Amongst the misspelled graffiti on the side of a house are some new
words, sprayed carefully in silver: "Do something different, please."
The neatness and politeness disarm me. Now I’m smiling.
"Maybe you’re right," I say, as if to the anonymous author, making a detour behind city railings.
A handsome crow is adamant about something on the lawn of a
park, but nobody’s listening. He eyes me jealously and makes off with
some small prize - bounces twice and transforms into a glossy fan
sweeping under a tree.
I’m puzzled; did I only sleep for one night? Spring is already in her dressing room, trying on new jewels.
Crocuses take up their brilliance in unseemly mire and
mouldering beech husks. They ring with hope; detached in dignity from
their unlikely home. How brave to be so vulnerable, playing out
fleeting roles, fearless of weather or the soles of boots.
One bee is lumbering, battling to keep his own weight above the
unearthly light of snowdrops. Nature returns my adoration with the
stoic gaze of diligence. She has already placed fistfuls of tiny red
trumpets onto stems. I listen, but I do not have ears for them; I hear
only the fountain, and two beaks pecking on wood.
A bronze boy is lost in eternal fascination with a bronze butterfly,
unaware that pigeons are paddling unstockinged in his pond. They’re
courting and gossiping with each other, voices soft and hollow like
clay pots.
A child, almost crazed with contagious joy, runs ahead of her father
and of her own feet, in boots as wide and tall as they are long, and a
flailing coat.
Why not? Who needs reasons in the company of Spring?
* * *
"Why you going there?" frowns the cab driver when I ask him for a seaside town.
"I’ve got a physio appointment." I reply.
"Waste of time," he says, eyes strangely enlarged in a convex mirror, "you want to find yourself a healer."
Now he has my attention – cabbies usually stick to topics like
weather and sport don’t they? Careering across the estuary, he recounts
with passionate sincerity the stories of his faith-healing
brother-in-law. I’m rapt, not really by the content of his words, but
by their intense delivery. What an unusual topic of unsought
conversation. I interrupt only to point out a black pet rabbit cleaning
its ears in the display of a cycle shop.
After my appointment I recall my adopted motto for the day,
and mentally file my chores under "pending." Ducking down through some
ornate topiary, I find the sea.
An Italianate ice cream parlour looks out towards England from a
peeling 1950’s facade. Ladies sit inside in coats and hats. The pier
beckons me more urgently than ice cream; rusting in an endless saline
assault, while its abandoned summer palace waits in vain for brass
bands and tea dances.
Searching for England’s furthest shore, I lose her in grey bands of sea
and sky. It’s always grey, but not like the city - steely and vibrant
as if daubed in a hurry on blue. The sea is brown and milky like Milo,
swelling and drawing with imagined sweetness on black clumps of slack
weed.
A little girl is blowing a whistle constantly to a mile of
grey shale, while her mother picks across larger stones. There are no
longer amusement rides, or slot machines, or candyfloss: only fishermen
crouching under their caps. I wonder if they’re really here for fish,
or to greet the air, and sky, and sea... as I am.
I’d forgotten "I" was there at all; maybe that’s something different too, and something good.
Sumangali Morhall
February 2005
