Oxford is one of those places which has big open green
spaces very close to the city centre. On a recent visit and taking advantage of
a sunny morning, I started my day with a walk into Port Meadow, an extensive
area of low-lying flood plain which has been common land for centuries. But
such walks always cause me a bit of anxiety. I make them without any props and
often find myself the only person out and about who hasn’t got the kind of
excuse which a prop indicates; I am just a solitary walker, without even the
cover which coupledom provides.
The dog-dependent are out at this time of day, their
presence in the meadow justified by the dog. A notice at the entrance to the
meadow tells me that to reduce the risk of dog faeces spreading parasitic
infections to animals grazing in the meadow, those faeces must be gathered up
and disposed of into a bin. In addition, a single person may not bring more
than four dogs into the meadow, perhaps to discourage those who depend on dog
walking for their livelihood and for whom the meadow would be a convenient,
unpoliced shittery. A more prominent notice tells me that one of the horses
which graze in the meadow has recently died in a savage dog attack and the
Meadow custodians would like to know whose dog.
This makes me a bit anxious and I guess does the same for
the joggers and runners who are out, mostly young women dressed in clothes
which indicate seriousness of purpose and justify their presence in the open
air on a sunny morning: I am here because I am keeping fit, though I rather
anxiously hope that my Lycra legs do not attract the attention of a savage dog.
Then there are cyclists, most heading south towards the
city centre and most, I guess, with the practical aim of getting to work or
class. They look rather intense, as if they might be late for an important
date. But the bicycle is the prop which legitimates their rapidly passing
presence.
A few of the joggers and the cyclists greet me but, of
course, there is no reason for them to stop and pass a time of day in which I
would tell them that I have just been watching a pair of young
goldfinches, feeding on dandelion clocks.
There was a time when, in response to anxieties about
walking alone, I used to carry a stick - an indication that I was a serious
walker, up there with the jogger or
cyclist. But I could never bring myself to don the expensive garments which
signify someone as a Rambler, garments made all the more signifying
by their binary contrast with the Naked version. Eventually,
and despite the fact that I was getting older, I gave up the stick and now
present myself, albeit uncomfortably, as that species of solitary walker who
pays some attention to what can be seen and what can be heard around them, but
with no real excuse for being there in a meadow on a sunny morning.
*
Later, I walked down to the city centre, a world crowded
with young people and, of course, seething with props: smartphones with their
own human beings permanently attached. Where are the flâneurs and
the flâneuses, I asked myself? Surely there must be other people
nearby, strolling and trying to pay attention to the viewscape and the
soundscape. But I don’t see many.
As for the smartphones, their human dependents would be so
full of the beauty of youth if they would but detach themselves, look up, look
around, pay attention, stroll or strut their stuff. This, after all, is Oxford and the young
people I see clearly have the benefit of good diet, good dentistry, and
effortless taste in the way they dress. They are quite unlike the young people
I see each day in the decayed south coast resort where I live. But, fortunate
or not, both rich and poor all now have in common that they are not looking at
the world around them, or listening to it. Especially, it seems, when crossing
a road.
But then I said to myself, In your day surely you must have
had your own props; and then I thought, yes, the smartphone has replaced the
cigarette. Back then, it was a cigarette which solved the problem of what to do
with your hands, or at least, one hand. The cigarette - mine were always Turkish
- gave you an excuse for your existence and a prop to navigate social life. If
not a cigarette, then maybe a handbag or even just a rolled up newspaper - the latter a common sight in the past.
Human beings are natural fidgets; so many of our problems stem
from our inability to sit, stand or walk quietly, without a prop to soothe. In
the days of portraits in oils and into the early days of photography it was a
big problem, partly solved by equipping the sitter with a fan, a flower, a
book, a riding crop.
*
I walk back to my guest house. A woman approaches, perhaps
a grandmother, pushing a buggy and addressing soothing words to its occupant.
She passes and I half turn to look at the baby: big-eyed, big-eyelashed, and
wide-open mouthed; an old-fashioned pink plastic doll.
*
This piece is now included in my little book Sample Essays, available at
https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/search/author/Trevor%20Pateman
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