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freedformwriter · 6 months ago

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English quartet

Wrote this last weekend but was then too non-covid but basically covid to post. It's supposed to be a return to daily micro-blogs but, meh, long format seems to be my energy at the moment.

4th July, 2024

There are things you notice for the first time when you don’t know how to vote: the suppressed hopefulness of the red-rosette pollster, the beatific care with which the volunteers scan down the registry, but mostly it’s the special pencils. I’ve got a lovely hexagonal half stub in my hand. It’s fatter than the average pencil and in a tasteful monochrome. Most alluringly, it’s labelled the property of the UK Government. The urge to untie it from the rickety booth and slide it into my pocket is almost overwhelming. I wonder if there is a black market for these things. I was entirely prepared to vote Green when I sauntered into the Mormon church that doubles as a local polling station. Now I’ve been staring at the same three names for five minutes. And they all belong to one man. Can I really vote for a man with three Christian names? Who keeps such a surplus? It’s suspect. And I’ve absolutely nothing else to base my impression of the candidate upon because I haven’t looked up a single person running in this election beside the incumbent. We were so excited when she won a historic race here in 2017. Now her name is branded with bitter X-fuelled feuds between Terfs and anti-Terfs and she can’t show up for Hustings because of security concerns. Why did I not look up a single freaking other candidate? My government-issued pencil drifts that towards the Labour box. Stop. I close my eyes and do some of those grounding exercises. What truly matters to me in this moment? My friends. My friends’ kids. This second thought sets me off. The sheer helpless terror of being the parent of a trans kid right now is something I cannot even encompass. It’s possible I’m going to cry in the government-approved booth. Fuck this. Mr Three-Christian-Names it is. I’m back out the door, shades on to hide my expression. Thank god it’s a sunny day.

I later learn the Green candidate is a jolly sort who runs the local bike repair charity. And wouldn’t, my friend reasons, the world be a better place if it was made up of people like that?

5th July

The world has changed and the weather drips from the brim of my walking hat. In my all-black rain ensemble, I feel like a modern-day mourner. I just don’t know whose funeral I’m attending, or even if one is scheduled. The social rupture of the General Election has reopened old fissures. The grief leaked into my friends’ last-night communications, the ones who poured themselves into the Labour movement in the Corbyn years. Their momentum is now officially a stumble, in the same way we minimise the significance an old relationship once we find The One. Crossing the Stour where the picturesque plankton-filled river takes on punts, I hear a man singing. High above the water, a scaffolder in a harness and bright blue quick dry t-shirt belts out a sentimental ballad about finding love at last. Come on! he calls to an unseen man below. It’s unclear whether it’s a call to join in or to hurry up. My mood lifts. Not everyone is miserable today.

When I arrive at my appointment, the craniosacral therapist opens the door looking like the embodiment of fresh English summer: a floral sundress, pink cheeks, and flowing waves of loosely bound hair. You’re dressed for the weather, she declared. I want to be dressed for her weather. I lie on the table in the beautiful old treatment room in the heart of Canterbury, trying to tune out the fluctuating high-pitched hum of the air purified as she moves her hands around the energy centres of my body. How are her hands so warm? She truly exists in another climate. I try not to think of anything negative, or wildly inappropriate, under her touch in case it filters through. It’s time for her assessment. When you first came in and we were talking, you didn’t seem tired at all but – here she tilts her head to a sympathetic angle – but your body is really tired.

Tonight, the football is back. I’m really delighted at how willing my hosting friend is to join me. I’m backing Portugal despite the nausea-inducing presence of Ronaldo at the helm. She is supporting France because she enjoys going on holiday there. I’ve previously signed off on similar claims about the superior charms of Spain and Turkey – better food and more attractive men – but I draw the line at France. Why? They’re the villain, I say. What, as in some kind of ancestral enemy of England? Yes..maybe… I don’t know. My relationship with the technical country of my birth is complicated. The England-France rivalry is not. France plays their role so well: producing grand triumphs followed by epic collapses. They are an incredibly satisfying antagonist and for that reason alone, yes, I will always root against them. Mbappé even obligingly wears a black mask. Whether they are a mustachio-twirling villain, a protesting troubadour, or a stranger in this town, we always need the man in black.

