Episode 12 (of 18)
To my consternation it wasn’t going to be as easy as I’d thought – the tides did not just go in and out like on the Solway Firth – the books and papers in the reference library confirmed what I had heard – that in the Solent tidal flows were complicated and at springs there appeared to be two high tides, separated by a couple of hours.
Episode 11 (of 18)
Just two months later I pulled into the car park at Southampton General railway station. There waiting for me was Svet, entirely encumbered with bags; a rucksack on her back, briefcase in hand and two huge holdalls on the ground beside her.
Episode 10 (of 18)
I had but only fleeting acquaintance with consciousness over the next couple days, and when I did I did not like it. I disliked most the ache that seemed to inhabit every constituent part of my being. Every constituent part! Jerome would have laughed, I couldn’t even say with any certainty that I did not have housemaid’s knee! But I knew there was other unpleasant stuff that would have to be dealt with once the ache subsided and I wasn’t ready for that.
Episode 9 (of 18)
I came out through the revolving doors and into the crowds of the London streets in a bit of a state and I don’t mind admitting it. At first I just walked anywhere – along avenues, arcades, across squares, dodging the traffic on autopilot. Then I began to slow and start to take an interest in where I was and, more worryingly, what I was going to do.
I am lucky. I can walk to the end of our garden and sit in the sunshine on the cliff edge terrace overlooking Endcliffe Park. Through the yet-to-leaf trees growing tall from the foot of the old quarry immediately below I can see the road. Normally busy with all sorts of traffic it’s almost deserted. A lone car turns off Ecclesall Road onto Rustlings Road and a solitary walker crosses in the other direction. It sounds quieter than a Sunday morning, quieter even than a New Year’s Day morning.
It was then that the chopper dropped down out of the darkness on top of them. She heard the whump whump whump of the blades above her and to the rear and she raised her head, but she had to close her eyes and turn away because in that instant she was blinded by the white glare of a spotlight, and the end of a skid lighted by that glare that was swinging back and forth just above her head, forcing her to crouch down with her hands on Santiago’s shoulders. Under his clothes she felt his tense muscles, his back bowed over the wheel, and she saw his face illuminated in brief bursts from the spotlight swinging above them, all the bursts of spray that wet his face and hair.
A Wonderful Thing – or a Pisser?
I knew as I drove back in the rain swept dark from Eckington in North East Derbyshire (a ‘must win’ constituency) on the evening of 12th December. Over the previous week the canvassed support for Labour had felt to be softening and then falling away. On polling day itself people who over the previous few weeks had indicated a promise for Labour were reluctant to talk on the doorstep. People I remembered speaking to personally looked embarrassed. My last knock seemed to sum it all up. Three weeks previously I had finished a round on an upbeat note after a promising discussion with a woman in a modern bungalow. This time the door was answered by a man who just shouted ‘Brexit!’ at me before slamming the door shut in my face.
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