I have just found this unpublished post among my drafts. It was written on the first day of Lockdown 2 and I thought I’d publish it today because I like the main picture, and was fascinated by the event.
This was the last thing I saw before my husband “The Writer” and I locked down for the first time, last March. I had no idea who had attached this lock to a tree in St.James’s Park or why but I liked that it gave me something to wonder about during the first few days of our incarceration.
Oddly, The Gods of Lockdown have offered me a similar mystery to ponder til we are supposedly released from this one on December 2nd:
Walking down Oxford St.,we came upon a sight more familiar in Vietnam or China than on the main shopping Street of Central London.. When I asked the smiling gentleman f I could take his photograph, his response was “Of course, it’s my birthday!” I took it, popped some money into the cardboard box nearby, which said on it “It’s my birthday, please help me” and walked away with “The Writer”.
A few minutes later, he noticed I was distracted from our conversation and enquired as to what was making me so jumpy. I confessed that it was driving me utterly crazy that I hadn’t asked questions of both men and got the full story of the little scene we had witnessed.
“The Writer” was aghast. “I think he was homeless and the barber, who is a professional, was walking past with his hairdressing kit and kindly offered him a sprucing -up birthday haircut” or “The barber is homeless and the barbee is a wealthy businessman who said, “Since today’s my birthday and you’re obviously a bit short of cash. I’ll give you some work. You can cut my hair and I’ll pay you handsomely for it”.
“Yes but”, I began, “What’s the TRUTH?”
“Why on earth would you want to know when it’s so much more interesting to make up a good story”, demanded the writer, genuinely perplexed.
I remembered a previous occasion many, many years ago. We were sitting in a bar in Navaho country, frequented, almost entirely, by Native Americans. Suddenly and without a word, they all got up, formed themselves into groups and began to do what we, as children, would have called a war dance.
We looked on, fascinated. Here we were, privileged to watch these complex sets of uniform movements, which “The writer” was thrilled to elaborate on, holding forth to me on what the dance must represent in terms of ancient tribal culture.
It wasn’t until about ten years later that Line Dancing arrived in Britain and I got my truth!
But there it is, however much more prosaic the truth is than the many available fictions, it’s what I want to know. I am a documentarian to my soul and he is a weaver of fantasies, a dreamer of dreams and the custodian of nightmares.
Where do you stand on truth versus fiction??
Locked down in London 