04.11.2023
It's All Right There on the Label...
While a teenager ... when only people were a mystery, watching them closely developed into a habit of mine. On display were their fingerprints, some a greasy smudge, others sublimely light.
In reaching for a satisfactory way to commence this piece, and having abandoned at least a half dozen starts, a return to some originating thoughts had the orbs coming onto examining the work of Stuart the electrician, who's here this morning installing ceiling fans and light fittings. A stare at the concrete ceiling in the direction of this tradesman's work is in truth the beginnings of a daydreaming...
Though sometimes a 'pal', procrastination is shaken off while the cursor winks in my direction.
The decision on what the next bit of writing is to be was made earlier, at breakfast, though the 'how' was yet to be settled. This was before the racket of an impact drill harmonised with my keyboard tapping frustrations. It must be added that Stuart is a Milwaukee man (his choice of battery-operated tools), and on this occasion, he is also pushing a drill through a cement rendered brick wall to add a twin power point in the main bedroom on the other side of the living room. It is a wonder to me how even the mid-century moderns managed to live without multiple outlets in every room. As for the unruly extension cord...
A voice tells me that in order to deliver on the writing, I'd better soon develop the skill of ignoring distraction. Noise after all is merely loud objectionable sound, even if it is only the din of heavy metal escaping somebody's press-fit ear buds. Frankly, within this epidermis, the preference still would rather it be the syncopated rhythm of a jackhammer accompanied by a chorus of emergency vehicle sirens.
On the table is a bottle of Worcestershire sauce - for just the drop, or two, on a soft-yolk egg. Breakfast was lemon-water, coffee, fried egg, re-heated fries, sliced banana, and peanut butter on dark fruit toast. The table is cleared away.
As the electric tool cacophony fades to tradesmen bantering at ladder height, the needlessly silenced mobile phone by the laptop lights up with a notification (from, of all things, an online book seller). The headline contains the word "ingenuity". This word appearing at the moment it did was hilarious for both its timing and appropriateness. That is, it was illuminating the fact that the moment for "the quality of being clever, original, and inventive" had arrived, though I was yet to arrive at how I would deliver cleverness, originality, and inventiveness. But breakfast tables being made of memories means all the breakfast tables of the past take their turn to drop by, including the one I shared the first time I moved out of the family house. Breakfast tables make it a cinch to mine the past.
Harry and I were the best of friends in high school, through our motorcycling period, through our first jobs, and into the inevitable and sudden need of 'career' re-assessment. As I dreamt to break free of KingGee overalls for broadcasting and Harry imagined a switch to a work-to-live solution free of auto-electrics, we civilised our seventeen-year-old selves, domesticated by the actual devices for survival: the stove and the washing machine. At seventeen it is yet possible to survive without the vacuum.
I had made a study of my friend at the breakfast table. Whereas I would awaken fully conscious, Harry was eyes-closed through much of his cereal course. Once he had assimilated a little energy, he would reach for a jar of jam, a tetra pack of juice, or the cereal box itself—whatever product was before him—and make a study of every word on its packaging. That was a practice we both shared, though in my case it was not a breakfast activity. It was sometimes closer to midnight when I might be seen to read a cereal box.
The electricians have departed. The new ceiling fans are nice: a dark brown timber grain effect, elegantly formed like bentwood propellors.
Reaching forward, I once again pick up the bottle of Worcestershire sauce, renewing the earlier thoughts of my old friend when I had read over the label, just as I would have seen Harry pick it up and read it. There's much to read on the Lea & Perrins, all their ingenuity bringing forth a fine condiment in 1837: the cleverness of the copy vaunting their originality and genuineness, as well as the inventiveness of the claim that their product "Adds instant richness".
Clever, original, genuine...and rich. Harry had it all. One could read him. It was written all over him.
It's November again. It's almost nine years since we've seen him. It's almost daily that he visits at breakfast.
TA