I smelt the quay’s tar and the ropes lightness, yellows and pinks and warm grays. I was remembering Stonehaven harbour, and mixing it with others: Dunure, Arbroath, Anstruther, Seahouses. We...
lightness, yellows and pinks and warm grays. I was remembering Stonehaven harbour, and mixing it with others: Dunure, Arbroath, Anstruther, Seahouses. We lived a stones throw from Stonehaven harbour for 7 months. A miserable time of sadness and worry, Stonehaven is our personal by-word for something depressing, shorthand for feeling rock bottom. Sitting freezing by the harbour listening to the rhythmical lapping of water, didn’t alleviate any of the problems, it seemed to make them worse. I was thinking of showing the colour monochromatically, under a veil, like at night. A greasy yellow light, a dreamy light caused by pollution maybe, where particles hung in the air.
I thought of meeting my dad, like W.S Graham did in a dream.
Lying asleep turning Round in the quay-lit dark It was my father standing As real as life. I smelt The quay’s tar and the ropes.
Dad, I think of the last time I saw you in Seahouses. *
We were on holiday at nearby Bamburgh and Robert drove you and mum down from Hawick for the day. You seemed happy, smiling, but strangely silent, unusually lost for words. Maybe something was brewing inside, for a week later you had a stroke, and never spoke again. I can see you in the sloping car park just up from the sea front, you walked, with your inimitable walk (thanks to Hitler’s bombs) towards the car. I watched you the whole way willing you to look back but - unlike Graham’s dream dad - you didn’t.
* The last I saw my father was a game I played internally for at least the last ten years of my dad’s life, consciously noting the circumstances and context, storing it, each time being sure it was going to be the last time. The last time was at Seahouses, even though it wasn’t really. I saw you in the hospital dwindling slowly and saw you when you breathed your last and opened those pale blue eyes for the last time looking through and beyond us, but Seahouses still seems like the last time, when you were you.