You never quite know what you’ve got
Serendipity is a wonderful thing and today I wish to bring Rust readers the joys of a true story.
I have lived in my current abode in the quiet suburbs of south-west London for over twenty years. During this period I have been in the habit of going across the road to my local newsagents shop to collect my papers at about 7.00am. I think the owner or manager chappie opens the place about half an hour earlier than that, but it takes him about thirty minutes to open the tin box outside the shop, in which the newspaper delivery men place the newspapers every day, and firstly ‘set them up’ and secondly, go to the back of the shop and start up the oven in which he bakes his croissants and baguettes before placing them on the relevant shelves.
Thus about 7.00am is the right moment for an early bird like me to arrive.
Over at least the last decade, possibly decade and a half, when going about this daily ritual, I have noticed an elderly gentleman [well, probably ten to fifteen years older than me] en route to the newspaper shop presumably upon the same quest. In fact definitely upon the same quest.
He soon became one of the features of my existence, as people sometimes do when you first consciously notice that you’ve come across them before – then that you tend to see them most days collecting their newspapers like you are – and then you begin ‘spotting’ them out and about in the locality with patent regularity.
It wouldn’t be unkind to comment that – just as I do – left to his own devices, he tends to be instantly recognisable because, apart from no doubt changing his clothes from time to time, he tends to wear the same trousers and/or coat every day – or might that be different trousers, but always trousers in the same style?
His uniform tends to be fawn corduroy trousers, a whitish shirt, an old light brown coat and a homburg-type hat beneath which he sports longish once-brown hair and a beard. Year after year, I don’t think I’ve seen him wearing much else.
Fast-forward to about two years ago.
For some reason or another – not guilt, because I’d let the situation go on for far longer than guilt would have allowed me to – one dark morning I found him waiting for the traffic lights close to the bottom of my road go to red (so that pedestrians might cross, in our case to get to the newsagents).
I looked at him, said “Good morning” and probably passed a comment about the weather or the time of day. He seemed a reasonable sort and soon, whenever we came across each other – whether it was in the road, or even as we were going about our business in the newsagents – we’d acknowledge each other and sometimes even have a brief conversation about this or that.
One day he looked down at my leg and asked about my limp – this was in the days when (arthritis hobbled) I was struggling to walk without one. I did my little chatting routine about how I’d succumbed to the condition and, upon being told the diagnosis and that I’d eventually need a hip replacement, I’d reacted with indignation “But that’s an old person’s disease!” and the doctor had looked back at me deadpan, as if to say “… and your point is?”
My ‘chap in the hat’ chuckled and, by way of return, told me of his most recent visit(s) to hospital for quite serious things which at one stage had appeared life-threatening but which he’d somehow got through.
From then on we hailed each other daily, or as often as we saw each other on our way to collect our newspapers. As time passed and I first signed up for my hip replacement op last year – and then went through it – I gave him a running commentary on how things were going, but usually only when he was kind enough to ask.
Thereafter – as I came home after the procedure and began staggering around on crutches and eventually trying to walk without them (and failing) – I practically gave the poor chap a series of blow-by-blow accounts.
We were getting on quite well, but our intimacy never got beyond the ‘acquaintance’ stage, if I was totally honest and being brutal. I never knew his name, nor he mine, and I’ve no idea exactly where he lives, but I do know that he comes along my road whenever he is going to the shops.
And … er … that was it, really.
Until yesterday.
At 7.45am, some 45 minutes after my normal time, I arrived in the newspaper shop, walking past ‘Homburg Man’ as I entered (he doing something with some newspapers by the door) though I didn’t immediately acknowledge him.
“Morning …” I said to the proprietor behind the counter, “… sorry I’m late”
“Well don’t do it again …” he replied with a smile.
I explained that I’d overslept and began collecting my newspapers off the shelves.
As I reached behind Homburg Man, I said “Good morning” and, motioning to the papers he was thumbing through, asked him what he was doing.
His reply stopped me in my tracks.
“I’m trying to have a look through the Financial Times Weekend – they’ve written an article upon me and they’ve got a couple of things wrong, I haven’t got grey eyes …”
I investigated further. Sure enough, there was a full page article on him in the Arts section of the Financial Times Weekend newspaper. He was apparently one of the great ‘lost’ British artists of the second half of the 20th Century and there is an exhibition of his work coming up in Jermyn Street in central London between the 2nd and 24th of February.
I immediately announced to the newsagent that I was going to buy a copy of the Financial Times Weekend, in addition to everything else.
“You don’t have to …” said Homburg Man.
“Yes I do! …” I retorted “… I must have one, now that I know that all of us round here are living in the presence of a world celebrity!”
Sadly, I cannot provide a link for Rust readers here to the said review of Neil Stokoe and his work by Jackie Wullschager in the Financial Times as to do so I would have to ‘sign up’ to a Financial Times subscription, an invitation I always decline on principle.
However, here is a link to the page on the exhibition of his work at the – MEGAN PIPER GALLERY
I really must introduce myself to him properly next time we meet up on our way to picking up our morning papers. Maybe I can show him a photograph of my own epic five foot by four feet masterpiece that once adorned an end-of-year exhibition at my public school – Green Man With Nice Sideboards and Piles (1970).
