LONDON CALLING!

Storytime: From the Image to the Word and Back Again

by FELICITY USSHER

G21 Staff Writer

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LONDON, U.K. - I've painted the view from the bedroom on a canvas and put it by the window so that when you look at it, the picture becomes an instant reproduction of reality. Quite satisfying in a poetic sort of way. It shows a big chunk of the building opposite, some ground and lot of sky, with clouds scurrying by. The clouds are the best bit, because they are static in the picture and so you have to watch for hours until they line up with reality. Great for people like us who like lying in bed a lot.

It usually depends on the wind, and the sort of weather, of course, but this morning, it was the sleep-induced chemicals overwhelming my brain that made the best effect. It had been a long sleep and when I woke, watching the window and watching the painting to wake up gradually (I'll get up when the clouds match), it wasn't just the clouds that were moving with the wind, but the building opposite too. A gust this way and it sailed to the left, revealing the rest of the street as a long scenario scrolling past our window. A gust in the other direction and we'd be back with the big house opposite - but seeing much more of it than we could in the painting. Blown to and fro, scrolling scrolling, until suddenly a big gust caught our bed and we were swept down an East London street on a Sunday morning - thank God no-one was up yet.

Through the estates, across the park until we slowed on a grassy slope by some modern flats where a family was sitting around a children's plastic paddling pool.

They were enjoying the sunshine, having a picnic. We'd already passed an old-fashioned bath tub on the grass, with mother, grandmother and child scrubbing each other with suds, so the picnic scene wasn't all that surprising - but embarrassing to interrupt them with a big, white-sheeted double bed just feet away from their food. Especially as we were not married.

The family was Asian and they were speaking a language I didn't understand. Quite chilled, but the gist of it was definitely "leave us alone." One of the children, a girl in smooth dark plaits and glasses, explained in English, "Good-bye, you must go back to your homes now." They waved back at me as we left and that was my last clear image of the scene. The rest just appeared in my head as I read on from the pages of a book.

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It said that the meeting, so memorable for me, could scarcely have impacted the little girl, who was to become one of the most influential bankers of the capitalist world. In years to come I would see her photo in News Week and tell my friends the story of how she had shunned me so politely, as a child.

But wait - here she was again, walking down the slope towards us. A clear example of late-morning hallucinations taking on a shape that can resolve your verbal dilemmas.

She had a piece of yellow paper in her hand and she showed it to us. A list of words which meant little to me, but appeared to provide a kinder explanation of why we had to leave. I took the crumpled paper, turned it over and saw a single word. It was the name of her mother's anti-psychotic drug. The shame of it. The little girl stared at me in horror.

And it was that shared secret which cemented our meeting in her mind, and made it the milestone in her life that it had become in mine. Or so the final analytical insight of this morning's sleep informed me, before I woke up to the confusion of the day.

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