Some Events in Canon Hill Park, Birmingham – 16/9/05

Canada geese harassing heads in low flight approach, their reasons will become clear – a young woman misreads the signs and gets overly bossy, treating treasure like an every day object, assuming too much she is ignorant of what she may lose – ‘Friend of the Park’ in stay press white trousers mobilizes teams of walkers with their bent ash canes and folding seats, they walk in single file – Three teenage boys, 18-19 years, slouch at the pond edge. They share a spliff among the feathers, a kind of eider dust, on the water surface at the slag end – Oddly paired couples wander off earphone to earphone, one of them knows what lies ahead while the other has no clue of the purpose of their roaming – Sweet peas, salvia, Indian Bean Trees – A woman with thick dark hair stands ramrod stiff, cold in the shade while an anorak loner sits in the sun happy for all to ignore him in his musing – Greek women in high-heeled shoes chain-smoke strong cigarettes while children reel past on scooters and bikes – One of the teen anglers sings: “Now I’m starting to fish I’m gonna have me some luck.” – There is an attempt at flamenco going on in a skirt worn by a middle-aged madam, she knows some fundamental questions would be good right now, she wants to spend some time with a stranger but wonders how safe that would be? She asks herself: how big is my heart? Big enough to embrace a park? A pond? An ornamental garden? A tree? A shrub? Another person? Perhaps. A Labrador squats and shits on the path in front of her, cold stone arse. So she leaves her position and takes up on the other side of the pond, the lee end, where strangers often meet (she’s seen them do it): men in dark pin-striped suits meet women wearing pullovers and track-suit trousers. They shake hands as if making a deal – The teen anglers move, more to cause trouble than improve their chances of making a catch. They eat bacon rolls. They are getting cold, bored, frustrated and look for scapegoats. They shout at old men and dogs. Eventually they up and quit, nothing caught. They pick on each other as they go, rods now less precious and used as whips and clubs to knock each other about with, they head off along the pond edge.

The hubbub of Urdu bubbling in the mouths of two elderly gentlemen: brook speak, river words, waterfall sentences.

Roman emperors once walked here I’m told, or did I imagine it? Sure. Sweet imagination sat here while the roamers roam collecting their woodland parts, their overtures in the garden – “Can we feed the ducks down there please Daddy?” – surely Caesar never asked that, then again perhaps he did, perhaps he invaded solely to feed the ducks – a grouchy child squats down in the center of a busy path, refusing to move. He plays with a pebble and the tip of his boots, skating blue, waving hands, woad and wailing, the vestige of land-based resistance, Boadicea’s inheritor. He doesn’t know it of course, just does it all the same, acts trenchant boy over and over, little piggy lord of the flies.

A fish jumps – the teen anglers missed the beast, perhaps the only one in the pond, and now he knows he can reveal himself, flop through the surface without being afraid, mocking the idiocy of impatience.

Mobile orators on push scooters and mountain bikes ride the slopes screaming and bellowing the names of single syllable gods and goddesses, slow open mouthed grunts vowel full, hard edged even from the mouths of women and children.

“You’ve got to find a man first.” Two women discuss childbirth and seem to repeat the obvious, broken by the bell on a child’s tricycle. “I was 37 when I had him.”

Then the day is broken. A dog with a head like Anubis moves close, cocks its leg and urinates full flow against a litter bin, his amber bead eyes strike horror in the people nearby as if with it’s gaze it is capable of stealing some essential part of them within, a part they cannot define and made more horrific by that, the unidentified, the unclear – but swans and geese arrive - Icelandic, mythical - landing on the pond surface to play out their role as mediators of peace (I said their reason would be clear) – come to quell the dog-like satanic beast – the pond bubbles with the battle, the dog growling, salivating, baring harsh canines, drawing blood from the slender necks of the swans or tearing the broad wings of geese – but he is one alone against them, crowding him, sending him down under the surface, not dead but defeated in his legion for now: the dis-animated mask, the steaming turd sinking to the pond floor – a dirty legend, not some romantic sugary fairy tale, but a grimmer reality: pagan, debauched, bloody, sacrificial - feuds of animal gods suffering even here – the gatekeeper keeps the public back, away from the danger, blowing his whistle, rapidly cordoning off areas of the park - on the opposite bank, the Molineux wolves gather for any carrion that may float their way. They can’t swim so haunt the water’s edge hungrily, snuffling at the bloody surface, eager to gorge on the dead bird fodder of good vs. evil – they bay and howl with hunger.

The air remains edgy, tense. There’s a stand-off between a squirrel and toddler - each eyeing the other with suspicion – unhappy families play emotional hide and seek on the walkway to the coffee shop, pushing and pulling against each other, then oddly inertial, wondering where they are going and why? A Serb or Croatian family gathers nearby. One of them, male 28, has a false arm, the immobile hand of which rests on his thigh, open palmed. Cannot tell where it is attached but he does not bend his elbow so presumably right up to the shoulder, torn off in the Balkans war. It is a shocking sight here. This man, half-mannequin. There is something odd about the plastic his prosthetic is made of, like that part of him is from the 1960s.