After, and Before

After the Rubber Band Debate we decided to go for a walk. I remember thinking, during the walk, that if the Tour de France was over, I would be paying more attention to my surroundings.

That is not to say I was thinking about the Tour De France.

I was coasting, observing nothing properly.

How lucky I was to have had that thought. For, from the moment that I thought it, I began to observe things properly again, but in a different way.

That was last Saturday. Let us see how long the proper memory has lasted.

We left mum sitting on a seat. No, that's wrong, we left her just about to sit down on a seat. She probably sat down on it after that. But by then we were walking south along the footpath towards Seacliff.

The sea was on our right, slopping and gleaming like molten steel in a bowl. Then the sand heaps, ugly. Then the dunes and struggling grasses. Then the gnarled and twisted bushes, the decrepit fence, the footpath, and us walking on it, towards Seacliff.

We were talking about something in Latin. That is not to say we were speaking Latin. We can't do that. We were talking about a word, errato, and whether it existed....

After that we fell silent. There was a sound, probably of the sea, slopping. What else could it have been? And another sound, probably of rustling bushes, or a bouncing car. Whatever the sounds, they were enough to make me think about listening, so then I heard another car, and several birds.

On the way back, northwards, towards Hove, we seemed to be somehow tilted towards the sky. I suppose the path must go uphill very slightly. In any case, I remember looking at the clouds which looked like solid lumps of dirty yellow wadding. Far away above the horizon a slash of blue sky promised the sun, by means of a triangulation of sunbeams. But minutes before it appeared, we had to turn up Smith Street.