Adventures of a froggy
# 1 – The shed at the bottom of the garden
No, this is not Cabrel speaking. I’m not a hermit, a fisherman or stone breaker. Like x number of youths with a volatile mind, I am an urban vagabond. And like x number of curiously sponge hearted people, I chose London. Yes, the name ancestor gives me more zeal. It is less boxed and more far-fetched… the results from the legend. I prefer to say to myself that the city doesn’t just belong to me and turn it into a myth without honor. I think of the thousands of Europeans who live through the same thing, which revolve heavily around the capital, and leave your head full of hope and intelligence. It is a sweet poison, a 20 month orgasm. It generates dreams, the only thing remaining after is to edify them.
The cabin is made of red and beige bricks. A former garage, a shelter where spiders lay eggs at ease without ever needing to flee the web. A shower, a bowl, a bunk bed, a green office. 14 m² of badly insulated comfort in the garden of a good family, without history. Chiswick, a beautiful family suburb which smells of money, where people carriers and luxury cars are found along the distorted pavements. Ah yes, a pause seems necessary: cars and pavements. In Britain, a two-way street is not necessarily that, at least, its doesn’t look that way. Let me explain. Good French formalism means that the meaning of car parking in the streets is subject to even and odd dates of the month. Here it’s not the same. They are a pain in the arse in the right way.The fact is that it is dangerous and harmful to the good humor of the notes anyway. When we find ourselves face to face with a Mini about to die because it’s 60 year old strength in reverse and once engaged, it moves back like a drugged up snail, we are quietly patient. And when this happens six times in the same day, you get pissed off. Instead of bragging with your progress of six windows and your flowers to impress your girlfriend at afternoon tea at 4, build garages dammit! Your pragmatism dents every day life therefore stop demonstrating your differences – if you can even call it that.
Yes you are proud. You can be. I remember my first impression. A bike through the streets of scenery on a Tuesday. The summer ended, the green leaves shone their last shine. The houses in the streets were like sardines, but beautiful sardines, not those beheaded in a yellowish oil. Tall houses, white, endless windows. Without shutters, as the locals like to show themselves in the evening, making a clean sweep of their day or the race of their child. They encourage surveillance, it is not for the curious. I was intrigued, excited to see how one could interfere in people’s lives with a sneaky glance, how could this urge to watch them clog madly in our mind. In the evening, I allowed myself to go to the show, in this brilliant series of windows that keeps the low temperature outside. I saw them nod off, burning theirs eyes watching television, playing video games, and sometimes even in the middle of domestic dispute. I interchanged with them against my will, made up dialogues with their oral articulation, invented their lives into a deceptive illusion. Some houses had blinds or curtains and so their figures loomed and made me immediately imagine their actions and the company of their household. And while I was walking along the illuminated pavement, I felt safe. I thought about our poor shutters, our falsely modest authority, the habit of closing the shutters at 8pm because obviously, passersby are as curious as I am. At least, these looks could loosen up more than one person.
Among the many scenarios, there was always this old man in his chair. His television made his back and I was looking at the cathode lights that stood out on his face. Weary, appeased – or tired – by life, he was trying to watch his favorite program. I’ve never managed to see what he was so fascinated in. Past 10pm, the electric chair was raised. The man disappeared. It was probably projected from his living room directly into his room. Everything remained light, the lamp was still lit and the blue glare of television dotted the walls and the fabric of the seat. This image still haunts me, the vision of man catapulted. Sad and funny at times. I came home, leaving behind me the nocturnal illuminations and on my bunk mattress, with the leafy shadows crossing the bare windows of my cabin, I fell asleep a few times with the image of that ejection seat.
