Thursday afternoon, Ramsgate, overcast, everything neatly stowed into old hand bag for an overnight stay. The fast train: water marshes, les boucles du Stour, grey sky and yellow rape fields, clouds lowering into mist beyond Canterbury. St. Pancras, oyster card top up, fast tube to Piccadilly Circus - too early, go to Hatchards and browse, disgusted to find Hatchards is a camouflaged Waterstones... remember a birthday book token - two WW1 paperbacks. Found a bestseller "Cats in France" - designer interiors and charming exteriors - with cats - in France! Made me laugh. Try to go to St. James's Piccadilly for a prayer - but the church (unlike the burgeoning market place in the churchyard outside) is CLOSED - because it's after six... "moneylenders in the temple" thoughts. Walk to St James's Square in hope of sitting in a green space - also CLOSED. Staring into space see beloved cousin... meet, kiss, he's had a drink already, how are you? "fucked"...... enter the imposing edifice together - does this look bad? Stow my stuff and "prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet" (there will be time to murder and create!!!) seize a glass of cremant de bourgogne and sally into the fray - more beloved cousins - chat - more people - priest "Vatican II was an experiment that didn't work" - 3 x 2nd cozs once removed - briefly, plus spurned wife of beloved cousin's son...more shock revelations about health statuses/outrageous behaviour of various mutualities. Then the speeches: warm praise, S reads a moving extract from book - remember discussions with him about that sense of something "beyond" when we were teenagers - decide actually want to read book, not just because he's my cousin! We are invited to mingle - we mingle and separate. I wander off meet a couple of people I've encountered on Facebook - isn't the real world wonderful? and find interesting American student and have interesting discussion about Plato - Kierkegaard and poetic vs.philosophical language - another cousin enquires about my book "don't mention the book!"... More talk with putative collaborators about "The Menopause Dialogues"...mingle, blur, cremant de bourgogne, salmon scotch eggs, etc. Suddenly it's time to go - a detour to Paddington cramped under the curve of the tube door. We don't have forever to talk to the people we care about - if not now, when? The tube, the escalators and disjointed talk, "I had dhrink taken, your Honour" - The terrible melancholy of empty tube stations.
I send a text and soon - after dashing through Bayswater on the Circle Line, the tube station of my childhood - I am received into the bosom of South Kensington with a Thai takeaway and gallons of water. A long discussion about the economy. Are we totally fucked? Is there any hope for the West? Dear sister scathing about my views on Americans, which are probably unfair to 5% of them! Move onto safer ground - literature... Bed, magnificent downstairs spare room, bathroom, underfloor heating, shower, brass bed, v. comfortable - but can't sleep. Start reading S's. book ( http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Power-Ring-Spiritual-Vision/dp/082454983X/ref=pd_sim_sbs_b_1) but aware not really doing it justice in current state. Swap to book about Woodbine Willie, drift off to sleep....
"no, that is not what I meant - not what I meant at all."
I send a text and soon - after dashing through Bayswater on the Circle Line, the tube station of my childhood - I am received into the bosom of South Kensington with a Thai takeaway and gallons of water. A long discussion about the economy. Are we totally fucked? Is there any hope for the West? Dear sister scathing about my views on Americans, which are probably unfair to 5% of them! Move onto safer ground - literature... Bed, magnificent downstairs spare room, bathroom, underfloor heating, shower, brass bed, v. comfortable - but can't sleep. Start reading S's. book ( http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Power-Ring-Spiritual-Vision/dp/082454983X/ref=pd_sim_sbs_b_1) but aware not really doing it justice in current state. Swap to book about Woodbine Willie, drift off to sleep....
"no, that is not what I meant - not what I meant at all."
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