THE DEEP POOL

Between Christmas and New Year i spent two days with my friends Guy And Gina at their house in Wallingford, a lovely ancient town on the river Thames in south Oxfordshire. They live next door to a stunning old honey-stoned church, very close to the river, and not far from a great pub called The Dolphin, where i spent some time listening to the speech patterns of the area. At one point a young, superficially calm, but deeply pissed-off woman came in the pub and asked the barman and two perched-on-stools locals sitting at the bar if they'd seen David. Much umming and ahhing about this, then - 'he's probably down at the Town Arms'.

'Was 'e with Fraser?'

'Fraid so - best brace yourself'.

With this, the girl left the bar with a determined set to her jaw and eye. I felt guilty - Fraser could only be Scottish with a name like that, or have very screwed up English parents - 'oh dahling, let's call him Fraser! - that WOULD be different!' As i say, i felt guilty on behalf of all victims of fucked-up bar-careening Scottish bastards that say 'c'MOAN Davie boy - wull gan doon tae the Toon Airms 'n get SLAUGHTERED, then gan back tae the Dolphin an' pit AC/DC oan thu juke boax'.

'Well - i said i'd meet Lizzie here in the Dolphin'.

'FUCK that man - yill be seeing PLENTY a' Lizzie fer the rest ae yer life - whit wu need richt noo iz a bag a' chips an' a pint ae heavy!' One of life's more depressing dances, taking place any minute now, in a bar near you...

I also went to a bookshop called Toby English next to the Dolphin and bought some second hand books including Brewer's Place Names of the UK and J K Galbraith's The History of Economics, plus some old American pulp science fiction magazines which i bought primarily for the smell. In good bookshops like this, and also in health food shops, i tend to adopt a simpering stagey 'posh' persona, putting my hand to my chin, head to one side, like an intellectual giant-of-the-century who tragically took an ill-advised course of controversial anti-depressants, then got knocked over by a tram in Melbourne in the '80's. It drives Deborah up the wall - 'I think i'll wait outside in the fresh air if you don't mind'.

I have a soft spot for J K Galbraith - he wrote a wonderful short book, the name of which i can't remember, about the Scots in Canada, how they established and presented themselves there - very affectionate but wryly scolding at the same time.

We drove back to south Hampshire via the Thames Valley and the Ridgeway, by way of Moulsford, Streatley, the Hampstead Norreys and Newbury. At the highest point on the road across the Ridgeway the fading light in the west was of battered old gold with metallic ribbons of silver-grey, and a near-mystic view for hundreds of miles to the north, south and west. Kate Bush was raging away as the car soared and ploughed on a highwayman's road - 'Heathcliff, it's me, it's Cathy, i've come home now.....so co-ho-ho-hold - let me in - so co-ho-ho-hold'.

I've discovered an excellent small callow trick which has been amusing me from time to time over the winter holiday. Sitting in the front passenger seat of the parked car, with the window right down i wait till the pavement crowds of drone-like exhausted shoppers at the sales is at its most dense, then suddenly put on, at full volume, which in this car is fucking immense, My Generation by The Who. People stagger with shock and slowly turn, like big animals taking a bullet, and give you furious looks. You've got to sit like a simpleton, staring straight ahead as if entirely oblivious to Daltrey rasping 'Why don't you all f-f-f-f-fade away - i'm NOT trying to cause a big s-s-s-s-sensation' closely followed by Entwhistle's glorious bass solo - 'dung da-da-da dung da-da-dung da-da-da dungy-dong'........ In galaxies trillions of light years from ours, geezers with one eye and four cocks are slowly turning dials and saying 'Barney - can you hear this?' and all they will ever know of our planet will be the Entwhistle bass solo from My Generation.

'What the fuck is that? - did you record it?'

'i got most of it and i can make it into a loop - wait till the captain hears this - he's gonna have four hard ons'.

At one point in Southampton, a spotty teenage kid in a hoodie put his head in the car window and said 'who's that?'

I said 'yeah that's right'.

'Eh? - no, who is it?'

'Yeah, that's right - it's the WHO!' - dung da-da-da dung da-da-da-dung da-da-da-dungy dong - SPLAT - 'talkin' bout my generation'.

Kid moved off shaking his head, smiling.

