Dead things

Earlier this week I came home to find a dead pigeon on the glass roof of the little porch over the front door to our building. I’m guessing it flew into the glass windows that front our building and broke its stupid neck. It stayed there for three days before I decided I would have to be the one to call the building maintenance company to bring a ladder and a bucket of disinfectant. I took some photos and emailed them as evidence, but it’s been three more days now and the bird carcass is still there. I’ll spare you the day-lit ones, but thought this one was worthy of a bit of gruesome fascination.

Disclosure – I hate birds. The thought of little bags of tiny bones covered in soft, slightly oily, seed-scented feathers creeps me out on some deep biological level. Pigeons occupy a special place in my scale of loathing, for their lack of navigational skills and capacity for crashing into innocent humans on their way back from the bus stop (the humans, not the pigeons, pigeons don’t take the bus as far as I’m aware).

The bird on our porch roof is not yet rotting, but the corpse is starting to flatten out as gravity overrules the muscular structure. One of its feet is curling into talons, more like a Poe-style raven than an idiotic flying rat. But I find myself oddly intrigued by the fact that this creature, living earlier in the week, is now formless, inert, at the mercy of the elements and helpless. In a word, dead. And I wonder about humankind’s preoccupation and fascination with death. Funerals, cremations, burials, religious and otherwise, Halloween and festivals like Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead). I wonder at my predilection for horror films and novels, for vampires (before it was decided they ‘sparkled’ and drove Volvos *grits teeth*), for Frankenstein and his monsters and just how much I enjoyed Christopher Golden’s recent undead anthology Zombie.

I’m sure studiers of human nature have better explanations than I, but I’m assuming it’s because it is the final Great Unknown. Because we really don’t know what happens after death, because, well, we’re dead and no-one’s come back to tell us (I’m not talking about people who die for a few minutes and are revived by the way, I mean properly dead like my six-day-old pigeon-corpse buddy). Humans aren’t good with unknowns. We don’t like to have unexplained mysteries, we like certainties. Uncertainty is frightening. So death really pisses us off. So to deflect that anger and fear, we make stuff up. We hand out stories of tunnels of light and angels with harps on clouds, or fire and brimstone to keep the kids in line. Or that you’ll come back again, in another body (but conveniently won’t remember your past lives). Or that you won’t die at all, you’ll simply change form, into a ghost, a vampire, or a spirit, floating in the ether around your family and friends, protecting babies from falling out of their cribs.

But I look at ol’ pigeon here and I’m not convinced. His feathers are limp in the wind, his insides are now his outsides, his eyes are glazed over and he’s a soft, damp toy without any batteries. He’s not coming back, he hasn’t moved on, he’s just stopped. He’s not aware of the rushing traffic. He’s oblivious to polite behaviour in public, he won’t hear his pigeon buddies taunting him about his choice of ankle cuffs, the daily food shop is no longer required. He doesn’t have to pay his rent to sit on a lion in Trafalgar Square and his wife won’t nag him about coming home late after a night out on the seed with his mates. He won’t have to go into his boring job sitting on ledges outside office windows. Everything is quiet in his world.

People might be frightened of death as a Great Unknown, but I think they’re more frightened of not getting everything done, of not following through on those childhood dreams, or parental expectations. Lately, having been in a romantic relationship for nearly six years, I find myself frightened of what my death would mean to my partner, but my fears about what death means to me lessen as I grow older and my life is fuller of memories and adventures. No, I don’t want to die yet, but I’m not as frightened of my mortality as I used to be. Because in my noisy, busy, adventure and information-filled world, the finality of death seems like the best, last chance to sit down and have a rest. Peace. Solitude. Tranquillity. The ultimate quiet time.

Then of course my chap suggested that it would be cool if the pigeon turned into a zombie. Thanks babe.

The nervous youth

We renewed the tenancy agreement on our flat this month, for another year - mainly because (aside from the fact  that we like it here and the rent's good) we don't want to move house again. We've moved five times in five years and that's just a few too many cardboard boxes. 

As part of the renewal process, our letting agent decided they'd send someone round to a) get the agreement signed and witnessed in person and b) do an inspection of the flat to make sure we hadn't sold off the appliances, repainted the walls black or ripped up the carpet. Fair enough, if I was a landlord I'd want to check that too, even if the tenants paid the rent on time, didn't complain (much) or cause any complaints to be made. Like us.

