Just for today, I am going to break all my own rules. I am not going to pick up the house before leaving it. The birds are unfed, the garden un-watered. I leave dirty dishes in the sink, and cleaner ones where they were left to drain. The worktops have not been wiped. Things have not been put away.
Just for today, I am going to let that be ok.
Yesterday’s recycling is still in the hall, having not yet made it as far as the bins. There is half a glass of cider on the coffee-table. Scatter cushions are still scattered on the floor. The lap-top cable snakes across the carpet where it fell, when I unplugged it to play a late-night game of solitaire.
And just for today, that too, is all ok.
I pack my bag without really thinking about what I need. This means I have to go back to the house twice: the first time to pick up the camera which (it turns out) is already in the bag, and then again to pick up the phone, which isn’t.
I’m wearing dark glasses and there is a hat in my bag…and a swimsuit…and a heavy denim cover-up.
There is also a watch in the bag, but just for today I am going to try not to look at it, but rather to trust that buses and trains will turn up and I will get on them. The bus turns up, the train has just left.
I packed water, and wine, but no food. I packed a walk-route that I know I’m probably not going to attempt (re: wine). I walk into the station co-op and look at sandwiches and sushi. Then I walk out again. I walk up the wreckage that is now Prince of Wales Road. I remember Thorns having that ground floor retail outlet, all the shining lights and candelabra and glistening shades. I remember The Hotel Nelson, before it became a Premier Inn. I remember when Premier Inn deserved their name. This one doesn’t. The only word is squalid…and I wish I had cold hard coins to pass to the sorry people hunkered down in the shade, but not as much as I wish they weren’t there and that this whole street was all as it used to be. Bright and busy and mostly happy.
I wish it was like it was the day I’d wandered down to the station, and Clive rushed away from his desk, caught me unawares and picked me up and swung me round, just like they do in the movies. I wish the Royal Hotel with all its intricate brickwork were still a hotel and the bar was still there, and we were still who we were. But none of it is. And neither are we.
I forget about sandwiches and sushi. I buy a simple salad. I eat it on the station platform waiting for the train.
I’m wearing cropped leggings and a sleeveless top. I put in ear-studs that do not match my clothes, and found a bead-bangle that does: quartz for clarity, tiger’seye for courage, carnelian for creativity. Clarity, Creativity, Courage.
And of course a few haematite to absorb the negative vibes that follow us like dark cloud wraiths.
I am not going to the pool today. I am going to the beach instead. I am going to swim in the sea. I am going to scavenge, bum around, write.
The lady on the station platform bench is shades of beige, from the skin that peeks through her thinning blonde perm, to the matching handbag and shoes that pinch her feet, from her crimplene slacks to the gold at her wrists, which is dulled with age, rather than gleaming. I wonder about this “old woman look”, that seems to have survived the craze for eternal youth. I wonder if there is a Twilight Zone thing that happens when you reach a certain point in your allotted years, whereby you
go to bed in your scanties, with your long hair simply scrunched to stop it strangling you in the night, and you wake up in a flannelette nightie, your hair brittle with chemically induced curls.
I envy her that she is confident in pale-coloured slacks. With my lower body leakage, the would not be a good idea. But I look at the pinching shoes, and the no-longer necessary mask that she clutches like some 21st century talisman, and I wriggle my happy toes in my trekking sandals.
The track-side grass and the stubble in the fields are the same shades as those shoes.
Flat-bottomed clouds float on the high pressure, like snow-covered islands in a pristine sea. The bowling green looks like a sandpit.
Today I am going to swim in the sea…and then eat chips, with too much salt and not enough vinegar. And I am not going to judge the sad-eyed woman with the painfully thin children, who have glitter on their finger-nails. I am not going to flinch when the jets fly low over the cliffs and I am not going to yelp when I discover that wasps do sometimes sting for no reason. I don’t feel it land; I look down when it stings. Or maybe it bit. Do wasps bite as well as sting?
I walk barefoot over the pebbles and into water. It shimmers and glistens like liquid mercury. I almost expect it to trickle iridescent over my skin when I stand, pooling and evaporating. I am learning to swim. I have always been able to move around in the water, kicking and stroking, but now I am learning to swim, head down, diving under, rising up. I am not being taught; I simply figured it was time to learn, to learn how to breathe, how to move. I suspect it is still not elegant, and for today I am content with measuring my lengths between the two breakwaters, and not counting them at all.
Today, I figure out how to float, feet up, head back, arms out, held by the gentle swell. I watch the clouds and think about sea otters. And smile.
I decide to let go of the unfairness that parades itself in all the ugly men who have beautiful women hanging on their arms and on their every word, but none of the unattractive women are held by beautiful men. And I wonder how come I never learned how to walk in flip-flops.
Just for today, I am going to capture all of this, just as if any of it really mattered.
