Wind-up clocks and Turner skies
Spent this weekend away in the green, pleasant and sodden bosom of Yorkshire. The 3-day event inspired and exhausted me in equal measure... Train to Leeds, out to the airport to pick up the car in teeming rain, skirting the outer reaches of the city with the Morvern Caller OST. At Selby Fork a strange oasis of lights, a Crossroads-styled 60's motel, emerged from a darkened rainly stretch of the A1(M)... And so began Charlie and Hazels wedding, and in the midst of the formal, and ritual, elements of the event, a family odyssey unravelled.
I knew it would be challenging, and also special, but I couldn't predict how profound. Something like a carefully staged work of fiction... Like something I'd already read a review of - very charismatic protagonists, old stage-hands, often performing in less than comfortable circumstances. It wasn't the kind of wedding you remember for gaity or style, but it was a sincere celebration, a simple measured ceremony with the least fuss, and a party of the highest order. Maybe more on this later...
Saturday, breakfast in spite of nausea, coffee, family farewells. We descended from a grim Halton into Leeds proper. We heckled the phallic DHSS monolith, and sped through the city to (Rodley?) for a pint. I changed outa my suit in the car and we walked along the canal towpath, parallel to the mainline railway. We met a dalmation puppy, anme escapes me, and spied a canal-gypsy, doing his laundry and cooking on a stove in the woods. His boat was decorated with faded souvenirs of the waterway, banal canal junk. These sights and smells awakened the power of the land, stirred the industrial history slumbering beneath the turf... But the spell that swallowed us up let us go, so we drove to Guiseley for a Morrisons sarnie, and then a coffee, in a cafe-bar where half the clientele gossiped, and the men eyed the footie results on widescreen. Then we daisy-chained from one town or village to the next, continual rain, sporadically lit mill-building conversions.
At Tom and Lucy's place, in Huddersfield, was a veritable oasis. We ate sausage'n'mash, drank wine, and set off to launch fireworks from Lisa's allotment. We watched them fizz, frequently splutter and sometimes burst, just under the clouds and the drizzle. We descended back down to The Slubbers, a great pub selling a fine pint of Landlord and for a few hours all was well with the world. Started to spin a bit after an hour or two at Dan and Lisa's... Next morning another hangover, but a lazy coffee & croissant breakfast sorted that. Squeezed Lucy, hugged Tom, and we hit the road.
We got lucky with a local by-pass, a glimpse of Elland valley, then way up high above Halifax, then got lost. I stopped to take a photo of the hills west, first backlit and proudly layered, then enveloped by rainclouds... Discovered the camera missing so onward, until our road, sandwiched between a huge wind farm and a resevoir, became ravaged by pot-holes and broken bitumen, until it seemed likely to disappear completely. A burly man in a tracksuit, unloading quad and trials bikes from his van for his kids, helped us out. He reassured us that the way ahead was in fact a national highway (transpires it's known as Nab Water Lane) and that by navigating gingerly for the next 500 metres, we would then descend a steep narrow road (Hill House Edge Lane) into Oxenhope, and then Haworth.
Effectively we found direction by getting lost, but it was a memorable and valuable diversion. We sped on from by-passes, vales and villages until Ilkley, and up to The Cow and Calf for a pasty, styrofoam cuppa tea, and this time lose my lover, albeit temporarily. Like Heathcliffe, standing high on the rise, looking to see if Helen had gone to the pub, I had time and chill-factor enough to blow the cobwebs away... From o'er the risibly darkening moor came a wind of change, and I was doomed.
We set off in search of the airport, and the setting sun flashed momentarily, white gold, beneath that shelf of cloud. But the winged spirit in the soul seemed to go down with it. We delivered the car and again the sense of freedom and expansion faded. I felt deflated, and let the evening, and the sprawling city, envelope the bus. For Chelsea too, the dream ended, defeated by the Reds, across the Pennine horizon.
