Scumbles II – around the corner…

Remember that scumbled panel? Well, the more I look the less I see. He’s here though you know, they all are. Who would have thought that Breugel was up there, just above my head, scumbled onto the bottom of my wardrobe? Disney’s there too, and Goya, Donny Darko, Edward Lear, Sayuri Ichijō, Richard Dadd, and of course Dali.

I have to sneak up and catch them out of the corner of my eye. Hard to work out what I’m seeing. Well, you can never quite tell what’s just around the corner can you?

I’ve never really liked life around the corner. You know, that life that takes you by surprise, the unpredictable kind. I prefer roads that are straight and easy to follow. Roads with good, clear visibility way into the distance - as far as the eye can see and then some. Corners are dangerous. Anything can be around the corner, it’s an unfathomable place.

Once in my youth I was walking along the high street and, turning the corner, almost fell over a woman who lay on the pavement coughing up blood. An ambulance was called and as I walked quickly away I noticed the bloody footprints I was leaving. Another time, not too long after that incident, I turned a corner to find my girlfriend kissing a friend of mine. She wasn’t a girlfriend for long after that although he remained my friend until he died. On yet another occasion, not so long ago, I turned the corner into my road just as a car ran over my neighbour’s cat. The driver didn’t even stop, so I picked up the broken body of poor old Tesla, carried him over to my neighbour’s house and broke the bad news to her.

Around the corner can be an unexpected, frightening and often bleak place. Oh, good things can be found there too. I’ll never forget tuning a corner on holiday in Santa Cruz to see a wonderfully blue sea and a huge white wave crashing thirty feet against the cliff-face wall. Generally though there are monsters around my corners – blood and betrayal and death.

Anyway, they’re here – like the TV people they’re beginning to come through. Little by little they’re coming into focus, becoming clearer, stepping into view from around their various corners – ‘Y'all mind hanging back? You're jamming my frequency.’

I hope I can still run fast if I need to.