I sat on a bench on a bit of sea front between one road and
another and listened to a man play a harp, good notes in a fine order while the
sea sent wafts of white noise in approval and the seagulls kept their beaks
shut for once. It was all a good accompaniment to Jose’s horror, which had
intensified to the point where I thought I could smell it. A young man in an old man’s clothes went past
pushing a walnut-faced dog in one of those upright-canvas-bag-in-a-wheeled-frame things in which your gran might carry home her bargains. The dog was facing him and he
was staring at it not for the first time that day. He pushed it yapping past
the harp and before he turned the corner asked it: why are you being like this?
Facing west now (it's important to let you know in which directions this was written), trying to find things to say about the
view, get some visual sauce on this introspective pile of uncertain
nourishment, but I can’t so I won’t, but I will type it up and submit it to the
Telegraph’s travel-writing prize and be utterly furious if it doesn’t win five hundred quid.
Last night the train from St Ives to Penzance went as far as
St Erth before going backwards. I should’ve paid attention to the unboldness of
the numbers next to the stations after St Erth, in the timetable, which
indicated a change should've been made, if Penzance was where you wanted to end up.
But I was busy with Jose and had no interest in why some numbers were bold and
some unbold, nor why the unbold ones continued in an unbroken chain to the
destination. Logic or curiosity might’ve prompted some easy research. But I’m on holiday so I have a lack of both.
We hurtled backwards
while the sun disappeared and Jose piled on the horror and I said to the
conductor I’ve stayed on by accident and he nodded like you’re not the first.
By the time we were going forwards again the moon was up, looking sunburned.
