Down the Donkey Line (having done the first bit on the road because the owner of the patch of land at the start of the bridle path has meanly blocked access but seems still not to be doing anything with the land), onto the canal towpath and across the stepping stones into the park in Uppermill and the up the road to the market stalls. The fruit and veg man this morning had Cox's apples, "the first from our orchards in Kent", as he told me with justifiable pride. For no-one can deny that these are the best apples there are. If the English orchards could produce enough of them, they should export them everywhere and stop the sale of some of the poor fruit that is sold under the name of "apple". Well, that's what I think anyway. And I am sure the lady I met at the fruit and veg stall would agree with me. She was shaking the apples to see if the pips rattled before deciding to buy. It's a long time since I have seen anyone do that. If the pips rattle inside the apple, then the fruit is completely ripe and ready to eat. We reminisced, separately but together, about receiving that bit of wisdom from our fathers long ago.
Clearly this was a morning for reminiscences for after leaving the market stalls I ran into an old friend I have not seen for almost ten years. There he was on the corner of the street, trying to work out what was going on behind the scaffolding on the building opposite. This is what happens: you reach a stage in your life where you can stand and ponder. Maybe it's part of the same syndrome that has men leaning on the wall overlooking, or perhaps even overseeing, the work going on in Vigo where they building the new railway station.
Anyway, my friend and I caught up with each other's lives: who is still married (me), who has married again (his ex wife and his ex wife's best friend - for the fourth time! - that one's original husband says that she is collecting surnames!), what our various offspring, who went to school together, are up to and how many grandchildren we each have. And so on and so on until I looked at my watch and had to say that, delightful as it was to stand on the corner and chat, I had a couple of places to go to before my bus came in about 7 minutes time. You have to keep an eye on our buses. If you miss one there is a half hour wait for the next one. And I didn't fancy the walk home with several bags of fruit, fish, bread, biscuits and goodness knows what else!
I caught the bus. Quite a masterpiece of timing.
Reminiscences can have adverse consequences. Reading the news online after a late breakfast, I read that a member of the House of Lords has been calling for a police investigation of the writer Hilary Mantel, one of my favourite writers. At the weekend, a short story of hers was published in the Guardian: "The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher". That's what did it. She wrote something that involved one of our "national treasures". Mind you, can Mrs Thatcher really be classed as a "national treasure? I thought they were mostly rather nice people. (I need to be careful what I write. Maybe there is an app somewhere looking out for derogatory stuff about national treasures.)
This is what happened. Years ago Margaret Thatcher was hospitalised for some routine operation and on the day the national treasure (not yet recognised as such) left hospital Hilary Mantel looked out of the window of her flat and saw the lady waiting to be collected, in a prime position to be a target for a sharpshooter, had there been one in Ms Mantel's flat. The moment was stored away and has been turned into a short story, provoking outrage, just as when Ms Mantel commented on Kate Middleton's role as producer of heirs to the throne. It's a good job Hilary Mantel is already a successful writer because in the current climate of outraged reaction, immediately spread via social media, she would have little chance of getting her material out there.
This tendency to explode into furious comment about material written by novelists is rather frightening. It smacks of censorship. Besides, do people no longer recognise that what appears in fiction is just that. Because a writer includes certain events in a novel, this does not mean that the writer wants or, even worse, intends to carry out those actions! Where is the voice of reason in all this?
On a lighter note, I have read that today is the 65th birthday of The Boss. Even pop stars grow older. Here is a link to a fond look at Bruce Springsteen, still a dreamboat according to the journalist who put it all together.
More reminiscence!
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