Warming Up

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Sunday 2nd September 2007

I am still sleeping for an impressive chunk of the day, waking up around 6 or 7 in the morning and then unable to stay awake much after 8pm. I am not sure why I am so prodigiously tired as I am not really doing much apart from reading and eating, though there is a lot of mental pressure I guess, due to the responsibility of bringing the sun down every day. Even though these days these celestial bodies practically drive themselves, it would still be an enormous embarrassment if the sun crashed into the earth on my watch. Or if it just stayed up in the sky all night. It’s not as cushy as it looks my new job and I am already regretting taking it on. The sunset verifier gets very little thanks in this world.
It was lovely up there today though. A brisk wind was blowing in off the sea, which made it hard to pour my beer and threatened at one point to actually knock my glass over. But it was a warm and refreshing wind and just made this idyllic scene all the more beautiful. It makes me stupidly happy watching the sun go down, though it shouldn’t as it just signifies that another day of my life is over (especially when I am going to sleep at 8). I tried to work out how many sunsets there have been in my life, but quickly got bored and ate satay instead.
There had been some drama in the afternoon to differentiate this day from the others. I had been lying in my hammock reading today’s book – Janey Godley’s “Handstands in the Dark”, a jaw dropping autobiography detailing the horrendous things that this fine comedian has had to deal with in her life, told with humour and without any appeal for pity. Well worth reading and probably a unique look at the gangster and drug culture of Glasgow in the seventies and eighties, told by someone with both the intelligence to get it all down and the good fortune not to have died.
Anyway I became aware of a bit of a commotion coming from the next hut along, though I tried not to pay too much attention. A woman who seemed rather drunk for three o clock in the afternoon was shouting things out on her balcony and singing songs and seemed in a little bit of a state. I think I heard her shout to someone that she had just got married, so thought that this might explain her heightened and excited state. But I didn’t want to stare as it was none of my business and I could sense something strange in the air, like all wasn’t what it was meant to be.
A member of staff had gone up to talk to the woman and her seemingly sober husband and I happened to glance over as the woman embraced her and kissed her on the cheek. This again seemed an odd thing to have happened, especially as she sang “Let’s all do the conga!” immediately afterwards. But then there were raised voices between her and her husband and it was all a bit unsettling and very unclear as to what was going on. The woman then started to cry, shouting something about her mum and dad.
I was curious to know what was going on, but also aware that I was almost intruding on this personal crisis. It became clear that the couple were being moved out of the room and their luggage was being taken away, but I didn’t know if they had done something wrong or if someone had died, giving rise to this strange hysteria. Soon enough the couple were away in a speed boat to deal with whatever it was that had ripped through their lives. The staff dealt with it very discretely, but it was strange to have the real world encroach on this idle fantasy that I have been indulging in. We can hide from life, but we can’t escape it entirely.
It struck me today how little I have said out loud in the last week. Given that I spent almost all of August doing nothing but talking, sometimes uninterrupted for over an hour at a time, in the last seven days I have probably uttered less than fifty words a day. I have not spoken more than two sentences to anyone. It’s been great.
Yesterday a three year old boy walked by my hut in the afternoon sunshine eating a Cornetto. He held it with reverence, pecking at it gently, looking very happy with himself. I thought to myself that it doesn’t get much better than that in life. Being three and having a Cornetto in the sunshine. There’s no purer pleasure or indulgence in all that will follow. But of course, you don’t realise that at the time. You don’t even remember. Of course I could still eat a Cornetto now at 40 – and in fact, I have done, but it will never be as awe inspiring or perfect as the Cornetto you eat at 3. At 40, I could eat a dozen Cornettos a day if I wanted – and I guess that’s part of why it is special as a child. You have no actual control over what you eat and no power to choose beyond manipulating the adults around you. So when a Cornetto comes along it is a wonderful and delicious surprise, an ice cream oasis in the ice-cream-less desert of life. Plus it’s big and it’s yours and you have no concept of it being bad for you or that there might be better more expensive ice creams out there somewhere else. You don’t really have any concept of the fact that soon the Cornetto will be gone. You just have a Cornetto in your hands and it’s all for you and you are alive in the moment and I can promise you, there will never be such uncomplicated happiness again in your life.
Yet I couldn’t grab him and shake him and tell him, remember this moment, because life gets no better than this, partly because that would somewhat sour the indulgent pleasure and be confusing (is it the shaking the thing that will never be bettered?)and also because in this day and age a 40 year old man, shaking a young child he doesn’t’ know and shouting feverishly into his face about pleasure is seen as some kind of crime.