Sunday shadow puppets

I went out for a walk in the late afternoon sunshine; it was sort of glowing all over the buildings. Avoiding the trendy bits and the nasty old (I mean good ol') High St, with its betting shops, takeaways and filth, I walked the back way to Church St, through the neighbourhood with its huge square houses. To get to the neighbourhood you go to the end of my road, down a little road with a bridge over the train tracks and a row of Hassidic shops (challah, buns, cakes, kosher wine, groceries, household items), & past a church I've never been in, and then you turn. The houses are very big, very square, made of some kind of pale stone, very unyielding. They all seem to have budleias in their front gardens - budleias and rubbish.

This was the hour when the whole street, the whole neighbourhood, smells of gefilte fish. I used to love that stuff when I was little and if I only knew someone now would would make me some I'd be very happy. I hear it's an art, but then so is chicken soup with matzo balls and I can make that.

The light was golden (as schmaltz? Or is that too schmaltzy?) when I went out, with the sun shining straight into my eyes; I walked round the churchyard of the old 1560s St Mary's church, with its moss-grown crypts and those awful memorial stones that are the size and shape of coffins or mummies, just as the light was beginning to pinken. The ground was a clutter of old sticks, broken slabs, dirst; one gravestone had a single, dark green strand of ivy growing straight up it. Most of the graves are too eroded to read, but some of them date back 200 years.

But once you're in the park you get a horizon (ignore the fact that it's Green Lanes) with a sort of castle jutting out into it (ignore the fact that it's the climbing centre); over there, and over the houses with their chimneys, the sunset went an intense, violent orange, melting upward into the usual pale blue. The trees were black cut-outs against it, and a jet trail hung motionless in the sky beside a faint white crescent moon. A duck flew up from the pond. It was exactly like this:




















I sat on a bench for a few minutes till the light went a bit more.

Except for a couple of very short, where-are-you-when-will-you-be-home conversations with Mlle B, I have not spoken to a soul all day. Well, scratch that: I spoke to the girls in the Spence, ordering coffee and telling them that Fresh & Wild is now charging £2.59 for one of their small white loaves (£1.40 in the Spence itself - they laughed and told me they even take it down there hemselves - nobody from F&W has to lift a finger!). But aside from that, I have been on my own and silent since yesterday afternoon, & life is but a dream. It's hard to believe I'm even in this scene, somehow.

Strangely, hanging all those newly-framed pictures seems to have contributed to this dream-state, as most of the pictures are things I have either had for ages, or have had all my life, or have been given by friends and relatives, or have inherited from my father le Duc. In short, they all have very personal significance, as well as being interesting to look at. But then, hanging them if I weren't in a dream state they may not have had such an effect. And no one has even seen them yet.

Coming back there were a few more people about in my road: an old man in his long black coat, stooped over a cigarette in the street; a tall, red-headed girl in her long navy blue (why must they wear navy blue?? It is simply ugly on everybody) skirt, looking impossibly grown up and impossibly young at the same time. Two tiny boys, in their yarmulkes, playing: one by the front gate, and the other running away pell-mell as fast as he could, while the first one shouted - screamed, really - Eins! (pause) Zwei! (long pause, jumping up and down, then hilarious burst) Dreeeeeiiii!! And with that he rushes into the house.

By now the pink fairy dust is settling and the blue is arriving. Sounds are sounding more normal, less enchanted, and soon it will just be plain old night, with traffic and harsh lighting. The fish smells even more delicious. I've been walking for an hour and can hardly tell the difference between life and dreaming: I've been living since Thursday almost entirely in my own internal spaces, and sleeping badly so I'm never sure if I'm awake or not. And I'm home.