So, in anticipation of a middle-aged hawkeyed spinster obsessed with grease on hob exhaust grilles (yes, I'm speaking from experience), we got up early, Hoovered,  tidied, dusted and even washed the balcony windows (not a big task, but, oh my, the difference - we live on a very busy road with many polluting cars and trucks). The flat looked more than presentable and I was no longer paranoid about the disdainful inspector's imminent arrival.

The doorbell went and I put on my best welcoming smile, prepared to offer said harridan a cup of tea, when in walked a boy.

Yes, in a suit (or rather a sweater vest and tie) but a boy nonetheless. He couldn't have been more than 19, but looked about 15. He smiled nervously and shuffled a plastic sleeve of papers, looking for our tenancy agreement. They hadn't even given him a clipboard, bless - first tool of intimidation, the clipboard. As a stage manager I found it a terrific symbol of authority, right up there with walkie-talkies.

The boy finally found the agreement and we signed it, then he swallowed and said ‘I’ll just do the inventory’ and poked his head into the few rooms of our wee abode, rushing off a series of ticks on his list. I altered his list before signing it (we own the fridge but the other flats came with theirs installed) and he blinked, then nodded, wide-eyed and agreed. Too bad we're so honest, could have got ourselves a washer-dryer and cooker.

He was gone a minute later in a flurry of floppy hair and nervous nodding, but I have to wonder - what would he have done if he'd turned up to find we'd gone all Pacific Heights on the place? What if we'd repainted the ceilings to match the Sistine Chapel, torn up the carpet and carved Satanic symbols into the floorboards, punched holes in the walls and torched the balcony with a bonfire-style BBQ? What if, my chap said, we'd taken out all the walls and tiled the entire flat in pale green, with nothing but a toilet in the centre of the room?

I have to wonder, would our young inspector just have nodded, hyperventilating, and got us to sign the agreement anyway, then run away in tears of terror? I felt at the time that if I'd looked sideways at him and suddenly hissed 'BOO!' he might have wet himself. I can't imagine him standing up to the Andrex puppy, let alone a psychopathic Satanist decorator. Which, fortunately for him, we're not. But I have no idea about our neighbours.

Snow

I grew up in Far North Queensland. Which is so far north it requires capital letters. The temperature in summer can get up to 40­­° Celsius and even in winter it doesn't get much lower than about 17°. Humidity stays around the 60/70% mark all year. So it's pretty warm and sticky most of the time, but particularly at Christmas time. Traditionally my family don't do cooked lunch, it's ham and potato salad and sparkling apple juice, then sit around trying not to sweat.

I don't like hot weather. I don't like having to reveal that much skin to anyone but my partner and I don't like wearing shoes with a no-sock requirement. I like trainers. And boots. The sandal and flip flop require a pedicure and inevitably cause blisters while you're wearing them in. I hate blisters.

I moved to the UK in part to get away from the hot weather. That and the lack of culture, artistic merit and availability of tickets to arena concerts (yes, yes I know, topic for another post). But mostly for the weather. Unlike most English people, I like the weather here. I like the rain (unless I'm required to walk long distances in a direction opposite to home), I like clouds and I like the temperature no higher than 22 degrees. While I don't really enjoy the early darkness six months of the year brings, British Summer Time means it's sometimes light at 9.30 at night. Which is awesome.

However, I'm not convinced about snow. The first time I saw snow (actual snow falling from the sky, as opposed to sitting in frozen lumps on the side of a mountain) I was in New York on holiday. I was travelling on my own (though I was staying with my brother in Brooklyn, he had to work all week) and I had just finished looking at treasures in the Pierpont Morgan Library and Museum on Madison Avenue. I was collecting my coat from the cloakroom at the front entrance and looked out through the glass door to see tiny white fluffy things floating around in the air. It took me a minute to realise what it was, and I think I must have been standing there looking amazed because the large black security guard at the door stepped forward and asked me if I was okay. I said I was, I'd just never seen snow before. He was amused in the way that I'd only ever seen New York characters on television amused - he laughed out loud and announced to the couple who were leaving the museum behind me that I'd never seen snow! They smiled in that kindly patronising way that New Yorkers do and stepped past me, putting up their umbrellas as they left.

