Dear friend,
It’s stuffy down here and noisy so it hurts.
I’m sat on the Victoria line with Eileen who is ten and visiting from Italy.
The next stop is Finsbury Park. The piped voice announcing the stations is piercing so it cuts through the screeching and rattling of the train.
Eileen and Chiara stick their fingers in their ears but I’m typing with my thumbs on my phone. It’s like the pressure at the bottom of the deep end of a swimming pool.
We chose not to have kids and neither of us regret the decision. We love them, but we’re both happy to play the roles of arty aunt and uncle. Chiara and Eileen just tricked me into thinking there was a snake on the seat next to me.
It’s a discarded braid of hair. Even though I knew it wasn’t a snake it still gave me a scare. Playing the fool is a lot of fun.
Planting seeds that will sprout later in life.
It’s a joy to drop ideas into a conversation, seeds that will sprout in the future, and more than that maybe just to really pay attention and listen, ask questions and find out how it’s going.
And to be light hearted.
To do that for someone else makes you appreciate the adults who were funny and kind and interested in you when you were a kid.
God bless them all.
Small kindnesses costs nothing and that kid might remember it all the way through to being an old happy guy on a tube.
For example, I’ll always remember Mr Brown for calling me a gentleman and trusting me when I made a mistake and returned my rugby kit unwashed.
And my uncle Steve who was a genuine, born within the sound of Bow Bells cockney, who could charm the birds from the trees. It was like going round with a pair of superstars whenever we went out of the house with uncle Steve and Auntie Doe.
The number of times kids get ignored or told stupid things because the adults are feeling out of control.
It gets passed on.
We’re on our way back now from seeing Complicite’s Mnemonic at the National Theatre. Then we walked to China Town to the Tokyo cafe for Sushi and Eileen had a brown sugar milk bubble tea in a panda shaped cup. We visited Watkins books in Cecille court and looked at the prayer beads, tarot sets and crystals.
On the way back a Dad is struggling with his kid on the tube. His nerves are frayed and you feel for him. It’s also uncomfortable because he doesn’t really need to shout that way at the little one.
We’re also looking after Bessie, so we’re heading home for a walk by the river.
Couldn’t be happier.
Art, culture, friendship, dogs.
Not to mention the Sushi.
For me, the best part of the Complicite show was the visualisation they got us to do at the start. We all wore blind folds and held a leaf. They got us to imagine our parents on either side of us. Then another generation, our grandparents and the great grandparents and if we went back to the beginning of the 15th Century there would be more ancestors behind us than the number of people alive today.
We’re related to every human being in the planet.
We’re all one.
In the vastness of the diversity of all that exists.
It’s an extraordinary fact.
Till tomorrow
Love
Mikey