Last
Wednesday, I celebrated an anniversary. Well, when I say celebrated
what I really mean is that it was noted as it is every year in the
diary. I did nothing in the way of marking it, other than to think
upon it and perhaps I remarked on it to one or two people. It was
really nothing special, not a birthday or a wedding. Nor anything
sad, like so many years since someone loved had passed. They don't
make cards for it. Nor am I suggesting that they should begin to.
There are too many cards for too many occasions, for friends, couples
and family members. A day for this, a day for that, and a card
specifically for. All I get is my birthday. Oh, and Christmas, though
less and less people mark that with the giving of cards. I'm one of
them. Well, which is to say I only give them to a select few. The
rest get email greetings or a text.
Christmas
is overrated in my view. And I'm a December baby.
But
we're not talking Christmas, we're talking anniversaries, or we were
at any rate before I went off piste. Oh, I wish I hadn't used that
word because now I want to mention skiing, specifically a dry slope
run I once did where my skis got all tangled up in the netting. That
outing was not my idea of fun, though I think that had less to do
with the fact that the setting was fake and more to do with the fact
that I didn't take to it. When you've always felt your feet were
somewhat large – too long and too narrow – then putting on skis
reinforces that complex, especially when you've entered, or are about
to, the throes of puberty. If they'd put me in a sleigh with a driver
and a pack of huskies I'd have been happier. Hey, I might even have
whooped with delight if any bends had been taken fast. But I don't
imagine you can replicate that in a country that gets little
snowfall.
Yes,
I know, I've done it again; huskies have absolutely nothing to do
with the passing of time and the marking of it, but have you ever
noticed what incredible eyes they have? Just saying...because maybe
the wolf in Red Riding Hood wasn't a wolf at all but an Eskimo dog?
Those eyes are mesmerising, and I'm sure they'd survive just as well
in a forest. Angela Carter, if she were still here, would have
something to say about that.
She's
been gone a lot longer than eleven years (she died in '92), yet she
still has new words to say to me. Richard Yates found eleven kinds of
loneliness, which I haven't found with him yet though I keep meaning
to. And I've passed eleven years, a week and a day in the one place.
Well, to be precise, I've been in the area all my life, but eleven
years in this flat. Sorry, apartment. I don't want to bring the tone
down. It doesn't seem possible, but it is. It's happened. And never
once during this time have I known my neighbours, not those next
door or those on the opposite side of the corridor, or those above or
below or in my core, or anyone in the other three, which interlock
and form the whole apartment block.
Now,
don't go assuming it's me. That I'm unneighbourly. No, I'm just one
of a handful of owners that actually live here. The vast majority are
rented out or are short-term lets, serviced and used by travellers –
on business and for leisure purposes - which is surprising given the
area, though we are in good commuting distance of London and all its
attractions. The two on my corridor are just that. I've never known,
for sure, from one week to the next whom I'm living alongside. One
week it's a beefy man and the next a petite and sweet-looking woman.
But mostly it's rare to see anybody, anywhere in the building, not in
the lift and not on the stairs. It's all just row upon row of blank
wooden doors, each with a single lidless eye that stares.
Yet,
it's been as I said eleven years. And to which I still think: How
has that happened?
And where the only person I know to speak to is the cleaner of the
communal parts and a very nice girl who services the apartment next
door. Visitors, should a chance encounter arise, are visibly taken
aback if I say I've lived here for as long as I have, for there's
this belief that it's for the transient, only. People on the move or
those saving to buy. I've therefore made what some think the
equivalent of a hotel my home. Except that in this spot, from
1929-1960, there was a cinema. So that's where I've been for the
last eleven years: at the picture house.
Picture credit: The Capitol Cinema (source: Epsom & Ewell History Explorer).
