I had one pie per hand and I was stepping, delicate-like, through the crowd, and when I found Suz she was grinning because the pies had come home to roost. One was Thai Chook, which was a Thai green curry pie, who knew this was possible?, and the other was the spicy lamb, because I don’t know how to turn down lamb, and this one you couldn’t even see, really, because of the mushy peas and gravy. The mushy peas were minted, and perfect. “Mushy peas are sooo tasty,” I said. “How come ah?” I said, and then I said, “How can we make this happen at home?” “Boil, then boil,” Suz said. “And then?” I said, interested now, because it seemed like a real possibility, and Suz said: “And then mush!”



It’d rained early Saturday afternoon while we were in Greenwich for the film festival, and I’d said, “This sucks,” and Suz’d offered me another chocolate drop biscuit from the Tupperware. And we’d waited in line to get into the festival—it’d stopped raining by then, at least—and they were late letting everyone in, and all we wanted was a lie-down, maybe, if we could find a dry patch of grass, and maybe, eventually, a nap. “This sucks,” I said. “Yah!” Suz said, “eeeyur!” and she portioned out the last two chocolate biscuits in the box.

A cheer went up from the front of the queue, finally, and we started shuffling forwards, and then, I mean, you think you are going to a film festival—all you really know, because Suz was in charge of the tickets, is that you are going to see “Kill Bill” outdoors and on the big big screen—and look what magic comes exploding out of the fairgrounds. We went into the big tent on the right, the circus tent!, with its freaky freak show and the creature in one of those Georgia O’Keefe horse skulls who followed me around the room with its hollow eyes. “Suzzan,” I said, “freaks,” and the trembling made it a two-syllable word. “Ha ha!” she said, “you are scared!” “Eh,” I said, “they are freaks!” There was music, black-and-white and old-timey, like the first films, and I wasn’t sure it hadn’t been spun out of the grim, post-rain air.



There were popcorn girls and roll-up-roll-up girls, there were girls with snakes for hands. A wind-up girl turned round and round in the black heart of a black flower. Later, we wound through a dusty tunnel while a stripey aquaballerina kicked and pointed. She was sort of there and sort of not, a projection on gauzy screens, layers of dreamlike ethereality.

We scored two seats up front on vintage velvet chairs to watch the film shorts. In Nacho Vigalondo’s “7:35 in the morning”, a music video ended with a confetti bang; in Jan Schomburg’s “Ni solo sein”, a story went backwards and forwards; in Nagi Noda’s “Sentimental Journey”, a day went from pink to pink to flying to pink to black. Benoit Mariage’s “Le Signaleur” had a hedgehog. “I cannot speak,” I said, for I could not. There were so many things in my head by then—these wonderful, wondering stories—these fine, fragile vignettes—some of them accompanied by a slow electric guitar—and we went out, squinting, into the sun.



We found a sunny spot where the ground seemed dry already, and lay down on our blanket. “This is great,” I said, and then I said, again, “This is great.” We ate orange Soleros and a cranberry brownie, we put on sunscreen, we lay down, we sat up, we lay down again. “This is great, I said, and then I said, again, “This is great.” The boys playing frisbee kept missing, and the girls to the right were dancing with ribbons. Lying down and looking up, I saw green only, green and green, and then the blue of sky.

We moved closer to the big screen, eventually, in front of the guy in the Pac-Man T-shirt, right by the guy with the paper parasol. The National Symphony Orchestra was playing the “Ghostbusters” theme. They would play the “Time Warp” later. People would dance. Suz said Alex Zane smiled at her.

Such jollility! They cheered when Nancy Sinatra began her “Bang Bang”, and every now and again someone would whistle the Daryl Hannah bit from the hospital. The air was laced with marijuana.



An hour and some in, my right arm was sore from being lain upon. Our picnic blanket was cold, and damp, because the night was cold, and damp. I needed to pee (so this is what it’s like to attend an outdoor film festival). I put on my Onitsuka Tigers and ran to the portaloos, and when I came back Uma Thurman and Lucy Liu hadn’t even gone outside to fight in the fake snow yet.

The credits were rolling on the big screen behind us as we left Greenwich Park some time after eleven. We were heading down the hill towards the High Street and the pier, the tips of the Cutty Sark were silhouetted against the night, and I said, “Look,” I said, “you can see the stars,” because you could.