Call it coincidence if you like, but Sammy’s and my birthday are two days apart. We celebrated over the weekend, somehow fitting in an excellent balance: friends, family, down-time, food, and two trips out. It was great!
My favourite thing was stepping on board HMS Victory at Portsmouth Historic Dockyard. Victory was commissioned in 1765 and was Vice Admiral Nelson’s flagship during the Battle of Trafalgar. On the 21st of October 1805, Nelson fell on the quarterdeck having been shot through the back. There’s a small brass plaque to mark the spot.
But the thing I liked most was the smell. Old wood; the kind you only really get in creaking sixteenth century pubs. It was the smell of the past; the great timbers of oaks, square cut, varnished, joined and bolted into the hull of a truly magnificent ship. Everything about it was evocative, intoxicating. We patrolled along the decks and stood by the gigantic guns that were poked from the square windows. We ran fingers along balustrades and ropes, perhaps just as the admiral had done all those years ago. We stood at the bow, looking out across the city of Portsmouth and we clambered over ropes and barrels, each carefully positioned. And the smell of the past pervaded it all.
I breathed it in. That’s what you’re supposed to do with the past I think; close your eyes and imagine you were there. I could almost hear the cannon fire and the cries from nearby ships. The wind could so easily have been billowing and flapping through the sails under a cool October sky. Well. She has no sails at the moment. No rigging, and only half of two of her three masts while conservation work takes place.
The past eh. The next day, we went to Lacock, the place where photography was invented. There’s a particular window, one that William Fox Talbot captured on film in what’s thought to be the world’s earliest photo. I stood outside it with my iPhone, thinking about silver nitrate and dark rooms and pinhole cameras and how far we’ve all come since the 1830s. The past is just the present really, but sort of sped up.
I think Sammy had a great birthday weekend. I hope she did. It’s sweet that our birthdays are so close together, but I do worry that mine being first, hers could easily be a bit of an anticlimax. I did my best to make the most of her day. I started it by falling out of bed - for some reason she finds things like that extremely funny, especially when they happen to me. It’s probably the memories it makes. I hope so, anyway.
I certainly did enjoy it. It was a great opportunity to make some new traditions, to celebrate in a slightly different way. I really liked it; it felt like the way of things to come. I wonder if Nelson pondered the intersection of past and present and future as he was taken below deck. The story goes that he was still giving instruction about the tiller, while being carried below to the orlop deck. England expected him to do his duty, I suppose, but that certainly showed some dedication. He knew he was dying, he knew that the battle had already been won and the French were rounded. He knew the circumstances that had led him to a musket ball. Yet still, the great admiral remained focused and conscious of the present moment.
I really like that. Especially when birthdays remind you that you’re on deck. I think it’s the best way to be at the intersection. Present.
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