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It
is early February and the blackbird has returned to the courtyard at the
back of my house. It sings well before dawn, and I hear its measured improbable
tones half asleep, half human. In musical terms its song is complex and
extraordinarily inventive; Darwinists can undoubtedly wrestle an evolutionary
advantage to this which I don't begrudge them, but I hear the song on
an emotional level. Some days it provokes pure laughter in me, but on
this particular morning I don't fully respond to it; I merely note its
blessing for reference.
The working day is intense as usual - my parishioners (students) are a
motley collection of strangely-coloured fish, while my colleagues are
mainly hang-dog: some great Danes, some whippets, many mongrels. At the
end of the day I walk from college via Tayab's growing collection of restaurants
without buying my customary pistachio barfi from his sweet-shop; I cross
Whitechapel High Street and move through the market to the Tube. I first
encounter a tall female derelict who reminds me horribly of a recent failed
romance (tall, with eyes close together), and then a man coming out of
a shop who hands a woman some money. She looks only just surprised; I
am not sure if she is begging or not; he is mid-fifties and appears
furtively charitable. My favourite market creature is now visible, an
Alsatian who belongs to one of the stall-holders: a real dog for a change,
glowing with life, merely hanging around; intensely, relaxedly interested.
(The souls of Alsatians are mainly reincarnations of large predators:
lion, bear, or wolf - the doglife is a subjugatory compensation for their
previously powerful statuses in the animal kingdom. You can see
the one animal in the other.)
A noise intrudes on my consciousness: it is a pulsing mechanical sound,
and before long a matching concept arises within my mind: helicopter.
In artificial intelligence theory keywords like helicopter bring
with them what is technically called a 'frame': this is a dataset of related
information; mine contains the reflection that the cyclical change of
orientation of the rotors was the key technological breakthrough that
made the helicopter possible. The noise now dominates the scene and I
look up at the helipad on the roof of the Royal London Hospital. This
could be a non-emergency flight, but more probably a call-out to a serious
if not fatal accident. The emotional daubing of the rotor experience
with the colour of the potentially fatal experience, combined with
the throbbing presence of the machine, forces many heads up to watch;
others are indifferent.
As I approach the underground station the engine roar increases and the
helicopter finally lifts off; it turns uncertainly and eventually backs
its way to a position almost vertically above me. (Perhaps the navigator
is checking maps.) Having made up its mind it moves off in the direction
it first thought off, catching us all with a blast of downdraft. The Asian
stall-holder in front of me is suddenly wrestling with a line of garments
pitched to the ground; he has a grin on his face, and one of the vendors
of Socialist Worker says to the other: "He loves it really."
I turn into the Underground station.
I get off at Mile End, and just catch a newspaper-seller intoning "Jewish
Chronicle, get your Jewish Chronicle." As I leave the station it
is already dark, and I hear the same voice saying "We keep the change
on Fridays." In musical terms the cadence was very simple, all the
syllables were at the tonic except the 'We' and the 'on', which were on
the fifth below. As I walked home reflecting on the ramifications of the
'kept change' the cadence echoed in my mind.
It had the purity of the blackbird's song.
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