Memory-eternal time

I set off for Grant’s mid-morning and took along my Mouth single and Grant’s Ludd's Mill mags. I was soon walking through sunlit woods thinking how lucky I am to live near all this. As I walked I pretended I was accompanied by a foreign visitor, describing what I was seeing in my head, his imaginary impressed reactions. . . .

Grant had borrowed The Pop Group’s Y from Nik so we listened to that.

Then we set off for a walk, going along the main road, through the park and up to Hainsworth Hall with the intention of revisiting the Print Biennale but it was closed for Good Friday, so we plunged down towards a fair that was in the park: whirling flashing light and noise, leering laughing faces glimpsed over the balcony of a dodgems stall as we walked by, frozen in an instant of memory-eternal time, a fragment of conversation, a fragment of a life. Innocent enjoyment.

On we walked through no-hope derelict Lockley back streets in the direction of Easterby (saying how we liked it all). We visited second hand shops, Praxis (closed, open Tuesday), had a beefburger at the Potting Shed Café, and then to HMV where I bought the Pigbag 45 “Papa’s Got A Brand-New Pigbag.” We went back the way we’d come, through half-demolished Lockley and the fair again and then through Ashburn, getting back to Grant’s at teatime.

I took down some addresses for Kerouac LPs, books, cassettes, etc., and we listened to the Pop Group again and Pigbag and Mouth before going out for another walk, into the woods this time. We behaved like overgrown children, chasing each other around breathlessly, screaming and shouting and, as the rain dripped through damp branches, we sang duets to make it stop. It did!

I left mid-evening and walked back via the wet dusk-shrouded woods, strings of sprinkled street lamps glittering to the horizon, me thinking about how amazing everything is.

Easter eggs awaited when I got home (me and Andrew had complained that all the good things stop when you’re supposed to be an ‘adult’) and a good mood prevailed until Dad came home, bringing his bitterness and infuriating prejudices. He called Judith Hart a “bitch" and an “enemy of the country.” Sometimes I wish I had Grant’s relationship with his Dad.

Keeping a regular journal should be encouraged in school from an early age. I’ve always thought that, really. It helps to put life and the passing of time in perspective. Keeping a record of thoughts, feelings, and responses negates the pointlessness, the waste, all the people who live and die in awful anonymity, and at least use leave something useful behind when you die.

Later, listened to Radio 3 (“Celestial Mechanics: Macrocosmos 4” by George Crumb).