Monk Quixote

Itunes has decided to have a sense of irony fail­ure and is cur­rently play­ing me ‘Every day is like Sun­day’ by Mr Euro­vi­sion. (Hmm, that might be a cool fea­ture for the future, play­ing songs at inap­pro­pri­ate times. And while I’m at it, why not include ‘Fea­ture for the future’ in all prod­ucts — a but­ton that doesn’t do any­thing. Hello Mr Gates, I’m look­ing at you here. But I digress). And it’s got me think­ing about park benches. In the song he talks about hav­ing his heart stolen on one. Which all sounds rather excit­ing. Ooh. I’ve just remem­bered I have kissed some­one on a park bench. In Berkham­stead. By the canal. But I expect I wasn’t the only one. That she kissed. There. I mean, I wasn’t alone, on the bench, kiss­ing my hand or some­thing pre­tend­ing to be in an Amer­i­can high school movie. That would be Lame-Oh to the Max­imil­lian. OC? No, I just flossed.
Any­hoo. The bench that I’m pic­tur­ing is one I ran past sev­eral times in the past eigh­teen months. It faces a green space and is more or less fully hid­den under a tree. Last sum­mer a tramp took up res­i­dence there in his sleep­ing bag, and he’d cackle incom­pre­hen­si­bly at me as I plod­ded my way past him. For all I know he could have been crit­i­cis­ing my gait or telling me to improve my arm swing. But I’m fairly sure it was ‘gar gar gar gar’. I guess the con­cept of doing things for a pur­pose is brought into sharper relief when you’re a tramp. Jog­ging is wasted energy you could be expend­ing on being cared for in the com­mu­nity (Cam­bridge City keep intro­duc­ing more and more asbos to stop peo­ple like him. I’m fairly sure they’ll be excluded all the way up the A10 to Hunt­ing­don soon. Let John Major have them.)

Hmm. Rac­ing back through the men­tal archives, like a train, look­ing for des­ti­na­tion ‘bench’. Oh yes. AHA! I once attempted to sleep under the one I had in my front gar­den as my coat had been stolen at the club I’d been com­per­ing at. Bas­tards! It was a green felt num­ber. It didn’t suit me, but that’s beside the point. Indie scum! Hav­ing attempted to curl up under­neath the bench (it was rain­ing, I thought it was mar­gin­ally bet­ter than sleep­ing on the bench) I walked round to the police sta­tion and explained I was about to break into my house and please don’t arrest me (see — good lit­tle sol­dier). The plod looked at me like I was Peter Andre and ignored me. As it hap­pens I did break in suc­cess­fully (with nary a flicker from any of my neigh­bours, which was a tad dis­con­cert­ing). Of course, nowa­days, thanks to my exten­sive CSI habit, I would have bro­ken into my car first to get some gloves, then care­fully ground the shards of glass into a pow­der and made a small ele­phant out of it. I could have given the ele­phant to the next per­son to sit on the bench. Unless they turned out to be the ran­dom coat thief. Bas­tards! Although why there would have been more than one I don’t know. Par­tic­u­larly as I’d only have one ele­phant orna­ment for the necklace.

Where was I? Oh yes, sit­ting on a bench. I used to sit there, smok­ing a joint in the evenings (gosh, don’t I sound street! Well, up to the bit I said ‘gosh’. I don’t think I’ve bought pot in ten years. A more effec­tive waste of time has yet to be devised by man. Although tin­ter­net is a very close sec­ond. So, I’d sit, there pre­tend­ing to muse lyri­cal on the writ­ings of Sartre while in fact sim­ply feel­ing a bit cold and hun­gry and try­ing really hard not to be freaked out by the bud­dleia that grew to the height of the house and flapped in the wind like old man’s fin­gers. That are cov­ered in lots and lots of lit­tle pink flow­ers. Ahem.
In my mind I’m also pic­tur­ing an old teak bench, white with age, that’s miss­ing some slats. It’s set in con­crete. I’m fairly sure it’s ded­i­cated to some­one. I can’t remem­ber where from though. Maybe it was a school thing. Oh, and there was another snog­ging episode in Regent’s Park, which was quite fun. Although that was more of a seat­ing area than a bench.
Any­way. Benches. More mem­o­ries than you might think. The song fin­ished a lit­tle while ago. I’m off to run past the bench and look for heck­ling tramps.

Do you have a favourite bench? Was your heart bro­ken on it?

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 14th, 2007 at 11:28 am, is filed under flimflam and . You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.

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