A Saturday Ramble...

Saturday 24th June 2006

Meet up with a friend I haven't seen for ages. He's come into town to see an exhibition of David Hockney's drawings at the local museum, so I go along with him.

I like some of Hockney's work, but I've never been much of a fan ' and this doesn't do much to change my opinion. The drawings are ones he did for a special edition of Fairy Tales by the brothers Grimm. I won't use the obvious pun, but I'm not overkeen on the execution ' a combination of freehand drawing, cross-hatching and scraperboard. I'm interested, though, to read his accounts of how he was inspired and the techniques he used to achieve his effects: a handkerchief draped over a pencil, for instance, as a model for a ghost.

One picture, though, does capture my attention ' not for the execution, but for the subject matter: a lone woman looking out of a tower window over an enclosed courtyard garden, planted with the sorts of shrubs and trees you wouldn't find in any garden centre this side of an LSD trip. The sense of isolation and confinement in the picture is striking, and the image spooks me for some reason. I keep coming back to it. I feel an identification with the woman, somehow: that sense of being shut away above an alien, uninviting landscape. I see a contradiction in the picture, too, which may or may not be what the artist intended: the idea of the desire for escape coupled with the relative safety of the confinement. I feel like it sometimes, looking down from the window of my bedsit onto what's increasingly becoming, for me, the unfriendliness of the outside world, with its nightly boy-racer derbies, neighbourhood shouting matches and lunkheads falling out of the pub around the corner and looking for something or someone to kick.

My overall ambivalent reaction to the pictures may be slightly coloured by a radio interview I heard a few months back between Hockney (a pugnacious smoker) and a female proponent of the government's plans to ban smoking in public places. The woman was putting across a perfectly reasonable line concerning the health risks associated with passive smoking. Trouble was, she was doing it in a po-faced, finger-wagging, goody-goody-sounding way ' a real prod in the arse to a flinty, no-bloody-nonsense Bradford lad like Hockney. He didn't even give her time to stop for breath ' barging in, blood vessels bulging, like a football supporter whose team has just been hammered and who's falling back on the second-to-last resource of the terminally inarticulate: fulminating abuse of the other side. "You're bloody dull, love, were his final words to her. And much though I sided with her (I'm fed up with having to take a shower and wash my clothes every time I come home from the pub), I did find myself in grudging agreement with him there. It reminds me of a funny point someone once made about a certain type of environmental campaigner: Why is it that the people who have all the right opinions wear all the wrong clothes?

Afterwards, my mate and I nip along to 'Spoon's for a couple of beers and a bit of a catch-up. He's coming up to his final year at university, studying English and Creative Writing. I first met him at a Creative Writing evening class a few years back and knew then, after hearing him read out a few of his pieces, that he had the vital 'something': an ear, a style, a spark, a sense of humour and of the absurd. An original voice that sounded way above the rest. He's recently had a short story published in a major anthology of new and emerging writers. I'm chuffed to bits for him. He deserves it. He knows what he's doing and he works hard. It's a bit of a wake-up call to me, too ' getting me thinking "I've been doing this for years¦. isn't it about time I had something to show for it?

Lunchtime drinking does the usual for me ' knocks out any prospect of a productive afternoon ' so I jump on a train to Westgate for a film: The Squid and The Whale. I have the auditorium almost to myself ' just 2 other people in the back row ' which is just how I love it. It's like a private viewing. Space to stretch out. No bobbing heads. No occasional flashes of light where people are checking their texts. No self-consciousness about opening and drinking the can of lager I've smuggled in. And no, positively no popcorn-eaters anywhere in the vicinity. Just what is it about popcorn at the cinema? I know I sound Hockney-ish, but nothing spoils a good film for me more than having to sit through the sounds and smells of popcorn mastication. It's like sitting in a cattle barn. In they come, tugging their wheelie-bins full of buttered foam pellets, and they sit right next to you, fingers poised, ready to plunge in as soon as the opening credits roll. Why can't they fucking eat before they come out? Why can't cinemas have 'popcorn-free' areas? Maybe I could suggest it.

I've been wanting to see the film for ages, and maybe it's the anticipation ' or maybe the fact that I've had a few shandies ' that makes me feel a bit let down at the end. Don't get me wrong: the script was sharp and funny, the details well-observed, the performances excellent (particularly Jeff Daniels as the has-been writer paddling desperately through the mid-life rapids). Somehow, though, it didn't hit all the right spots with me. Maybe I need to give it time to settle, then another viewing. It often works that way with me and films. Local Hero, Withnail and I and Mystery Train all originally left me thinking 'What's all the fuss about?' Subsequent viewings, however, did the trick. I now regard them all as classics. It's like with books, too. As a lecturer once impressed on me: You can never say you've read a book until you've read it at least twice.

It's still early evening when I leave the cinema ' warm and still and sweet. Westgate's an odd little town ' more like an overgrown village, really, despite the huge 3-screen cinema ' and I've always had a soft spot for it. Most of the shops are on one parade, curving around and running down parallel with the station platform. You can't really call it a High Street because it's not really busy or big enough, though it has all the essential shops ' most of them independent, too, which is always a bonus. For some strange reason, it always puts me in mind of a backwater Wild West town: covered stores fronting the railway, big saloon on the corner, not much happening except the daily come and go. I almost expect to see some blue-dungaree'd old-timer sitting out on a stoop ' hat over eyes, spittoon by the rocker ' waiting for the whistle of the mail train coming up around the bend from Margate Springs en route to London City.

