Conkers

I am quite enjoying this rain. My new rain-mac (actually it’s old because it was bought at the Buddhist Centre charity shop – which top tip has a better selection of clothing than your average charity shop – I don’t know why) is the main joy. I check the weather regularly and always the night before, and when it is forecast for drizzle the next morning, I am secretly pleased. I like to wear my peaked hood out on the common; my daily commute to work these days because there are road works down my street, meaning no buses.

I like to pick up conkers from the common on the walk to the station. The dirt from the conkers flake off easily like sand off a shell collected while beach-combing. I collect a conker a day, then give it to a co-worker in the office. Noemi didn’t know what it was called, so when I called it a ‘conker’ she was like, ‘what’s that?’ And I said, ‘that’s what you’re holding.’

She thought it was a chestnut, which to be fair could have been accurate. I checked online and a chestnut (edible) is from a sweet chestnut tree and its outer shell has loads of spikes, like a hedgehog. A conker (poisonous) is from a horse chestnut tree and its outer casing is bumpier and smoother, like skin with acne. I have no idea what kind of shells my conkers came in, so I will have to check tomorrow when I walk under the tree for remnants of their husks.

There is also a gathering of crows every morning on the common. Round about the same time I am picking up conkers, you’ll see an even spread of crows all over the grass. Each crow has a patch of their own and they position themselves equidistant from every other crow, so they’ve got it covered. I’m not sure if this is normal crow behaviour, or if this is just a city full of crows.

She fills her face with senses

I have a few heroes in my life and whilst in Japan I met one of them. Her name is Saeko and she doesn’t seem real. We crossed paths when I was 18 or 19, about to set off for university and whilst working as a kitchen porter at a Japanese restaurant in Soho. It was great. I washed dishes, I cut sushi rolls, I sliced raw meat and washed and drained the rice, multiple times. She was a waitress, so she was customer-facing and looked presentable and pretty all the time whilst I looked sweaty and smelled of onions and had my hair scrunched up in a bun under a grubby white cap. We had loads of laughs over the internal restaurant phone as she sent up orders in a funny voice pretending to be a monster or like a mouse and stuff. After work we’d go out and have fun sometimes too. She danced professionally in the arts clubs, there was one in Notting Hill with a strange sloping floor and eerie ultraviolet mood lighting, like a cave for neon night creatures. She had a room in Paddington in a shared flat with too many cables running across the ceilings, and in her own room she had a wardrobe that doubled-up as a mirror the size of a dance studio’s to practice her movements in. Against the opposite wall was her bed and although the whole room was coloured an off-yellow, possibly darkened by the cigarette smoke, there was one pale blue circle painted above her bed. Just off-centre. The blue little moon floated there since she had arrived. Her theory was that someone had painted the whole room yellow whilst leaving a clock permanently stuck to the wall. And so, when a new tenant arrived they had removed the clock and behind it was blue, the original colour of the room. I thought the circle could likely have been painted on top of the yellow for some unknown reason, but I preferred her theory in the end. Because I imagined her staring at the pale blue moon for days - between dancing and the restaurant - and coming to the fixed conclusion that a small wall clock had hung there first and found peace in it. I really didn’t mind, it was a nice feature.

The day was so bright it hurt and I waited outside Harajuku station for Saeko to arrive, she had come all the way from Shizuoka to see me. When she was there standing in front of me it was like no time had passed since - forever - and the moods were all the same, like they always have been, goofy and full of surprises. Lots of corners to turn and things to stare at. We laughed and joked and reflected and found a gluten-free cafe (neither of us have an intolerance it was simply the first thing we found down a busy narrow street filled with too much) and sat down. 

‘How is your singing going?’ She was now part of a few bands in Shizuoka ever since she won her local karaoke contest in her village in the mountains. 

‘I have bookings as a sessions singer for some older people’s ballroom dancing’ she looked wide-eyed and around with a smile forming across her lips, ‘but they are really old’. 

