Sun Bursts Sky

Schools have broken up for the Easter holidays and I’ve been hanging around London for work rest and play but mainly work and the telly folk are busy chasing Mr & Mrs Obama and they’re deadly honest with their email responses and write things like no please leave me alone the rest of the week G20/Obama arriving and I’m cool with that because when stuff starts happening there’s no stopping it. There’s a creativity outbreak over at the weekly Producer meeting and ofcourse we can lay an awful lot of eggs and hope some hatch but we do need to prioritise. I’m all for the short film in Johannesburg and developing the Kenyan film with the excellent Dada films and making sure our friends in Amsterdam bite and run with that other one. You reap what you sow, a prophet or two have declared and what's the reaping rush.

But for now it’s April and April is a likeable month in the northern hemisphere and perhaps we have global warming to thank for the fields of tulips and daffodils and the light, the glorious light of shy summer staying up a little later and as a child of sunnier climes I’m surprised at how much my mood feels the changing of the seasons the renewal of plant life in the urban wilds the lightness of feeling the heat the breeze the light itself the blue of the skies the fruit in season pull me out of emotional gutters and the knee jerk tendency to complain.

Everyone is friendlier, some more friendly than others on this rumbling train to the south west and a fat taxi driver of Italian origin drives me from the train station gleefully telling me this and that about everything in his life like I’m the Pope’s confessor and I don’t know why it must be the priest face behind my summer shades and he’ll be fifty this year and found out the other day that he’s got two sons now in their 30’s and he’s a father of eight now and he reckons he likes the ladies and he’s driving with his eye on the sidewalks where the mini skirt has come out of hibernation and he goes how can he not look isn’t the summer wonderful and he turns by the large green spaces where I’m meeting my offspring and I spot them crossing the zebra crossing and he shouts Oi I’ve got your dad here and the children laugh.

There’s a strong wind about, sudden and unexpected but the sky is suitably festive and the March rains have dried on the green which is too tough for a smooth game of cricket. So what’s your news? Monosyllabic responses to questions about school but I learn that the exams were ok and that an exchange student from France will be staying with her come Easter and the world is opening up to them slowly and certainly and we bang a ball about with a bat and he reckons he has me out because I didn’t reach the stumps on time and I refuse to go and he takes the bat away and tells his sister that I’m cheating and it’s nice to have a dad who admits to losing but if I won’t leave the crease it’s fine because what the hell am I going to do without a bat.

We head out for coffee at the park café and in the glare of the public I’m thrilled by their self assurance and confidence I could entertain myself for hours just watching their interactions and listening to their frighteningly adult take on the world and those thoughts all parents have of keeping danger at bay and the evil of the world disproportionally visited on little people and the attraction of bastards to essential innocence and the haunting adage a child should outlive a parent and what if they don’t – all of that we file under donotthinkaboutit and my thoughts are ofcourse with children and how so many have come into the world in the last year alone there’s baby Maelle up in North London whose mama's been talking babies with me all year from the size of her belly to baby names and she just rang this very day to say at last Maelle's come out and it was hard work and she arrived early this morning and she's so beautiful. And there's little Tanaka down in New Zealand and Yeukai over in West London and the year is strongly female amongst my circle of friends and l must make time to visit the new princesses.

What are you doing next week? I’m going to France says he. What? It’s a school trip dad chill there’s like 40 of us going. I’m too content to be upset but it riles me that I can’t keep up with their busy calendars and I push the bad thoughts away and try and compress their collective ages into one and wonder where the years have gone and reckon it’d be fine to raise another bunch and from whence comes all this brooding? From Unfinished Sympathy as the song from Massive Attack would suggest and we pass the time playing with our cameras until the new summer sun sinks for good and I head back to the city where millions of people crowd each other into loneliness and despair and we must be grateful for the umbilical cords linking us to souls near and far.