BOOKED

Sometimes a good song sends you on a train of thoughts and brings back all sorts of memories. And such is the case with a breezy and a tad melancholic sounding song wonderful life to me.

Quite a while back I spent a year in a small college which is a part of the university of london in wye, kent a very small town near Ashford which would be familiar to you that use the ‘chunnel’ to go to france.

In those days there were no channel tunnel yet and if any of you want to go to france (via calais) you had to travel to folkstone which isn’t very far away. On several occasions - on Sundays - I drove to folkstone in my 600- pounds beat up crap brown vauxhall bomb.walked along the beach watching people and families enjoying the sea side or sometimes joined the fun looking at mostly useless bric-a-brac stuff if the day happened to have boot fairs there. On one of these occasions towards the end of the day and when the boot sale was about to end I came across a small still-life oil painting and this old gentleman almost begged me to buy it and I did buy it from him for around five pounds or may be ten at the most . he almost slobbered and thanked me profusely and said god bless you sir. It was as though he was getting rid of something bad but it wasn’t so. the painting looked quite pleasing with beautiful gauguin magenta colors and I still hang it in my house and remains one of my favorite paintings. It must be quite old as you can see hair-line cracks all over the surface of the painting - which was done on a wooden panel. On another occasion I met one of my college friends and his family and I remembered him pointing to a white surfaced cliff in the distance and asking : is that the white cliff of dover? He unfortunately passed away sometimes back. Had a massive heart attack while driving to office and simply died right there in the traffic.

i love boot fairs and antique fairs. most sundays I would go to nearby towns where the fairs were held. Maidstone, ashford, wye and rye. One time on the way to rye, I drove my car into the drain by the roadside. Couldn’t see the drain which was full of weeds. And a white gentleman stopped his car, shook his head, gave a wan smile and heaved the front end and i managed to bring the car back onto the road. He again shook his head, got into his car and drove away . On yet another occasion I was driving in the typical kent countryside along an empty lane with hedgerows on both sides of the road and suddenly a beautiful pair of pheasants flew out of the hedgerow and stopped right in front of my car. That was the first and last time I ever see live wild pheasants in my life.

and it was while driving along this kind of lane one day during a summer vacation on my way to work as a part time strawberry picker that I first heard this lovely song wonderful life by black on my car radio. The weather was fine, the countryside was beautiful and I was on my way to gorge myself on strawberries as big as my fist and try to make some pocket money on the side so that I can travel and visit the louvre and go to venice and black was singing a beautiful song on the radio….it was a wonderful life…

And with money saved from picking strawberries (another story) and working as a bingo club door man (yet another story) I bought a package deal and took a trip to florence and venice with a short stop in lucerne switzerland and visited the famous monastery in asissi italy . Crossed the channel on one of those channel ferries from dover (or was it folkstone?) to calais and traveled all the way by bus through switzerland to italy. on the ferry met an old indonesian man with a young girl of may be seventeen or eighteen years old whom he claimed to be his daughter. She looked forlorn and positively depressed . the man said he was bringing his daughter to see paris before sending her to study in a university in malaysia. While I was talking to her daddy the whole of the crossing she just stayed away looking out to the sea with her hair blowing in the wind but didn’t look at all happy or looking forward to see paris, the romantic city.i did not get to find out what bugged her.

And in the monastery in asissi I took a photo of myself with a priest.st francis of asissi was said to be so happy living a monastic life that he even talked to birds. But monasteries evoke loneliness and melancholy in me and I couldn’t help recalling a very good short story "The miraculous Cairn" by Christopher Priest about a priest who did a very bad thing to a young and very fat girl. This story was featured in GRANTA 7 Best of young British novelists. i guess not many people hear anything about this writer anymore but Granta 7 was very spot on on many of the others as the writers featured in this Granta 7 went on to become very big names in the british literary scene now. salman rushdie, ian mcEwan, william boyd, julian barnes graham swift pat barker martin amis were all featured in this volume.

and i first get to know about this great literary quarterly from one of those boot fairs. i bought my first copy (Granta 14: Autobiography) from ashford british rail car park boot fairs all for ten pees all those many years ago. i still keep this volume although it is all tattered and all pages came loose now. over the years since i've collected almost all the granta volumes now.

and in florence everyone gawked at michealangelo's david but one old lady lamented that she couldn't visit the uffizi because it was closed on that day. I made a small mental note that i had to visit the uffizi ...and the prado and the hermitage one day. these are the three remaining greatest museums that i've not yet visited.

i 'm by inclination a loner although i'm not averse to company. books and paintings suit me fine and i'm happy surrounded by my books. they are my true friends.

and in venice while everybody was milling about in front of the doge's palace i asked one guy who happened to be a french tourist who refused to speak english how to get to the peggy guggenheim's palazzo venier dei leoni where i saw henri rousseau's surprise! For the first time there. ( several years later I saw the same painting in france somewhere). i like this painting so much that i used this picture for my wallpaper for many years until i changed it to a still life of old books by an unknown italian painter a few years back.

it's difficultt not to run and hide. i've been running and hiding all my life but one just can not hide and run away from oneself . everything considered i'm not too unhappy with my lot and this song , a sweet and happy song sometimes feel a tad melancholic as all good romantic songs are. if i can sing i would sing this song to a nice girl and i imagine she would be happy , perhaps shed a drop of tears or two and perhaps if i'm lucky she would shed more than just tears...but i'm thinking bad thoughts again...so i'll stop here...

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Wonderful life

by Black

Here I go out to sea again
the sunshine fills my hair
and dreams hang in the air

Gulls in the sky and in my blue eyes
you know it feels unfair
there's magic everywhere

Look at me standing
here on my own again
up straight in the sunshine

No need to run and hide
it's a wonderful, wonderful life
No need to laugh and cry
it's a wonderful, wonderful life

Sun in your eyes
the heat is in your hair
they seem to hate you
because you're there

and I need a friend
Oh, I need a friend
to make me happy
not stand here on my own

Look at me standing
here on my own again
up straight in the sunshine

No need to run and hide
it's a wonderful, wonderful life
No need to laugh and cry
it's a wonderful, wonderful life

I need a friend
oh, I need friend
to make me happy
not so alone.......

Look at me here
here on my own again
up straight in the sunshine

No need to run and hide
it's a wonderful, wonderful life
No need to laugh and cry
it's a wonderful, wonderful life

No need to run and hide
it's a wonderful, wonderful life
No need to run and hide

it's a wonderful, wonderful life
wonderful life, wonderful life