Soundbites from the boat

We have become aggressive hunter-gatherers, snarling at anything that hinders our chance of survival - waiters, mosquitos, pedestrians - and developping the deadly instincts of a Dalek when it comes to stray insects on the boat. "If it flies, it dies," Shaz says grimly, swatting another one away. We all laugh.

Bleak Valleys humour and hysterical laughter are becoming familiar landmarks on the rolling soundscape of the canal, along with a buzzing fan and a stuttering pipe pumping out water. Every time the pipe starts pumping, my father asks, "does that mean the boat is sinking? Should we book into a hotel?" He sounds hopeful.

The boat's new catchphrase has been announced as:

"If you dump, you pump."

This refers to the toilets that only flush if you pump them vigorously. Hysterical laughter again. That's a good sign, isn't it? Maybe one day soon we'll be sitting around a roaring fire telling tales of our inexpert manoeuvrings of this boat. Like Odysseus and his crew. That's right. Maybe this counts as bonding.

"Mum, it's not like being on a car, you have to -"
"Oh just shut up!"
"Now, now..."
" Mum, your sailing's worse than your driving."
"You've been itching to say that, haven't you?"

Well, sort of bonding anyway. Oh family holidays! This one's been peculiarly pleasant, even though we are bitten and sandy and sweaty and unwashed. Waking up to the canal and the green glowing leaves, vivid living limbs of trees that shimmer and rustle with life, crisp against the clear blue sky. Leaves agitating, whispering, telling us to get a move on and enjoy the bright blue day. The solid metal sheen of the bike is winking at me in the sunlight, raring to go...

Oh fuck. Trying to moor up on the bank, we have managed to dent both the side of the boat and a tree. We are not like Odysseus and his crew. Nowhere near. We are more like the green seascum that latched onto the bottom of the boat, lazy and unskilled, hoping for a free ride...!

Mum: "I don't believe in washing up liquid. We're not getting any. We don't need it, all those chemicals."
Me, muttered: "Oh dear god."

Between a loch and a hard place

The soft drip-drop could mean mosquitos or an empty water tank. This noise wakes me, alerts me to the possibility of danger. Am lying on a hard lump of a bed, that feels like frozen custard - same colour too. Lurid pink curtains let in artificially-flavoured strawberry light. I open my eyes again and I'm lying in a tiny cabin on a boat. I'm not sure where I am. I'm not sure who else is on board. I'm not even sure if the boat is moving. Oh fuck - I think it is...

the morning after (the Cambridge ball)

A bike, cut clean
across their bickering conversation.
Blinds drawn, banishing the dawn.
Cocktails that clink, grotesquely.
This world does not fit
right- this world is reality

threatening the shape
of both their dreams, imposing its exterior
hideousness. Turning women in ball gowns
into girls about town, smudged make-up
and smeared smiles painted insincere
-less smile than sneer- with jam-and-butter
breakfast-traces strewn across their unripe faces...

this is not the world of visions
nor of hopes - the perfection of a rose,
the sky, their hearts, simply could not cope.

the traveller

Foot
loose
and fancyfree

I slipped my sandals under
the seat opposite me,
tipped my toes
onto the ledge so that my legs were a bridge

between the train's cool cushion
and myself, later bridging the gap
between the train and platform,
transporting me

from door to distant land
like a sultan who disrobes,
weary from battle and the weight
of royal matters, settles atop a silky seat -

so do my feet, released from sweaty sandals
glitter with sun-brown battle scars.

Like a traveller
who's been granted royal protection I bow low,
and smile and tell them it's not far...

concert at Exeter college chapel, Oxford

We sat down and were showered with gold. There's no other way of putting it: gold liquid drops of candlelight welled from the wax as though the candles had been moved to tears by the music. Then there was the honey-gold that spilled onto the singers' skin, reflected from the chalice-coloured archways of the church, where the saints shimmered like crumpled stars, hung above a portal into another world - one of music and unsayable longing.
Music and art often reach feelings that are deeper than words... The way that classical music could stir people has been lost to the class snobbery and academic bias of decades, centuries even. Now ordinary people avoid classical music and academics/ pseudo-intellectuals relish it - they can speak intelligently about a piece of music, and think that this is akin to understanding it, ergo enjoying it. This is false logic; one can enjoy something immensely, feel moved by it, without understanding it at all... kissing, for instance, is one such example. Music is another.
Sometimes speaking critically and academically about a piece of music enables you to find a deeper meaning in it. Sometimes it simply distracts you from the power and beauty of the thing itself.

The singer in this chapel was singing 'an die Einsamkeit' - 'on solitude'. Kind of ironic, I thought, that three people had joined together to perform a piece of music about being alone... Then I looked around at the golden light and the fragile blue of the chapel windows, like egg shell vibrating as the living, incredible thing hatched within, cracking our human shells with this beautiful sound...
Alright, I thought, well done, you've said something suitably clever. Full marks, you faux intellectual. Now shut up and concentrate on the music...

Charivari Agreable, the Oxford Baroque ensemble

the wine merchant

Nicolas was her local wine merchant; she visited his shop on Fridays, and when she left she always ready to step into the weekend in style, wine in tow. The shop was narrow and teeming with bottles; they crouched by the counter like clumps of wild flowers and crept up the walls like ivy, taking ownership of the shop, transforming it into an intoxicating lair. This place was a cavern of brewed mischief, where bottles of wine as sweet as ambrosia and as dark as dragon’s blood piled high against the walls. Stepping into this haven and doing business with Nicolas was the way that she rescued herself, every Friday, from the drudgery of the working week.

Is it any wonder, then, that in the bar she fell back on Nicolas, and on alcohol, to drown her sorrows once again? It was the habit of years: she had always relied on Nicolas, received alcohol, delivered from his hands. And so, once again she accepted a drink from him, and relied on him and leant on his arm and...

...and so the affair began, in that first heady sip of wine. Nicolas had a long nose and very narrow nostrils which he used to discern the flavours of a new vintage. His eyes flashed green when he was impassioned, like blades of grass caught in sunlight. He always had a hint of stubble.

But the thing that caught her most about him was the scar. A deep red mark etched on his collarbone betrayed his adolescent apprenticeship as a wine merchant, when he dropped a bottle of wine costing thousands and a glass shard caught his torso. She often traced that scar in the dark with her fingers when he was sleeping. Years later she could draw it with her eyes closed, recreate that beautiful mark of clumsy adolescence.

cigarettes and cinders

We were in a dim-lit club crammed full of twenty-year-olds and cocktails and the slightest scent of sweat. The dancers were too close for comfort, but the loud distorted noise of the bar made it a good place to spill secrets.
Nathalie crossed one leg over the other so that both legs reflected the spangling light of the bar. Her hair was astonishing; it fell across her shoulders and wrapped itself around her frame like amber silk, a robe in itself.
She tipped a tussle of tobacco onto a flattened out cigarette paper, rolled it and rerolled it with concentration, as though it were a piece of origami that she wanted to get exactly right. Soon the cigarette smoke fluttered from her mouth: smoke like a fleet of faded butterflies, emerging from their crumpled lung chrysalis. The smoke dispersed but the tobacco odour lingered and clung to our clothes, the fumes of a dark perfume.