Hindsight

There often, with the benefit of hindsight, seems an inevitability about what happens to people. One believes the clues were there all along, compressed into conversations, encrypted into encounters, like a word whose meaning one was then yet to learn. But one wonders a bit about hindsight. Is it really all it’s trumped up to be? Would I now with hindsight not have stolen money from my mother’s purse when I was ten? I doubt it, even though I was eventually caught and the crime caused some domestic distress. The amphetamine rush of creping into the bedroom while my parents watched television directly below and spying the bag on the bed was a reward in itself. That to me was life on a scale worth living. And the possibility of outrage and punishment was part of the pact. Hindsight hasn’t done the planet much good either. I suppose because, like apologies, it always arrives too late. Sometimes I think history is a bit like Cluedo. This time round it was Professor Plum with the lead piping in the conservatory. So what? Next time it might be Miss Scarlet with the dagger in the ballroom but the plot is always the same.

Losing my Virginity

When I was fourteen or fifteen a boy at school told me a woman had two entrances – a right one and a wrong one. This of course was an alarming idea. A year or two later, when I realised the girl I was kissing was prepared to go upstairs to the bedroom, the idea was still there in my mind - a grotesque insistent thing with a leering mocking mouth. Therefore I excused myself for a few minutes and made straight for the drinks cabinet. I was as naïve in those days about alcohol as I was about a female’s sexual anatomy. I gulped down the contents of the first bottle that came to hand. The only thing I therefore learnt from my first sexual experience was that it is a very big mistake to frantically drink large quantities of sherry.

Physical Exercise

Last summer I spent a few weeks living alone in a farmhouse in the Tuscan countryside miles from civilisation and carless. The first time I ventured out on a bike was to be the last. It was all tally-ho fun to begin with, flying down one curving incline after another, with my shirt catching the breeze and billowing out behind me (it hadn’t yet occurred to me that I would have to pedal back up all these fun slopes: I rarely dwell on the likely consequences of my actions). I bumped and flew past the small lake at the foot of the valley where cattle were drinking and began to feel a bit thirsty myself. The thought of a bar became my oasis though I knew it was still at least six kilometres away from any outpost of civilisation. Then I hit a series of uphill slopes, one after another and finally had to get off the bike and walk it. A sign announcing that Paganico, the nearest village, was still five kilometres away and the sight of another steep incline ahead finally defeated me and I decided the only thing to do was to head back. For a while I sauntered back down slopes with butterflies fluttering in my flight path and lines of white gulls waiting for the fields to be sown again but after a while arrived the relentless uphill part of the journey. Even pushing the bike exhausted me and several times I had to stop to catch my breath. When I could finally see the eccentric little yellow house across the valley I was virtually hyperventilating and feeling sick. The flies buzzing in my ears I told to fuck off and even the sweet smells of the wild roadside flowers began to smell like mockery. When I reached the house of the neighbouring farmers I began retching - in full view of their windows and I bet they had a giggle at my expense. Finally I dumped the bike and staggered home. When I could smoke again I made a vow – from now on, I said to myself, I will limit my forays into the realms of physical exercise to carrying my dictionary from one side of my room to the other.

Oracles

     I open my copy of the King James Bible.  If thou seekest her as silver, and searchest for her as for hid treasure: Then shalt thou understand the fear of the Lord, and find the knowledge of God.  I enjoy opening the Bible at random and reading the first few lines on which my eyes alight. It’s like putting to the test the power of circumstance to body forth an oracle.

Breakfast in Italy

There’s probably a campanile within sight. And at some point a bell will chime – bold timeless strokes which, like light after rain, will give to the moment an undertow. The play of shadows on a medieval wall will draw attention to the history of the stones, the struggles of blood and line they have witnessed. You’ll be sitting at a table with the sun warm on the back of your neck; scooters will fizz past; and then the waiter will arrive. “Cappuccino,” you say. Bliss.

Betrayal

 One's sentiments, one's fidelities are so instinctive that one hardly knows they exist; only when they are betrayed does one realise their power. That betrayal is the end of an inner life, without which the everyday becomes threatening or meaningless. At the back of the spirit a mysterious landscape, whose perspective used to be infinite, suddenly perishes.

Hope

Novel’s gone off on its first round of submissions. All the big guns. They were given a deadline to make up their minds – which is today. So today I dare not venture anywhere near my yahoo inbox. Then, after lunch, I came across some very appropriate lines from Byron’s journal on the subject of hope –

Why, at the very height of desire and human pleasure – worldly, social, amorous, ambitious, or even avaricious – does there mingle a certain sense of doubt and sorrow – a fear of what is to come – a doubt of what is – a retrospect to the past, leading to a prognostication of the future? Why is this? I know not, except that on a pinnacle we are most susceptible of giddiness, and that we never fear falling except from a precipice – the higher, the more awful…