Empty headed

 Empty headed.  Head in the clouds/Clouds in the head. Nothing between the ears.  The spaces inbetween.

This is Sir Edward Elgar's head.  To be more explicit it is part of one of three sheet steel portraits of famous local people, erected alongside the nearby cycle path.  And Sir Edward, a keen cyclist himself apparently, was indeed illustrious and it's fitting that the path passes close to the site of his house on the edge of town.

I'm so pleased I can now walk the fifteen minutes or so to reach this.  The cycle path was opened last year but it's only recently that I've been fit enough to get here. Energy levels are still very up and down depending on the day but on good days it's not a problem.

 I shall return.  These figures plus a camera have a lot of potential.

Wheels

Distinctly emotional watching the final stage of the Tour de France. France TV does a fabulous job with their earthbound and helicopter shots and the late evening sunlight set the scene beautifully for the ride into Paris yesterday. Just a quick glimpse of the suburbs that I knew so well sets me off - Meudon-la-Foret, Issy les Moulineaux, Porte de Sevres. The  Champs Elysees and the quais de la Seine formed part of my walk to and from work at one time. Nostalgia and beauty and sadness and regret all mixed; this city pulls at my heartstrings like no other. One day I'll go back, take my time and lay a few ghosts.

Ironically yesterday I decided to put my bike on Freecycle.  In the future I simply can't take the risk of an accident.  Transport henceforth will be two legs or four wheels.  If specific cycling exercise is needed I'll go the gym.  Can't crash an exercise bike.

Halloween

The most recent attempt to finish a Harry Potter novel. Failure once again in spite of the cat’s unexpected attempt to up the fear factor (moral: always have a camera to hand). I realise I am in a minority.

****

One stormy night this week a friend and I cycled home in the dark along the river path. A section unlit, overgrown and so narrow that we pedalled silently in single file, headlights bobbing in the dark like a pair of foolhardy fireflies. Rain beat in our faces and the cold cut to the bone but exertion and waterproofs minimised the discomfort.

Elemental. The river to our left, a dim, eerie grey-green, its surface ruffled and harried by the force of the wind. Bare willow branches tossed this way and yon, in terror or ecstasy. Wet face and hair and a pulse of wild exhilaration.

****

Halloween

Imminence. Deep darkness
wraps itself around us:
hidden lanterns glow.

River Path

Click to enlarge.


Brown water murmurs
and churns,
its current
tugging fretfully
at the willow branches.
Come with me.

....

A boy on a red bicycle
hurrying to reach
his future
anxious to overtake me,
saying excuse me
pedals by.

....

I move aside
and watch them pass.

Tuesday

Aimless doesn't work. I like having a fairly firm structure to my free days, though I often tell myself the opposite. Tuesday began early with a trip to the bicycle repair place (I fell off the bike, very publicly, two weeks ago - no bones broken but the machine wasn't so lucky) and ended with an evening yoga class.

Somewhere in between, to the local arts centre for a lunchtime viewing of Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi's autobiographical animated film about a young girl with a taste for the music of Iron Maiden, growing up in Teheran from the 1970s to the 1990s. Witty, harrowing, tragic and at times downright comical, with a political edge. I learned a surprising amount that I didn't know previously about the history of Iran and the rise of fundamentalism. One quibble: ten minutes could perhaps have been cut somewhere towards the end; the last half hour was a little too long for me.

French with English subtitles but there's a dubbed English language version out there as well. Definitely recommended.

Cycles

8.40 am. Off to work. Time for a quick photo.

Given escalating petrol costs and my disinclination to return to full time work, it's looking increasingly unlikely that I'm going to be able to afford to run a car. It would mean cutting back so drastically in other areas that it's not worth it. And I've never enjoyed driving. And I'm pretty dark green, environmentally speaking.

Two colleagues, K and V, are in the same position. We're lucky in that we all live in town, on bus routes, that we've all got bicycles - and that the topography around here is river-plain flat. Not good for floods but excellent for unfit cyclists.

So V brings up the subject of electric bicycles as a way of going further afield and even negotiating the occasional steep hill. In the face of her enthusiasm I've done a little research on the net. This could be a possibility.

Blossom and Bicycles

Early blossom. Yellow celandine and the bruised blue of grape hyacinth. Greenfinches dart and flutter in the branches of the rowan tree in the garden. Exhausted relationships morph into shapes I'd never imagined because truth will always, always out. Yet it doesn't do to give up on love and joy. On warmth and tenderness and touch. How could I? Something close to elation is tracking the footsteps of loss.

It still feels strange to be alone in my mid-fifties, without partner or children. I am an anomaly, in spite of all those futile efforts when I was young to blend in. (There's nothing wrong with blending in per se providing you don't do as I once did and make it your life's purpose). I ponder the seeming inevitabilities and conditioning that have led to this point, what - if any - gifts of mine are needed by the planet and whether it's time to stop dying my hair to cover (or blend in as the blurb on the packet says) the grey. I enjoy the town and the job - its ethos and people - and fret over balancing my budget in this low-wage county.

The days slip by smoothly one by one. Impossible to decipher the bigger picture, how the pieces of a life fit together. Uncertainty is what makes living such a whacky business, and it's all ridiculously transitory. Fossils have been found in the fields where we walked a few weeks ago - those hills once formed part of an ocean floor. And there's a place locally where you can book an environmentally friendly burial plot with a tree as a gravemarker. I'm a little surprised at my own pleasure at this discovery. Silver birch perhaps, with sweeping branches that are never totally still? Or a lime tree, for the heady scent of the blossom on a summer's evening?

***

A friend tells me on the telephone that the real high point of her life to date was not meeting her lover. Nor giving birth to her daughter.

It was, she says, learning to ride a bicycle as a little girl one morning on a dirt track in East Africa, the day her father finally took his steadying hand off the saddle. Short chubby legs pushing down on the pedals, picking up speed in the hot, dry air, the shock of the realisation - one that she could never have articulated that day - that it was possible to break through limitations, to fly out free into the wide world.

I've rarely heard her voice so certain and joyful. As she talks she's back on the bicycle again.