Sometimes odd coincidences happen. I spoke to a man on the street and he said he knew me. I was sure I didn’t but then we got talking and it turned out I knew his ex, now deceased wife and some of his other friends. But we had certainly never met before. That was just a coincidence. The other day, a rainy windswept day, I saw stray cucumbers on the rainy pavement at three different locations in the town. A coincidence? Or might it be that on a tempestuous day shoppers with a cucumber in their grocery bag might very well lose it on the windswept highway. You do, do you not?, put the cucumber in last, thrusting it into a gap left between milk and cornflakes, so it makes sense that harassed shoppers, fighting the hurricane, passing the shoulder bag from one side to another, might loose the cucumber, have it tumble headlong from his or her bag, one at South Kensington, one on High Street Kensington and one on Harleyford Road, Vauxhall. Lost cucumbers; just one more round in the eternal debate between the rational and the the mystical.
Author Archives: paulbilic2003
December 23: a christmas ditty
The baby Jesus in his cot
Knows nothing yet of Herod’s plot.
The ox and ass are blithely dumb.
They know not from where this child has come.
Carpenter Joe picks at his beard.
This birth is all that he had feared.
The shepherds came in out of the cold.
Deaf to this greatest story ever told.
Three kings with gifts too, quite a few.
They’d brought them for some friends they knew.
And Mary sits, her eyes bemused.
Her thoughts on Jesus quite confused.
Where did this child come from in fact?
A father was the thing he lacked.
The Holy Spirit was to blame.
At least that’s what the gospels claim.
The babe doth mewl and puke and roar.
The same sounds as the inn next door.
Only one angel sits aloft in glory.
She, only she, can tell the real story.
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November 25: lecture, grumble and rant
I am inventing a new card game for Christmas. It is called Lecture, Grumble and Rant. This is not the name of a solicitors’ practice, but it does reflect the nature of modern conversation. You will pick a card from the pack and have thirty seconds to lecture, grumble or rant without hesitation, repetition or deviation. There will be a trump card, called Bemused. This card will reflect those very rare conversationalists who are able to transcend the three main techniques. They will be called upon to illustrate a quiet, tangential comment on the three principal protagonists. What do you think? I may even offer it to Radio Four.
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November 21: controlled bitterness
I am by nature not a very bitter person, but I found myself touched by the spray from a wave of bitterness last week. I had seen a poster for something on a wall in the tube, the type of thing that I had tried to promote about ten years ago only to be told that it would interest no-one. As so often, I have found myself ahead of the curve. It engendered a wave of bitterness that engendered some irritability in my habitually sunny disposition. These days I mostly avoid bitterness. It is a young man’s luxury. After extended periods of not getting what you want you have to just live with it and find a way of thinking about yourself in an elevated way (which is vital) without the adherence of much of the rest of the population. You still need some bitterness, of course, as bile keeps you kicking, but this will be controlled bitterness.
November 7: a spider
We have a spider on an elaborate web outside the kitchen window. There is the web and a leaf stuck onto one of its corners where the spider goes sometimes for protection or maybe to lock out the light, I’m not sure. He’s a big spider. I have seen him with other insects trapped in the web. He knows his spider business. We thought: should clean those windows and get rid of that web, but I am torn. It is such a wonderful architectural product; it seems like cultural vandalism. so we are putting off the day.
The other day an enormous spider appeared on the living room wall. I am not particularly scared of spiders but this one almost took my breath away. I thought, if I kill it with The Economist or The London Review of Books, it would leave such a splatter on the wall and also, again, my better instincts prevailed, why kill? I managed to put a glass over it and then a strong piece of card under the champagne coupe and so was able to take it outside and let it crawl free in the courtyard. I wonder, is it my spider from outside the kitchen window whom I haven’t spotted recently. Maybe the storm dislodged him and using his wiles he sought refuge indoors. Anyway, the spiders or spider are still at large and I shall try not to kill them or him.
October 29: poor conversationalists
You would think it would be an easy enough competence to listen, then speak, listen, then speak and so construct with another person a conversation, but this art is not always accomplished proficiently. Here are three types of incompetence I have recently come up against.
Monsieur A listens to what you say, then picks up on a detail and uses that as the impulse for his response. You gymnastically and skillfully re-formulate a response to adapt to the detail, whereupon he finds another peripheral detail from your latest response and picks up on that. Monsieur A can only converse through marginalia.
