Flinging Spangles

There are things that I’ve long since realised are to be expected in a town like the one I live in, one way up in the hills, nestled in a rather indefinable spot in the North of England. As consistent as water being wet, or grass green, winters here bring a ridiculous amount of snow. As the days turn to weeks and weeks to a month or even more, the biting wind brings about some shapeshifting urges in the snow: it twists and turns, lays white blankets on gardens, thin snowy caterpillars on window ledges and deep, alabaster banks against the walls of our houses and little shops. 

   Now, when the weather gets really bad, getting back home from work is nearly impossible, when the snow builds itself up in impenetrable mounds along the sides of the road. Leading up to and a few weeks after Christmas, I sometimes work, like everyone, much longer hours and so I usually get home a lot later than I’d like. Something I read online once about the “preservation of respected tradition” in old English towns such as mine means that there are still very few street lights along a lot of roads here: our local council seem to enjoy keeping much of our town two hundred years behind the rest of the world, so as you can imagine this makes for some dangerous walks home at night. I remember when I was a teenager hearing about an old lady who slipped in the dark while walking her dog - they found her the next morning, alive but chilled truly and absolutely to the bone, in tremendous pain with a broken ankle. She made the chocolate bar she had kept in her pocket last the whole night, and blamed - quite aggressively, I remember - the lack of lights on it all. I was and still am on her side about that.

   Anyway, getting home late always means anticipating the same fate as that old lady. I always fear that at some point on my fairly short walk home I’ll slip and hurt myself or, worse, embarrass myself by allowing my fall to be seen by quick eyes darting about in the night, like the eyes of a cat searching for scraps.

   That night after work - at the end of some day in mid-December - I found myself walking a different way home. I had to pick up some vegetables from the shop. I think I was making soup that night… Yes, I was probably making soup. Ivy Road, the street with the shop, usually collects its fair share of snow on the worst, most wintery days of the year, since it has very little in the way of pavement, so nothing prevents huge mounds of the cold stuff from pushing its way to the old, stone walls that line the streets.

   I had bought what I’d needed and had only just left the shop, turning right then right again before I saw it lodged in a knee-high, solitary wave of melting snow. I pulled it out and of course was soggy where it had made contact with the snow, but I’d say half of it or so was still dry. It was strange, why would somebody leave that there, a book? I pulled my carrier bag further up my arm, keeping it in place while I used both hands to open the book and check the pages. Since there wasn’t much in the way of light, the words were blurred, the title too, and the cover was seemingly non-existent. I was curious enough about it to take it with me, so I wedged it between the cabbage and sweet potatoes and walked carefully home. 

   In the light of my kitchen, I saw that the book was by James Joyce. It was called Ulysses and I hadn’t heard of it before. I knew of the author, though. I had been to Dublin twice, to visit my cousins, and I knew that he was Irish and was a big deal. I must mention that I do read sometimes, not much but enough to feel like I’m doing something productive with my life, even when I’m not. 

   I separated some of the pages delicately with my fingers, mainly from the top corner that had been soaking in the snow. The rest I figured would be fine, so I left the book open over the radiator, then I must’ve just gone and made my soup. Cabbage and sweet potato: it was delicious, I think. Knowing me as well as I do, I probably made some bread to go with it. I do love making bread, it’s a nice way to pass the time.

   In the morning, the book was fine, just rigid and curled at the corners. I left it on the kitchen table while I went about my business. I seem to remember that I just worked a half-day that day, which rarely happens around Christmas time. So after some coffee, cereal and possibly some toast too, I left home and would’ve only returned around one, maybe two o’clock. 

   There was more snowfall that afternoon just after I got back home: it was heavy for a while, then it petered out before it started to rain. By then, though, I was already in my happy place on the right side of the sofa with the TV on. I had been thinking about the book while I was working; actually, not really thinking about the book itself, but more about just how strange it was that I found it sticking out of a mound of snow. I’ve never heard of anyone finding things in snow. Wait, no, I’m sure I have heard of it, but it’s more likely that you find stuff once the snow has melted, rather than seeing something having been jammed into it. Why would someone do that, and why this book in particular? I told Mark about it and he laughed as he was bagging up some shopping for a customer, but he thought I was joking, telling me that someone probably couldn’t be bothered walking all the way to the library. Now I know he’s not the sort of person to know that our town doesn’t have a library.

   So I opened the book, armed with my cup of tea beside me and what were then my new reading glasses, and read the introductory biography section that are usually in books, often there for famous writers, dead writers or famous writers who are now dead. James Joyce was, I quickly realised, very famous and very dead. I thought I recognised a book he had written, Dubliners, but nothing else jumped out to me.

