Just. NOTES // Aspects

Was it the sun that possessed me to pick up my compass this morning? Or just my inner gadget geek. Either way the day began with a whole new aspect.

The boys stayed with their dad last night. It’s usually Thursdays during the week but we did a swap. The to-ing and fro-ing is becoming easier and the sun certainly smoothes the way. They’ll be back with all their X-box rap football chatter but for the next few minutes it’s just me, the radio, and the promise of a fine day ahead streaming through the window.

I stayed in bed a while, because that’s the pay off. Not ‘time off’ (a casual yet painful trope that belies the heartache within its proffered positivity), but time to rejuvenate, perhaps. Which takes organisation and routine in itself. Heading downstairs through the rewards of last night’s spring clean before I treated a friend to dinner – a small host that will hopefully become one of many – light streams through front door and kitchen window at opposite aspects of the house. The estate agent presents it in simple terms: ‘south-facing garden’, ‘east-facing terrace’ (none of these descriptions apply to my new abode). But I’m not so sure.

Making my way to the back door, I bypass the washing up for a moment, and decide to instate a new morning ritual. A simple turn of the key, bare feet on a chequerboard flagstones of salmon and biscuit, a walk to the glowing white plasterwork of the far wall, the sun-trap facade of someone else’s house that offers a surreal Mediterranean vibe to my otherwise urban English yard.

The blank canvas of what lies ahead joins forces with the silhouette of my house, the terrace within which it sits, and two sides of perimeter fence, to cast geometric swathes of light and shade: the trapeziums, rhomboids and parallelograms that will guide the eventual placement of tables and chairs, paddling pools (let us never be too old to dip our feet in), and lush planting. All this in good time. I’m still tired from leaving a garden. For now my feet make their own way to a sun spot and I just stop there a while solar-powering my crown. This I will repeat tomorrow, and the next.

I think about a conversation with a friend who visited yesterday. About the aspect we believe our garden to be and that which it really is. I step inside to grab my favourite compass (like I said, gadget geek) and bring it back out to take a reading. North-facing is the assumption, 340º north-north-west the actuality. Wanstead-Flats-facing the romantic interpretation; my preferred. My garden is also open on both sides, and that’s how the light gets in. Sunrise to the east, a diagonal down-beam from where it appears to hang above Tylney Road, just one more garden between; sunset to the west, a softer glow across the gardens and fences of my side of Godwin Road; due south at noon but high enough in the sky to overshoot the rooftops and bestow a few generous afternoon hours of total sun-drench.

I grab my camera and take some photographs. It’s a bright day and easy to track the shadows, more starkly defined on digital than I can see with my naked eye. Or perhaps I’ve just tuned in to observe a particular feature. Looking closer. My compass also has a built-in magnifying glass, which has me occupied for at least another 10 minutes. I peer at the protruding black peak within the just-blooming borage, merged anthers within five-petaled stars of ultraviolet and pink, obscenely hairy sepals. In stark comparison are the multi-flowered yellow centres of fleabane, rose-tinted white ray petals daintily circled around.

I think I hear the doorbell but I’m just anticipating the boys’ return. Time to wash the pots, from which vantage point – sink below back window – I carry on marvelling at the brightening sky beyond, the small fledgling flowers of my homestead, evolving aspects and perspectives. Slowly but surely, connections are being made.