Yesterday

Yesterday, which is now the day before, a French girl called me from Germany but I said I was having my photo taken and couldn't help her. I half climbed a set of aluminium step ladders and pretended to read a volume of Moomin cartoons. I thought of skidding on my knees along he dusty wooden floor but instead slowly threw two cardboard boxes printed with my initials into the air. Time moved quickly but contained the correct number of minutes and hours and after a familiar supper we blew on whistles and pulled words out of a wooden bowl that made pictures in our heads and joy in our breaths. Relaxed, we read as the windows sung a wheezing drone till we climbed the stairs to the attic where we slept well until the morning, dreaming of islands forgotten by boats but never by the waves which lap them.

The Bike

Sitting in the cafe he cannot stop thinking about the bike. The coffee gives him a headache and noises seem closer than they are. He thinks how mortified at some point must have meant something different.

A black piece of fabric drapes over the drum kit. Not to hide, to restrict. Four cymbals like varying sizes of coolie hats or wide brimmed bowlers, hang from a makeshift frame. Thick rope holds them to a crossbar and they dangle rather shoddily, as if from a child's mobile of the solar system, where every planet is surrounded by brass rings. Although there is no movement in this miniature galaxy. They sit suspended so still and silent. Their stillness emphasised by their silence. The piano, also covered sits still under mustard yellow canvas and black material patterned with large turquoise and white stepped triangles.

As the coffee cools he cannot stop thinking about the bike. He receives an e-mail saying the toothpaste got there. She can now brush her teeth in hospital, he pictures her smile and for a second he stops thinking about the bike.

Raising his head up and slightly to the right he tries to picture the glasses he tried on two weeks ago. He damns his power of imagination for failing in being able to construct faces. Faces he knows well that still evade him, lacking in the nuances and subtleties of topology and movement that make it that face.

As hunger begins to feed in he cannot stop thinking about the bike, and the bag of half eaten bombay mix back at the studio. The brand new, freshly unsheathed sketch book and still shop sharp pencil lay untouched on the table, because he cannot stop thinking about the bike. And the truck. And the police men. And he feels like he should go. Back to the studio, to eat, look at her smile, and try and forget about the bike.

Injera

Last night Hannah and I totally slayed some Ethiopian food, we made Ethiopian pancakes (injera) a couple of lentil dishes, one spiced with 'Beberé' a pretty intense spice mix and a coconut milk mash potato. Pretty dangerous stuff.


A couple of nights ago I wrote a poem,

And so and so and so and so
He thought and thought and thought,
I wish I had more time for thinking,
More time for sport,
More time for reading
and swimming in rivers, lakes and ponds,
More time for writing words
to as yet unfinished songs.

"But this want is good my dear,
I would far prefer to fear
The passing of time, than to hold on
To times passed too dear."