Monday, January 06, 2014

20/60 hindsight



The days are so alike, no? It is weird to try and write something in each of them, noting wryly that today you are still eating the walnut cake that made you feel better yesterday, still wrangling the vestiges of the paper chaos that you talked about Saturday and the household bits and pieces you talked about Sunday.

Still, the words behave most nicely for me when they are about today, about whatever happened just now. There are so many things I want to write about that happened some time in the Ago, but somehow the past turns immediately to a few coloured streaks and a footprint that you don't know is yours. 

Many things happened before and some are very good stories. There was the time with the white phone, and that robin one, and the one with the bubblewrap up to the ceiling and the time me and a Berlin cab driver had a handwriting competition, and the hedgehog, and the grass snake in the wild garlic and the time I thought a blue tit was a ringed plover, and the one with the otters and the fisherman, and the police station and those shoes that made my feet bleed and the time the coasting barn owl at Welney turned its head and looked us right in the eye. Also there's the one about the priest, and the one with the Satanic horseradish gelatine roundels, and the time the cheetah bit my wellie. 

It is hard to tell these stories. They look pretty in the jars but when I try to get them out they are all powdery and full of weevils.


No comments: