And drop me they did. While I was still flying. Christ. I was profoundly disorientated on our return, like I was concussed.
These are my notes, as I fought to right everything.
Norwood Jnct – drunks, dogs, dirt, fruit, seen through a foreigner’s eyes. Rottweiler with trash hanging on its lead: “He ain’t going nowhere for no-one love…”
There is a piano playing. I don’t do piano. I’m a strings girl.
A night of sirens, the planes woke me. Then the traffic. Then the parakeets. Then the builders arrived to work on the school across the road with their radio and drills. And then the boiler clicked on and the cacophony as I lay there with something on my eyes to shut out the light was detailed, vulgar, shameless. City tinnitus. Inescapable. Then..
Accustomed to frugality. Used to lighting the little water heater. Used to plainness. Water to wash with too hot, scalding hot. Nobody needs water that hot.
Lights on everywhere.
Stand at sink unable to decide what to do.
Then the cyclical thoughts that I left behind when I got up in the air, silent for a fortnight, return. The same words on repeat, predicting every move. Like a bloody sergeant major.
Outside, to breathe. To pull up weeds from between the slabs. To smell the evening primrose that has sprung up everywhere. To hang the insistent washing. A neighbour is on his mobile phone, smoking a fag. All that divides us is two foot and a broken fence. He might as well be sitting in my lap, blowing in my face. His conversation is in my lap. And her, her on the otherside, starts laughing. That sodding laugh. A builder is whistling to his radio now. How do we tolerate this daily assault? When did I become as sensitive as sunburn?
Watching this mountain with the sun behind it is all I want to do.
I go in, lie down. This is crazy. I didn’t go away to come back feeling sorry for myself. I need to find the ground again.
Screw the rest of the notes. Only one thing for it. Fetch the tent kids, shoulders back. We are going camping!
Comments