No. 5 Mugs
I’m not saying my perceptions have sharpened since this lockdown started – at my age, they just get more and more rose-tinted – but I have been seeing small things more keenly recently. Ordinary things.
Like, I don’t know about your house, but our house is coming down with mugs. I don’t mean the people. Certainly not my designated lockdown companion, not one bit of a mug there. No, I mean the things you drink out of. Flat at the bottom, roundy, cylindrical sides, then open at the top. And only one ear.
Like Van Gogh. (GOF). Aye, Vincent. (sings) Starry, starry night, paint your palette blue and grey. That’s him. Vincent Van Gogh. The artist. He was great with yellow as well. Sunflowers. Magic. Now Van Gogh had only one ear. One handle, you could say. Or if you prefer, only one lug-hole.
It’s said that he took a blade to his mate Paul Gauguin, another painter, when they lived together in Arles, in the South of France, a dispute over turpentine or something and when Gauguin got off-side, Vincent de-lugged himself. Cleaved a slice of the right head-handle off.
Or so they say. Might be fake news. There’s plenty of it about.
(Sing) Morning fields of amber grain.
So that’s why I thought of Vincent van Gogh when I was looking at all the mugs in the house. The things you see in lockdown, eh?
My best mug is 20 years old. I know that because the lad brought it back from the jersey shore when he went on a swimming camp there. It’s branded Ron Jon’s Surf Shop and when you read the logo, the handle is in the left ear position, just like Van Gogh’s good lug. I know, you could turn it round, but then you’d be looking at the back of Van Gogh’s head. As it were.
I’m seeing this all anew, in virus-time. Like the wheelie bins lined up the street, every Wednesday, after an out rider from the refuse collection posse gets them into position for the wagon coming round later. They look statuesque and inscrutable, especially the ones coloured Van Gogh blue.
They make me think of the statues of heads on Easter Island, in the South Pacific, huge stone statues over five hundred years old. Many of them are shy an ear or two. The people who built them weren’t mugs, I can tell you.
I know. A mug is a small thing. I just think small things are important, especially now. Small things can be precious. Looking closely at them can open up big stories. As the great Indian novelist, Arundhati Roy wrote, in her Booker-Prize winning novel, The God of Small Things.
The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably.
You know what? It must be time to get comfortable and read that book again. Kettle on. Muggatay. (sings) Starry, starry night, paint your palette (fade)
Broadcast on BBC Foyle, The Breakfast Show, 4.5.2020
Available on BBC Sounds |
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