Boredom always inspired my father to go walking, along the quiet country lanes where hedgehogs rest like splattered peaches, through the sheep fields, with curious suspicious eyes, fluttering inanely and barking softly in such a confused malady one simply stood and stared and compared. Then out across the dung splattered grass, out through the old abattoir town, and away to parts of his mystery world I have never seen before, boredom. Out of boredom my father built ponds, fixed with zest and zeal already well maintained fences and slate walls throughout the glorious summers and winters of his boredom, out of boredom my father joined committees and ate out after work because it was easier. In my youth I suspected this was in fact due to some marital difficulty he and mother were desperate to keep quiet; possibly some lady called Miriam at his office, possibly many things. For all my friends parents had undisclosed yet wildly known marital upsets. Father spoke to me as if he would rather be reading the paper, short sudden sentences that kept him in a constant state of nervous senility.
-Peter I want the truth from you (A bad actors wrath, uttered without menace from his lips) if you lie I shall be very cross, do you understand?
-He pushed me so I pushed him back then I hit him! Rapid young man justice.
-Well, Miss Jenkins said you kicked him too, when he was on the ground, you kicked him, is this true?
-Yes because if he got up I would have had to fought longer! Admirable young man logic.
-I see (long almost fearful quiet mind things I could not guess at) well you shall apologise of course, then your mother shall think of a suitable punishment. I am going for a walk; you should probably go to bed.
I always thought my father disapproved of me out of parental necessity, yet later much too late and far too simply; I understand it was fear ' fear that the son he bore was lustier, wilder and more intense than the father, and in too many sad regretful father ways too much like the mother, too fierce and sudden, passionate and sullen, swift to joy and swifter still to misery; there could be no genuine communication with such a creature as that, thought he in mild agitated forgiveness as he walked and pondered inarticulate sensations in wan evening of his days. Yet as I stood beside John, in that dusty fresh flowered sepulchre, much older in sombre faced fear, in a suite borrowed and much too small, beside some friend of fathers I knew by name but not face. As I stood in the church listening to a priest I did not know by face or name, quote scriptures about the grace of god, I realised with a smile. My father was a man prone to boredom and restless with it. One could not say he loved mother, but he endured her with better grace and humour than he did a well built and maintained garden path. No, it was merely my father bored swiftly, and so our garden was kept in trim and order. Often thinking back, when alone in some god forsaken train platform café or bar, scribbling poetry I do not believe in - I smile in jest and half seriousness that he probably died out of boredom too.
It would be wholly inaccurate to say father was a severe man, for he would admonish in the late for school morning as softly as he would read in the drowsy fire place evenings. It was more a case that he was a distant man, vague with intimacy and often despite being close enough to touch he was indeed away in some infinitely selfish garden, of pleasures and thoughts he could not recount or share even if he had desired to. Mother told me once that she first met father at a fare, in the mysteriously cold Celtic night of their youth.
-I saw your father and he looked very silly to me; my friends thought he was pompous and scary, too severe and watchful, the only one of his friends not to smile at some unheard passing thing like boys will and girls never know when or why.
-Did you go on the bumper cars?
-No, but I spoke to him. He spoke very softly, quite a lovely accent really, he said "I detest bright noises and loud lights and I thought it was the loveliest thing to say, at the most lovely time. Did you know Peter, your father wrote poetry when we courted?
-Girls write poetry (frown and scowl) but did you go on the ghost train?
-Do you want this story or not, I could just as easily turn out the light and send you to bed without a story, what is it to be young sailor?
-Okay (sulky pyjama lips) go on then you nasty pasty (A moment of mischievous quiet) but did you?
-No, but we did arrange to meet at the local library where I worked on Saturdays, he sat in a corner, between to rows of books and read Pierre Boulle 'Planet of the Apes' I think I truly loved him then (Soft motherly hand, to ruffle soft curly hair a head almost asleep) for his beautifully naïve joy, like a young boys, he was much sillier then, much like you are now.
-Did you eat candy apples?
I have never been to a fare, I fear to see my parents there. In the lazy electric euphoria of too much wind rush and candy floss; for it is out of fear not boredom that I plod along, recalling recent and ancient things. Yet I plough roughly through the dregs and wastes of a modern world gone beastly and simple. When out through the nameless speaking places of a town, I retreat to safer havens in the mind, where ghouls and glad things come married in tight efficient sentences, one can pass a year this way. Yet what is fear to me? Fear is to see the haunted, haggard face of a grey wispy haired elder lady, weak cold bones and old stuttering steps that she can barely endure through the winds and chill; falling through the slalom of boisterous young things, fresh from school, young lascivious minded girls eyeing me with curious intensity. Loud energetic boys much like I once was with puzzled faces, yet here they differ considerably with their scripted hair too delicate to touch a grand manufactured aesthetic. Fear brings these phantoms to me, and out of fear one must endure them. Then to remember, along the road, with the tired leaf shredding branches, a tent across the highway, such beautiful things as November's foliage; which will always inspire wonder in me; with its soft myriad colours, and deep mounds and scented fallings, younger, when I was much younger than now; belatedly walking to school, you carrying my book bag and P.E. pumps, whilst I went swinging my shoulders and kicking enthusiastically at the piles of dry leaves with new shoes, talking ceaselessly as I refused to hold your hand, I never tired of kicking those sand castle leaves to dust.
