The Cockney king and queen, covered in pearl buttons, soak in a puddle.
Ahead of me, one of our local crows flies towards The Grove. He sits on the barred, metal gate at the entrance and claims possession of the park, with a loud "kaarch". Next he flies on to the grass and struts up and down. "Kaarch, " he goes. "Kaarch". A great tit meanwhile issues its high pitched two-tone call from the top of a silver birch. "Doo dah. Doo dah". A strange duet. Kaarch. Kaarch," goes the crow, thrusting his head forward every time he calls as though he is trying to bring something up. "Kaarch. Kaarch."
A young man passes me. A wire proceeds from his ear where an earpiece resides. He seems to be hissing like the sound of air escaping from a tyre.
3 comments:
You've been pearl diving again!
Re. wires into ears. When Hockney first moved to California he was shocked to discover that so many young people there were deaf and did a line drawing with repeated figures to draw attention to this sad fact. Later in one of those self-deprecating confessions he used to specialise in he said he'd been misled and the young people were in fact early users of what the French call baladeurs. Miles Kington, now prematurely dead, wrote a perceptive column about the mixed reactions one experiences towards Walkman then, MP3 now, users - irritation mixed with a secret desire to know what tune is playing.
The charismatic smile beneath the glassy surface of the pond says a great deal.
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