Category: Criticism

The slow blink is the most misunderstood gesture in the repertoire. To the untrained eye it is a person falling asleep. To the trained, it is a treaty. The correct form is a half closing of the lids, a pause of two seconds, and then the full close, delivered with a faint air of having more important things to do.

Beginners over blink. This conveys desperation. Experts under blink, which conveys an intriguing malice. I recommend practising before a mirror, or better, before a bowl of cold chicken, a more honest audience. After six weeks of such training I successfully slow blinked at a postman and he gave me a nod I have been thinking about since. It might have been a tic. I choose to believe in treaties.

The zoomies, that nightly sprint from the bedroom to the kitchen and back at the speed of a startled bus, are routinely dismissed as senseless. These are the same people who admire jazz. Look closer. The route is consistent: bed, hall, sofa, a wall run of exactly four feet, and a skid on the tile that is never the same twice. This is not chaos. It is improvisation within a form.

I have clocked the most committed performers, led by a ginger called Mr. Pumpernickel, at roughly 31 kilometres an hour over six metres, which is, by my arithmetic, a very fast cat. The audience, often asleep, seldom applauds. This, I think, is how you know the work is serious. Ask any poet.

For eleven years I reviewed the water of this city with the diligence of a sommelier and the patience of a cat on a counter. The still bowl, the dripping tap, the toilet, the puddle by the bins: I assessed them all. But last Thursday, I tasted the new ceramic fountain in the Hallworth conservatory and realised I had nothing left to say. It was wet. It was cold. It moved.

Water, I have come to believe, is beyond criticism, much as breathing is, or the postal service. I will go on drinking it from the glass beside the bed at 3 a.m. while you sleep, but I shall do so as a private citizen. This column will now cover the tap. The tap is a more serious matter.

The 4 p.m. beam on the rug is competent but overrated, much like the 4 p.m. nap it facilitates. The 9 a.m. kitchen beam is a respectable middle class option with good heat and a faint smell of toast. Ranking fourth: the beam through the bathroom skylight, an eccentric choice, damp, adored by the type of reader who writes to us about fonts.

The best sunbeam in the city, and I will not be argued out of this, falls at 1:40 p.m. on the landing of 22 Dace Street for roughly eleven minutes in late July. It is warm in the way a good argument is warm. I have measured it with a thermometer I borrowed. I have not returned it.