Rain buckets down onto grey tennis courts, puddles coalescing into lakes.
On the football pitch the Spurs goalkeeper, a new guy from Thailand, makes a hash of the pass back and balloons the ball into the air. I want to flick his neck on the TV to see if he reacts. Somehow the ball lands at the feet of an opponent but when the attacker tries to kick the ball into the open net it goes to the straight to the goalkeeper. This time he makes decent pass down the right flank into midfield. The referee calls it a foul anyway and awards the ball back to the other team.
I want to yell at the ref too.
Instead I am late for class and need to run, even though it is raining and I don’t feel like going.
When I get to the studio the others are lined up outside in the courtyard showing the basics to Len and Melanie.
Len tells a student, Show me your bow stance! he sounds accusing. The student gets into position under cover of the rain, along the courtyard’s edge.
We are in Syon House. The red wooden walkway is reminiscent of old Vietnamese colonial houses. Rain like a monsoon pours into the gardens, but still spills onto the covered path.
We line up to form a standing posture in preparation for the walk from one end of the path to the other but there is not enough space to walk abreast along the path; so half the students go to one end, the other half go to other. And before we begin, we take our shoes off to make sure that our stance is correct and our toes point in the right direction.
I sit down on the red wooden bench at one end and stare down at my feet. They are pale and swollen from being out in rain and puddles.
What on earth! I exclaim.
On each foot the big toe is located on the left of the rest. A right foot on the end of each leg waiting for the next instruction.
I am driving around town in a very fancy white car top down. Think I’m in Chelsea, because of the tall brown town houses in courtyards with gated parks.
In my hand I have a broken golf ball, a tiny stone poking from one end that I can push back into the ball with my thumb. And when I squeeze the ball from the other side, the stone pokes back out. I play with it, pushing, squeezing. It could cause some damage, but the stone doesn’t want to propel from the ball no matter how hard I squeeze.
I could try to throw it.
I drive over red tiles that are broken. They are spread across the road, and even across the bridge, it is coverered with tiles. All kinds of tile, curved Mediterranean roof tiles, garden pot tiles in different colors, piled high so I have to navigate the car between each pile. I could bounce the golf ball from the bridge and could cause even further damage.
Instead I drive into a warehouse where I see tiles piled up even more, and see now that this is where they come from. Workers are pilling them up and I have to manoevre my car carefully between the piles stacked at the entrance, in order not to scratch the sides.
I remember that I have the golf ball, that I wanted to throw it. I think about the damage I could cause, but also that I do not want to hurt any one. Then just as I am driving out I throw the ball back through the warehouse entrance. One of the workers calls out to another.
“What the hell was that?” as the golf ball pings around the warehouse bay. “Was it a ball?” The other spurts out as he ducks down. Luckily it doesn’t hurt anyone.
I like my car, it’s fancy enough that I can press a dashboard button and it will shift its looks. I press the button for show, and there is a whirr as it flicks its blonde hair across the bonnet and over the headlamps which grow long fluttering black eyelashes.
“I just got fed up,” I explained to two women I had bumped into in the street. I had landed in Libya . “I am going to travel around Africa,” I continued. “I’ve done it before…” I pictured my route, westbound from Libya then down towards the equator. “Upped and left.”
My company had given me a new phone just before I departed, bright orange cover, large and rectangular, not like the iPhone I was used to, or like the flip phones the business women were carrying.
Perhaps I could go with them, even join their company?
I was still standing in their hotel courtyard when it was getting late. “I need to find a hotel,” I told them. I looked across the yard, through to a covered souk, I could ask in there. “We should swap numbers before I leave.” I said… “It is typical for travelers”. Sure thing, they said. One of them pulls out her phone. I type her number into my own phone but my screen is hazy with moisture, and the numbers are difficult to type.
Later, in the same hotel we are trying to lay out the design of a tennis court. One room is ill-shaped with angular walls like a tetrahedron instead of your typical rectangular room. The other is regular but long and thin. The rooms are airy, white, ready for our plan.
We will fit a doubles tennis court and a singles tennis court in the angular room. In the other room, we can only fit a singles court, I suggest.
There is a debate over which way the two courts will face, and whether we can squeeze two doubles in the larger room, but in the end everyone concurs and we stick to one doubles, two singles.
The painters start first with the doubles court, using bright blue for the court’s area, painted directly onto the white floor. Looks good. But when it comes to the singles court, they instead start painting the outline of a rowing boat, with three concentric stripes in thick gold braid.
No! No! No! that should be a tennis court, I exclaim. Perhaps we can paint the tennis court over it.
Or perhaps the boat can look good to embellish the court?
Staying at a château adjacent to the Lac Leman, gold trim and chandeliers.
We are having a party, lots of wine, beer, on the TVs are football games. England is playing Portugal, and across the front of the blue and white shirts of the England team is written “DOWNING”. The Portuguese also have a name.
Another crowd, of Americans this time, shows up. I don’t know this crowd, but one of them comes over, points to a TV.
“Who’s playing?”
“Portugal,” I reply.
But he says, “No, it’s Turkey.” And close up, I see he’s right.
I go over to a table to get more alcohol.
“Give me more wine.” a squat woman tells me, and I am annoyed. There is not much left, but I split the remainder. It’s fizzy. It’s actually ginger beer.
Tired now, I retire to my bedroom, but I am afraid this new party will keep me up. I lie down and hold up my hand. The cut on the back of my index finger is not healing. It is a vertical line, the length of the finger. I look closely and bend it; the cut opens out to reveal pulsing flesh and organs underneath.
Now Germany has a free kick and to celebrate, the team does a slide, face first, arms spread out. Some of the players get their head and bodies stuck, they are upside down in the grass, legs flailing comically in the air.
They complain that the ground is too soft to take a free kick, and to prove it they try the slide again. Three new holes side by side are created by the players heads. The ref is irritated. He puts a marker to the right of the third hole.
“You can take your kick from here,” he says.
The England team line up across the goal line. The goal keeper parries the ball but it ricochets off a teammate and bounces over the line despite the wall of players. We attempt to clear it, but it is clearly a goal.
A game with a tennis ball, a soccer ball and a rugby ball. You had to get each ball over the line. Their coach was leading them to victory. No one was leading us, but when I tried to take a stand they did not explain the rules. It was raining, I kicked the soccer ball over their goal line. But it had to be the tennis ball first.
So I kicked the tennis ball over the line and they started laughing.
I punched one of the boys in the chest. He fell backwards, face down, head in a puddle. The rain poured down on him.
Should I pull him up? His long curly hair was bedraggled. I wanted to wait more. To punish him. He was wearing a coarse dark blue knit shirt. Motionless.
I turned him over. Unconscious. I pushed his chest with two fingers just below the sternum. Instantly he spurted clear water from his mouth. His eyes stayed shut but unprompted he spurted more water, coughed, then more water, again, and again.
