(WordPress does not work – an exhaustible problem with having flushed my cookies – so this is the old fashioned log being recorded. )
London
A stranger to me now, I am drawn to old haunts like my grandmother was drawn to bygone stories – which used to drive me mad. As I sat outside the Mytre, Craven Terrace, I looked up at windows, enlightend and framed like movie shows into peoples lives, those who own London now, I reflected my day. Down through HydePark, where I once had an ambition never acted on to be a park gardener; into High Street Kensington, where Biba, gold on black, once tempted me, but felt beyond me; passed Barkers where, what was her name? committed suicide, dressed in a tight leotard as if considerate of the splat. And – what was her husbands name, who went with me for a picnic I’d prepared to somewhere in Barns, to relay the whole story, me implicated, he shouldering all the blame, and at the end said goodbye, I’ll not see you again: I must live my life with this shadow. I almost made it up to Holland Park, but got waylaid at the Commonwealth institute, re-branded as the Design Museum, where I dallied in Mailchimps exhibition The End of Email? Mailchimp – the curse of my computer, the cause of flushing my cookies and disabling WordPress! I came back via John Lewis, a store I scorned as far too middle class, and bought enough underwear to last the next 10 years, served by a kind and professional woman who moved my breasts to fit the bra with even skill. I am collecting all the skills and professions I am glad not to have embraced in my life, along with all the regrets at the avenues not ventured.
Would it be the end of SFCP? Like the Commonwealth institute, did it need re-branding, to be more politically correct? It was a tough and at times uncomfortable series of meetings, with factions and fractions. The dialogue, however, so lightly with such good humour delivered by Dieter, whose first dialogue was back in 1965, with the question: What is our responsibility for the future? I like others interpreted future to be out there, but of course, future is the next moment too. He delivered his first dialogue back in 1965!.
Waiting outside Chelmsford station, back entrance, where a budlia seed has nested and flourished on a vertical wall. A surprising lack of interest in municiple planning instead I watch pigeons nesting in hollow pipes, one upstairs one down. I still want to walk and explore Epping Forest, I vow.
We are gathering to celebrate Tinks turning 70 this day, a selecting of friends and family from stages of her life, I among them. Orchestrated with ease, between delicious Indian food, we talked, some strangers, some known, often of our diverse relationship to her, recalling those ghosts of the past, her father, my Uncle John, her mother Elspeth, her sister, Alison. Our connections, and sometimes our lives.
With Tinks turning 70, I was reminded that I’d recently been calculating that, should I reach the average age of a western person of 80 years, I had another 13 more years. Shit. Better get those trees planted.
The Nettle Dress
Watched in the lux of Aldebugh cinema with Yuka, over from Switzerland. The people and the film had a purity. About a man who made yarn from nettles, then over 7 years wove a dress, modeled by his daughter at the end. Such pure skin, and honest way about her. The story was of the weaving of grief in this process – first the death of his father, then most poignantly his wife, who died young, and looked so startlingly bright out of photographs. It is inspiring to follow the uncertainty of it, mistakes made, nervousness of cutting.
During the film I vomited up my delicious haddock and chips we’d just eaten, and the next few days spent evening out. So it was I watched the film of Beckham rather than attending to emails. His football integrity and professionalism, so often challenged, often nastily, brutally, by the tribe, is at times hard to watch. Their relationship strong, vibrant, candid.
Rain arrived. With it, floods, cancellations uncertainty and much conversing and exchanging in the high street. I walked the dogs long the Millennium Green track, now a river. Our pathetic town river, is now as wide as the Waveney, so I could almost imagine the barges that once sailed up it to the Maltings, 100 years ago.
Kalikellett 