6th July

No problem, I will just read some Cervantes. This is not the response I am looking for when I announce the England game is about to start. Especially as the man speaking is sitting in the very middle of my friend’s sofa. Technically, I am just as much of a visitor as he is, but this is the television facing sofa and why can’t he read classic literature on the other one with the non-optimal angle? But I can already tell tonight’s entertainment will be a hybrid experience. He and my friend are prepping for the open mic she hosts tonight. She has tap shoes and a slide whistle out for a Klaxons style mating dance. He’s got the book open to the passage in which Don Quixote attacks some marionettes. The night’s theme is puppets. Pick a side, I tell him, and slot in prepared to do battle.

Men, particularly older men, always find something comical in my watching football. Tonight is no exception. Oh listen to you, you could be the next Gary Lineker, he says after twenty minutes. I’m not sure if it’s the Americanness or femaleness – probably both – but I get these comments lot. Where is my can of lager? Can they hear my football bellow? I infinitely prefer watching with women who discuss the match, rather than my watching of it. But as the minutes tick on, and England isn’t playing absolutely shit, something a bit special happens. This man has always struck me as an art and music lover for whom London is the centre of the world. Now, through the medium of share viewership, we’re transported back to his boyhood in Middlesbrough. He’s not nostalgic for it – horrible place, god the accents – but is channelling the energy of the rough, mid-century stadium he attended every weekend all the same. I remember a chant we did for the opposing fans, he announces, then changes his voice: you’re going home in a Teesside ambulance – oi!

I traipse into the open mic event late – worth it for that penalty shootout – and watch the mating dance. Then a woman in Birkenstocks works a skeleton puppet through a synth performance (absolute fucking genius). During the inevitable ambient musical interlude, I make the Franz Kafka marionette journey through his own dreams. At the end, we are all instructed how to make a swizzle, the technical term for the bit of card and spit that transforms your voice into Punch. Terrifyingly loud, it would attract attention in even the most raucous stadium.

Do you want to go to a mummers’ play? My friend issues this invitation while I’m still groggily stretching myself out on a Sunday morning. It’s this kind of impromptu invitation that more than makes up for the mental overwhelm I often experience staying here. Camped in her overfilled central living space, my control-obsessed brain has to ignore the old rescue furniture, the new music equipment, and theatrical props accumulating by the door. But the Jack-of-the-Green costume – a sort of burlap cage denuded of its festive vines – is not just an unwieldy obstacle, but a connection to a whole performance community. The sort who revel in arcane folk traditions. I take my porridge with berry compote in the car and we’re off to Sandwich. I forgot what an absurdly charming town it is. We used to ride our bikes here on long summer weekends, stopping at, yes, a sandwich shop attached to a posh deli.

The pageantry is in full force when we arrive at St Peter’s Church. A blonde woman about my age in a white rugby shirt emblazoned with ‘George’ is going several rounds with a fire-breathing dragon. Parking ourselves on the curb, we cheer as George dispatches the dragon with the aid of protective potholders. Next, we have the French knight. Sir Fleur de Lis, with his waxy moustache, withdraws a white handkerchief. George counters. The fight very much resembles the troops of Morris dancers taking over the town for this folk and ale festival. This, I say to my friend, is why we root against France in the football. It’s just another form of pantomime.

The dispatched French knight now lies on the ground, a lance projecting from his body at a 45° angle. An incredibly tall man in a long white doctor’s coat, a top hat, and myopic spectacles seeks help from the audience to remove the weapon. Is there no one in the audience who can help remove the lance? He approaches a little boy who stares up with wide terrified eyes, then a little girl who ducks into her father’s side. Sensing that there are no sufficiently patriotic children to take up England’s Excalibur, the doctor approaches my friend, child height from her position on the pavement. Do you think you can pull it out? She hops up and runs to the fallen French knight with what I can only describe as a scamper.

After she hoists the lance – huzzah! – and the knight is at last resuscitated – ‘When all else fails, drink some Kentish ale’ – we move about taking in the food stalls and more flag-waiving dancers in tabards. Do you remember we saw that one old man perform the ‘The Ladies’ Fancy?’ my friend asks me. It was in Cambridgeshire; and I do. Ribbons were involved. English villages are so weird. Am I really thinking of moving back here?

#writerslife #writersinspiration #General Election #Canterbury #English villages #morris dancing #euros 2024

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