ALHAMBRA

I stand frozen on a Soho street corner transfixed by a terrible quandary.  Tourists and trendies flow around me regardless, as my mind goes back to Granada in Spain twelve months earlier.

We were taking a tour of the Alhambra palace and fortress.  All around us hoards of social media junkies slavishly digitised every inch of the decor to re-create it on Facebook for the benefit of friends and family back home. And I was transfixed by the almost tangible torrent of data rising into the cloud from that parched hill. So many images of the same thing taken from the same angle, the only difference being the visage that places itself in the foreground and smiles triumphantly as if to say: This is it. I’ve done it. Finally I’m here.

HAN SOLO

Last night I watched The Empire Strikes Back with the kids. 

And I felt a forgotten anxiety reawaken from long ago. A huge and bewildering fretfulness from a wet night in Bradford in 1980. For the previous three years the Star Wars characters had sustained my imagination, the templates for countless games and flights of fancy, more real than any earth-bound contemporaries. But sat in the Odeon that night with my two older sisters, I witnessed them falling apart.

I saw the princess putting more energy into avoiding Han’s flirtatious advances than the swarms of tie fighters pursuing them through the asteroids. I saw Luke fail miserably to complete his Jedi training, and then I saw him lose a hand. But worst, I saw Han shipped off to God knows where, frozen in a block of carbonite. And as the closing scenes played out, it became horribly apparent they weren’t going to get him back before the end. And at that moment, 1983 seemed an eternity away.

Since then my family, like the imperial star fleet, has dispersed across the galaxy. Me and my sisters have gone our separate ways and grown apart. My father is dead. I no longer live in Yorkshire and the people who populated my youth have faded into the past.

And I wonder whether the significance of Empire was that it was was a taste of things to come. Because perhaps the first person I ever lost, was Han Solo.



More thoughts on Star Wars: Whose Star Wars?   Pantone 291   Space Shoddity

@jesoverthinksit

FOOLS AND HORSES

At my barbers they play Only Fools and Horses on a looping DVD. All the time. I sit and watch while I wait my turn, chuckling occasionally, despite myself. Welcome back, says the barber to the guy in the chair as he whips the cape off with a flourish and invites him back into the world of the respectable haircut.

Then I’m in the hot seat and I ask him whether he ever gets sick of Only Fools and Horses. No, not at all. He doesn’t actually watch it. He’s too focused on what he’s doing. He has to wait until he gets home to watch it properly. He’s a funny guy, of Italian descent. His colleague at the other chair asks him if he’s looking forward to his holiday in Barbados. No, this is a holiday he remarks. Cutting the hair of fine gentleman like me.

NEW JACKET

Last week I bought what I thought was a fashionable, high quality jacket. It had a security jab attached next to one of the pockets which prevented me from opening it. Which I tried to do because there was something inside it which intrigued me. It looked like a canvas condom protruding slightly from the partially open zip. When the sales assistant removed the tag the mystery was solved. It was a small bag, into which the entire jacket could be stuffed. Like a miniature sleeping bag. Initially this worried me. Can anything stuff-able into something no bigger than a large salami really be worth fifty quid? Is this jacket going to be in any way capable of repelling the elements? For the moment I needed to at least pretend the jacket was a good buy, so I pocketed the bag and decided to revisit the issue at a later date.