kissed us both.
—
Nous sommes les trois, toi et toi et moi
. She giggled.
Finally – something I could say. I got in there fast before Saul could.
—
Et nous sommes Jules et Jim!
Laughter, but then she asked
,
—
Et moi?
I didn’t know the name of the character that Jeanne Moreau played, Saul seemed similarly perplexed, and I felt like a fool because the film was inappropriate – it ended in suicide, but none of us seemed particularly worried by this detail.
We watched the playback but Saul was not convinced it was art. — It needs something more, he proclaimed, — a leap of faith, a jump into the dark!
— Oh, but we didn’t film the cutting. I am so bloody . . . Dot was lost for words and threw the video camera onto the bed. Saul said, not to worry, he would film the hair in the sink. So we stood there in the bathroom as he did. But Dot was still dissatisfied.
— We can’t miss any opportunities again, she said, — we must take a leap immediately and record it! She asked us for ideas, but I could think of nothing and Saul’s eyes were drooping from the drink. We slumped before the TV and Dot sat there between us, filming the screen: a surreal news report about President Bush throwing up in the lap of the Japanese prime minister. Dot recorded it and we played it back. Although he tried to hide it there was a dangling bit of noodle visible on his lip. We wept with laughter as we replayed it again and again. The world suddenly seemed impossibly beautiful.
Dramatic changes occurred within Saul – I recall waking one day to find Dot filming him waltzing in a Miami shirt with the vacuum cleaner while Abba played at full blast. — Look, look, he declared with a flourish— it’s like Eno’s
Music for Airports
, or
Fanfare for the Common Man
. I envisage a whole series – music for chain smoking – music to sleep to – to take a shit to –
Now That’s What I Call Hoovering Volume Twelve!
I marvelled at how the presence of her camera had made him do a thing he’d maybe never attempted in his life.
The very next day it was shoplifting that was the subject of Dot’s video life lesson. I went into Saul’s room and she was already sitting on his bed, dressed in his pinstripe flared trousers and authentic antique Nazi trench coat with real Luftwaffe swastika insignia and the pockets that, torn, went all the way to the bottom of the lining – ideal for the theft of shirts and spaghetti, nothing too large as that would ruin the line of the coat – and she was recording his infamous oft-delivered lecture on the ethical necessity of theft.
— If everyone was to do it, he declared, invoking Kant’s categorical imperative, — we could finally destroy the rotting corpse of English capitalism . . . or at least the Hackney branch of Woolworths!
He really was atrocious. I doubted he’d told her how he’d shoplifted almost his entire wardrobe from charity shops, his favourite being Save the Children in Islington because all the yuppies dropped their designer labels there, there was no electronic tagging and the old woman at the counter was half blind.
Saul was testing her on strategy.
— So, you walk in, then what do you do?
— I take five or six things to the changing room . . .
— Aha. And then?
— Put on three layers of their stuff and then the trench-coat on top, and return the three others to the rails.
— And then?
— Leave?
— No, no! You must buy a little shitty something, a 99p Depeche Mode CD or some socks, and have a little chat with the old dears. About anything really, the starving in Ethiopia or Bosnia or God or whatever, they’re so ecstatic to be talking to a nice young person who believes in their good work that they’ll never suspect you’re wearing five layers of their stuff.
— But why don’t we just buy the stuff? Isn’t this a bit . . . unnecessary?
— My dear, the only thing that saves us from the totalitarian tyranny of common sense is random
—
Nous sommes les trois, toi et toi et moi
. She giggled.
Finally – something I could say. I got in there fast before Saul could.
—
Et nous sommes Jules et Jim!
Laughter, but then she asked
,
—
Et moi?
I didn’t know the name of the character that Jeanne Moreau played, Saul seemed similarly perplexed, and I felt like a fool because the film was inappropriate – it ended in suicide, but none of us seemed particularly worried by this detail.
We watched the playback but Saul was not convinced it was art. — It needs something more, he proclaimed, — a leap of faith, a jump into the dark!
— Oh, but we didn’t film the cutting. I am so bloody . . . Dot was lost for words and threw the video camera onto the bed. Saul said, not to worry, he would film the hair in the sink. So we stood there in the bathroom as he did. But Dot was still dissatisfied.
— We can’t miss any opportunities again, she said, — we must take a leap immediately and record it! She asked us for ideas, but I could think of nothing and Saul’s eyes were drooping from the drink. We slumped before the TV and Dot sat there between us, filming the screen: a surreal news report about President Bush throwing up in the lap of the Japanese prime minister. Dot recorded it and we played it back. Although he tried to hide it there was a dangling bit of noodle visible on his lip. We wept with laughter as we replayed it again and again. The world suddenly seemed impossibly beautiful.
Dramatic changes occurred within Saul – I recall waking one day to find Dot filming him waltzing in a Miami shirt with the vacuum cleaner while Abba played at full blast. — Look, look, he declared with a flourish— it’s like Eno’s
Music for Airports
, or
Fanfare for the Common Man
. I envisage a whole series – music for chain smoking – music to sleep to – to take a shit to –
Now That’s What I Call Hoovering Volume Twelve!
I marvelled at how the presence of her camera had made him do a thing he’d maybe never attempted in his life.
The very next day it was shoplifting that was the subject of Dot’s video life lesson. I went into Saul’s room and she was already sitting on his bed, dressed in his pinstripe flared trousers and authentic antique Nazi trench coat with real Luftwaffe swastika insignia and the pockets that, torn, went all the way to the bottom of the lining – ideal for the theft of shirts and spaghetti, nothing too large as that would ruin the line of the coat – and she was recording his infamous oft-delivered lecture on the ethical necessity of theft.
— If everyone was to do it, he declared, invoking Kant’s categorical imperative, — we could finally destroy the rotting corpse of English capitalism . . . or at least the Hackney branch of Woolworths!
He really was atrocious. I doubted he’d told her how he’d shoplifted almost his entire wardrobe from charity shops, his favourite being Save the Children in Islington because all the yuppies dropped their designer labels there, there was no electronic tagging and the old woman at the counter was half blind.
Saul was testing her on strategy.
— So, you walk in, then what do you do?
— I take five or six things to the changing room . . .
— Aha. And then?
— Put on three layers of their stuff and then the trench-coat on top, and return the three others to the rails.
— And then?
— Leave?
— No, no! You must buy a little shitty something, a 99p Depeche Mode CD or some socks, and have a little chat with the old dears. About anything really, the starving in Ethiopia or Bosnia or God or whatever, they’re so ecstatic to be talking to a nice young person who believes in their good work that they’ll never suspect you’re wearing five layers of their stuff.
— But why don’t we just buy the stuff? Isn’t this a bit . . . unnecessary?
— My dear, the only thing that saves us from the totalitarian tyranny of common sense is random
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