The Old Friends In The Basement

 

  Can you see a white arrow in the centre? I think you can press that.

 

 The following four posts will all begin with me confessing that I'm posting them on the evening of Saturday the seventh. Now I've cleared the air, here is a video of Forbidden Planet that I took on Monday before the second lockdown. It's a bookmark more than a record: I was feeling something, and thought if I took a video of the place where I felt it, it might help me to remember it – as good a use for my new phone as any. I tried to describe this feeling later to Joel Morris and Will Maclean whom I happily bumped into at the queue for the cashier upstairs. Will had just had a book published. It was now in the shops. We had coffee, our shopping at our feet, and were happy. Men of our age had not been the majority in the shop however; it was full of girls now – not women, girls – doing what we'd done as boys: looking for worlds built on messages. The toys were upstairs on the ground floor but here in the basement were the warnings, the comics that let you know the future might be cruel and that coping might mean fighting in bright colours. It felt peaceful because comics make no noise, even when they're full of fighting. That's what I was feeling, and although I hadn't read any recently and I'm always in Forbidden Planet and was never into super-heroes, for a spot of time just before I took out my camera I felt like I was looking round an old school again, a school I had been allowed to choose for myself. The covers on the shelves facing outwards felt like allies, a feeling I don't get in bookshops. Covers of books without pictures have scenery on their cover, or handwriting, and rarely look at you with the faces of young people ready to fight your corner.

 

 

My first.