1. Thoughts while Strolling - 31st October 2016

I walk in the park sometimes. Where we live in Bristol is a cul de sac and on our side of the street the houses back onto a public park, complete with a lake, in which there is an island. The lake did accommodate fish but the constant entanglement of birds, including a pair of swans and their offspring, in fishing line and the attendant hooks led to them being 'euthanised' (not my word!). But I am sure I have seen the blips on the surface of the water that betray the presence of life beneath and have heard this put down to eggs that were still in the silt on the bed of the lake and/or the re-introduction of fish surreptitiously by some keen to return to the regular fishing of the past. For the lake was always well attended by anglers who landed on occasions sizeable fish which I guess had been hooked on multiple occasions before. So I think the anglers will return in the fulness of time. I know that fishing is the most widespread participant sport .... Is it sport? Let's say pastime or hobby. But it's always been beyond my ken as something to be enjoyed for any length of time. The tedium! I know that you can read a book, especially now that the gear can be alarmed to alert you to a nibble. But why not simply read the book, seated on a bench, and forgo all that fiddling with line, hooks (Sharp! Blood!) and wet, slippery fish that you can't eat anyway? I never saw a book, in my walks past fishermen in the past, who seemed intent in either chatting to others of the same ilk or smoking dope or gazing in trance like manner into the ether. Perhaps musing on their inability to read Wittgenstein's Tractatus? And they were often there overnight, camping on the grass in tiny tents. Standing before the toilet pan in the early hours I would sometimes hear an alarm beeping through the calm and quiet. Hey, ho! Whatever floats your boat!

But back to my walks. Most days, at some stage, I walk through the park to buy small items to top up the weekly shop at one of the two supermarkets on the main road at the far end of the park, one budget, one one of the big four. These trips are comparatively short and my thoughts are limited to remembering what I am to buy or idle references to external stimuli, the weather, litter, people encountered. When I walk, without purpose, other than fresh air and exercise, my mind wanders freely through the variegated landscape that exists inside my head. I say fresh air but the proximity of the park creates a false impression in this regard for we live within no more than a mile and a half of the centre of town and the main road that runs beside the park, albeit forty yards from our back garden, has the most polluted atmosphere outside of the city centre itself. But there are no fuel smells, no smoke, stately mature trees planted at the end of the nineteenth century by those far sighted and I guess bearded city fathers abound, gobbling up the carbon dioxide. So the illusion is not without foundation. And exercise? Well, that depends for its efficacy on the speed at which the walking is carried out and most of the time I would describe my progress as a determined amble. Punctuated by periods spent seated on a park bench, listening to music on my iPod. Not that I can't walk with some speed when attempting to catch a bus but a specific purpose is what's required for increased energy expenditure.

But the true purpose of this what I hope will be the first of many effusions is that variegated landscape. My mind is only at rest when I am asleep. It has always been abuzz with ramblings, progresses through a library of references, brought to the surface by external stimuli or simply rising though a miasma of mental mush. I have never been able to sit in that state of unthinking nothingness that I can clearly see many people do enjoy. Or rather, I was unable to do so until we spent a long period living in Greece when I learned to do so. But only for short periods, minutes at most. And I have a mechanism that enables me to do so on lying down to sleep each night. This is so successful that my wife marvels at how quickly my breathing makes it clear I am asleep. But awake, after a short gap, my mind latches onto something, a barely heard word, a cough, a gust of wind, a barely glimpsed face and memory or something else closes a synapse and off I go, remembering Dad, a line of Shakespeare, a lyric by Iggy Pop, something from that personal locker. I hope to avoid any preplanning, deciding what I will contemplate in advance. And I accept that true stream of consciousness is impossible and what finishes up on paper will be no more than an approximation of what passes through my mind. I have a wide range of interests and when I finally sit down and type there will occasions when I may embark on a potentially boring retailing of an aspect of one of them stimulated by .... something. Things, moments in time haphazardly stitched together. Virginia Wolff describes Clarissa Dalloway's mind being like a stray thread of a spider's web floating free until it lands on a leaf and then focusing. And, of course, there is always what I will/ may simply have forgotten on my return. But we'll see! I'm about to go for a stroll.

As you might expect, that first foray has been unsuccessful in terms of a set of thoughts that came to me that I can pass on. But I was stimulated by something I saw, simply a passing image that recalled one of my favourite films. I saw a child standing lakeside, staring almost vertically into the water, presumably seeking one of the non-existent fish! There, before I start, that single word, fish. Living, as we did, for a long time in Greece, led to us several times explaining, or attempting to explain, the vagary of the English language that means it's fish and not fishes. Except where there are a small number, as in two loaves and three fishes! And, of course, many Greeks would talk about their sheeps. Until corrected, albeit inexplicably. Aside from any other consideration, it was sometimes unclear until the conversation proceeded whether the subject was sheep or ships, the Greek 'I' always being pronounced as 'ee'. Anyway, back to the child.

I was reminded of a wonderful Russian film, Ivan's Childhood, shot in black and white, the first film of a man called Andrei Tarkovsky. The film opens with what turns out to be a dream sequence in which Ivan is passing through an idyllic summer landscape where he runs to meet his mother, laughing and happy, before staring into a bucket of water and plunging his face into it to drink. A sudden jolt and he is awake. Still a child, of about fourteen, he is cold and dirty, hiding from the Germans, acting as a spy and message carrier, slipping silently back and forth across the undrawn battle lines, wading in darkness through muddy water with vital information. The opening sequence is what Tarkovsky thinks his childhood should have been, the horrible reality is what is real.

For Tarkovsky, the beauty of what we see on the screen is of prime importance. His seven films address many of the most profound aspects of life, good and evil, redemption, love and they do not have story lines as such so they demand concentration. But visually they are often sumptuous, glorious images and colours, often of water or the effects of wind, or fire. Every one contains at least one sequence that makes you sit up and gasp. I recently managed to obtain a copy of Ivan's Childhood and mentioned this in an email to a friend who is also a film lover and he told me that he wanted to obtain a copy of Solaris by the same director which he saw once, ten years ago, and has stayed with him ever since. (Note: Solaris was remade with George Clooney in the lead and whilst this is a good film, it lacks the depth and mystery of the original.)

Only seven films because Tarkovsky had problems raising the funds to make them and suffered from ill health and victimisation by the Russian authorities. He died of cancer aged 54 in 1986. My favourite of his is The Mirror but they are all works of art as well as documents of human life.

Before closing, another example which occurs to me of confusion caused by language differences and misunderstanding. Many years ago, when lived on the Greek island of Karpathos, we decided to visit the remote village of Diafani for a few days. When we reached the point where the road north splits and we turned down to Diafani, we were able to look across to the mountain village of Olympos and could see a funeral procession in progress involving what appeared to be the bulk of the village's population. On our arrival, Diafani was almost deserted as people were also attending the funeral but our favourite taverna was open and we quizzed Popi, the wife of the taverna owner, about the circumstances of the death. We did not know the deceased but she told us he had been killed by his beans!! Attempts at clarification proved futile and we could only surmise that the poor chap had been killed by a falling sack of said vegetable or poisoned by old or mouldy beans. It was not until our friend Giorgos returned from Olympos that we discovered that the man had been killed by his bees! Most men in N Karpathos keep bees and being over confident, he had done something to a hive without donning all the protective clothing, had angered the bees in some way and had been stung to death. A far more painful end than being felled by a sack of beans!