The Park, around about 3pm
When You've Seen How Big The World Is, How Can You Make Do With This?
Damp ground gives up its smell as we walk through the park. The light here is something else; white even on the greyest of days. Lures painters and artists a new friend tells me; lured me, although I am neither a painter or much of an artist. Two children in the park. Too old for the play equipment. A boy and a girl. The squirrels are throwing acorns at us, Alexander screams from the oak he’s standing under. Around us, the thud of acorns falling firmly to the ground. I laugh at the thought of squirrels lobbing little bombs, explain that it’s just that the acorns are ripe now.
One of the kids in the playground kicks pooled water into the air, the light hitting it as it arcs upwards. The girl laughs, runs at the boy, kicking water right back at him. How pure it was, to flirt like this. How easy it was.
My children, too intent on the murderous squirrels to notice the children. Recently, they have become preoccupied by squirrels, little wonder when the park is right here, almost on our doorstep and the squirrels are well fed, independent, not like the well fed but lazy squirrels we used to encounter in Hyde Park, only three weeks ago. How is it that we have only lived here for two weeks? What has happened to time?
The boy runs at the girl, the full force of his body running through the puddle sending water flying up on either side where it meets this pure white light, droplets flying at the girl as she runs away from him screaming, her hair soaked now and plastered to the side of her face. The light around them picks them out until they might as well be a painting and god what must it be like, not to choose language as your medium, to have paint and colour and perspective and line at your disposal. As bad as this, likely, this harsh mistress of language I run up against every day, and most days, feel only the lack of ability. Some days, the days where it feels like flying, feel like they might never return. Recall telling a journalist earlier in the week I am not very good at lines and probably not the right thing to say when you’re meant to be talking your work up, not down; my editor reassuring them that no, I am just fine at lines. Some people, every line cuts, and is fridge magnet level quotable. I know my limits. The fridge, not for me.
The two truanting teenagers are still laughing when we walk past them towards the sea, their clothes soaked right through. Hope someone is not waiting at home to tell them off when they arrive back in the door. Savvy kids, likely will have a change of clothes or a back up plan. Recall being like this, alert to the necessity of the adult world not encroaching on my own teenage one. Mixes in the park. Empty bottles of Irn Bru filled with whatever was in parents’ drinks cabinets. Whisky and Southern Comfort and Peach Schnapps and Vodka. Enough to turn your stomach. Aged 13 and sitting on the swings. Park empty of little kids. Boys to impress. Swigging straight from the bottle. Did turn your stomach. Mad mixes we called them. If you’re south of the border or from somewhere else, likely this is not how you misspent the last remnants of your childhood. Later when we believed ourselves sophisticated, 15 maybe, and old enough to occasionally drink in the local undetected - although thinking about it, they knew who we were, in the way everyone knows everyone in a small town, and so knew how old we were or weren’t - we stripped back the ingredients, simply coke and vodka. Kept the ratios extreme and our stomachs empty. Thought ourselves Kate Moss. And how is it possible now to look back on those strange times in the mid-90s with affection and not terror at how insane we were, how willingly we hurtled ourselves towards danger, without mobile phones or constant surveillance, without the panopticon of social media, without the pressure to appear rather than be; before Blair was a war criminal and we were only on Bush 1.0, and Noel Gallagher swaggers down a Soho street, the future still light years away and London the other side of the world, but it was ok, we were all sorted out for es and whizz.
(I have, while working, been listening to a lot of Pulp, it shows here. Sometimes I think I’m a method writer, using music to teleport right back not just to a place and time, but a specific attitude from that time. And I write with music on, find it very hard to write in silence. It’s a lonely enough pursuit without silence for company.)