Things to do

Big people – 27th April 2016

Further to my entry: ‘Intrepid – 18th April 2016’ I’ve been thinking of the possibilities of a theme park for adults: a specially created environment in which all the furniture, fittings and props would be three times normal size, to allow people to re-experience some of the possibilities of childhood –to make dens out of oversized tables, grapple with gigantic cutlery you can hardly lift, find plug sockets you can almost get your fingers into, and rediscover the magic of the undersides of everyday things.

But then I realised that to make the experience real, you’d also need to populate it with 20 foot tall ‘adults’ who’d occasionally leer into view, completely filling your field of vision while booming “Aww…” And then at some point there would be the handkerchief produced from a cavernous woollen sleeve, licked, and prodded at your face with the words “Keep still!” reducing you to a bawling bundle of uncontrollable emotions.

Maybe not such a good idea then.

Staring games – 17th April 2016

As children, we’ve all played games involving out-staring a friend, these usually ending with a cry of “You blinked!” “No, I didn’t, you blinked first!” “No, you did!” etc… Why this is such a good game when you’re young I’m not sure. It has limited application in adult life, where there are limits on how long you can look at a fellow human being who is also discovered to be looking back. Try it on a train with a complete stranger and anything more than a micro second could get you punched, or slapped. Even the romance attached to: ‘their eyes met across a crowded room’ is only underlined by the briefness of these rare moments.

But these latter are not really staring games, more like glancing games. If, as an adult, you want to play a staring game and you can’t find any friends interested in playing, we all know the game works on animals too. Admittedly with dogs it’ll only last a few seconds before the dog looks away and you suddenly feel ashamed you could even think of putting your beloved companion through this torture. But cats, on the other hand, are much more fun. A cat will keep up the contest for quite a while, sometimes even winning the match, and if it is you who outlasts the cat, the feline indignation as it looks away at least partially makes up for your minor cruelty. Indeed the knowledge that cats will stare at each other for hours serves as confirmation that they place a great deal of importance on staring.

However, the real masters of staring games are sheep. If you don’t believe me, go and stand in the same field as a flock of these ruminants and wait. It won’t be long before you find one of them staring at you, and when you do, try staring back. The sheep will happily carry on looking at you directly in the eyes for what will seem like an age. In this time you will find yourself wondering what on earth it can possibly hope to accomplish by this contact, after all, sheep are not predators, nor are they territorial. You will also find yourself trying to fathom the expression on the sheep’s face. The gaze of the sheep goes well beyond ‘unconcerned’ to your realization that if there are any emotions or thoughts present, that these are of the absolute right the animal considers itself to have in looking at you. You will find yourself reminded of the time you accidentally stumbled into a yoga class full or pregnant women, or perhaps memories of school when, having accomplished some small act of drollery, you find the gaze of your teacher locked onto yours with the full force of a blowtorch. No one can survive these kinds of looks for more than a few seconds.

Yet at this moment, with your confidence reduced to a pulp and with the full knowledge that the sheep has won before you have even begun to tire, the sheep will then turn it’s head and look somewhere else. And this will actually make your defeat worse, because you will know that whatever the sheep is now staring at, the stare will be just as intense and self-righteous as it has been when the quadruped had been looking at you, that you are no more important than a tree, or a gate, or the water-trough, and with this you will recognise that your humiliation is now complete.

Sittin on top of the world – 13th April 2016

No need ‘a runnin’, holdin’ up your hand,
I can get me a woman, quick as you can a man,
But now she’s gone, and I don’t worry,
‘Cause I’m sittin’ on top of the world.

I’m on top of the world, with my leg hanging down,
My baby done quit me, gone out ‘a this town.
But now she’s gone, and I don’t worry,
‘Cause I’m sittin’ on top of the world.

Work all the summer and all the fall,
Now, they wanna take my Christmas, and my overalls.
But now she’s gone, and I don’t worry,
‘Cause I’m sittin’ on top of the world.

Bye, bye, baby, honey if you call it gone,
It may worry me some, baby, but it won’t last long.
But now she’s gone, and I don’t worry,
‘Cause I’m sittin’ on top of the world.

‘Sittin’ On Top Of The World’
Originally written by Walter Vinson / Lonnie Chapmon. This version as recorded by Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee

Lithographs – 10th April 2016

The seven embellished pebbles shown in the photograph bottom left are, to my mind, some of the best examples of this peripatetic artform I’ve come across to date. Also, they raise several questions: Do they all have the same author or is this a group work? I suspect the latter as there is a difference, both in content and manner of execution. Three are decorative and quite beautifully drawn plant forms. Another resembles a stylised mediaeval comet; this suggests at least one of the authors has a sophisticated knowledge of early European manuscripts. Lastly, there are my favourites: the three in the top row, the ones I can’t fathom the meaning of. Why do I feel such a fondness for these? Probably because I can’t fathom their meaning.

Moving walkways – 6th April 2016

Following on from my post of a few days ago (Jennycliff – 31st March) here’s another space that, while not actually beyond the fence, is pretty close to it. If you’re a smoker, you’ll find yourself passing through a lot of these non-environments. Yet, despite the powers that be doing everything they can to show you how disgusting you are by hiding smoking areas in the ugliest and most difficult to get to of venues, these are the places that we have always been the most familiar with: in the bike sheds and behind the science huts at school, round the back of your mate’s dad’s car repair workshop, the garages at the end of the estate, among the bushes at the bottom of the sports field, these sites offer a welcoming escape from normality and the opportunity for chance meetings, not all of which will be nice, but then what is the world without risk?

On this occasion, at the smoking area at the end of this trav-o-lator™, among others I found: a brittle and angry airline worker sucking the life out of her dog ends as if, in draining them, it would also consume whoever had caused her upset; a young woman texting frantically between puffs, then waiting with equal fervour for a reply; a man holding his cigarette with studied nonchalance trying to look important; three more men joking in an unfamiliar language while waiting for their pick up… and here I felt at home.

The Detectorist – 27th March 2016

“22p, 22p! But on a good day I can make up to £200. That’s after a bank holiday, if I get down here early, or when there’s been a high sea. The waves shift the pebbles, bring stuff up to the surface, rings and coins… I’m the only one that does it proper. Systematic, that’s the only way to do it. There’s others with better equipment but I’m thorough. There used to be another bloke down here, latest stuff and everything, he cut me up a few times, heard he was bad mouthing me behind my back and I says to him “any time, any time, you just say it to my face…” He’s a bus driver and you know what they’re like. He don’t bother me so much now.”

Quixotic windmills – 20th March 2016

I’ve always quipped that one of the great reasons for living by the sea is that, at least in one direction, you can guarantee that no-one is going to start building and spoil the view. Fool. I suppose it was going to happen one day and I shouldn’t be annoyed. After all, we need energy and a wind farm is a green and renewable solution – one we should encourage, one I applaud, and yet… it’s as if the smooth face of a beloved daughter has started to develop stubble.

On the other hand, I’ve now started thinking, what would it be like to sail between these vast quixotic windmills? Who do I know with a boat?

Intrepid – 18th April 2016

When I was very small I used to take great delight in playing under tables. Empty ones were private studies, tree-houses or caves, where you could escape from adults too big to fit. While when populated, to crawl through the depths of a forest of legs, both wooden and human, all shrouded by the low clouds of the tablecloth’s hems, was the finest of adventures.

I’m glad that I took advantage of my smallness then, because today I had the sudden sharp realisation that this pursuit was one probably no longer open to me.