*

I always forget that the Japanese sky looks so different and not only that it feels different. Like flat, like a mass of something rolled-out with a sheen, and it’s clear but a vapour and it goes on for much longer than you would expect it to. Perspectives don’t exist in the distance everything looks flat and right there. Here’s a funny thing that I forgot I wrote when straight off the plane: 

The sky and the sea

Fool me

It’s bigger than any giant

You’ll see

And you know in Japanese the word for ‘sky’ is the same as for ‘air’ and ‘empty’ and ‘open’. It’s that sort of sky that I’m talking about that isn’t just a thing but the lack of a thing. It spreads out to nothingness. We walked and talked and got accosted by a vlogger who made us do a pose and say happy new year to her ipad and arrived at Meiji Jingu - the shrine in the middle of Tokyo - slap bang next to Harajuku filled with fake nails and vloggers. But here it’s another world: serene. At the start of the new year people do Hatsumode, which is the first few visits to a shrine to pay your respects and maybe eat some market food and pull a few fortunes. I love Meiji Jingu because of the trees, there are so many trees there that it feels cool in the summer and warm in the winter and the woodland shot up from seedlings in only 200 years, which I think is impressive in tree terms. I got out two 500 yen coins and bought us a ticket in to the private gardens inside the shrine’s grounds, where we met an old man and a woman who had staked out a kingfisher with their telescope and let us have a look through too. He was cobalt blue with a sash of ginger red round his chest. He flew not too soon after we’d seen him, so I guess we had been lucky. Later on we turned a corner in the woods and there was a flurry of tiny wings, perching and then flapping, perching and then swooping. A small pair of children, brother and sister, had their hands raised and out flat above their heads and the little birds were flocking to their palms to eat some crumbs, then to disappear. They were so excited, we were so excited. A groundskeeper-cum-priest who was passing through said it had become the highway of the birds and told us, ‘If you young ladies place you hands out flat they will surely perch because they think you have food for them’. Saeko went first and soon one hopped on and stopped, had a look and flew off. I did the same and a tiny thing perched on my hand, gently clasping my ring finger as if a twig with her dark delicate feet, she searched and failed to peck and left. It was a joy and the rest of the day continued as it had been set out for us. We laughed and joked and reflected.

Evaporated Milk

Never really written on the back of a bus before. Legs swung sideways out in to the aisle, there’s nobody here, the top deck is mine, no need to worry. Why has evaporated milk become so much part of my waking life than before? Because on the boat we have a tiny fridge that is crammed full of grapes and orange juice and cheese, so, there’s not much room for milk and Mer doesn’t drink milk. When I have cups of tea on the boat I usually have the ginger one or the knettle and jasmine one but sometimes you just hanker for tea, right? Regular nice builder’s tea with sugar and milk and everything Good about hot beverages. But there's only this thing called evaporated milk on board and it comes in a tin. 

The first time I put some evaporated milk in my tea it tasted fine, creamy but fine. Not like a normal cuppa but it was like not so different, you know. A day went by, I went to work where also I had cups of tea in the office and coffee and nothing that unusual. Another day, in the afternoon I bought a salad and went to eat it on the deck, which is much like a sun porch or a patch of grass that somebody owns out front. I had my book on British Birds and I was checking out the birds, the only kinds really are the coot and moorehen, both of which are labelled “confusion species” of one another; the coot is plumper and larger than the moorhen with a bright white stripe down the middle of its face, and they make a racket with their whirring click click clack clack noises. The tea I had on deck then tasted a bit odd but then I couldn’t remember how the first evaporated milk cup of tea had tasted, so I started to doubt whether the tea had ever tasted normal so I just drank it in sips and left the rest.

When Mer came home to the boat on my lazy Saturday afternoon which had been provoked by a great hangover incurred after Alex’s birthday, I offered to make her a cup of tea.

’Sure. I’ll have the knettle one! No - actually yes… no, I’ll try the melon and raspberry one.’ 

I boil the kettle and wait, tapping on the side of my white porcelain mug. I ask, ‘Mer can I have some of your evaporated milk?’

‘Sure you can but just check it hasn’t gone off.’ 

‘How do I check that?’ 

‘Well I’d pour it out somewhere and have a look.’ 

So I reach for a utensil and pour this gloopy substance on to the face of a spoon and it slides in to the shape of a white chocolate button but glossy. 

‘I don’t know what it’s supposed to look like though’ I say in anticipation for some big reveal by the evaporated milk, but it gives me nothing. Mer comes over to have a look too. 

‘Maybe give it a taste?’  

So I pop the spoon in my mouth and immediately have to spit the fucker out because it tastes sour and gross.

‘If it’s off spit it out!’ Mer desperately scrabbles to make some room for my spittle in the sink and then I have to spit it out.

The evaporated milk had definitely gone off so I would have thought I’d be scarred for life from that tin-held impostor, but then this morning I woke up quite early and had a freezing cold shower because I’d messed up the heater settings due to daylight savings time (the clock was wrong basically), and I needed a cup of tea. Like normal tea. So I boiled the kettle and put the tea bag in and pierced open the tin lid of this new evaporated milk and strangely enough, the tea tasted great. So, my overall feelings on evaporated milk are as yet undecided.