Footfall

There is a sound and a sense when your foot hits the ground. It can be first thing in the morning when you get out of bed and wander in a wobbly line towards to bathroom to see what damage your dreams have left on your face. That first wander for me is as if my left foot has been in a plaster cast for a year and is unfamiliar with it’s job as a foot and has to be taught how to behave before the world requires it to take half my weight and get things done. It can be on sand. Sinking in, pulling out. The miracle of all those tiny pieces of silica, the shavings at the edge of the solid world, that right themselves smooth whatever words or holes or castles we make with them. Beaches sometimes ring of summer holidays, but because I have lived so much of my life by a beach it is often in the winter that I love walking on the sand so much. Because then it is often just me and a few other hardy ones and the beach is free of man made detritus and your footprints feel like they are the only ones on the moon. There is cement. There is always cement. In England the pavements, or sidewalks, are often made of paving stones. These slabs of rectangular stone that are in the older streets were still brought in from the quarries of Purbeck and in newer streets from the concrete shop.

I fell on one of those a few months ago. Marching along the pavement, off to the bus stop, avoiding the shoppers with their shopping bags on wheels, scanning the ground for the pavers that didn’t fit so neatly together and whoop de do.. the classic phrase, “the ground coming up to meet you,” did exactly that. It was so fast. Flat on my face. Felled in my pride of over familiarity. Some young man came to my aid. “ No, I’m fine” I said, gracelessly picking myself up from the ground. I was embarrassed at being careless. Not wanting to be one at odds with the ground on which I walked. Not wanting to be a stranger.

I know I have written before about old churches. Not always the big ones, but the smaller ones in villages now consisting of a farm and a scout hut. Where you walk through the grass churchyard with gravestones almost illegible with moss and hundreds of years of weather.

And you open this wooden door into a stone vestibule where benches line the sides. Maybe for people to shake off the rain or the mud of where they had walked through, before making their way through the second door into the church itself. No fancy stained glass windows, no high vaulted ceilings.

Wooden pews, warm to the touch. These are the everyday of ancient stones. The working man’s path of pilgrimage. Many lifetimes worth of sunday devotions have made worn patterns into the uneven stones. Pressing indentations into the steps to the altar. will give you smooth and shiny stone, worn curves in the steps to the altar. Once bright and tight, now pressed down by so many centuries of feet, that you feel the echo as you walk on them and step where they once did

Footpaths and bridleways. These are not hiking trails. They don’t end up at “ Inspiration Point.” They don’t tell you how many miles you will have achieved if you do the whole loop. They may start with a wooden stile off a small road. They might start at the far end of a churchyard. They often cross fields of wheat or grazing cows. This is also where you pay attention to those grazing cows for the bullocks or bulls among them who can charge and have you running literally for your life to that stile on the far side of that field over which you throw yourself to safety. Sometimes you skim past a grand stately home. If you are lucky they pass by a pub where you can sit on a bench and grab a libation and a packet of crisps. These are the footpaths and bridleways of Great Britain. Criss crossing the countryside. Decreed by law. Drawn in the Ordnance Survey Maps. There is a swishing as your feet move through the cut grass, or the stubble path at the side of a field. There is a give as you walk through the wood that is under a canopy of trees. Not grass here but soft earth with the occasional tree root fighting its way though. This is the world of bluebells and stinging nettles, where tiny birds hop around inside bushes and gnats swarm in late afternoon.

Angela

It was my first job outside of the provinces. My first job in London Town. I knew it wasn’t classy. But it seemed like a step, a diagonal step. if not forward, then a diagonal. I was going to spend a year in “ The Mousetrap.” At the St. Martin’s Theatre. The east end of the West End. One. Nobody said Miss Casewell wasn’t written as a lesbian. I simply chose to play her as someone who had spent far too long on a hockey pitch, Two. The Policeman did it. Three. My career in Agatha Christie plays may now be over. In this year I learned never to rely on anyone for lifts home and I bought an orange Peugeot bike. the extra money I earned bought me a trip round the world when I was done and I met a dear and wonderful man called Peter. Peter Penry Jones was this big polar bear of a Welshman. handsome with a mass of wonderful grey hair that he constantly pushed away from his face with his hand. He had a voice that should be bottled. He wanted to do this job about as much as he wanted to shop in Harrods, but he was pulling his weight for his family. Peter decided to invest in me. I had no idea why. He had no interest in developing his social circle. But to a couple of people every so often, he opened his massive arms and invited in. I don’t know when I started going round to house in Chestnut Road, West Norwood. I don’t remember when it was I started joining them going to the this free form church service down the road on a sunday. I know that a couple of years later I moved in with them for about four months when my flat, that I had bought, was being gutted and rebuilt. I went up to Wales and spent time with Peter, mowing the fields, sitting in that little hut up on the hill at the end of the afternoon, going fishing with his wife’s brother for mackerel off the rocks. And then there was Peter’s wife. Angela. Angela Thorne. Peter was demanding of your intelligence, Angela was demanding of everything else. You could easily get it wrong with Angela. Read the moment incorrectly, say one word too many, Smile when it wasn’t funny, and you were toast. She made me observant of being accurate with my speech, my information. She smacked me down if I repeated unsubstantiated gossip. Her temper was fast and short-lived. Her sense of humour was explosive. Her language was sometimes unexpectedly blue. her loyalty and love were enormous.

