A Day in the Life -- Peter Leyland



"A Day in the Life"*



 

The Black Dog lurks, what am I to write about this month? Friday was bad but today is better. Tuesday is usually my favourite day and Thursday can be good, with the poetry group later after the washing and shopping is finished. Thursday then - today. It's not a good drying day - much too cold and misty. A bit of tumble drying - hang the expense. I’ll put the shirts on the chairs around the table; the duvet cover always does well over the bannister. The supermarket won’t be busy until later and there is always coffee to look forward to.

 

You can have too much of that. This morning after collecting my new glasses I go into Costa. A long queue, probably because the rival shop is closed. Not that I mind too much. It is often full of dogs and crying children there, and the staff are constantly changing. Eventually I am served. There are no empty tables. I pick up a full tray of dishes from one of them and carry it around for a bit, searching, but there is no space. Other tables are crowded with dishes or people. I carry the tray to the counter and the barista takes it from me smiling. I sit at the table which I had cleared of dishes. The coffee is surprisingly good

 

On the counter opposite a tall carton of milk suddenly turns over, spilling to the floor. The customer grabs paper towels and starts to mop, three four. She soon has a soggy clump in her hands. One of the baristas helps her, the other goes out and returns with a squeegee with which she wipes it up. I watch as the customer is served her takeaway drink. She takes it outside. The baristas smile at each other. Not a word has been said. I continue drinking my coffee. When I leave, I praise the barista for dealing with the incident so well. She is pleased. She thanks me.

 

I return home, walking up the hill with trees still in leaf, and I begin looking at the verses for this afternoon’s poetry session. We are reading extracts from Shakespeare. I have chosen Macbeth’s soliloquy, “Out, out brief candle…”. I have just begun practising it aloud when my wife returns from work in the car, wheels scraping the gravel. There was a clanking sound, she says. We look and one of the rear tyres is flat. Luckily, we have a customer care package, so we swing into action. Or she does. The trouble with my hearing loss is that the phone is really difficult to manage. It’s a good thing we're not stranded on the  motorway, I say.

 

When the AA arrive, we enter the relentlessly male world of cars and tyres. Since it is ten years since either of has had a puncture, we learn that everything has changed. The AA man removes the damaged tyre from the car and puts it into his van. He fits a special one of his own. He has a voice which is difficult for me to hear so my wife explains what will happen next: I must drive the car to the tyre shop and he will follow. 




We reach it and we park. My wife carries out the transaction. There are no Pirelli calendars now, just stacks of tyres bearing the name. I lean on a rail and watch as the tyre is fitted to the wheel rim and I am reminded of a time long before I met her. I was visiting a junior school in Luton in the pouring rain, bearing gifts of the new primary science and technology, when I had a sudden puncture. I pulled off a busy road which was streaming with rain and traffic onto a grass verge; I considered what I should do. It was a time when you had a spare tyre in the boot of your car. You would take it out and replace it at the roadside. 


I remembered how I tried the jack. The ground was really soft, so it just sank in, but then in a moment of inspiration I seized a piece of wood from my travelling educational kit. I reset the jack on the wood and pumped at the lever and it worked. It raised the car enough for me to take off the damaged wheel and fit the spare. The rain had not let up, but I remembered the adage that those who teach can, or is it the other way round? Whatever - I did arrive at the school safely. 

 

I resist the temptation to tell this story to the man fitting the new tyre. He has probably heard it all before. I do, however, tell my wife who can always cope with another re-telling. We reach home and she notices on her phone the news that an old friend, with whom I have often walked in the Oxfordshire countryside, has died. It was expected. We know that he has been ill for some time. But the news hurts.

 

I remember a long walk we took to Alfriston on the Sussex Downs. Andrew was already using two sticks. The others from the group had gone on a more challenging, twelve mile trek but I, being a little less fit, had chosen to walk with him. We talked about books, crime fiction being his favourite brand. We passed a trig point and he told me about how you can work out where you are by measuring angles from the concrete pillar to other surrounding points. They are marked on OS maps with a small blue triangle. I joked that the information might be useful to me as I have the worst sense of direction in the world. I talked about a book I was reading, The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan. Later I loaned it to him. I think he may still have it.



  

Black Dog, I have had enough of you now. There is the washing still to do but how much difference a few hours can make. The sun is out, and I know everything will be dry by this evening. I will read Macbeth's soliloquy to my poetry friends. My granddaughter is coming for the weekend. She is six years old. My wife has made a plan: we will plant bulbs and make pumpkin lanterns and visit the children’s playground. Later you will vanish, and tomorrow I will buy a sympathy card. 

At the funeral I will cry.



* With apologies to The Beatles for the title

 

Comments

Sandra Horn said…
Oh, Peter, I know that black dog only too well! I try to banish it with 'I have this here, this now' and to remind myself to acknowledge it when I'm happy for no particular reason - I just am, in this or that moment. All very Pollyannaish, I know. Doesn't always work. Old age, eh? It's not for cissies, as a friend once said. However:

On the ferry

The ferry chugs unhurried through the bay.
To our left, the shingle bank;
To the right, a row of tethered boats,
Skugga, Sylphe, Sea Eagle, Seren Wen,
Tug at their moorings in the salty wind.

Kite surfer skims the shallow sea,
Comes alongside, keeps pace with us,
Then makes a half-turn, lifts –
And flies. Over the ferry,
Over Sea Eagle, Skugga, Sylphe and Seren Wen.

Oh, I am nudging threescore years and ten,
Slack-fleshed, stiff-jointed,
Needing to feel my feet flat on the ground;
But now I’m up there with the surfer – past him –
Riding the wind on strong and tireless arms.

The ferry chugs below.
Skugga and Sylphe, Sea Eagle, Seren Wen
Clatter and tug and fret;
Sea-bound. Earth-bound, while I surf the sky.

LyzzyBee said…
Very sorry to hear about your friend, and the Black Dog. He haunts me, too, although the whatever it is of anxiety is ebbing a little. My tyre story: My flatmate in the 90s' tyre burst, we had a jack but it was feeble, so we jacked the car up and balanced it on a pile of Vogue magazines we'd taped together!
Peter Leyland said…
Thanks for your comments. That is a marvellous poem Sandra. It's like we inhabit two worlds as we age and that's a great set of seagoing images which points up the contrast.

The Dog was part of an inner world which I have to some extent mastered through experience that things will always work out, however precarious - with a pile of Vogue magazines perhaps, or just because the light within us doesn't leave.
Griselda Heppel said…
Sorry to hear about your friend. Even when you know it's coming, it's still horrible to lose someone you love. The memory of your walk with him on the beautiful Sussex Downs will be all the more poignant now but how lovely that you had that happy, conversational time together. And you and your wife will have made a brilliant jack o'lantern with your granddaughter (I'm not entirely against them, in spite of what my recent post said!).

Black Dog, GET THEE GONE.
Griselda Heppel said…
And Sandra, that is a very fine poem. I had echoes of A E Housman's Shropshire Lad in your reference to three-score years and ten (but that may be because I read On Wenlock Edge recently!).

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