We tell ghost stories on the way home. It’s dark; Port Meadow is black, the river is silver and still. We have bike lights and a parafin lantern. A mist covers the ground, as if we’re wading through it. I can see my breath, feel the tingle of my fingers.
Earlier we walked the other direction. It was early afternoon, light, grey, the trees bent over the water. The dog picked up impractical sticks and we sipped from a small bottle of whiskey. Amazing how quickly we could be palpably outside the city. Smelling woodsmoke from narrowboats and surrounded by green and brown; the golden stones of Oxford had dissolved, the spires dissapeared behind a puffy cloud. My wellies rubbed raw a spot on my foot, the same spot on the same foot that had been rubbed raw so many times before. We came to a crumbling nunnery; now just a field walled in, the outline of a church. We ate apples at the pub and drank wine waiting for our lunch.
Now we tell ghost stories but there’s nothing eerie about this stillness. The eerie part is re-entering the city, coming suddenly to a well-lit bridge, passing parked cars, pubs, restaurants, cashpoints, closed shops, kebab vans. It’s crowded, though there aren’t many people out tonight.
Meanwhile, I’ll get back into blogging, but my time seems to be consumed at the moment by a thousand little things–working, writing, eating, sleeping, cleaning, running, planning. Strolling along the river. Stay tuned.
❧
Strolling the busy streets of Musbury. Ben looking tipsy and Xander looking authoritative. Neither was either.
Did I mention the band that opened for Ben was called “Itchy and Scratchy”?
Ben Walker vs. the River Cottage Chickens
A real, live, authentic River Cottage Chicken.
Geeks.
The man himself, Mr. Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall.
Down time with Xander and Ben.
He was a big hit with the kids.
Oh you know. Just hanging out.
This handsome fennel-seed salami caused Ben a great deal of distress, and Xander and me a great deal of amusement.
Heading back to the cabin.
We’ve seen some fairly spectacular sunsets.
❧
(This is not a post about beer, by the way. This is a post about a village.)
The sunlight has been disappearing and reappearing all day. We arrive under a blaze of blue sky and I’m tempted by the ale. A whole tableful of ales, £3 each. We go outside and stand in a pool of the sort of warmth that is too rare this summer. It takes about ten minutes for it to start raining–raining hard. Time for another pint. I’ve reached my ale-maximum, one pint, so I try the Hereford perry. Smooth,
sweet, and dangerous. At a certain point it gets dark and then it gets a little cold, so I go inside to warm up. I sit with my feet up in a corner of the pub. Maybe it’s the perry, but I can’t get this silly grin off my face. There’s a live band playing music. I’ve lost track of my tasting sheet but I wasn’t doing much with it anyway. We decide to dance, for a bit, and then Joe, who’s a bit of a local celebrity, with his red face and his Oxfordshire accent and his penchant for skirts and heels, reveals the denim mini-skirt and fishnet tights he’s been wearing under his trousers, paired with a dirty t-shirt and a pair of slip-0n trainers. “If I’d known it was gonna be this kind of night,” he says, “I’d've put me heels on.”
Before bed the Man and I lie down in the wet grass to admire the stars. The next morning my trousers are still wet and my blazer is stained, and I can’t for the life of me remember which ale I tried and what I thought of it, other than that it tasted ale-y and made my mouth warm, but it’s okay, because I can go to the shop next door and get a croissant and the papers and spend the day reading outside. My choice? The Idler #42, with an article, conveniently enough, on the very village I’m in.
❧
Yesterday the clouds spread like ink across the summer sky and then dried and disappeared, and I took a long, lazy run around Christ Church Meadow half-hoping to catch a glimpse of Alice’s Day, and when I came home I crawled back into bed and we had a nap with the window wide open to let in an almost-autumnal wind.
In the evening we watched the sun setting over the Oxfordshire countryside amidst the tea lights and elderflower champagne of a midsummer wedding.
It occurred to me sometime between then and now that even when I am not working, I am. I’m always working. Isn’t that frightening? And a little exciting?
I’ve been reading and re-reading Louis MacNeice’s Selected Poems. Here’s one for you on this sunny, windy, green July Sunday:
Coda
Maybe we knew each other better
When the night was young and unrepeated
And the moon stood still over Jericho.
So much for the past; in the present
There are moments caught between heart-beats
When maybe we know each other better.
But what is that clinking in the darkness?
Maybe we shall know each other better
When the tunnels meet beneath the mountain.
From Louis MacNeice. Selected Poems. London; Faber, 1988, p.158.
❧
Just as we finish scrambling along the wet shores of a makeshift lake, my phone rings. We’re behind a perfectly English stone wall, sheltered from the muddy road running away from the village. Just a 9-year-old boy and myself. We’ve been exploring the outskirts of the village, the secret swampy places between water and meadow, for nearly an hour. At one point, after I sink in the mud, I tell my companion about the time my Dad and I donned wellies and walked the length of our local creek, following it until it met the sea. Now he’s calling me, my Dad. From Buellton, the truck-stop town of grocery stores and auto-repair shops. I can’t see civilization from here (maybe the gleam of a thatched roof beyond the wall) but I can talk to California. I’m watching the 9-year-old leaping over a stream in the same way I used to do while I waited for my Dad to finish his work in the garage. I’m speaking to that same Dad while I watch the 9-year-old. There’s something strangely circular about this, and something dizzyingly meta. And, more simply, something rather delightful.
(Also, re: the last post, this, from Alain de Botton: “Journeys are the midwives of thought.”)
❧
