VENGEANCE OF THE WATER GODS

Before leaving the Mill I took a last wander down to the fairy pool where the river turns sharply north and flows deep under an overhanging and ivy-covered crag. It is where the silver salmon would lie, if there were salmon in the Célé, which perhaps there were once. It’s a magical place, where dappled sunlight shines and where the fairies congregate: the water nymphs and the tree nymphs, the elves and the pixies.

You’ll have to imagine it, I’m afraid, for to take its picture would steal some of the magic, but anyway this is the spot to which I always go to say goodbye. It had rained a deal in the night and the river was running high and coloured, swirling in foamy anger. In truth, had I a golden coin in my pocket I might have cast it into the pool and made a wish, for I was in one of those moods that afflict us all, I suppose, from time to time: reflecting mournfully on what remains to be done in life and the short time left to do it.

If I had made a wish it would have been to secure for myself that warm and instantly recognisable blend of charm, elegance and confidence that some of us have but most of us don’t. If charm, elegance and confidence come on a scale then, despite a lifetime of trying, I am way down at the bottom end. But I hadn’t a golden coin, or even a golden edged euro, and so had to content myself with throwing into the water some elderly and much crumpled receipt, the only thing left in my pocket.

But first I tore it into two halves, one about twice the size of the other and cast both wantonly into the water, where they hardly moved at all. I found that I had thrown them into slack water and began to feel silly. Yet, bit by bit, the current started to drag at them, first backwards towards the angle of the bend and then forwards into the flow. The smaller piece moved fastest, as if in a hurry, but then it was sucked under by a vortex. It surfaced a couple of times like a drowning man and then disappeared for good.

The larger piece seemed to take a more circumspect course and travelled far across the stream to within inches of the overhanging rocks. It, too, was sucked under from time to time but it came up again, no worse for wear and I watched it bobbing down the river, heading into the turbulent distance and the far off sea carrying my thoughts and dreams. Adieu, I muttered to myself, before turning to head towards the far off airport and my even farther off home.

Standing later in the security queue I remove bits of metal from about my person. It is a long queue so I have plenty of time to remove everything. You may think me unduly self-deprecating when I say I am at the bottom end of the charm, elegance and confidence scale. But you have only to watch a group of people at an airport who have been through security to know where on the scale they are placed.

You have, don’t you, a bag, hurriedly over-packed, from which you have removed your computer and your toiletries in their luminous yellow bag, taken off your jacket or coat together with your broad miscellany of jewellery, cards, keys, belts, phone, watch and the like. It's the same for everyone.

Then suddenly you are at the end of the line, in a confined space and a press of people, trying to assemble all this paraphernalia again into a semblance of tidiness. Elegant people can do this in a few seconds - deftly slipping this or that into a commodious handbag with an insouciance bordering on the miraculous.

I’m still fumbling five minutes later. Moreover, it seems my earlier prayers to the water gods to substitute my habitual maladroitness for a kind of effortless head girl competence have gone sadly unanswered.

Worse is to come. As I sit down with my book - The Glass Room, as you ask, lent to me kindly by Rosie and a most excellent read - I reach for my glasses. That’s when I find that in my confusion I have put my watch in the same pocket. The glasses hook on the strap and my watch sails out in an arc to burst into pieces on the marble floor of the departure lounge.

Perhaps it’s not that bad. The back has come off and the battery has sprung out, but I manage to reassemble the components. To my surprise the watch still works. Then the back springs off again. Something has warped.

Did I commit the crime of lèse-majesté by throwing a crumpled till receipt to the water gods? For now the heavens open and we have to struggle to the plane in a downpour. Then as we sit in the plane, wet, cribb’d and confin’d, with a loud party of ten year old school girls for company, comes the announcement that take-off is delayed for an hour an a half. Insult is piled on injury.

The next day, back at home, I fall out of the loft, landing painfully on my back and wondering, for a moment, whether I should ever walk again. Was this more water god vengeance? But of course one never knows, does one, whether it was really the displeased water gods tipping me out of the loft, or whether, having fallen through my own clumsiness, it was their little wings and flippers bearing me up that ensured I received no more than a painful bruise. Or, then again, it might have been my Guardian Angel, who has saved me from even worse fates before. Why don’t the gods leave calling cards? Or even till receipts?

And on that philosophical note I shall leave you to ponder.

Picture is ‘The Guardian Angel by Pietro Cortona 1656. Courtesy of Wikipedia. However, her wings look rather small. More like flippers don't you think?