What happened to the week? It just whooshed by in a haze
of activity. I blame work. Specifically, the first paid work for months. Real
work. Close proof-reading and editing of 20 or so documents, written in the
most impersonal, convoluted technical language imaginable. It conspired to do
my head in, question my own grammatical certainties and occupy me night and day, night and day.
Work, the final
frontier. When it's there, I resent the time it swallows up. When it's not,
I worry that I will never work again. Buried in the countryside here, I'm out
of sight and out of mind. But I'm one of life's fortunate individuals: I have an industrious wife who does regular real work. So it's not that I really
need the work, it's just that work somehow confirms your existence. It means
that I can contribute.
One of my favourite writers, Joseph Conrad, always
maintained that work – in all its weary, mundane permutations – kept us from
staring too deeply into the heart of darkness at the very core of our being. Therein
madness lies. And it's true in a sense; the entire week I was so busy that
there wasn't time to worry about the state of the planet, answer e-mails and
sign on-line petitions. No time to ponder our daughter's future or our dog's decline.
No time to fret about all that lapsed correspondence and mounting paper work.
No time to worry about wintering the garden. No time for writing or self-doubt.
Barely time to cook, in fact.
The good thing about all that is that you can wallow in
the relief that comes with the end of toil. Normally my weeks segue into
weekends. For the first time in ages, however, I felt the Thank-God-It's-Friday
effect. So much so that the Good Wife and I went out. To a bar, what's more (a thing which of course I don't often do,
as Vivian Stanshall of the Bonzo Dog Doodah Band narrated in his rich and
fruity voice). And not just any bar, but the recently opened Bar Au Coin de la
Rue: a nicely re-furbished stone building near the market place in the centre
of Martel, our un-thriving local metropolis.
We went to see our Amerikanische
Freund Steve's band in concert. Normally there's three Steves, but on
Friday night there was no room for Steve the drummer. His kit would have
drowned out all attempted conversation in such a small venue. So it was just
Steve on double bass and Steve on guitar, playing, very competently, their usual
repertoire of old R&B, soul and rock 'n' roll numbers. They were already
well into their first set when we walked past the smokers outside, pushed open
the door and stepped diffidently inside.
It was a hotbed of activity. I wouldn't have believed it
possible had I not witnessed it with my own eyes. So there is life in Martel after
dark and after the summer season. I recognised a few local faces. There was the
nice cashier from Intermarché, whose new glasses I admired a few months ago.
There was the Australian woman who walks her three dogs around town. Her little
black poodle barked excitedly every time the audience burst into applause,
wagging its little coiffed tail endearingly.
 | |
| Assembling flat-packs for kicks |
And our friend, Dave, was there with a group of pals and
the girlfriend we hadn't yet met. He's one of the soldier boys I described in Bloody Murder On The Dog's Meadow, who
helped out on our build. Once a soldier, always a soldier. When he's not off
seeking thrills and exhilaration by, for example, paragliding in Katmandu, he
works here to pay his charges and keep his head just above the water. He's
planning to go paragliding over or off Mont Blanc, but is currently helping
American Steve with his latest renovation project.
I didn't get a chance to ask his Isabelle what she thinks
about all these death-defying adventures. They met via an internet dating
service and they clearly dote on each other. I wondered how they managed with
the language barrier. Dave told me that when he speaks French, Isabelle tends
to reply in English – and vice versa. It seems to work. Dave proposed to her
outside the cathedral in Limoges and a wedding is in the offing. We're both
delighted. I love a nice wedding, me. It hasn't always been easy for him over
here and he's a diamond geezer, who
belies all macho military stereotypes.
As a result of our construction project, Dave decided to
use straw bales for the interior walls of his barn down river. He knows how
long renovations can take, particularly when you have to work on others' to
finance your own. In between the band's two sets, I chatted to a couple of his
friends. They've just started to emerge from their own renovation project. They
decided to dedicate themselves to it body and soul for as long as it would take,
rather than letting it drag on for years. It took them two years and almost,
apparently, killed them. She's had two operations on her hand for repetitive
strain injury resulting from too much re-pointing, which is wicked work. They
moved here from the Yorkshire Dales, because they were being overrun by
day-trippers and she couldn't ride horses safely any more.
Debs had to work on Saturday morning, so we sneaked off
half way through the band's second set – after a particularly fine version of
Ray Charles' 'Unchain My Heart', which got a couple of women at the bar dancing
and the black poodle barking more deliriously than ever. It was nice. And it's
heart-warming to realise that there are people in our town who want to listen
to live music. What's more, the cashier from Intermarché kissed me on both
cheeks, which pleased me as much as our local mechanic calling me by my first
name. He probably pronounces it with a 'c' instead of a 'k', but it doesn't
matter. These are positive signs of local acceptance. It's good to belong.
Another good thing about work is that you earn your
time-off without fear of guilt. The following day, we treated ourselves to a On The Road by the Brazilian director,
Walter Sallis. It went on for hours and didn't matter a jot. As an ex-student
of American literature, it shames me to confess that Jack Kerouac's famous
novel is one of only a few books that I've never been able to finish. The novel
was so vividly brought to life that I feel now that there's no pressing need to
go back to the book. The portrayal of Dean Moriarty was beautifully realised. Now there
was a man who chose not to let work stand in the way of living life to the
full. Life, though, in his case, was brief and intense.
If this rain doesn't stop, I won't be able to get out
into the garden with my neighbour's pickaxe to dig up the baby trees that
sprouted this summer from their unidentified parent. We want to transplant them
to unchartered corners of the garden. But it looks like we might have to settle
instead for another film. Ah well, it sure beats work.
No comments:
Post a Comment