I was upset to miss out on the snow of last week. Apart from a couple of hours one beautiful night in the village when tender great flakes flurried around, there was no snow here. In the morning, that snow was gone, as was the promise of a winter wonderland dawn walk with the dogs down by the estuary. I NEED snow - watching other people have it in Norwich on television just isn't good enough - i've befriended the entire Norwegian nation just so i can share their snow.

'So what do you like about Tromso?' journalists ask.

'Er, the people are nice and friendly' i say, looking out the window at the snow. Thank god for the snow in Berlin last November - sitting one dark evening in an eccentric small Italian restaurant run by Greeks with the Small World Orchestra, and outside - the snow - real snow - lots of it and more to come.

I ordered a bottle of the most expensive white wine on the list - a slightly green gavi di gavi, and the owner felt obliged to say something to us after ignoring us for half an hour.

'You English?' I said no, and identified the musicians by nationality. He clearly did not believe that Mixalis was Greek, but when it became clear he was, we were all welcomed into the bosom of this family room, champagne all round and a visit from their shuffling old dog who looked deeply into all our eyes, trying to understand what all the fuss was suddenly about.

'His earnest advisers stand back in silence, protecting the small dapper figure in front who, like a footballer about to take a vital penalty, stands and stares. It is as if Vincent can see not only into the yearling's heart and lungs, but into his brain, and into his character and thus, by definition, into his future. It is magical, almost mystical to watch.'

A paragraph from 'Vincent O'Brien, the official biography' by Jacqueline O' Brien and Ivor Herbert, describing the legendary Irish horse trainer looking at a horse with a view to buying. Vincent O' Brien trained three consecutive Grand National winners and three consecutive Cheltenham Gold Cup winners. I guess i'm fascinated by people like that who have gone so deeply into energetic understanding that they fleetingly become one with the object of their attention. What could O' Brien be 'reading' when looking at the horse, if not himself as the energy flowed between them?

I was in a horse yard yesterday, listening to Jane, Jackie and Deborah discussing horses, pointing out attributes of various horses that were standing around waiting to ride out. You can follow the conversation up to a point, but then, without you being able to see the join, they're in a participation mystique which grows in intensity until the apex of the spell is reached and they're suddenly back in the normal world, laughing and bantering as they move away from each other and towards different horses.

I watched Jackie mount her beautiful grey/brown horse and ride away from me down the lane to the winter fields beyond. She gave the horse a few hard pats of deep encouraging affection and he turned his head slightly to the left in some kind of eternal agreement between horse and rider. It's in the witnessing of such moments that your soul starts the necessary preparations for leaving your body, bracing itself for its next purpose.

jl
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MOST ENJOYED OF 2005

REKIRDS:
Best of The Who
I'm The One - Anette Peacock
Mojo Hand - Lightnin' Hopkins
The Blue Note Years - Cannonball Adderly
This Is Soul/Rare Trax - Rolling Stone magazine record/Germany
In The Shite! - Shitfinger
Nutters With Attitude - Mad Pride
Lamentate - Arvo Part with The Hilliard Enemble
Independently Blue - Hayley Hutchinson
The Inflated Tear - Roland Kirk
(Note - i hear loads and loads of happenin new rekirds wherever i go, so don't worry man, i know what's going down, but when your soul needs fed, you don't turn to Boards Of Canada, you turn to Roland Kirk).

BOOKS:
Cooking With Fernet Branca - James Hamilton Paterson
The Geography Of Thought - Richard E Nisbett
Dionysus: Myth and Cult - Walter F Otto
Handbook For The Diamond Country - Kenneth White
Avicenna and The Visionary Recital - Henry Corbin
Kinds Of Power - James Hillman
This Tree Will Be Here For A Thousand Years - Robert Bly
Fleshmarket Close - Ian Rankin
Grievous Angel - Jane Hill

BARS/RESTAURANTS:
Gourmet Kama, Aberdeen, Scotland (they brought the wrong meal and didn't offer to change it, gave me a seat in the terrible sea draught, the poppadoms were cold and it was STILL the best Indian food i've ever eaten).
Borse, Bergen, Norway (how people used to look before the onslaught of 'lifestyle' - god bless them all).
The Bein Inn, Glen Farg, Scotland (log fires, cheerful drunk Scots folk, lovely owner and a braw wee dug).

PAINTERS:
Allan Black
Mirjam Ruckert