Vague Supermarket Thinking

After many months of winter someone asked me what my wish was. I answered that I would like homes in the northern and southern hemispheres in order that I ‘never be cold again’. This brought forward some over-spontaneous laughter. I had placed a slight emphasis on my words, with a sub-concentration directed at monotonous delivery. If you modulate your voice to bring forward a toneless sound it encourages similar, uninflected mood which then leaves the blank canvas necessary for such transferral of nuance, upon which your interlocutors will possibly find some entertainment. The beauty of speech is that controlled in such ways, in particular with undertones of miscreant intent, it can cause small vignettes of life to pass by like pleasant puffs of white, fluffy cloud on bright-lit skies. People laugh at such inflection precisely because it catches a shard of their own thinking. Even while drinking poor quality tea from shockingly cheap recyclable cups with ill-fitting lids at restaurant furniture knocked up by manufacturers who long ago lost any feel at all for the institutional, in pockets of time mapped out by time and motion men (or women).

It is that similar light of sky that has brought me to think forward for future possible postings in ‘Marginalia’. For some time I have wished to examine further the ‘hatchery light’ of supermarkets. From there, to an examination of small corner stores, the way they are laid out, and some of the products they purvey, and especially the juxtaposition between those of England and of interior towns in Spain. I find that kind of environment hypnotic, lulling, mesmerising. ‘Drilling down’ in to the constitutional matters of quotidian life is important, and all too often passed by in the quest for speed or haste. I have always been taken by what is right in front of my eyes, what stops me or slows me down, be it a person, a packet of biscuits, a tin of corned beef, or an array of jars of variegated mustards upon a long, broad, well-configured metal shelf. (Only those with a true interest in circumlocution will still be reading here. There is a ‘gist’ to this all, let me add, for non-gist getters. Those in the know will still be reading on with some curiosity. Narrative, parchment, the spread, as previously briefly outlined.)

This again leads me to other areas of life I have wished to lay down in print as my ‘mark’. A legacy that will not see me recompensed at all in terms of money for what I may write, but will be seen as evidence of my existence that will outlive me. Writers among anyone reading this will, even if they have not experienced it directly themselves, understand the notion of a scribed bequest. It ties to the notion of history and record, and once again, of archive. I am writing a selection of essays loosely entitled ‘My Working Life’ within which many of the observations and memories are not to do with work at all, but freedom. Examine that notion for a while, let the thought edge forward in your mind while you let it settle and spread its pool. Often the thought of freedom is one that moves people to a point of emotion. Away from the time and motion people and back towards the ‘hatchery light’, tins of corned beef, the rows of disparate mustards,  and the uterine comfort of the supermarket and its beeping, humming tills.

In this account of what I have achieved and not, some examination of the environment of work, its purpose, or not. Having reread some of my initial arcane musing in this ‘document’, it will be reassuringly dry, at least, and to a level of tedium I can live with (but passing readers may not be able to). Yet, I don’t think it will be for work that I will remember for myself, nor be remembered for, at least, not hopefully. Nor will it have been work that I could have ever have possibly turned to for the ‘realisation of happiness’. The thought crossed my mind, several times in recent days in fact, that if questioned, perhaps for instance by one of my children in years to come, that if I were to pinpoint a time or place (or combination of the two) where I would have been at my happiest, then it would have to be the answer that involved ‘walking in parks and quiet streets’. No amount of delicate nuance can account for the tedium of that.

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Over the Points

Just looking at a loaf of bread gives me a deep sense of satisfaction. It connects seamlessly with an equal level of love associated with listening to a particular type of sound made by the air-conditioning units on the electric trains that run on England’s South-West Trains franchise, particularly those on the line that straddles the commuter towns of Guildford and Woking. How does the bread tie in with the train? It doesn’t really. What it’s more to do with is how the mind moves from one source of pleasure to another. Trains and bread are superficial. One is the staff of life; the other draws staff from life. Both are accessible to me whether I am on or off the rails and whether I am over the points, or missing them completely. Gentle commuter towns in southern England aren’t as genteel as they may pertain to be, but you let yourself be drawn in to that form of geographical comfort. It’s all about platform eight for me at Guildford, the flat little diesels back to Reading, crossing through the garrison towns and light engineering suburbs, places with ‘Camp’ in the name or ‘Hurst’ or ‘Thorne’.  When I’ve been to Upskirt Flats and I’m coming home with train beer in my bag, a copy of the London Review and a notebook, a scratchy fountain pen (it’s cartridge but that’s my prerogative in nib-based terminology and that’s another matter with Brisbane undertones, more of which later), I manage to sit among the shifting crowd of people seeking this line. Drinkers, lovers, boisterous girls or older couples deeper in the flat reserves of a relationship that’s cupboarded itself where little speech is required but unspoken admiration and scorn is exchanged in equal measure. I read and doze and sip Holsten Pils and smile and drift, the warmth of the carriage hugging and preventing cold bones, lulling sway and rick of the rails and rolling stock, the stroking, soothing sound of the diesel engines, a fat, spilling sausage of a sound. People are coming home from winter breaks in sunnier climes, eating desultory sandwiches and letting ears clear of pressurised cabins and the bleep of cabin crew instruction, carousels for pink suitcases and cardboard cities of coffee cups and water. Gatwick as Arctic outpost. More on airports and forms of transit soon.

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