Visceral Fears

On a morning train to the south west the sun is blinding and I think my friend from the mask-making people near the Ivorian border looks quite out of place in this carriage hurtling its way past green and sunlit fields but certainly the kind of thing my boy would appreciate and I'm reading the papers in an effort to catch up on how the other half is doing and it seems to me that the recession tidings of woe and despair have been growing steadily worse jobs are being lost here and there high street chains we've all known are no more and ofcourse the jobs are collapsing faster than the banks did in that dark September not so long ago and a feeling of doom pervades everything but even F Scott Fitzgerald wrote all the way through the depression as did that man who gave us Grapes of Wrath and what will be the record of these times? And how far do we have to go before we reach the end of it? And the newspapers go on and on from the smug perspectives of journalists who will be very well cushioned from the disasters befalling us.

Namibia Botswana South Africa have all had huge slumps in diamond sales because bling bling is the first casualty of recession and about 15000 copper miners in Zambia are without a job as the price of the stuff just drops and drops and drops. Over in the broken country high jacking has increased the local currency has all but disappeared from the streets from the markets from people's wallets and what do you do if you don't have any access to dollars you'll be sorely tempted to buy yourself a gun and take things by force and there may be a story there but I shan't be doing it. I change mental gears not worlds because we may move in different realities but the worlds are the same and I take a look at England through the train window and if all the images in my head were to be stacked one on top of another the geographic terrain would be a mess. I missed my boy's robust hugs and my daughter gives one of those dainty faraway hugs I always complain about which have become much worse with the grip of adolescence and I say her hugs are getting more rubbish and she goes personal space dad you're invading my personal space and it's wonderful to see them and I want to get out and about in the faraway spring sun and we head over for a coffee on their Sunday high street and they talk to me like a couple of old mates catching up in the bar and all fears real and imagined evaporate with the steam from two cappuccinos and a hot chocolate. There's not much to do with the rest of the shrinking day but maybe a game of cricket and she says yeah she'll come and play but she's got a Romeo and Juliet essay to finish and we promise to return her to her desk before dinner and they bring me down to earth and go so did you make a film out there and I say yeah and he goes oh God not another one of your two minute films dad and she goes were you wearing your shades in the film and she takes them off me and bats with my sunglasses sitting on her hair and I feel stripped and trod on but I take the tease because what else can I do.



Spring is in the air but the sun is still a little shy and drops a little less speedily as it did in the winter but the day does seem short or maybe I'm just knackered from being in three different time zones in the last twelve hours or so and in the empty park with its mothers and infant traffic the colours of the day's end have their wow factor as we set up the wickets on the green and argue about the distance between the stumps and have a game out of habit and they quiz me some more on my travels and I don't have much to tell them except it's a place I like visiting like we all like to visit our past. And she says she remembers stuff from the past and I ask how far back and she says she remembers that her great grandmother lived in a round house somewhere in the outback and that she hurt her ankle on the rocks surrounding her place and I wonder if memory is a spiritual thing and why on earth she's thinking of that dead woman. I run after the ball and run after it until my feet hurt and growing old feels wonderful in such invigorating company and he's competitive almost to a fault and the sun sinks with the bat in his hand and he won't leave until he hits another thirty runs because she's gone way over that. But the real value of hours like these - because that is what they are when you don't do the school run and walk past teachers and the gang from the parents club because you don't know who they are - is to cement your emotional union and create a space in the memory to dispel the doubts over who you are to them and as quickly as I arrive I know I'm going to leave soon enough. Schools are breaking up soon there's plans for the summer and we've been having a long running argument over which university she should think about to pursue her writing dreams even though the making of that choice is two and a half years away. I know the one I'd choose for her and she doesn't want that she wants to go way up North and I break bread with their mother and I'm grateful for the sterling job she does and yes they're very much my children and how lucky can a guy get and I head back to the capital counting my blessings and feeling all warm and fuzzy from their wit and smiles and incredible hearts and I'm thinking how cool it would be to have a couple more blessings then the fear returns halfway through the train traffic of how do I support two growing adults let alone four in a world gone harsh and colder. On the ipod Gregory Isaacs is singing "Jah never give a man...more than he can bear..." and I'm sure the old Rasta ain't talking about weed.