A curious, rather private weekend. I don’t normally get them to myself, and I certainly wouldn’t normally take a long weekend to be at home, but sometimes it just happens regardless.
Saturday was spent firstly transporting foetid bags of garden waste to the municipal dump, a task I wouldn’t wish on George Bush. By the time I’d done that, cleaned up all the dank smudges of putrescent leaf that I’d managed to spread through the house, gone shopping and cooked a very nearly edible Creole lamb dish for myself, it was time to light the evening fire and settle down to watch Alejandro Amenabar’s first film (nasty minded rubbish; don’t bother).
Sunday, as usual, revolved around the midday football in the park. Hit the post twice and, eventually, nicked an equaliser, thank you for asking.
Today. Today was odd. I’d booked it off to go on a little shopping excursion for a small but important something I’ve been meaning to get for a while now. I got it, and the usual other bits and pieces one picks up when shopping with some time to waste; a new cartridge for my printer, which somehow cost over three times as much as the 14-disc set of ‘Der Ring des Nibelungen’ I picked up. Now, I’m no particular fan of Wagner, but at something like 70p per hour of volcanically serious mythomania, it’s vastly cheaper than the ‘Lord of the Rings’ films (which, in their extended forms, will be almost as long as the Ring cycle). If I start trying to annexe Austria, please remind me to change the record.
I was meaning to go to the National, but in my excitement got it all wrong. I had my valuable shopping with me by this stage (no, not the Wagner), and really didn’t want to be leaving it in the cloakroom, no matter how well attended. I’ll have to catch the Bill Viola exhibition one evening this week on my way back from work.
Walking back down the Strand, I passed one of the theatres as two workmen outside were fitting one of those eight foot tall posters into one of the glass display panels outside. I felt a whisper against the back of my neck, and half turned as the metal and glass panel smashed onto the pavement right behind me.
There is really very little you can say to someone who has nearly brained you without noticing. So I didn’t attempt any more than the basics. It certainly didn’t require more than words of one syllable.
I’m amusedly aware that I was not in the slightest unnerved by the whole incident. I’ve been trying to work out why ever since. I’ve ruled out curiosity value; being lamped by a display window may not be the way I would choose to go, but at least it would have been…theatrical. While death by defenestration has a venerable history, I suspect fenestration is altogether rarer.
I suspect that the reason why I’m not more disturbed is that windows do not look aggressive. Buses, lorries, elephants, panicking hippopotami, trains, even cars can loom menacingly towards you. Windows can only ever loom transparently. Besides, any looming that was going on was entirely behind my back. I missed the entire looming part of the process. My near-miss was entirely loomless.
Eventually, I got home to find a message from the bank. Sweet, I thought; checking that I’m safe. In reality, checking that my day’s purchases were not the result of a stolen bank card.
One final pleasure: on the doormat was a second hand book I had entirely forgotten I’d ordered; Defoe’s The Life, Adventures and Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton.
That’s it. Pirate ships loom. Out of the mist. They do it all the time. That, if ever was, is the way to go.
No comments:
Post a Comment