old-fashioned doctor’s wife, or a vicar’s wife. I was there when needed. And now I am not needed and I am not there.
I wouldn’t teach Latin. I remember that Andrew was quite cross with me one term when Miss Phillips was off for weeks with pleurisy, and I said no, I wouldn’t take her class. I said my Latin wasn’t good enough. And it wasn’t. Latin is a serious subject. You can’t play around with Latin. I have a respect for Latin.
The lumpen boys in big boots walk the streets. The ugly, heavy-footed spotted youths, in their gashed jeans. Two of them followed me last night as I walked back from the Club. They were singing some kind of stupid jingle, and I think they were singing it at me. It went something like this:
Jim Jim, Jim Jiminy
Jim Jim, Jeroo
I’ve washed all the dishes
And I’ve fuckall to do.
Then they overtook me, leering back at me, to see if they’d scored a goal. Or so I fancied. Maybe I imagined the whole thing. Maybe they didn’t even notice me. I’m not very noticeable.
I sometimes think that my kind of washed-out genteel look – a look which I could not shed even if I tried – attracts a particular kind of aggression these days. The white lumpen boy ones are worse than the indifferent black boys, who do not notice me at all.
‘Lumpen’ means ragged. I read that in a book last week. I thought it meant something different. I think most of us think it means something different.
I am beginning to realize that black people come from many different kinds of social background, as well as from many different countries. I must always have known that, but in Suffolk I didn’t see enough of them to be able to begin to make distinctions. There are very smart young black people on reception at the health Club – a young woman called Tamsin who wears smartly tailored suits in strong plain dark colours, a good-looking young man called Chelsea who wears a white jacket and a red tie. They have a very pleasant manner, which I think of as faintly American, though they are not American. They come from another world from the man with dreadlocks who lives under the bridge by the howling monsters rattling their chains. They would not recognize the holy black man with the crucifix. I wonder what they would make of the elderly black woman I saw on the Tube this morning. She was sitting opposite me, tidily but cheaply dressed, reading a paperback book with a heavily laminated cover. Her boldly framed spectacles were held around her neck by a golden chain. She was elderly but not old, and she was dry and withered. It was her legs that attracted my attention. They were slim, and hideously scarred. I wondered if she had had varicose vein operations that had gone wrong. But far from hiding these once handsome legs, she was flaunting them. She was wearing a pair of semi-transparent toffee-tinted plastic shoes with high heels, of a curious elegance. The set of her ankles was superb. Now who was she, and whence had she come, and whither was she so proudly going?
I miss my Virgil evening class at what used to be the College of Further Education, and is now the Health Club. It was an interesting group. We were reading the
Aeneid
, in English, but with access to a Latin text. We compared our various English translations and suggested phrases of our own as improvements. We were an archaic, arcane little group. That’s where I first met Anaïs. I’d like to ring Anaïs this evening, but I don’t want to bother her. I don’t want to become a bore to Anaïs. I’ll wait for her to ring me. Anaïs was the
most exotic and unlikely class member, but most of us were quite bright. We met on Thursday evenings. Our teacher was a fine woman called Mrs Jerrold. She was the widow of a legendary BBC Third Programme drama producer called Eugene Jerrold who had worked with Louis MacNeice and Dylan Thomas and George Orwell and all the great names of the 1940s and 1950s. Even I had heard of these writers. I had heard some of
I wouldn’t teach Latin. I remember that Andrew was quite cross with me one term when Miss Phillips was off for weeks with pleurisy, and I said no, I wouldn’t take her class. I said my Latin wasn’t good enough. And it wasn’t. Latin is a serious subject. You can’t play around with Latin. I have a respect for Latin.
The lumpen boys in big boots walk the streets. The ugly, heavy-footed spotted youths, in their gashed jeans. Two of them followed me last night as I walked back from the Club. They were singing some kind of stupid jingle, and I think they were singing it at me. It went something like this:
Jim Jim, Jim Jiminy
Jim Jim, Jeroo
I’ve washed all the dishes
And I’ve fuckall to do.
Then they overtook me, leering back at me, to see if they’d scored a goal. Or so I fancied. Maybe I imagined the whole thing. Maybe they didn’t even notice me. I’m not very noticeable.
I sometimes think that my kind of washed-out genteel look – a look which I could not shed even if I tried – attracts a particular kind of aggression these days. The white lumpen boy ones are worse than the indifferent black boys, who do not notice me at all.
‘Lumpen’ means ragged. I read that in a book last week. I thought it meant something different. I think most of us think it means something different.
I am beginning to realize that black people come from many different kinds of social background, as well as from many different countries. I must always have known that, but in Suffolk I didn’t see enough of them to be able to begin to make distinctions. There are very smart young black people on reception at the health Club – a young woman called Tamsin who wears smartly tailored suits in strong plain dark colours, a good-looking young man called Chelsea who wears a white jacket and a red tie. They have a very pleasant manner, which I think of as faintly American, though they are not American. They come from another world from the man with dreadlocks who lives under the bridge by the howling monsters rattling their chains. They would not recognize the holy black man with the crucifix. I wonder what they would make of the elderly black woman I saw on the Tube this morning. She was sitting opposite me, tidily but cheaply dressed, reading a paperback book with a heavily laminated cover. Her boldly framed spectacles were held around her neck by a golden chain. She was elderly but not old, and she was dry and withered. It was her legs that attracted my attention. They were slim, and hideously scarred. I wondered if she had had varicose vein operations that had gone wrong. But far from hiding these once handsome legs, she was flaunting them. She was wearing a pair of semi-transparent toffee-tinted plastic shoes with high heels, of a curious elegance. The set of her ankles was superb. Now who was she, and whence had she come, and whither was she so proudly going?
I miss my Virgil evening class at what used to be the College of Further Education, and is now the Health Club. It was an interesting group. We were reading the
Aeneid
, in English, but with access to a Latin text. We compared our various English translations and suggested phrases of our own as improvements. We were an archaic, arcane little group. That’s where I first met Anaïs. I’d like to ring Anaïs this evening, but I don’t want to bother her. I don’t want to become a bore to Anaïs. I’ll wait for her to ring me. Anaïs was the
most exotic and unlikely class member, but most of us were quite bright. We met on Thursday evenings. Our teacher was a fine woman called Mrs Jerrold. She was the widow of a legendary BBC Third Programme drama producer called Eugene Jerrold who had worked with Louis MacNeice and Dylan Thomas and George Orwell and all the great names of the 1940s and 1950s. Even I had heard of these writers. I had heard some of
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