Dream Diaries… 122

03/03/24

People keep commenting on my shoes.

“Ooh, nice shoes!”

“New shoes, Nick?”

“I like your shoes.”

I look down at my shoes, but they’re not new. They are a pair of grubby, once-white, All-Star Chuck Taylors, purchased last September. I bought them after much deliberation, much procrastination, only relenting, allowing myself, after the strip of masking tape that I had applied to the perished, canvas heel of one of my ancient red Chucks, had lost its adhesive quality.

I bought them in the bright shopping centre, and carried them, boxed, under my arm, through the long-shadowed streets. Leaves fell out of the sky. I remember that I felt a sort of vague shame for carrying a box of new shoes; an ostentatious embarrassment. I thought about throwing the box into a bin and stuffing the new shoes into my tatty army bag. But I couldn’t bring myself to unbox them in the street, mostly because I knew that I would find a use for the box, a better use, at home.

There was a metro strike, or the metro wasn’t running for some reason, and the promise of a rail replacement bus failed to materialize, so I walked out of the city, through the back streets, along the dirty canal path, and then the clean coast road, and, finally, I walked on the cold, hard sand of the empty beach. The little waves licked my old red High-Tops and the North Sea anointed my feet. I arrived home just as the sky began to purple, causing the undersides of the Herring gulls to appear black as they circled the roof tops. I put the wet sneakers by the front door and I dried my feet.

I took the new shoes from the box and worked the laces into them. I tried a couple of ways, but settled on the method I preferred where one end is threaded into the bottom left eye and passed out of the top left eye, the remaining length of lace is then stitched, left to right, bottom to top. I tied them, tried them on, and walked around the flat glancing at my feet in the reflections – the long mirror in the hall, the wooden framed mirror leant against the wall in the bedroom, the black screen, the dark oven door – and I felt quite smart in a silly sort of way. I took the white shoes off, placed them with the red shoes by the front door. They nudged up nicely together – the new and the old – I emptied the tissue paper from the box and into the box I placed a large collection of 5”x 7” snapshots I had taken over the year on my phone and, after very little consideration, had had printed. Photographs of singular gloves that I kept spotting in the streets.

These shoes aren’t new. One of the metal grommets is missing. Two, actually. There are hair snippings, they could be anybody’s, except mine, in the crease between the rubber sole and the canvas. The toe of the left one is stained with something like tea.

09/03/24

I am surprised to be landing at Croydon airport. It has, the Captain informs us, recently reopened after almost 70 years. Large airliners taxi, turn, and charge the weed and wasteland runway, rising, rising with horrific metallic screams, sending bundles of bin bag rubbish and tumbleweed luggage all over the field. The air trembles, engine-blasted. We leave the plane and, as we struggle across the runway toward the the arrival lounge, I notice a movement in the undergrowth at the edge of the airport. This scrap of land was once favoured by street drinkers, feral wankers, and glue-sniffing teens, but nowadays, I see, it has become the hang-out for bum-fluff estate agents, white-toothed chuggers, and lifted and tucked grandmas. They all seem to be summoning the new arrivals, this every town crowd, dressed in tight, blue two pieces, oversized Nirvana tee shirts, and animal print onesies.

17/03/24

An armada of red sailed ships appear on the dawn horizon. By mid-morning they have anchored in the bay and a delegation have set off on paddle-boards to greet them. The sun sparkles on the water and large, graceful whales rise up, briefly, their barnacled backs arching and falling with gentle, sloshing noises. MW is one of the paddle-boarders and his spaniel, Daniel, sat at the head of the board, watches the great beasts as they appear from the surface, rising like brief, blue islands all around the paddle boarders. MW sings a song of welcome to the arrivals and the others in the delegation join in on the choruses. The song is perhaps Hawaiian, or Polynesian, or something. The words sparkle like the water and Daniel begins to sing, too. His dog voice fills the air and soon the others, MW included, let the real words slip away and the welcome song becomes an imitation of the little spaniel’s voice: mournful, pathetic, and quite tuneless on the bright morning. The whales begin to make their way out into the deeper water, rising less and less and less and less, until, less and less and less and less, they have, less and less and less and less, become less and less and less and less a memory, and more, a dream.

It is now later, maybe years, and IW, the two children, and I, are living in the Schöneberg district on the third floor of a typical apartment for that area. It is the end of the war – or, at least, the end draws near. IW stands between the open doors on the small balcony, her back to the room, gazing on to the street below. She wears a cotton dress, cinched at the waist and printed with tiny yellow flowers. The balcony is crowded with potted plants; the fronds of some of which brush the backs of her legs as she leans over the railing; her heels rising and falling in and out of her delicate, high shoes as she moves this way and that, watching something on the street – a cat, perhaps. She speaks an elegant language. I am sat in the middle of the room, naked, cross-legged on the bare boards, tying a knot of twine around a small brown paper package that contains the children’s books. Her words sound like spoons on glass in the near empty, high-ceilinged, room. It is Spring.