The wind that blew 3 days ago still haunts me, whistles around the office, and the platforms of the Northern Line, magnifying the nonsense and numbness of the life I'm living. The here and now is very definitely not enough, and only today did that feeling take on semblance of being a positive thing. The big plus is that there's no friction with Helen. Despite the anxiety and tension prevailing on the wedding day, we seem stronger for it, just knackered. Whatever becomes of we, and where our private windswept moments led us, this weekend was far from lost.
I knew it would be challenging, and also special, but I couldn't predict how profound. Something like a carefully staged work of fiction... Like something I'd already read a review of - very charismatic protagonists, old stage-hands, often performing in less than comfortable circumstances. It wasn't the kind of wedding you remember for gaity or style, but it was a sincere celebration, a simple measured ceremony with the least fuss, and a party of the highest order. Maybe more on this later...
Saturday, breakfast in spite of nausea, coffee, family farewells. We descended from a grim Halton into Leeds proper. We heckled the phallic DHSS monolith, and sped through the city to (Rodley?) for a pint. I changed outa my suit in the car and we walked along the canal towpath, parallel to the mainline railway. We met a dalmation puppy, anme escapes me, and spied a canal-gypsy, doing his laundry and cooking on a stove in the woods. His boat was decorated with faded souvenirs of the waterway, banal canal junk. These sights and smells awakened the power of the land, stirred the industrial history slumbering beneath the turf... But the spell that swallowed us up let us go, so we drove to Guiseley for a Morrisons sarnie, and then a coffee, in a cafe-bar where half the clientele gossiped, and the men eyed the footie results on widescreen. Then we daisy-chained from one town or village to the next, continual rain, sporadically lit mill-building conversions.
At Tom and Lucy's place, in Huddersfield, was a veritable oasis. We ate sausage'n'mash, drank wine, and set off to launch fireworks from Lisa's allotment. We watched them fizz, frequently splutter and sometimes burst, just under the clouds and the drizzle. We descended back down to The Slubbers, a great pub selling a fine pint of Landlord and for a few hours all was well with the world. Started to spin a bit after an hour or two at Dan and Lisa's... Next morning another hangover, but a lazy coffee & croissant breakfast sorted that. Squeezed Lucy, hugged Tom, and we hit the road.
We got lucky with a local by-pass, a glimpse of Elland valley, then way up high above Halifax, then got lost. I stopped to take a photo of the hills west, first backlit and proudly layered, then enveloped by rainclouds... Discovered the camera missing so onward, until our road, sandwiched between a huge wind farm and a resevoir, became ravaged by pot-holes and broken bitumen, until it seemed likely to disappear completely. A burly man in a tracksuit, unloading quad and trials bikes from his van for his kids, helped us out. He reassured us that the way ahead was in fact a national highway (transpires it's known as Nab Water Lane) and that by navigating gingerly for the next 500 metres, we would then descend a steep narrow road (Hill House Edge Lane) into Oxenhope, and then Haworth.
Effectively we found direction by getting lost, but it was a memorable and valuable diversion. We sped on from by-passes, vales and villages until Ilkley, and up to The Cow and Calf for a pasty, styrofoam cuppa tea, and this time lose my lover, albeit temporarily. Like Heathcliffe, standing high on the rise, looking to see if Helen had gone to the pub, I had time and chill-factor enough to blow the cobwebs away... From o'er the risibly darkening moor came a wind of change, and I was doomed.
We set off in search of the airport, and the setting sun flashed momentarily, white gold, beneath that shelf of cloud. But the winged spirit in the soul seemed to go down with it. We delivered the car and again the sense of freedom and expansion faded. I felt deflated, and let the evening, and the sprawling city, envelope the bus. For Chelsea too, the dream ended, defeated by the Reds, across the Pennine horizon.
The wind that blew 3 days ago still haunts me, whistles around the office, and the platforms of the Northern Line, magnifying the nonsense and numbness of the life I'm living. The here and now is very definitely not enough, and only today did that feeling take on semblance of being a positive thing. The big plus is that there's no friction with Helen. Despite the anxiety and tension prevailing on the wedding day, we seem stronger for it, just knackered. Whatever becomes of we, and where our private windswept moments led us, this weekend was far from lost.
posted by johnnytoobad at 11:37 pm
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