h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

There are some images of people that keep coming back to mind.

One is of a couple seen three, maybe four times over the spring and summer. The sun is out each time. He's quite tall, grey, casually smart, slimmish, moves easily. They progress very slowly. She hangs on to his arm. She's grey too, with short curls. And neatly dressed. She takes two or three quick rather stuttery steps to his one. They walk up the lane where it passes the nursing home and back again. I can imagine their story quite easily and it's heartbreaking. They're out for a late walk in the sun.

There's the guy on a beach on the North coast of Ireland. It's a long sandy beach round a bay and it's late afternoon. He's dressed in a very sharp, black suit with very polished black shoes with very long pointed toes. Grotesquely long and pointed. Hands in his pockets, spoiling the line of his jacket, he strides straight down the beach just out of reach of incoming waves. There are vibes of Vettriano's butler. I've no idea what his story is, he's out of place.

There's another very smartly dressed gentleman, just smart not sharp. He's in his seventies I'd guess, and he's wearing a smart black hat. One that goes with a suit. There's a circular bench at the top of the pedestrianised shopping precint in town. On this occasion it's almost full of young adults in low-slung jeans, heavy black make-up and expensively mussed-up hair-dos lounging around talking on mobiles. The little man in the suit and the hat goes and sits in their midst, back straight, knees together. He gets out a neatly wrapped package, places it on his knees, undoes the greaseproof paper and takes out a sandwich. Sitting there, neatly hatted, in the fast-food eating designer-torn crowd, he's out of time.

Then there's another picture from the same street but of one of the long straight benches. Eight or nine dressed for a day out women from the 60 to 65 age range. Smart trousers, smart jackets, smart cardis, smart perms, smart handbags, all in a line eating large ice-cream cones. I imagine some interesting power dynamics among them, I would bet they sit in more or less the same order everytime. Like the roosting chickens. But right now they're enjoying their ice-cream on a day out.

I think all these pictures want their story told.

Oh lovely. I do admire people with good observation skills.

I'm also a people-watcher and body language aware. My partner has a picture of the butler bent against the wind struggling with an umbrella trying to shield the dancing couple from the driving rain. It's on his bedroom wall and I studied it this morning in more detail than I would have normally. How strange that I would come home and the first journal I read is yours, mentioning just the same character.

That's neat .
Vettriano's paintings are striking. S is into Ivon Hitchens, my preference is Stanley Spencer and Tinga-Tinga. They make quite a mix!

Across the Traffic

She was standing
At cold day’s end in a grey winter coat
By a busy road
Where I too, my day done,
Was hurrying past the red brick hospital.

She was looking across the street
To a window, high up,
Where an old man stood
In pyjamas and dressing gown
Staring back.

He, like she, was unmoving.
Beside him a young nurse,
Waved, smiled , pointed and smiled again,
In gestures sent,
To fill the impending lonely space
Between window and street.

And though I saw no expression on face of husband or wife,
The space was not empty yet.
There were years in the intensity of their gaze,
Cutting across the traffic.

Did she always turn here to stare? The walk and the lift
Down from the top floor must have taken many minutes.
Had he insisted that he stay by the window?
Maybe a pact, maybe an instinct
But I knew that I could not bear to stand
And watch her turn away and
See the nurse lead him with, gentle touch
Back to bed.

So I passed by
Twenty years ago and left them
Fixed forever sending their years across the traffic.

There's heartbreak in that too.

I did read it last week, but as so often ended up not posting because it felt like saying something for the sake of saying something. But silence doesn't work online.

The way journals grow occasionally, and collect all sorts of wonderful things is such a pleasure.

Thank you. I can still see the couple in my mind's eye so clearly and thank you for being the first place on to which I have put any of my poetry. warm wishes Robbie

That makes this journal even better.

Season's greetings .

On the edge of the armchair a woman dressed in a black business suit sits knees together, ankles crossed. Her shoes are high heeled and black. Her hair is died black, bobbed with sharp edges. She is quite heavily made up with a lot of darkness round the eyes and red lipstick. One hand holds tight onto a brief case. The other hand holds a brochure from the table.

Passing in front of her an elderly gentleman guides his wife in her wheelchair through reception, they greet the receptionist and pass the time of day with her. They go to look at the Christmas cards on sale, appreciate the flower arrangement by the door and admire the courtyard garden with its weeping willow fountain through the window. He shows her the dining room on the far side of the courtyard, where one of the patients rooms looks out on the courtyard and the Hospice Consulant's office window.

The woman in the suit is ten minutes early for her business meeting. She doesn't turn the pages of the brochure. Sitting very straight, her eyes are fixed on the corridor leading to the Admin offices.

Two weeks on, the image of this woman, and particularly her eyes, remains.