   The first few pages were confusing, something about shaving and a dream someone had. These guys lived in a tower. I think it was a tower, in Dublin, on Sandymount Strand. Later on that afternoon I realised I had been there too, walking with my cousin and her friend; we had coffees - lattes, probably - and we sat on a rock, chatted and watched the waves. It’s a big stretch of beach, with a factory at one end: it has those huge chimneys that release horrid smoke like cigars that’ve been jammed into the ground. It was sad to look at and it ruined the view, but then again now that I think about it most buildings ruin most views.

   My dad, after he and my mum divorced, had a view from the bedroom of his flat that had no buildings at all. It was a little village that he moved to, not far from our house, maybe half an hour in the car if there wasn’t much traffic. There was a huge farm there and that’s all you could see from the window, just the grass and the animals: a handful of cows, some horses, lots of sheep. It was nice, looking at them as they walked around, ate a bit, slept a lot. I used to do my homework there on the window ledge. It was wide enough for me to sit on, so I kept my exercise books on my lap and worked on them quietly; it was a nice place to sit when it rained and a nice place when it was sunny. Dad ended up selling it a couple of years ago, not long before he died.

   I wonder if he liked James Joyce? He read sometimes, more and more as he got older, more than I do now and definitely more than mum ever did, or does. We sometimes went into book shops when I was younger, but we never bought any or at least not for me. I liked the pens they sold at the counter, or the bookmarks that had been made into funny shapes. I didn’t have many books, so buying bookmarks was a bit of a silly idea, but he bought them for me though, regardless. They must’ve just gathered dust on a shelf or were tidied away into a cupboard or drawer. Mum always did that - don’t all mums do that, put things that aren’t theirs into random places and not tell their children? Usually she wouldn’t remember doing it, so when I asked her where something of mine was, she couldn’t help me.

   I do have memories of him reading; I have quite a few faint ones of him sitting in a chair in our old, little garden with a cup of coffee between his legs and a book in his hand. Now that I think about it, I guess it could have actually been a newspaper but there’s quite a difference in size between the two and I like to think that my memory wouldn’t do that to me, change a detail like that behind my back. Thinking of Dad now, he strikes me as a person who would’ve enjoyed detective novels, the sort the BBC makes into big-budget dramas, those gritty ones where everything is dimly lit and nobody is allowed to be happy for very long. Maybe that’s what he was reading on those sunny days, and maybe watching him read them an effect on me, because I like sitting in the sun now, sipping a drink, reading a book.

   Still, I can’t see him reading James Joyce - I don’t think it would’ve been of interest to him. That afternoon, I had long since finished my cup of tea before I reached the end of the first chapter of Ulysses. I was a bit confused, and to be really honest, not that interested in it. But at that point, I had already done all my Christmas shopping for everyone, already eaten lunch and outside was painfully cold, so inside I would stay, nestled in the corner of the sofa. I had no reason to do anything else except enjoy some time off, so I made another cup of tea and sat back down.

   I distinctly remember skipping a chapter or two. Please, hear me out: yes, I enjoy books and I enjoy relaxing and usually I respect a book enough not to skip any of it, even when it’s a bit slow. But I found this book in a mound of snow, which piqued my curiosity enough to try to read some of it and that’s what I’d started to do. I feel I had already given it enough attention: books found in the wild like that have been neglected by someone, and I think what I did - nursing it to health - was a good, kind thing to do. Unfortunately for me though, the book was very big, too big.

   But - and I must say this - some of the parts that I read were actually quite lovely; not everything was amazing - actually, a lot of it was quite hard to understand. But there were a few lines that stood out to me so much I ended up typing them out onto the notes app on my phone and they’re still there now. It’s at the end of one of the early chapters - at least I think it is, it must be since I didn’t read more than a hundred pages or so - and it reads: ‘On his wise shoulders through the checkerwork of leaves the sun flung spangles, dancing coins’. Isn’t that beautiful? Dancing coins. Now, when I think about that, I think of bumblebees, fat ones humming around my garden. Coins with wings - you know the sort, the really golden ones, the kind you buy at Christmas for children, with the thin, shiny foil.

   It’s been so long since I made that note on my phone - I’ve gone a long time without reading since it’s been relegated to the bottom of the list: a fate that falls upon all notes. It’s sad, because I do get a lot of happiness from reading those few lines. Seeing it now reminds me of a few things, and surprisingly what first comes to mind isn’t the strange circumstance that led to me finding the book, but that the Christmas that year was a good one. I was happy, quite content with my life, my friends, as well as coming to peace with a few things that had been getting me down for a while.

   At that point during Christmas of that year, memories of Dad were still quite fresh in my mind, and I revisited them a lot, especially when I was alone at home. I know that I can’t always trust these memories of him, but I find that as life goes on, they’re what I hold on to the most; if, in my head, he’s an avid reader, with his legs crossed, sitting in the sun with an open book in his hands, then can’t that be him? Sometimes, my head feels like a piggy bank and I’m putting in new memories of him when I can, storing them up like coins, dancing coins, for me to return to again, maybe as I sit in my own garden, a book on my lap, the sun bright and golden, doing what it does best, flinging spangles.