Going out in the rain
I don’t know if anyone else noticed, but yesterday chez moi was the occasion of a sudden break in the weather. Gone was the scorching heat and sunshine of the Bank Holiday Weekend, replaced by a distinctly colder temperature and steady rain which, after a slow start, persisted for most of the day.
As it happened by chance I had opted to go for a walk relatively early in the morning and thus managed to complete my exercise without becoming prey to more than the odd smattering of raindrops. By the time I’d been about my morning business, made myself a light early lunch and then had my habitual midday half-hour snooze, things were not quite so civil.
Having prepared to set off for a rendezvous with family members in the West End of London, inevitably I hit my first snag. Donning my preferred ‘rain’ coat (a light Musto sailing jacket) in readiness to go out, I placed inside its pockets my necessaries – a spectacles case plus my smartphone, earphones and house keys – and then went to ‘do up’ the zip.
Only to find I couldn’t. Somehow, with no prior warning, the ‘female’ side of the jacket zip had lost its ‘base’ – which made it nigh impossible to secure the two sides of the zip together and thereby ‘do it up’.
After grappling with the zip (and problem) for several minutes I finally concluded that the struggle was an unequal one and gave up, placing the Musto jacket back on the stand in the hallway and seeking out an alternative rain jacket of some sort. Which one didn’t matter that much – whichever, it was going to be my second choice. Furthermore, by now I was now about seven or eight minutes behind my intended schedule. What person (or indeed rodent) had broken off – or eaten – the hard base of my Musto jacket zip fastener?
Life is so unfair – but then we all know that don’t we? This sort of thing often happens to me …
I trudged through the high street to the station and caught the train, having bought a copy of the latest monthly edition of the music magazine Uncut to read on the journey.
Nothing much to read in that – a feature on the US rocker Jack White (whose music I am wholly unfamiliar with) and interviews with Van Morrison and Stevie Winwood about their latest album releases.
Winwood’s is a ‘live album’ of his all-time greatest hits that was launched yesterday and Van Morrison’s was a new CD entitled Roll With The Punches – granted a disappointing 6 out of 10 by Uncut’s reviewer, whose throwaway line was a dismissive ‘as comfortable as a pair of worn slippers – featuring a range of blues covers, most of which he’s recorded before, and a smattering of underwhelming new compositions. On the way home yesterday I popped into the HMV store on Oxford Street beside the Bond Street underground station to see if I could buy it, only to be told that it doesn’t come out until 22nd September.
My main purpose of journeying into town – for which I arrived soaked but (inside my rainwear and baseball cap) dry – was to join a family consultation about the pacemaker with which my father had been fitted last week.
The scar had healed properly and the pacemaker itself was working well – we were told – but the only ‘arresting’ aspect of what we learned was the consultant’s stated view that in the event last week’s elective procedure had proved more than necessary. He actually used the phrase ‘in the nick of time’ – since the procedure the natural working of my father’s heart had reduced further and in effect the pacemaker had now totally taken over the regulation of his heartbeat. I don’t mind admitting that made me sit up. However, as before, all seemed very relaxed. We are to return in another month for a ‘look see’ and then after that repeat visits will take place only on a six-monthly or yearly basis.
Subsequently, after a bit more waiting around, the hire car taking my father and the others away arrived. I saw them all into the comfortable black Mercedes and waved them a cheery farewell before beginning my return route to Bond Street tube station.
After about 50 yards I crossed a junction with Wigmore Street and took to the pavement on my way towards the back of the Oxford Street John Lewis department store.
As I did so, I came face to face – as you do – with someone I recognised (or thought I did) who has been in the news recently.
Coming towards me, huddled under a rain jacket with the hood pulled over his head, looking a little disgruntled and talking animatedly upon a mobile phone was former Olympic 110 metre hurdler – and now BBC athletics pundit – Colin Jackson, who had ‘come out’ as gay as recently as last weekend.
Our eyes met, but (for good or ill) I can record here that I studiously and completely ignored him.
Firstly, as indicated, he was on the phone and – had I stopped to address him – he might not have welcomed it.
And secondly, I was undecided as to whether, even if he hadn’t been on the phone and I had accosted him, he might have welcomed my intruding upon his quiet enjoyment of life. After all, the only reason I’d have made a point of doing it was because I’d just read about his ‘coming out’.
On the one hand, he might have been glad of someone coming up to him in the street and congratulating him for being bold enough to make a public statement about his true sexuality.
On the other – in this modern 21st Century ‘let it all hang out PC-correct’ world in which ‘any old how will do’ – might it not have been inappropriate of me to impose upon him?
Surely to have made nothing of it at all was the ‘modern’ thing to do?
A combination of uncertainty and the thought that I might best be demonstrating my ‘right on’ political correctness to the world by doing absolutely nothing overwhelmed me.
That’s the reason I completely ‘blanked’ him.
(Sorry, Colin, if you would have liked to have asked for an autograph and/or to have a selfie taken with me) …
