On the Beat

This is the second part of a letter I wrote nearly twenty years ago...

The second story I have to tell is simpler; it begins where the first ended, in my office. I was leaning against a doorway, talking to a computer guy, talking spreadsheets maybe, and memory, and as he walked away, I pushed against the doorway. In a second, I was on the floor in agony, and a fire-extinguisher was on my ankle. Rolling on the carpet. I stood on my other leg, and hopped - and I thought I was all right I was fine, me I'm all smiles.

I was sitting at my desk a few minutes later when I realized my foot felt damp; my sock was red and blood filled my shoe. Oh my - the pictures swing and fall. I phone the first aid girl, a secretary who sits with a friend, and ask to come over. She does it by the book - I don't see - and calls me a cab to take me to the hospital. (The grapevine moves quickly; when I get in on the following Monday, suddenly everyone knows my face, and asks if I am ok.)

I still don't think I am hurt; I hop down four flights of stairs, because I get irritated waiting for the lift (on the eighth floor, of course); I hop into the taxi. I walk into the hospital, down on Dean Ryle Street; I know it well: my grandmother - a sickly woman - was there a lot. I talk to the nurse on the casualty desk, and she gives me a form or two to fill in (always a dilemma: I call myself Mr). I sit on an uncomfortable seat, my leg stretched out in front or tucked under as I feel easier.
( ...lots more words... )

I used to write letters: long, drunken swirling narratives. And I kept a copy of them. Not necessarily every one, but a lot of them.

I have been meaning to match some letters describing trips I have been on – India, Borneo, New York – with pictures taken on those trips. It is actually why I started this journal, more than three years ago.

This morning, I started to sort through these old letter. There are 188, spanning eighteen years. A little over ten a year – not that productive, then. But perhaps thousands of pages.

They are full of adolescent ramblings (long after adolescence): girls, parties, gigs; girls, mostly.

I didn’t read them – well, I glanced at a couple; I was simply trying to put them in date order.

Then I got curious: I wanted to work out who I had written too. It was quite surprising.

Off those 188, I can’t tell who 28 of them were written for: they don’t start “Dear…” Of the remaining 160, I can have letters to 39 people: 30 women and nine men. Eighty per cent of those 160 letters are to 18 people. I wrote to D, my friend in New York, eighteen times; my brother, 16 times (whilst he was working abroad – which he did a lot); T, a girlfriend, 12 times (when she was away from university). And A, 12 times (although it gets a little more complicated – she married Dd, and some letters are addressed A&Dd and some Dd&A…).

I am still in touch with 10 people on the list, which I think isn’t bad going, ten years on.

Now I have to try to find whether I have written about the places I think I wrote about, and transcribe them; then I have to find the photographs and scan.

I may be some time.