they’ve come here to dance, drawn sideways from their route home by the music and by bravado, and now they are hesitating, unsure of how to begin, unfamiliar with the steps, embarrassed...they dance, and he smiles and nods and thinks of his wife sleeping at home, and thinks of when they were young and might still have done something like this... but here, as the dawn sneaks up on the last day of summer, and as a man with tired hands watches a young couple dance in the carpark of his restaurant, there are only these: sparkling eyes, smudged lipstick, fading starlight, the crunching of feet on gravel, laughter, and a slow walk home……
My favourite quote is from a book called ‘if nobody speaks of remarkable things’ by Jon Mcgregor and gives me goosebumps every single time. 'If nobody speaks…' is one of the most beautiful books I have read. I could probably just quote it from start to finish in this post but I won’t because that would be a very long post. I shall try to tell you instead why I love it so very much. It’s just….beautiful and clever and haunting and so wonderfully written that it makes you ache and as it slowly unfolds through the voices of two very distinct narrators it all but breaks your heart. Just writing this makes me want to go and read it again, to get lost in this poetic portrayal of all that is wonderful and terrible, of all that matters about life.
You know what, have another one. I don’t care if it’s against the rules!
He says my daughter, and all the love he has is wrapped up in the tone of his voice when he says those two words, he says my daughter you must always look with both of your eyes and listen with both of your ears. He says this is a very big world and there are many many things you could miss if you are not careful. He says there are remarkable things all the time, right in front of us, but our eyes have like the clouds over the sun and our lives are paler and poorer if we do not see them for what they are.
He says, if nobody speaks of remarkable things, how can they be called remarkable?