Madame B says something. You are in the middle of your response when you notice she is talking at the same time in an undertone, commenting immediately on what you are saying, so that two voices are happening simultaneously. Madame B can only converse through constant drone.
Monsieur C does not deign to engage in conversation unless he is a specialist in the matter and will come up trumps. If tricked into dialogue and revealed to be found wanting on some fact that should fall within his supposed province, he will crow I knew that!, as though he were a recalcitrant schoolboy. Monsieur C is in his late sixties. Monsieur C can only converse when he sees the imminence of his own triumph.
Yes, there are many ways to fail in the seemingly simple art of conversation.
October 25: the brexit cafe
Tom from next door told me he had been to the Brexit cafe and had a nice cup of tea and a figgie cake. He was delighted. We hadn’t planned on going to the Brexit cafe but we were staying out to keep away from the cleaning lady and still had another half hour on the streets, so we thought, all right then, so be it, let’s try out the Brexit cafe. I call it The Brexit cafe but it calls itself The Tea House or something like that. It only sells tea, no coffee. It writes No Coffee up on the door in a panoply of fonts.. And it’s full of union jacks. So obviously you put two and two together. We went in. There was a man sitting reading Henry James. So far, so consistent. I fancied a nice pudding. Apparently, or so we thought, they did basic builder’s tea, but when we looked at the menu it said Earl Grey £7/9 (£7 for a cup/ £9 for a pot as I harrowingly understood it), Figgie cake or pie or pudding or whatever they were calling it £10. There was still time. Quickly, silently, we extracted ourself from this place. About 300 yards away, on Black Prince Road, we found another cafe where the bacon roll was £3.20 and the teas were £1.75 each. My relief was palpable. Next time I get to see Tom it will be a case of let me tell you what almost happened to us yesterday, young man. Talk about close shaves!
October 22: on bobby charlton
When I was little I asked my dad, how much does Bobby Charlton earn? and he said £100 a week, which for me was about the most you could dream of. £100… every week. I asked that question because for me Bobby Charlton was the pole star. I sincerely remember wondering what I would do in some distant and unimaginable future when Bobby Charlton died. I could hardly imagine how life would go on. Well, he died yesterday and I suppose I can get over it. As I have said before, when a famous person who has marked your past dies or ages, the emotion you feel is not for them, it is for yourself, your own lost years, the time that cannot be brought back. Equally, the yearning for a simpler, more innocent time, or, maybe, and this is telling, a simpler, more innocent self.
October 15: industrious curiosity
As I have mentioned before, I am a great dredger of the past and of past people. I locate them, from five years ago, ten years ago, twenty years ago, thirty even, and contact them. I note they are often loathe to connect back. Of course, it may be that they want nothing more to do with me. Fair do’s. But I am sure there are a host of other reasons. Some people are unhappy to reveal themselves to you; they are older, fatter, balder, more failed than before. Maybe some are more successful and they want me to keep my dirty mitts off them. As you get older there may be a truth that we shrink into our tiny unit: the family atom; those who know you as you now are. Maybe the you as you once were needs avoiding because actually you were never like that, you just got pigeonholed that way and don’t want to be so again thank you very much. For me there is a difference between meeting old friends and acquaintances in a group or one at a time. Personally, I don’t want the group experience. And, to be honest, isn’t my desire to re-connect not much more than idle curiosity. Though, why is curiosity idle? It’s actually industrious.
October 4: so many pictures on a frieze
My girlfriend came home exasperated with one of her yoga workshops. People are so busy putting virtue emogis up on the whatsapp that it’s become a self-propagating site for self-congratulation (prayers, hearts, love in all shapes and sizes). But when someone actually needs a bit of love or empathy it’s a case of turn the other way. The desire to post up your identity in a series of pictures thrives and prospers in today’s bewildering world. Consider the tattoo. What a rich array of hearts, axes, plants and greenery in general, noble invocations in foreign often dead-language tongues, creatures of all shapes and sizes, greet you as you happen to notice the highly-inked arm of your neighbour in the coffee shop. So many pictures on a frieze. Whence this desire to offer a print-out of your personality to a stranger, or a PR version maybe? Can I not make my own mind up about you from conversation and observation of your behaviour, from actual social engagement? Or must you be immune to this? It reminds me of the business boasts. We are considerate constructors. Let me, the customer, be the judge of that. May I be permitted to ignore your frieze and just have a chat?
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