I could peacefully observe the red flower on the windowsill from where I lay on the leather couch, the trees of Clapton beyond it, and I considered whether a tiny black dot on its side was perhaps a flea, but it wasn’t, it was something else, a fleck of dust; and so I meditated on it, on the flower's beauty, its aliveness, of how it was like so many beautiful young people I know, fresh to the world. I was unaware that only a few centimetres away, in the flowerpot’s soil, lay a dead sparrow.
It was a weekend I'd spent in Clapton in East London, dog sitting Jack for friends (or “Jack Bowie”, as I liked to call him, due to his heterochromia iridis.) A dog who kept coming up to me on the couch, hoping I'd rub him with my toes. A dog that needed at least four walks a day, who I gifted with a long walk on the Saturday, past Clapton station, towards the River Lea, then up the towpath to Springfield Park.
It was there, watching the narrowboats slowly move north, that I remembered my ex-partner's and mine's adventure on a boat named Dinah May the previous year, how we had moored in this very area around September 2018, just before we went on holiday to Palermo, Sicily. As Jack and I took the towpath towards the park, we fell into pace with a boat carrying three people and a dog. The dog noticed Jack and got angsty, wanted to run to him but was stumped by the canal water in between them. It barked; its owners stopped their conversation to look at me.
‘Frankie!’ they shouted at him, trying to call his attention back to them. Jack was nonplussed.
Further up the towpath, by the Anchor and Hope pub, we came face-to-face with a working-class couple with many children in tow and a snappy little dog. The husband told the wife to pick up the dog, but I said there was no need, that Jack was friendly. She promptly put the snappy dog back down and it scuttled towards Jack for friendly sniffs.
‘What a lovely dog,’ the mother said, puffing on a cigarette. The children were quiet, the husband smiled. ‘What’s his breed?’
‘We don’t know. He was found in a bin.’
‘A bin? As a puppy?’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh, look at his eyes,’ she said to the children. Further ahead, a young cyclist had stopped and watched our interaction with benevolent patience. I wished the family a lovely day and nodded a hello at the cyclist. Jack was my ticket into the world of pleasantries.
Once we returned to the flat, I spent most of my time on the leather couch with a slim volume on Buddhism by Steve Hagen. When I took breaks, I put mindfulness into action: watched my thoughts, watched the now. The now was made up of seagulls flying above the flat, of bird songs, of sunshine interspersed with bouts of raining, and of a Brazilian guy, Mauricio, also staying in the flat (a friend of Jack's guardians who lived in São Paulo and was visiting London for the week), who my ex-partner had correctly described the night before as a "gentle giant". So gentle in fact that he eased my life story out of me in just half an hour of conversation.
Mauricio wanted to leave a gift for Jack's guardians, who were away in Sitges in Spain and only returning when Mauricio was already flying back to Brazil. I suggested a walk to the local organic supermarket so he could buy chocolates and flowers for them. On the way back, we stopped at the Clapton Heart for fish, chips and a pint of lager. He didn't know the Clapton Heart was once the most dangerous pub in London, Murder Mile’s beating heart. Gentrification had now wiped that all away and left in its trail a bartender with flowy silver hair, glasses and gym-made muscles. A bartender who turned out to be Brazilian and took Mauricio's breath away.
Originally published in Livejournal in spring 2019.
In memory of Jack.
What a beauty this brief essay is with this wonderful turn like a poem, Ollie: "Gentrification had now wiped that all away and left in its trail a bartender with flowy silver hair, glasses and gym-made muscles. A bartender who turned out to be Brazilian and took Mauricio's breath away."
I loved this: so full of incident and people and yet so brief. Really skilful. It’s interesting that it was from a few years ago, I think your writing has altered a little: this vignette has all the brevity of your work today with just an element of expansion.