A Walk

Having arrived at Cockpen Road, Bonnyrig, via 30 minutes along a former railway roadbed from Hawthornden, I faced a familiar question: left or right. I chose right (to the post office), I forget why—perhaps because a half block left was the Quidsucker Motel, where I’d likely stop in for a pint and a page or two—a page and a pint or two—and never get to the post office.

Turning right took my clear to the south edge of the city. I turned back. After a while I turned up a path leading along a creek—don’t play near the water!—and straight (I was sure) to the post office. 15 minutes later, I found myself in an obviously new development called Rosebottom, where supposedly you can “breathe the harmony”. I turned left, heading up a hill from which I’d see (I was sure) the post office.

Not yet. “Which way to the post office,” I asked a man in a flat cap.

He gave a little smile. “I’m sorry to say you’re a long way from it,” he said. He set me on the correct route from which, within minutes, I took a wrong turn, and another within that one. I asked someone else, a young man fiddling with his ipod, where the post office was, this time gesturing vaguely off as if I already knew but just needed confirmation.

He gave a little smile. “Nowhere near here,” he said, offering a new set of directions.

I had it now. Soon I neared Cockpen Road, the post office just a mile or to the right. A car pulled to a stop in front of me, the driver leaning over to speak to me out the open window. “I’m looking for Wesley Street,” said the man.

I gave him a little smile, and a “Sorry, can’t help you.” By now I’d decided to stop for a pint at the Quidsucker and leave the post office for another day.

Here it is now, corner of Cockpen and Wesley.

On the Trans-Pennine Express: First Day of Spring

I see lambs in the fields. Tiny things a stout hawk could carry off. (The fields are separated by hedgerows reinforced with barbed wire fencing, bringing to mind a story in the Telegraph this weekend about the deterioration of, and attempts to rehabilitate, England’s hedgerows. A lost art, laying them properly, the article said). But in the next field of sheep—maybe they call fields paddocks here, like the Aussies do—no lambs at all.

The train from Prescott, Lancs, to Edinburgh is already jammed with passengers. A young man boards—glad, I think, to be done with the awkward good-bye to his father. “Don’t get yourself killed in Spain or Morocco,” the father calls. Two sisters board, waving final good-byes to their parents through the train window. Mom pretends not to cry; dad pretends to boogie with the joy of it all. “Aw, look,” one sister says. I ask my seat-mate if this train is always so crowded. “It wasn’t until now,” she says, not unkindly.

The sun, which has been grand all day after two days of rain since I got off the ferry in Plymouth, falls hidden during the watching for lambs, as if I can have only one or the other.

Before I can choose, the sun comes out again. And look, more lambs!

Twelve Ways of the English

1. They "don't do table service on weekends".
2. They bustle from cafes carrying synthetic cups of coffee or tea which they consume as they walk, drive, or turn on their computers.
3. Many of them have blue eyes.
4. By 6:00 pm, they've tucked into their final meal of the day.
5. At the next table, I think they're speaking English.
6. But I listened to the Arsenal football coach speaking before the match with West Ham . . .
7. They don't stop for a pedestrian unless they have to.
8. If they're a matronly woman selling you a newspaper, they call you "Love".
9. They set matching shakers of salt and pepper on the table, no matter what the meal.
10. They travel in pairs so that on a a ferry, say, if you see one, you'll soon see the other.
11. The young don't carry umbrellas.
12. You cannot smoke in here.

PS: Boy, was the wild mushroom stroganoff with new potatoes and a side of garlic bread ever good!

  

Night Rise

How powerful the sea, treating the 41,000-tonne Pont Aven, and everything in it, to moments of weightlessness between crest and trough of any wave, like the next one, enough to flip Grace Kelly--High Society showing in Cinema 2, deck 6--from Crosby to Sinatra; to lift a 50-pence coin from the table and a Spanish sandal from the floor, one soon to descend upon the other; to delay the pepper's landing on the egg.

If you think this is something to write about, try it.  Entire words never make it to the page or slip away as soon as they get there.

You no sooner finish one breath when it's time to start another.

Fog.

Ship Lag: This Was Three Hours Ago

How delightful the departure! Not because it’s a departure but because it’s delightful—just the way I would have done it: fire the engines backward from the ferry terminal (the 11-lane parking lot, near full two hours ago, empty now), let the back end drift out a bit, fire the sideways engine at the front until the nose points out to the exit channel in the middle of Santander Bay, and then fire forward, letting loose with a deep, echoing blast from the horn and sliding past the para-sailers, faster than a man can walk, and out beyond La Magdelena peninsula, where I spent such happy hours yesterday, out to open sea.

First I was ready to claim this ferry is so large I can’t feel it moving. Then, walking back to my sixth-deck cabin near the back left corner of the ship, I felt it move. One step of my Spanish sandal seemed to land sooner than expected, the next not landing at all.

If I wanted to hum, I’d hum “Farewell Iberia”, if there was a song of that name. Land of the sea.

Having finished Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway (borrowed from Maria in Vigo and already posted back) and Sterne’s A Sentimental Journey (bought second-hand in Lisbon), I’ve started Nick Hornby’s Juliet, Naked, almost the only book in the ship’s shop by someone not named Steele, Brown, King, or Ludlum (although I almost opted for a Patricia Cornwell mystery). After Woolf and Sterne, and Moure before that, the Hornby seems thin, quick—like travelling by plane, instead of the mightyPont-Aven, bound for Plymouth.

On the Heights with Vigo Bay: A Wait

Vigo Bay can tell the sea from the sky by the noise.

No one's cheeks are red in the palace.  The Duchess must be away.

When Vigo Bay sees a giant ship about to appear, he leans a ittle harder against the stone.

How many corners in the sea?  Vigo stops counting at one.

Give him the vista panoramica he'll wait there till noon.

He's not quite
his continental self.

Fishing with Vigo Bay: Tonight's Catch

Vigo offers water where the fish are--his little buddies, the lamprey--but the "Real Madrid" wants water where the depths are.

The tide's coming in, Vigo's cold.

Finally he's figured out which way he empties.

A drunk fisherman, seeing Vigo's innovation--a thermal mug for transporting hot or cold beverages--says "Hey hermetico, hermetico!"

Vigo throws away cheese.  It sinks.  He throws away a pen that doesn't work.  It floats.

Vigo Bay looks in a mirror, sees the dark forms under concrete, tide rising.

Vigo's the ancient hook too old to use, too heavy to remove.

Thank goodness, he breathes.

Vigo aches in shadows.

Vigo Bay doesn't answer
the same way twice, the moon
as it is.