still

Sometimes I live through these times of heightened reality, no other way to explain it. I'll smell or see or feel something and it doesn't just remind me of the past, but actually take me there. Today I saw a guy carrying a hockey stick and I was 12 again chasing a ball around a wet field. I could feel myself trying so hard to be quick, skilled, running hard and then the disappointment that I wasn't ever going to compete with the sporty girls. Then I ate sausages and mash for lunch (it's winter already here, all grey and cold and wispy), and the mash was heavy and thick like the one my granny makes, and I was back in her kitchen with the red and blue striped tea towels and the upside down fish screwed the wrong-way-up on the wall, and her soft tone droning over the washing up as I ate silently. Then I take the tube from Oxford Circus to South Ken, and on the way I decide to stand still on the escalator instead of walking, just to watch the kind of people who stand. To my surprise they aren't all old or fat, or carrying heavy shopping. They're just not bothered about rushing like me. I'm humbled. Then a line from The End of the Affair pops into my head... the scene where Bendrix and Sarah meet after several years, in the restaurant on Piccadilly. Sarah's late and Bendrix asks her why... 'The tube would have been quicker' he says. 'I didn't want to be quick.'

So much emotion, so much more said in those six words than in their whole stilted conversation that follows.