She and Peter had met when they were both young actors. She was in Ralph Richardson’s company. The brilliant and beautiful young ingenue. He was in Olivier’s company. The youth brilliant and handsome . He was Welsh from the bones out. She was English with stories of going out to India as a child. Coming back on a boat to go to school. A family that changed shape in a way that must have been challenging as a young girl. She loved her two boys. She didn’t always like the everyday bits of being a housewife. But she adored those boys. She was always keeping track of the life that she wanted. The flat in Marble Arch was one of them. “ if I am going to live in London, I want to live in the centre.” Her career was a prestigious one. I caught the middle and latter part of it. With Alec Guinness, with Stephanie Beacham. In Ayckbourn plays, Playing Maggie Thatcher. In Television dramas, in television comedies.She kept track of her friends. And she had great friendships. She moved fast; in the street, round the house, in her little car. She wasted no time. Had good books on the go. Watched good television. Went to plays worth her while. She wasn’t unkind. She didn’t mean to choose the words she did, but out they came anyway. She had a critical eye and it traveled to her mouth without passing the pause button. One of the times we had tea, she said ,” shall we have biscuits? Or maybe you shouldn’t.” Her Peter left her when he was 70. It was a sad, sad time. For her sons. She said she was very lucky with the people they had married. She had a hoot with her grandchildren, one of whom came to spend the last year living with her whilst she attended a London college. A younger brother and sister, and older brother… nieces, friends ; professional and from way back when. They all had a place. When I last talked to her she said she couldn’t wait for summer so she could attack her garden in Battersea. “ Tidy it up.” She asked me if I knew where I was going to stay when I came back in the summer. “ Darling you know you can come and stay here, if you’re desperate. You know you can, if you’re desperate.” She had the loveliest face, the best hair, she wore fantastic clothes. She adored animals. Her family. The people she chose as friends. she was hilarious intentionally and not. She missed Pete, her Welsh champion, every day. His ashes are under an apple tree in Anglesey. That is where she is going to be too. A sad sort of perfect.

Slow days and bees

Having a slow day. Slow because there is something oozingly gentle about English summers. In the back garden of my friends house in Stockwell. I have doused the baby kefir lime and lemon trees in pots. I have carried a watering can through the house to the front garden and watered the beds containing poppies, salvia and hollyhocks. I am an interim gardener. Just the spreader of water. People are sanding and painting the houses on either side and I have heard talk of planned weekends in Whitstable and the horse to back at the 3.30 at Epsom. They have taken proper breaks at lunch and teatime. I have even seen two bees mating on the wall behind me. It was mating or murder, but am assuming the former because they both flew off but not at the same time. It is that slow. I have time and the attention to watch bees mating. Gorgeous really. In my own house , there is always something I have left undone. A pile of papers. An appointment to be made. An appointment to be kept. A bill. Washing to take in or out. Here in someone else’s house, there is nothing. Apart from watering the garden and two mugs of tea to fill my days. And a book I bought yesterday called “ Seats of London.” Yes, I bought a book on the various patterns of London transport seating.

I was traveling on the northern line with my young American friend and she didn’t understand why we didn’t have plastic seats as opposed to these carpet like ones. I have no answer yet, but I will be an expert after my book. I do know they are made now as they were then, by a factory near Huddersfield in West Yorkshire. If you have read any of my little essays over the years, you will know that I love all things bus and train. Coaches and cars leave me yawning. But the glass curve of a train station, the front seat on the top of a double decker bus, the slide of a train as it shifts from stationary, the old subway tiles of the subway….I am agog. I have only been in London a couple of days. It is the summer. So there are ‘crocs’ of school children on planned excursions. There are foreign students all wearing the same sweatshirts. There are a a lot more foreign tourists than I am used to, because I normally come in the spring or winter. They are all very well behaved and happy to see the Crown Jewels at the Tower or see shows like Wicked or Frozen. Which leaves me more chance to see Eddie Izzard play all the parts in Great Expectations, catch the amazing “ Guys and Dolls” for a second time, wallow in the miracle of “ A Little Life” and be informed by Peter Morgan’s new play about the rise of the oligarchs in Russia.

There are people on every piece of green. The Common. The Parks. Having impromptu picnics after work. The pubs are surrounded by groups, with jackets off and ties loosened having a drink in the evening sun

I will go to my favourite museums. Of course I will. And sumptuous gardens designed with long ago brilliance. But also I will watch bees having their way with each other. And drink tea. And eat strawberries that taste of strawberries. Do I dare to eat a peach?Or shall I wear the bottom of my trousers rolled? Someone, much more eloquent got there before me.