That same foliage burnt me as a young man, some leafy suburb morning, awaking on the floor in the quiet room, with pillow and sprawling sleeping bag. To pause in gracious sodden whimpers that I should wake at all, and to see her enter softly with a cup of tea in hand; smooth lustre hair, so fine I always nearly wept on her shoulder, Soft legs hidden wantonly in cotton blue pyjamas; her women breast bulbous and wonderful in a soft shimmering black night nest. A poet would say memories hear to me, are as leaves were both tree and Indian tea. I think it was simple lust. So it comes that as a young man, trampling thoughtfully along the long Borrowdale Valley roads outside Keswick town. I went ambling quietly with my guitar strung across my shoulders, kicking at small wet pebbles by the lake and gasping in the thin chill air that tickled my nose and bit my ears; a simple thing to go walking then beside the waters, walking to a new job at the Hotel up the road, happy after a fashion. Up the road, an entire youth spent trampling under winter sleepy tree branches, beside damp grey stone hills and impossibly placid waters, up the road and pausing in peculiar awe so eccentrically me. A young mans soul pierced by the fretful agony of blue pyjama love and lust, pierced by John's tears for a father I never wept at nay once not ever. Pierced deep and thoroughly by that rippling glass serenity, impossible quietude of still waters, with the green peaks, brown rock faces and plum coloured skies, all silently lush and subservient to the unassuming majesty of the Skiddaw range; with its highest peaks reflected in rich mauve Gainsborough colours across the shimmering hoary waters, the occasional leaf to fall from the damp tired looking shore trees. That hang glumly too close to the waters, panicky ducks and assured swooping Swan hordes landing with a splash and vast vertical wing sucking. I stood still and gripped my guitar, to sit upon a wall, and slowly to strum Em and Asus4, a gentle twanging melody like Einaudi upon the lapping shore waves. With occasional car motoring by, and the lug lugging of the passenger ferry passing, I could hear the tremolo of excited voices, carried across the water. When I thought then and remembered then, pumps and books, shiny new shoes scuffing dry leaves up the road.
Still I recall, walking along a dusk road, talking happily, kissing her of lush hair mornings and tea cup gladness and trying to bite the leaves from trees as we pass in the night deep mysterious Grasmere. Up the road by hand in hand up the road that led to Amblesdie and Windermere town. Young lovers parading sweetly and playfully, kicking at the mounds of accumulated leaves, gazing out of somebody elses eyes. It is here that I gaze inward, to pleasures of other days, I oft tried to speak that wondrous illation inspired by those fire scented airs and rustic leaves, but it became an impossible cursing thing.
-What's wrong baby, why are you so quiet? She enquires soft voiced intelligent that shall for ever be Lancashire's accent to me.
-Oh me, what, oh its nothing! Startled sudden from a puzzled revelry of mine.
-But are you mad, are you angry with me, oh please don't be! Sweet as ever, she squeezes my night cold hand, and I shall throttle her by the dark waters, or surrender and have her hear my cry, whimper, sniffle and choke my way through broken sentences about Pierre Boulle and damning my youth for not listening then when I should gladly listen now.
-Did I tell you, no! Look I am not angry with you, it's just, do you know who Pierre Boulle is?
-No, why?
-Oh nothing, look shall we turn back.
-You are mad with me, nasty pasty! Half playful sulking words, her too horribly beautiful face framed by the cerulean dusk which descends halo fashion about her lusty hair, then again I felt pain for all the blue pyjama days yet to transpire; if only John were there to cry for me. So she in that voice which commands everything and anything from me, no one will ever adore and despise that voice with the same manic glee and fear as I do and did.
-No, let's go on, it's only a little way up the road!
So quietly through the gaze like dark of the hill peak hastened sunset, when the burgundy rays switch to a deeper blue, gawking at each other with the same awed intensity as we would never remember but for the mounds of broken leaves that deep November. Peering at the Borrowdale Fells and Helm Crag, deep foreboding hill ranges, making a trivial thing of our kisses. Those magnificent conversations cuddled from the deepening chill that swells up through our flesh and into our lungs from the fathomless depths; so it was much later whilst sat on our bench, lake side hanging upon each others quietness like long African vultures, the flesh and fresh crimson sunset of Cumbria passed us by.
