Clapham Junction fills up with quiet people, some of whom are up far too early, but many, having worked a long night in the big neurological hospital, far too late.  In Wandsworth we are joined by a glamorous Jamaican woman, dressed with such urban sophistication as you might hope to see in Paris, who immediately begins to preach to us of Jesus’ love, laying special emphasis on the need to live well in the here and now, and to make others feel loved because, she says, “We won’t be coming Back !”  I’ve seen her a couple of times before on these local buses, always smart, always lovely, her energy flooding the space, even to the place where i cower in the back row.  Over the years, her phrasing and body language have become more “theatrically professional” and I wish there was a way to politely encourage her, whilst respectfully preserving my own timid scepticism.

I collect the dog from the old brick terrace.  We meander along amongst the parked cars, she stopping constantly to sniff every gate and lamp post, and searching the gutters for last night's chicken bones, and when we eventually turn the corner at the far end of the street on our way to the Common, we look west where a vast white rain cloud is rising quickly amidst trailing streaks of vapour and rain, supported on one side by half a rainbow, the whole spectacle imposing itself in fluent contrast to the dumb jagged dark rows of indigo slate roofs and burnt orange chimbley pots, like a beautiful preacher intimidating a crowd.

three beautiful things ... well, one and a half, actually

a frosty dawn of unusual clarity … the sky a kind of abstract expressionist playground for incandescent candy floss brush strokes and dabs, smears and wisps, and even a few curlicues … all across a flawless velvety infinity of hyper-intense ultramarine, toning down into turquoise towards the horizon … a few minutes later, driving quickly on a smooth winding road switchbacking through a deep wood where you still need headlights even whilst the first rays of the newly risen sun are lancing horizontally through the high canopies of beech and oak … then emerging to find all that was pink in the sky has turned to gold

Wandsworth bloody council have cut down the tree next to the bus stop on lavender hill … but have left the stump level and smooth and just wide enough and high enough for a certain posterior to sit whilst it's owner soaks up some afternoon sun after emerging from their excellent public library and settling down with Angus Trumble’s “A Brief History Of The Smile” … laughter and sunshine are excellent therapists

a Jehovah’s Witness stops to talk to me outside the post office whilst I am checking a hand-written letter for punctuation and coherence before posting it to a dear friend with whom i have corresponded some twenty five years … he talks briefly about communicating with God ( who has never communicated directly with me so far ) but I don’t let on that I was only just some moments ago writing about the strong possibility that when I get the job of giving Heaven a make-over then I’d probably want to replace the old straight and narrow turnstile with some drive-thru pearly gates

Three beautiful things … 10th October 2010

A long train ride to visit a friend I’ve neglected in the cancer ward in a south coast hospital.  And a long wait until visiting time.  The patient is sleeping, or is she already gone ?  No, the wind is whistling through the valve in her throat and they’ve removed the stomach tube and they've attached the help-yourself-morphine drip.  In mournful silence, I turn to search for a chair and then the old familiar smiling voice whispers from the pillow, “Hello, stranger!”  “Stranger than fiction!”, I reply before we embark on a three hour conversation.

Darkness advances as the train pulls out on the return journey and we pass the beach at low tide.  Three men with spades, for all the world like grave diggers, are silhouetted against the twilight waters.

Falling asleep in the loved one’s embrace, and waking there some time later, refreshed and healed.

three more beautiful things ...

a letter i've been struggling to write to an old friend for the last seven days suddenly leaps onwards from page four to page fourteen

i find just the right kind of walking and working boots i've been wanting to buy after days of searching and i proudly wear them even whilst i type, sitting here well after my usual bed time in my third best pyjamas

the house empties after a jolly gathering of buddhists and i re-possess the sofa, sitting by chance in just the right position for a powerful moonbeam to smack me in the eye