Looking up

I find myself walking around town like a tourist these days, looking up to see architectural details which I either had not fully appreciated in the 47 years I have lived here, or had not noticed at all.

At Step Daughter's house the other night, she asked me why I kept looking at the modern chandelier in the living room. I explained that my neck condition was getting worse and I have to regularly  counteract the tendency for my chin to rest on my chest while I still can, even though it is beginning to become the most comfortable position when I am up and awake. I also have to curtail the urge to inspect the pavement as I walk along streets, hence the late-flowering appreciation of high altitude Georgian architecture.

I was known for looking up when I was younger, but that was the early days after the introduction of the resident Peregrine Falcons. If it wasn't a search for birds it was for celestial bodies, but they are in the sky. It hurts too much to spend any longer then a few seconds looking up at the sky, so this is why I have set my sights a little lower of late.

Over Christmas, H.I. and I have taken to sitting somewhere in town, just watching people. To stay indoors would just exacerbate the cabin fever. Christmas day was beautifully still and sunny and the square was full of foreigners looking up at those bits of architecture while their children chased pigeons. No matter which country they are from, all kids chase pigeons.

Yesterday we sat in the Abbey Square to watch pigeon-chasers and their parents. A young woman ran diagonally across it, cutting a path through the tourists as she screamed, "CHRISTINE! CHRISTINE!"  in blind panic. "OH FUCK!"

I thought she may have lost a child, but it turned out that her friend was just about to miss the coach back to London. I have dreams like that, where I am in a foreign town in a foreign country, I've lost H.I., I cannot remember the name or location of our hotel and my mobile phone does not work.

A man in a black hat began setting up a keyboard, stool and amplifier in the middle of the square and I wondered whether or not he was going to be any good, in the ten minutes it took him to do it. There are many truly awful buskers in Bath. It turned out he was classically trained.

His first tune began with tinkling up and down the scale before the theme to 'The Snowman' emerged, and for some reason I almost cried. I have been close to tears for days now. It is very exhausting.