O Fortuna

What good fortune! For the balmiest of warm evenings,  the London friend I was visiting had organised us tickets for Regents Park Open Air Theatre (The Sound of Music). The last time I was there, many years ago, I shivered under blankets. Tonight a warm sun dipped behind the trees and the end-of-summer air stroked farewell to skin that will soon be hidden.

Earlier we’d walked past this staging of the ