passing shadows

As university draws to a close - how strange to write that - deadlines have stepped up a notch. 

So, in the interim period... I thought I’d pop another one of last year’s columns for the Strathclyde Telegraph on here (p.s. This was the very first one I wrote):

♥

Something I’ve Noticed: Peripheral People
(From the Strathclyde Telegraph. Issue 1. October 2011)

I try to live with my eyes wide open – partly because walking about with closed eyes is kind of dangerous, but also I don’t want to miss anything. I am a third year English and Creative Writing student, and I’m looking forward to writing for you over the coming months. What can you expect from this column? A collection of ‘noticings’: anything from overheard conversations, to observations from the bizarre world of public transport. Hello, friend, and happy reading!

I thought I’d start by telling you about the man who walks past my house every day. He is stout with a rather gruff expression, but what’s particularly fascinating about him is his hair: it is striped. A white stripe runs from the back of his head down into his moustache, almost as though someone painted it there. My sister spotted this soon after we moved. ‘It makes him look a bit like a skunk, doesn’t it?’ We all peeked out the window, and - ‘Yes!’ - it really did! Since then, we have always (rather fondly) referred to him as ‘The Skunk’.

I walked past him recently. He was on his phone, and didn’t look up. As I was walking, it suddenly struck me how odd it was. I have seen The Skunk nearly every day for the past thirteen years – I have had conversations about him, I have worried that he’s ill when no one’s seen him for a few days – and yet he probably doesn’t even know I exist. It’s almost surreal to think how he has been going about his life for years, not realising that he has somehow become a part of mine.

It made me wonder how many people’s stories we all stumble into, unaware. Do people on my street notice me running like a maniac – buttons bursting open, scarf unravelling – to catch the bus? They must: I do it often enough. Maybe I have become part of their daily routine. (‘What’s the time, Marge?’ ‘It must be nearly half nine, Phil. That strange girl just ran past.’)

It’s easy, especially in the city, to feel like we’re invisible – to feel insignificant in the midst of a crowd. It can be frightening – mixed in among a-hundred other faces on a train – to feel like we have lost ourselves, like we have become nothing more than passing shadows.

Recently I’ve been thinking a lot, though, about all the people who have quietly affected me. I don’t mean friends, or even acquaintances. I mean the peripheral people – people like The Skunk, or the couple in my work who always order white coffees, or the lady I saw once lifting her little boy up to the post-box so he could pop the letters in. 

I’m thinking about people like the boy with the blue t-shirt last week who played the harmonica while crossing the road; he  left music trailing behind him as he went. I'm thinking abut people like the old man on my bus a few months ago who I overhead talking to the lady beside him. He was telling her about his wife – about how she ‘made a great Shepherd’s Pie’, and how she was from the Highlands, and how she was a ‘good lass’ – and he was laughing. And then, his face suddenly fell and he became very quiet. And he whispered in a hoarse voice: ‘I’ve lost her now – I’ve lost her.’ And even though he wasn’t even talking to me, I found myself crying into my scarf.

All these people – they make up the story that is my life. They may not be major characters – I might not know their names, or even remember their faces – but something about them, the essence of them, has stuck with me. Maybe my life wouldn’t be dramatically different without them. But it wouldn’t be the same.

Our lives are constantly overlapping. We might not realise the effect we’re having on other people, but we do have an effect. We don’t pass though life unnoticed; we are connected. 

♥

(Pictures from: Will Freeborn - a Scottish artist. Quite a lot of these pictures are from familiar places)

the things they leave behind.

I thought I'd post another one of my columns for the Strathclyde Telegraph. This is one of the last ones I wrote for the paper before the summer... but, for a number of reasons, the paper-version of this issue never actually ended up going to print (which was a pity, because I was quite pleased with it). So here it is: a kind of exclusive! (*wink*)

Something I've Noticed: discarded.

(from the Strathclyde Telegraph. Issue 7. April 2012.) 

It started with a handkerchief.

I was waiting at the bus stop when I spotted it by my feet: a crumpled, green, tartan handkerchief. 'What can it be doing there?' I wondered.

‘The erstwhile-owner of this handkerchief,’ I decided, after a bit of thought, ‘was most likely a tweed-clad gentleman with a slight curvature of the spine. He had probably been the victim of a violent sneeze, a sneeze which exploded from his nostrils with such force that this, his favourite handkerchief, was blown from his fingers straight into a puddle. Because his bus must have arrived at just that moment, the tweedy gentleman was, no doubt, forced to abandon the hankie in favour of alighting as, in all likelihood, he had an important appointment with his lady-friend to keep.’

Satisfied with this reasonable explanation, I put all thoughts of stray handkerchiefs out of my mind for the day. But ho! Little did I know this was only the beginning...

Throughout the following weeks I stumbled upon other stray items scattered about the streets: a purple glove perched on a fence, a woolly scarf draped over a wall, a body warmer lying among fallen leaves. I found a pair of chunky black boots just sitting in the middle of the pavement, and a mangled umbrella stuffed inside a bush; I found two full bags of groceries from Morrisons, forsaken, in a ditch.  

'How curious,' I thought. 'Perhaps the people in my village are just particularly forgetful.' Leaving your shoes behind is an easy mistake to make, I suppose. Just imagine that you were walking home one day and felt your toes wiggling against two stones. It would be quite understandable if, after unfastening your laces and shaking the stones out, you were to resume your walk without remembering to put the shoes back on. Perfectly understandable. I’ve even done it myself a few times.

After a few train journeys to and from Glasgow, however, it became increasingly apparent that this ‘discarding of random objects’ is not something specific to where I live. Quite the contrary. As my train hurtled past woods overrun with neglected buggies, kitchen sinks and perfectly intact-looking leather sofas, I began to suspect that something other than mere forgetfulness lurked behind these cast-offs. My suspicions were confirmed when, just last week, I looked out the window and there, smashed to pieces at the bottom of a gully, was (I kid you not) an enormous grand piano!

People of Strathclyde, I believe there is a gap in the collective knowledge of this country. Good citizens up and down the land are forced into lives of littering because they are helplessly unaware of the other options available. But fear not, dear friends! Be in the dark no longer! I have taken it upon myself to show you the light!

To those of you inclined towards abandoning groceries: I know that putting the shopping away can be a bit of a grind – all those tins! All that cheese you’ll have to rearrange in the fridge! But! I have a solution: if you’re not going to take your food home with you, why not give it to a friend? (Or why not save yourself some money and, y'know, don’t buy it at all?)

To shedders of random garments: isn’t the charity shop a more suitable place for unloading your old clothes? How about a car-boot sale? Have you ever heard of eBay?

 

And to those of you who are tired of grand pianos cluttering up your living rooms: hold off from those destructive we’ll-lug-it-up-a-hill-then-chuck-it-over-the-edge type plans that you are currently formulating. Hear me out! Would it not be better, would it not be kinder, to sell the piano (or even gift it) to an aspiring young musician? Think of the talent you might help to unlock. (Think of the pain you will spare your back!)

Don’t throw away your undesirables like used banana skins (which, by the way, should go in a bin). It might start today with discarding a handkerchief, but what will it be tomorrow...? Beware the slippery slope!

♥

(Pictures taken over the past few years: a glove in Glasgow, the handkerchief itself, a baby's hat on a bench, a scarf on a wall, some socks at the bus-stop, a bear by a bin, an origami bird on a train, a seat on the street, a couch by the road. I haven't managed to get a picture of the piano yet, because the train is too fast. But it's still there, as far as I'm aware. I'll keep trying.) 

gifted.

Hello! The next few weeks I'm going to be studying for my 20th Century Literature exam, but I will endeavour to keep updating on here! So... I thought I'd put up another one of my columns from the Strathclyde Telegraph.  

  

Something I've Noticed: What's in a Name? 
(from the Strathclyde Telegraph. Issue 2. November 2011)

   There's a queue of about twenty people snaking around the shop. They are all waiting for the self-service checkouts. ‘Insert cash or press: Pay with Card.’ ‘Unexpected item in bagging area.’ ‘Notes are dispensed below the scanner.’ A chorus of the same voice grows louder the closer I get to the machines. I abandon this queue and opt for the real-person checkout.

    ‘Do y’need a hand to pack?’ the assistant asks. I shake my head and she scans the items. While I’m rummaging for my purse, she continues her conversation with the assistant at the next till.

    'Oh I know how you feel, Happiness,’ she is saying. ‘Tell me about it.’

    I look over at the other lady. She has tired brown eyes and lets out a long weary-filled sigh. I glance at her nametag and (yes, I heard that right) her name is Happiness. It’s almost ironic as, today at least, she looks positively UN-happy.

    'We’re just too tired, love,’ my assistant tells me, handing over my change. ‘Been working too hard.’ Happiness nods. ‘Receipt okay in the bag?’

    On the bus home, I find that ‘Happiness’ is still floating around my head. It’s an unusual name, but a lovely one. No hidden meanings, it gets straight to the point. It’s almost fairytale-like, like a wish her parents whispered over her when she was sleeping: ‘May happiness follow you all the days of your life.’ I wonder, though, if she finds her name difficult to live up to. I’m sure that she, like everyone else, has bad days – days where she wishes she hadn’t got out of bed, or when people have said words that cast clouds over her eyes; days when the idea of ‘happiness’ couldn’t seem further away. And yet, there it is: it’s her name and a part of who she is.

    The bus rumbles along the motorway. My ears pop as someone shuts a window. I’m remembering one night when I helped to choose a name. My mum was pregnant with my little brother, and my sister and I were sitting with her on the sofa, feet dangling off the end.

   'Luke.' 'Christopher.' 'Ben.'

   We spoke out all the names we liked best. We were trying to imagine a little boy in our house called one of them.

   'Lewis.' 'Matthew.' 'Tom.'

   I wanted to call him Mowgli, mostly because I was just three-and-a-half and I thought it would be hilarious. It wasn’t until he was born, though, that my mum knew his real name. She looked at him and she knew he wasn’t a Michael or a Winnie the Pooh (another of my suggestions). He was Evan. Nothing else would fit.

 

    Beneath the hum of the engine, I catch muffled sounds: a murmur of conversation, the rustle as someone opens a crisp packet. I’m trying to imagine a world without names. It is a cold world: impersonal. I wonder if when people stop thinking about each other in terms of their names, they stop thinking about them as individuals. I read a story once where this happened. It was written by lady who lived through a World War II concentration camp. She described how the camp’s prisoners were stripped bare – stripped not only of their hair and clothes, but also of their names. Names were replaced with numbers, and in the process identities were lost.

    As the bus slows down at my stop, I hop off and start walking towards home. I’m remembering how Madeleine L’Engle, one of my favourite writers, thought that ‘Naming’ was an act connected to loving. Giving someone, or something, a name shows that you think they’re worth something – worth your notice, worth your time, worth your love.

    Our names, I think, are more than simply a collection of symbols and sounds. They have meaning. They are chosen. They are gifts.

 ♥

(Pictures are from various summer birthdays in my family.)

doodles and deafness.

I thought I'd post my latest column for the Strathclyde Telegraph on here. The columns are all around the theme of 'something I've noticed' as well... so it ties in quite nicely with this blog!

I've mixed up the writing with pictures of tea from various cafes ...partly because the article is about a cafe (my work), but mainly because when I see huge blocks of text on a blog, it kind of puts me off. (Probably a shocking confession for someone who is studying literature - i.e. the study of very, very long texts - to make, but hey!). So don't be off-put, friend. Enjoy the pictures and happy reading to you!)

♥

Something I've Noticed: Brian was Here
(from the Strathclyde Telegraph. Issue 6. March 2012)

As I walked to their table, the old man was pulling a pen out of his shirt pocket.

‘Hi there,’ I said. They looked up from their menus. ‘Are you ready to order?’

It seemed like some sort of family event. One by one, they called out their orders – cheese toasties, minestrone soup, ginger beer. The old man at the end didn’t say a word. He had taken out a tiny black notebook and was now scribbling something in it.

I always feel an affinity with fellow notebook-keepers, and couldn’t help wishing I was closer so I could see what he was writing.

‘And a bowl of chips to share,’ said the lady in blue, ‘and I think that’s it.’

I collected together their menus but just before turning to leave, I noticed the old man had stopped scribbling. He was adjusting his glasses, and then he ripped the page from his notebook and slipped it under the sugar bowl.

My curiosity began to hum.

About two hours later, the family paid their bill and bustled out the door. As usual the table was strewn with napkins and dirty dishes but – yes! – there it was! That mysterious piece of paper! It was a little drawing: a long-nosed man peeking over a wall. Underneath were the words: Brian was here.

Customers often leave things behind: seashells, reading glasses, broaches, keys. Someone left a walking stick once; we kept it for weeks, but I don’t think anyone ever came back to claim it. All these forgotten objects – they whisper at stories.

What is the story behind this drawing?

I imagine that it starts with something quite banal, like the old man was just trying to pass the time. I don’t remember seeing him talking much. Maybe his hearing aid was playing up – it was picking up too much background noise and his ears were full of rattling cutlery, and the rumble of hundreds of voices speaking at once, and tinkling piano music, and teaspoons clinking against china. Maybe he had just switched it off, and sat quiet.

Maybe this doodling has become something of a regular occurrence for Brian, if that is his name; maybe it’s a way of coping with this new age of silence. He’s aware that he has become something of a nuisance at family gatherings. No one knows what to do with him. He can’t hear what they’re saying so they avoid sitting beside him because ‘it’s awkward’ – yes, he heard his granddaughter say that at Christmas. He pretended not to, but he heard it. Maybe this doodling is an attempt to reconnect with them again, to try and make them laugh.

Because he slipped it under the sugar bowl, and because he left it there, I almost think he put it there for us, the waitresses. I think he wanted us to find it.

Sometimes, on rainy, wistful days, I’ve wondered what it would be like for a customer to look back and see me clearing their table. They might glance through the window and catch me crumpling their empty sugar packets, catch me stacking their teacups, sweeping away their scone crumbs, wiping away their spilt coffee and sticky fingerprints, catch me wiping and wiping until every last trace of them is gone. I wonder if they would feel a slight tug of – not quite sadness, not as concrete as that – but a creeping impression that they had just witnessed themselves being rubbed out.

I wonder if Brian has felt like this. Maybe that is why he left the picture. He was leaving behind a piece of himself, a remnant. Of course there was the risk that it might get thrown away with the rest of the rubbish. But then, there was also the possibility, the hope, that someone might find it. Someone might find it, and then someone would know, he wanted someone to know: Brian was here.

♥