At the station, I see that I've missed my train by five minutes and the next one is almost an hour away. Bollocks! I could go and sit in a pub, but I already feel I've had enough for the day, and I want to keep my head clear for some work later. While I'm deliberating, I notice a flock of herring gulls pecking around between the rails on the opposite track, where some idiot's chucked the remains of a fish and chip dinner. On the footbridge immediately above, three or four teenage girls are leaning against the railings messing with their mobiles, while over on the other platform some younger kids are mucking around with their bikes. The ticket office is closed and there's no one around to watch after them, except the CCTV camera. They could so easily have an accident, I think ' though I remember doing exactly the same when I was a kid. Except there always seemed to be a station master or someone around then, looking unnervingly policeman-like, all primed up for an ear-cuffing.

The track suddenly rings with the approach of a train on the other side and the kids thankfully step away from the edge. The gulls, though, are too preoccupied with their feast, leaving it until the very last second before flapping up out of the path of the beast. One of them, though, isn't quite sharp enough. It manages a take-off leap, but is struck by the train's leading edge and falls back to the track. A horrible thing ' but at least, I think, it won't have known very much.

When the train pulls away, though, I see that the gull is still miraculously very much alive ' sitting there in the middle of the track, head up, as if nestling on an egg. Perhaps it's just stunned, I think. Then it gets up to fly off, and I see a smear of crimson on one wing. The girls on the footbridge and the kids on the platform have noticed the gull, too, and there's now quite a gaggling audience gathering around. One of the kids ' a skinny lad of about 11 ' goes right to the edge of the platform nearest the bird and looks like he's about to do something horrible. Knowing how cruel young boys especially can be towards wild animals, I think the worst about what's going to happen. But I'm wrong-footed. Before I can even shout across to him, the boy's jumped down onto the track and scooped up the gull, setting it gently down on the platform before clambering back up. I race up and over the footbridge, and by the time I reach the other side the boy has already got the gull wrapped up in his t-shirt and is cradling it in his arms. I ought to bawl him out for the stupid risk he's just taken ' but suddenly that's not how I'm thinking. I know I'd have done exactly the same.

"We need to get him to a vet, the boy says. The bird seems quite perky nestling there, as if he knows he's in safe hands. I ask the boy if I can have a look, and he puts the gull down on the ground. A large chunk of the wing is missing: it's clear the gull won't be doing any flying again. My first instinct is what it always was when I used to go out sabbing shoots ' finding the poor sods that had been blasted out of the air and putting them out of their suffering. The boy, though, is having none of it.

"I don't want him to die. I want to save him. He's alright apart from the wing, look.

The bird certainly seems fine and alert. It even pecks at a bit of biscuit one of the other kids offers it. I tell the boy to bring him over to the cinema, where we can ask the staff to check the phone book for a vet. They willingly do this, but can get no answers anywhere. They even try the RSPB, but just get an answerphone. Same with the RSPCA.

"Can you take him home? I ask the boy, but he shakes his head.

"I'll take him down to the beach, he says. "There's someone I know there who can look after him.

So he turns and, holding the bemused bird against his chest, heads off down the beach road with his mates in tow. And then I'm struck by it all. My mistake about the kid's intentions. The way he thoughtlessly put himself at great risk in jumping down onto a train track to rescue this probably-doomed creature. His determination to do what he can to save its life. There are all sorts of actions a responsible adult should take in such circumstances. At the very least, I should have insisted on putting the bird out of its misery, because I couldn't see it surviving. But what effect, I wonder, might that have had on the boy? Would it crush him after all his efforts? Would it sour his view of the adult world ' a world he's probably already started to see as one of mindless violence and indifference towards suffering? There's no doubt the right thing all round would have been for the kid not to have done what he did. He should have left the bird there and let nature take its course. I still know, though, that if that had been the case, I'd have been down on that track instead.

Back at Herne Bay again, I walk through the park towards home. As I pass the lake, I notice a couple of middle-aged men wading at the edge. One of them has a radio-controlled model speedboat, which he sets in the water and fires up. It races off, zig-zagging across the water towards the island, throwing up a considerable wake for such a small thing. It buzzes close to where some ducks are settling down for the night. A few of them flap and scuffle in their alarm, but the men don't seem to notice, preoccupied as they are with their toy and what it can do ' which is, apparently, very little except go fast, go round and round, rustle a few feathers (not all of them belonging to wildfowl) and make a lot of noise. It can't be a cheap hobby. It certainly seems ' to me, at least ' to have rather limited interest value once the initial novelty has worn off. I suppose it keeps them out of mischief, though¦ or out of the pub, at least. And, of course, I can't help being struck by the contrast between this and the incident with the boy and the gull. Some boys never grow up. And some are grown up way before their time.

I cut away from the lake and head off across the grass to the corner by the market. It's half-past-eight and the sun's well into its last quarter, turning the western sky a gorgeous liquid orange. Along the Avenue of Remembrance, the plane trees cast their huge lakes of shadow over the football field. With the evening sun behind them, the dark silhouette created by the trees puts me in mind of the dying light over the hills of Dartmoor ' a place and light I look forward to seeing in a few weeks when I go on a lone wild camping trip there. I long for the peace of it. The isolation. The timelessness. It's that ancient call of wild, lonesome places. A chance to breathe, think, take stock.

Look forward to better things.