Article - General
Once more unto the breech
Monday, Santiago; Tuesday, Oporto, long hot day, finally through the gate, airside and there is the piano and player leaking classical music into the open plan whiteness, a starving bird cry in an artic waste. So far so good. Then the call from The French Customer, my bane, my karma for a past life transgression, must be. I wish for curved yew, slender white ash with blue-grey bodkin heads. I walk up to the far end of the soulless space and sip cool water, worn down suddenly and then joy, I have a new Waterlog in the bag. Peace and 90 minutes glide past, with a float tip in the passing current.
I board, JAFA, stick ‘Queen Rocks’ on when the seatbelt sign allows and burrow further into Cervantes and the psychotic Don Quixote, the original box of frogs. ‘Garage Inc.’ then, ‘Astronomy’, what is that song about? Seatbelts on, Cervantes only.
Gatwick South Terminal, ‘Appetite for Destruction’ on the headphones, ‘Welcome to the jungle’ strangely appropriate and a good beat to walk from plane to passport control. Then “It’s so easy”…’I see you standing there, you think you’re so cool, why don’t you just F-‘ “Good evening how are you?” and with my “I’m as interested in your life story as you are in mine” straight face with a hint of very tired but polite anyway, hardly faked, I hand over my passport. I’m still me. Good.
I get coffee and a toastie snatched en passant like the Night Train’s mail bag. ‘Evanescence’ for the car in the dark, skipping the songs that require a special knowledge of bipolar disorders and at a flat legal speed reach Stockbridge, pull in, past closing time and lean on white railing where a thread of the Test jinks between the road and the path, in daylight haunted by bread bloated rainbow trout. I sip coffee, still warm, watch the streetlamp reflection shimmer in the curving water and its echo in the coffee held in front of me. I breathe in, out, shut my eyes and listen to the water, picking out two beats, the side to side waves of the water caught between two near right angles and then a longer one, maybe a standing wave, the reflection under the road from the first bend and it’s return. Then I realise the real sound is the stream chuckling at the absurdity of it all and I feel myself smile back in the dark. See, water is good for you.
Wednesday, back in the car, Abacabok, thudding Tuareg music, with the flat sound, impedance matched to the still cooling sand around the tented players, an optimum power transfer. Zurich on Friday. Once more unto the breech, dear friends, once more.