Bells and smells

What must it be like to see everything at Pie's level? More to the point, what must it smell like? I talk about taking him out 'to get some fresh air', but you couldn't get closer to the exhaust-fume smog of the High Road unless you, too, got into a buggy. By the by, I've started calling the buggy 'the red jalopy', which invests it with some of the dignity it otherwise lacks. We bought it from a couple in Ruislip who had realised that they could no longer live in the shadow of such a beast.

On a good day, Pie is neither happy nor angry when he goes out in the red jalopy. He looks indifferent, but I think this is a mask absenting him from the world while he processes with rapt attention all of the sounds, sights and smells around him. He is like a Russian Formalist, a baby Bakhtin, a suckling Shklovsky... If you, my friend are in the throes of a literary theory essay for Eng Lit 1, all about 'making the stone stoney', then pause a while and think about the world as perceived by Pie. 'Defamiliarisation' is an awfully long word for what you do when you try making this imaginative leap.

Pie's christening took place on Saturday at the church in Quex Road. There was a mix-up at the beginning when the nun in charge of paperwork insisted that it was a Sunday and that the baby's name was 'Caroline Glenda'. That's what it said on the piece of paper, and she was d*mned if it was to be any different. It was clearly not the moment to cede to my brother's wishes and slip the priest a fiver for the name 'Mungo' to be added to the litany. Confusion reigned, and it must have been due to her that at this point I lost sight of my grey winter coat.

Running various errands today on the High Road (exchange of paper for money at the bank and money for paper at the P.O.), I decided to nip into Quex Road. I pushed the buggy up the ramp and through the swing doors of the church. Muted silence of acres of carpet, the delicious smell of polish and incense. One person up at the front, to the side, lighting candles. No sign of my coat, though, so we creaked back down the aisle and pushed our way outside. Round the back to the presbytery, where we gained admittance (what a phrase, so suited to a cloister!) and enquired about the coat. I sat for a few moments on the slippery oak bench, listening to low mutterings and revelling in the sour smell of these places: lino floors, disinfectant and institutional cooking, as sharp as a smack on the nose.

I have my coat back.

--"My dog has no nose"
--"How does he smell?"
--"He sort of sniffs the air with his tongue."*

*as told by Lloyd Thomas, or as he is now known, Lloyd Woolf