SAND (1978)
The sand is hot beneath my legs, so fine it gets into everything we touch and eat. No matter how I try I cannot build a castle with dry diamond sand, so must rush to the sea edge, scoop up a bucket of water and cool my toes, observing the swimmers with my suitable frown on: you will all get into so much trouble if you drown! Rush back to the safety of our extended family camp. My sister has been stolen by cousins who are even browner than I am. Auntie suggests I could look in the little gift kiosk with her. I’m happy with my buckets, but am not used to being asked if I would like to do something or not, so nod and follow.
The shop is hotter than a kettle and full of sand. There are shelves of shell animals, stacks of sticky peppermint rock, faded postcards. But there’s only one thing I want and it's the tiniest coca cola can in the whole world. It hangs on a silver chain. I would feel as if I were the most special person I could be if I might wear such a thing. I don’t know about talismans or lucky charms. I don’t know how to count the money in my neck purse.
I stare out into the blue and watch for pirate ships. Everyone else is packing up. No matter how many times my name is shouted I cannot hear. Cousins are bickering over flip flops. My sister runs into the sea as if looking for me so I run after her, the tiny hot cola can dangling in my hand.
(sketchbook page 2010-ish)
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SNOW (2002)
Another heatwave. In a bid to find the delusion of coolness, I grab at wintry poetry and sit in the shade of our bird-filled garden. Just now the birds are all sleeping or away in the woods. My neighbours are discussing the size of their gazebo. A distant ambulance siren and the sound of donkeys from a nearby smallholding. Such a strange suburbia we have found ourselves in. To think I always expected city life, no real seasons at all.
Flipping through poetry books, I feel idle and restless. Hot and bothered by a lack of inspiration. I dig about for a poetic moment that is suitably chilled: ice on ice, things as cold as the moon. Winter is a word for poems and not a place today. It crackles in this wretched heat and the sun blinds me.
I give up the garden and retreat into the airless house. I lay on a sofa and take my mind on a winter’s walk: footsteps along a snowy path, following them until dark. Until all there is is the song of a blackbird in the nothingness of blank snow.
I am woken by a child calling out and realise she is my own. Where have you been? She asks me.
(sketchbook pages from 2019)
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ANTIMACASSAR (1921)
Suddenly it is summer and yet I resist it! I am dressed for winter in my drab respectable brown, which I love and you cannot make me wear anything less! It is between the hours of lunch and teatime, so my aunt sleeps in her chair with the lacy antimacassar slipping behind her head. Last summer I watched her crochet the thing - what an odd thing to call a thing - antimacassar - and now all she does is rest her head on it! All the hours of work and for what? I am so hot I could take off my stockings and lay my head on the table, but I am being watched, not by my sleeping aunt of course, but all the gaudy pictures of her younger self. So many charming summer portraits of youth. Who is that young man with his hand resting on the small of her back, so enticingly? Surely not my uncle. Some other lover, for I like to think even she has had a few!
All the good fellows of my generation, all the good ones are spoken for or dead. I must rest my hands on the table as if participating in a seance, rattle the table gently and see what happens.
I must write my novel (begin my novel!). I must go into the garden and gather tall hollyhocks and paint them as stripes in a vase. I must do something to prevent myself from ever crocheting an antimacassar!
(sketchbook page 2019)
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