14/7/06

One week in Winchester - I recall: sitting fantastically alone in a small cocktail bar on the high street last Sunday eve, two huge screens playing back the World Cup final thinking all the time about how great it would be if Italy won the cup for my Papa - I drank the finest gin in honour and text messages kept coming in from friends across the country all on their seat edges - and then that explosion of joy when they won - from me, from down this street to my surprise as the pub nearest exploded in deep shouts and a few fans ran out into the night leaping and raising their arms in the air, from across the continent -

The odd dry stench of a dying dog in the digs - steering clear of the kitchen where the poor thing flops around unable to hold itself up, a tumour the size of a football sticking out of its side like some damnable insult to the rest of its body - and the beast groans through the night. Why does the landlady keep it alive, why not put it down? Assume it must be painful for her too, something to do with loss and the fear of loss - her daughter is away in Italy for a month, her boyfriend is unable to visit so often because of his three daughters - all this reads in her face, a gentle greyness blooming across the skin around her eyes and onto her cheeks -

The stomach churning beauty of the guitar solo in The Stones' 'Sympathy For The Devil' - hard-edged, bitter-sweet -

Poor great Syd Barrett - the eulogies come in from all over: musicians, friends, journalists, modern pretenders - but the most moving are the blogs of ordinary people reporting how they were constantly awakened by his music, listening to it in gardens in the 60s or else in the clubs in London where the band first played - and his face staring back up from the pages of newspapers; those dark, haunted eyes - and how I recall the strange songs I used to make up with friends and band-members as kind of nods to Barrett: songs with names like The Singing Goldfish, Life's Too Important, PC Juniper the list goes on - saddest of all however is the fact that the local HMV doesn't stock any of his recordings -

And how the features of a place change dependent on one's mood and recent events - last time I was here the whole seemed marred and bleak, tainted with a sense of loss - now despite the quiet of Blackbirds and the density of tourists leading in the low light evenings, I bring with me more of a sense of anticipation and hope and true enough certain things begin to reflect that -

Well for a while at least - two thirtysomething men push each other around outside The Green Man pub as the sun goes down and the cloud of swifts reels low to the cathedral - nearby a natural audio mix of the cathedral bells at evening and a string quartet hired to play for an open air corporate do in the quadrant create a present discord -

Finally on the last evening, the landlady has the dog put down and immediately a sense of balance returns to the house, laughter and the two Italian students also staying are less frenetic in their pre-sleep energy and disruption -

The nearby fields are being harvested already, wide shock of vivid gold and the moon still evident, fading gently but there like a ghostly blemish in the early morning sky -