Wick (John More): Week 2 – 24 October

So, how can you tell if you’re not having a good week? Well—voice of experience here—one way is if you find yourself confusing lip balm with shoe polish. Let me explain. Having certain weighty matters on my mind (i.e., whither I should direct my steps for a walk), and feeling that my lips were dry, I decided to go put on lip balm. On the way, I took a detour into my bedroom to don my shoes, which I also remembered needed a clean. On entering my bedroom, the first thing I noticed was my liquid shoeshine applicator. Somehow all these impulses combined to short-circuit what I laughingly call my brain, and I found myself picking up the shoeshine bottle, popping the top, and starting to apply it to my lips. Luckily it was only the briefest dab before all my senses screamed the alarm, and the application of some washing-up detergent removed the stain, but for a while there I risked looking like I’d been in a transporter accident with an over-ripe banana.

It’s been that sort of autumn. The other week I was in the museum, and some thistledown drifted in the open door. One of the charming ladies I volunteer with reached out and grabbed it, and said that when she was a child she was told that these were fairies and if you caught one you made a wish. She was thrilled, as she’d never caught one before. But as she opened her fist to reveal the mangled wisps of thistledown on her palm I heard myself saying, “Well, that’s one fairy that’s never going to grow up and have kids.” Honestly, if I could have recalled those words I would. But it was too late. They are now part of the eternal, irrecoverable unfolding history of the universe, and somewhere in heaven the Recording Angel got a ping on his phone, woke up from a doze with a jerk, and scrolled through his messages before dipping his quill in the ink bottle and making another entry in the book of my life. In red ink.

All the same, it could, I suppose, have been worse. I was talking with a retired teacher. She told me of a school trip she’d been on once, visiting some old ruins. It was a foggy day, and some of the children wandered off and started clambering on the walls. At last the head teacher noticed these two figures on the walls and shouted at them to come down. They ignored him. So he roared out, “Right! You two come down right now and stand still until I come and deal with you!” Only when he got closer he discovered that they weren’t any of his party at all but a couple of German hikers, who were now standing petrified to attention at the foot of the walls…

Autumn colour in the Adirondacks

========================

TECHNICAL STUFF

I’m now about 3.5 inches into the plain knitting of the body, which is, I’m delighted to say, too floppy to stand up properly. There will be about 12 inches of plain knitting before I start the pattern, so feel free to start a longish book—Moby-Dick, say, or A Brief History of Time—and catch up with me sometime in November.