Half the World Away - страница 13

Finn is asleep on the lower bunk.

Isaac climbs up the ladder. I adjust the night light so it’s brighter and he pulls the covers up to his chin. ‘Can I have a story?’

All I want to do is sleep. ‘One, then I’m going to bed and you go back to sleep. Deal?’

‘Deal.’

Leaning against the beds, I rattle off The Three Bears, the shortest story in my repertoire. Isaac yawns, which is a good sign.

With the boys safe in their beds, I go to mine. Nick is there, awake. He clears his throat and turns over as I get changed.

We say no more than ‘Night.’ Drifting off to sleep, I wonder if he’s becoming depressed, and if he is, what on earth I can get him to do about it.

Lori in the Ori-ent

Park life

Posted on 18 March 2014 by Lori

Back home our park is used mainly by the following people for the following activities:

a) Parents and kids at the playground

b) The above feeding the ducks

c) Tennis players, whose numbers mushroom every year around the time of Wimbledon, then fade away

d) Bowls players, Wednesday afternoons only, must have a bus pass

e) Footballers, Saturdays and Sundays on the pitches. Little ones with their parents screaming at the ref, big ones screaming at each other and the ref

f) Dog-walkers (plus dogs)

g) Lovers, walking in the rain, lazing in the sun, snogging

h) Teenagers, smoking, drinking, snogging

i) Extreme frisbee players, Saturday only, by arrangement

j) A couple of old men, who share the bench by the rose bed all day long, each with a carrier bag of lager

Today is a typical day in the park near my flat in Chengdu. There are variations of all the above here but there are also

1) Tai chi sessions

2) Ballroom dancing. Really

3) Mah-jong players

4) People doing circus skills – juggling, diabolo

5) Musicians

6) Tea-drinkers at all the teahouses

7) Calligraphers who paint the paving stones with characters using giant brushes and water

8) People selling toffee – it’s shaped like filigree cut-outs of the signs of the zodiac, I think

9) Sword dancers

10) Men hitting spinning tops – serious ones, unlike the toys we had. The tops are the size of a large mug, the whips crack

11) People sketching and painting

12) People feeding the carp (with baby bottles, I kid you not) – all the ponds are full of them

The park is heaving. It feels like a carnival or festival but this is just an ordinary day. I am stopped four times by curious people and explain in my atrocious Chinese that I’m from England. I have practised this every day since I arrived. Each time I get a look of total incomprehension. Perhaps I have said, ‘Follow that teabag,’ or ‘How pretty is your camel.’ But the word ‘Manchester’ opens doors. Eyes light up, smiles blossom. Manchester! Manchester United! The Red Devils have paved the way for travellers the world over. Well, those of us from Manchester. I nod and do a little hand cheer, as if we scored a goal. Which we have in a way. Twice people ask to have a photograph taken with me. The last woman pats my arms and chatters away, and I smile and nod and hope I haven’t accidentally agreed to anything, like teaching all her grandchildren English every evening. Or marrying one of her sons.

The park is open from six in the morning till nine at night, when lanterns and lights glow among the bamboo plants and trees. And it feels safe. Another difference from the one at home where there’s an edginess, the peace shattered by some prat on a mini motorbike churning up the field, or a group of drunk kids getting physical.

Perhaps the biggest difference is that at home we’re out in public but we keep ourselves to ourselves – all that British reserve, we stay in our own little cliques. A nod as you pass someone is the height of interaction – apart from the dog-walkers, who like to mingle with their canine friends. In China, everyone is into everyone else’s business – there doesn’t seem to be any notion of privacy. People stare and interrupt and join in and interfere all the time. A crowd forms at the drop of a hat. It’s like a big party where everyone knows everyone else, except they don’t, they just act like they do. Lxxx