It could be the apogee of Englishness, an up-yours for the
Malvinas, a valediction of Anglo-Sajon pluck and nerve. It could be an example
of a super-globalised world where in fact you can occupy your personal bubble
wherever you are, however you are. Switch on, switch off and float downstream.
There will always be scones for tea, the elms shall never be diseased, the
swallow’s dart never stilled.
(In North Essex, by the banks of the Deben, two
weeks ago, the oaks were suffering from a blight which left their leaves
wrinkled and withered, turned papery like old people’s skin. Is there a cure?
Does anyone even know this is happening? When a tree falls in the forest…)
Bell tickles a single. The TV in the background mentions the
fate of a digraced milico. Pinter is in heaven, hell or limbo, drinking chilled
champagne for breakfast. Trying to get into my shoes. Claudia works on
Dorfman’s post-dictadura, post-apocalypse drama. The connection goes fuzzy.
Bell strokes successive boundaries. Pinter sneezes. There’s nothing left to
write. Even in Argentina, living is reduced to a test match commentary. The
bowler’s Holding, the batsman’s Willey. Lillee to Hobbs. Smoted for six. Laker
to Walters. Plumb. Every language a code, protecting some last vestige of the
hope that in a hundred years we might still be capable of misunderstanding one
another. Life shall not have been definitively reduced to an ersatz
transparency. Everyone weeping at the same songs. Laughing at the same jokes.
Perhaps this is why we came to Rosario. To watch cricket. To
observe the cracks the system has yet to paper over, homogenise.
A leg-bye.
