For some reason I was thinking tonight of years spent in Oxford, and in particular a converted public house in Jericho where I once lived, rapt in secret studies. Near the house was a delicatessen called, I think, Nellies, and almost every day I would pop in there for baclava or coffee, and chat briefly with the proprietor, 'Mr Nellie' as we used to call him, who seemed to be from Iran or somewhere, and was always effortlessly happy and content, so it seemed. And sometimes, when I was snowed under with work, I would stroll past this humble shop and see it warmly lit and familiar, and think how lovely it would be to lead the simple life of such a shopkeeper, sat reading on quiet days, or engaging customers in idle conversation. At times, it served as an elementary fantasy of comfort and secure and easy existence, undisturbed by uncertainty, ensconced one's own little fiefdom, a petit-bourgeois fantasy perhaps, but a fantasy thrown up and made appealing only in relation to the then instability and uncertainty of life, the burdens of work and laborious days leading who knows where. And so today, this little wish-image, swam towards me again: the yellow light in the window of the deli glimpsed in passing on a winter's night, the reassuring rhythms of Mr Nellie's comfortable life, the joys of possession. Like that inexplicable feeling one has, somtimes, passing a house at night and seeing through the window, what cannot appear but as some utterly desirable domestic scene, some place of inviolable refuge and contentment, like those house windows found only on Christmas cards.
I am currently wretchedly busy, hence this moment of nostalgic indulgence. And hence the absence of substantial posts.