I had an umbrella with me (my first overseas trip, I had EVERYTHING with me), but I wasn't going to miss out on my first snow - I walked back up to Central Park, gazing around at the snowflakes with an expression not unlike Jeff Bridges' in Starman and trying to catch them on my hand and my tongue. That night it snowed enough to make the pavements slippery and give mailboxes and railings snow cone hats (though CNN would have you believe that a blizzard was on its way). I ventured forth into freezing sleet (this time with my umbrella, can't tell you what a difference it made), thanking my sensible hiking books and diligent shop keepers with grit bins for stopping the worst of the pavement slipping and then realised why snow in an urban environment is not necessarily a wondrous thing. Once the city heats up the snow enough to ice over, everything is slippery. If the snow stays as snow it's fine, you can plough through drifts in waterproof boots and the soles will grip as they should and so long as you don't try and rush, you'll get where you're going without falling over. When it's icy, chances of arriving at your destination without a soggy bum are slim to none.

I hate falling over. I hated falling over as a kid, the embarrassment, the pain and the indignity at not being able to maintain a simple thing like balance. I was always the last one to make it back to the beach when we were rock-climbing, I never let go of the railing on my few attempts at roller skating and I don't even like stepping into a wet bathtub without having a two-handed grip on something that can't break. I hated it as a kid, but now in my late 30s, and weighing considerably more than I did at 14, there's a lot more of me to land on my knee, elbow or my substantial behind.

So here is my quandary. I love to watch the snow. I love to see the white feathers swirling, floating, piling up on tree branches. I love the way it sits on top of post boxes and window sills, the icing sugar on sponge cake look of roofs and lone trails of footprints (human and canine) through pristine parkland. I like seeing kids (and grownups) making rude snowmen and chucking lumps of it at each other, I like the way that dogs are ridiculously excited by it and zoom around, nose to the ice, trying to figure it out, as if they've never seen it before. It's still a marvellous magical phenomenon to me, and I get completely snap-happy.

I also hate the snow. I hate slipping and catching myself before I hit the ground almost as much as actually falling down. I hate having to leave extra time to get to the station in the morning, I hate having to remember spare socks and hoping that my boots will hold up to their waterproof bargain and my toes won't be wrinkled and cold when I get to the office. I hate the messy slippery slush left behind after several thousand pedestrians have traipsed through the snow on their way to work, much earlier than me. I hate the way the UK's transport system breaks down when more than an inch of powder lands on the train tracks, roads and airports. Just before Christmas there was an unexpected snowfall about 4 o'clock in the afternoon, a good two inches landed on London with a 'whoomp' and all vehicular transport ceased to function.

Trains were delayed, cancelled, gave up and went back to their train duvets in their train sheds. Traffic banked up as cars slipped and skidded on roads (hills were impossible) unless they'd managed to get in behind the frantically-deployed army of grit lorries. Buses stopped in case they slid on the road or crashed into shop fronts at three miles per hour, killing everyone on board and spoiling Christmas displays. We got to our next-to-local train station, waited for a bus in the snow only to be told they'd all stopped, then gave up and walked home. It's normally a 30 minute stroll over a grassy heath and along not-unpleasant shop-lined streets, but it took us nearly an hour plodding along in our hiking boots (I exceeded the limits of their waterproofness at about 40 minutes). I held onto my chap's arm with a vice-like grip, paranoid about ice patches and spent the entire walk with my eyes on the ground, placing my feet in a steady, stomping fashion like so many snow-shoed Eskimos before me.

Of course later, in my contrary way, I was taking photos from the window of our flat, watching in wonder at the swirling flurries and wondering how long the road surface would stay coated in the snowy frosting before a car (or a grit lorry) came along to destroy the illusion.

I think snow is a bit like action films where the hero beats up the baddie/alien/volcano with an array of heavy artillery, staggering triumphantly through bloody noses, broken ribs and bullet wounds. I like to watch, but faced with actually getting physically involved, I'd rather stay in with a cup of coffee and biscuit if it's all the same.