elsewhere
I’ve been trying to go elsewhere all my life.
Last year, I went all over the place. I went to Greece, I went to France, I went to Holland, I went to Morocco, I went to Canada, I went to Germany. That’s just some of the places I went to. I flew, I cycled, I went on Eurostar, I went by ordinary train, I walked, I got the bus, I drove, I sat in the backs of a lot of taxis. Wherever I went, however I went, there was no getting away from it. I would put my bag down on the cobbles, or the pavement, or the grassy side of the road, or the walkway next to the canal, or the plastic-strewn beach, or the railway station platform, or the bed, or the folding table-thing made of canvas and aluminium that some hotels have especially for suitcases, and where would I be?
I’d be sitting on a bench in a pretty garden high up the side of a fairly built-up slope above the city
of Naples. If you looked up you’d not see Vesuvius at all, because of the pollution. And if you looked down, you’d know Naples was down there, and you’d be able to hear the crazy hooting and roaring of the traffic, but because of the pollution it was like Naples didn’t exist.
Beautiful.
I mean Rotterdam was lovely. It’s got some great galleries. I particularly liked the medieval Madonna and Child with the tiny golden angels radiating out in interwoven rings round them both, playing golden musical instruments, forming a series of hoops of light, like vibrations or aura are emanating from them, and under her feet she’s crushing a long thin black monstrous-looking thing, a kind of devil I suppose it’s meant to be. And when I stood and looked at the painting, a painting as small as my own hand, of a pile of beautiful old books on a table and one book propped up and open at a double page, blank but for the figure of a man standing at the far end holding a spade, as if the blank pages were a field waiting to be farmed, for a moment, for a few seconds, looking at that picture, I was both right there in front of it and I was elsewhere.
Also, the gallery had a very lovely café/restaurant; there was leek soup the day I went, very nice, and even its toilets are works of art, with little plaques outside them like paintings have next to them for their title/artist information.
But pretty much the whole time I was there, I was still trying to get elsewhere.
*
There was a girl I knew when I was at school; her name was Debbie and her dad was famously elsewhere. That meant he was doing time, my mother told me; it was well known among the parents that Debbie’s father, from time to time, did time. Her mother worked at the petrol station where my elder brother worked the car-wash on Saturdays and Sundays, and this, along with a kindly demeanour, meant that Debbie, who was quite a tough sort of girl, and the kind who failed exams or tended to do averagely, was protective of me if I ever came under threat from the little gangs of girls who’d hang around the school gates waiting to slap the face of a swot.
We had sewing class last thing on a Friday and for this we were seated alphabetically, which meant that Debbie and I were put next to each other. Because she knew I liked books she told me about her favourite book, which was The Railway Children by E. Nesbit. The film is good, yeah, she said, but the book is much, much better. Then she lent me it, and was so delighted, when I gave it back to her, that I’d liked it as much as she had that she actually did my sewing for me for weeks; she’d do her own double-quick then give me hers to hold,
and work away at mine under the table, right under the sewing teacher’s nose. It was the only term in my life that I ever got a good mark in sewing. Once, in an English class, our teacher, who called himself the Gaelic version of his name and was known for his ritual of firing a cannon and raising a saltire in his back garden every year at New Year, and who still wore a black gown to teach in, which no one else
I’ve been trying to go elsewhere all my life.
Last year, I went all over the place. I went to Greece, I went to France, I went to Holland, I went to Morocco, I went to Canada, I went to Germany. That’s just some of the places I went to. I flew, I cycled, I went on Eurostar, I went by ordinary train, I walked, I got the bus, I drove, I sat in the backs of a lot of taxis. Wherever I went, however I went, there was no getting away from it. I would put my bag down on the cobbles, or the pavement, or the grassy side of the road, or the walkway next to the canal, or the plastic-strewn beach, or the railway station platform, or the bed, or the folding table-thing made of canvas and aluminium that some hotels have especially for suitcases, and where would I be?
I’d be sitting on a bench in a pretty garden high up the side of a fairly built-up slope above the city
of Naples. If you looked up you’d not see Vesuvius at all, because of the pollution. And if you looked down, you’d know Naples was down there, and you’d be able to hear the crazy hooting and roaring of the traffic, but because of the pollution it was like Naples didn’t exist.
Beautiful.
I mean Rotterdam was lovely. It’s got some great galleries. I particularly liked the medieval Madonna and Child with the tiny golden angels radiating out in interwoven rings round them both, playing golden musical instruments, forming a series of hoops of light, like vibrations or aura are emanating from them, and under her feet she’s crushing a long thin black monstrous-looking thing, a kind of devil I suppose it’s meant to be. And when I stood and looked at the painting, a painting as small as my own hand, of a pile of beautiful old books on a table and one book propped up and open at a double page, blank but for the figure of a man standing at the far end holding a spade, as if the blank pages were a field waiting to be farmed, for a moment, for a few seconds, looking at that picture, I was both right there in front of it and I was elsewhere.
Also, the gallery had a very lovely café/restaurant; there was leek soup the day I went, very nice, and even its toilets are works of art, with little plaques outside them like paintings have next to them for their title/artist information.
But pretty much the whole time I was there, I was still trying to get elsewhere.
*
There was a girl I knew when I was at school; her name was Debbie and her dad was famously elsewhere. That meant he was doing time, my mother told me; it was well known among the parents that Debbie’s father, from time to time, did time. Her mother worked at the petrol station where my elder brother worked the car-wash on Saturdays and Sundays, and this, along with a kindly demeanour, meant that Debbie, who was quite a tough sort of girl, and the kind who failed exams or tended to do averagely, was protective of me if I ever came under threat from the little gangs of girls who’d hang around the school gates waiting to slap the face of a swot.
We had sewing class last thing on a Friday and for this we were seated alphabetically, which meant that Debbie and I were put next to each other. Because she knew I liked books she told me about her favourite book, which was The Railway Children by E. Nesbit. The film is good, yeah, she said, but the book is much, much better. Then she lent me it, and was so delighted, when I gave it back to her, that I’d liked it as much as she had that she actually did my sewing for me for weeks; she’d do her own double-quick then give me hers to hold,
and work away at mine under the table, right under the sewing teacher’s nose. It was the only term in my life that I ever got a good mark in sewing. Once, in an English class, our teacher, who called himself the Gaelic version of his name and was known for his ritual of firing a cannon and raising a saltire in his back garden every year at New Year, and who still wore a black gown to teach in, which no one else
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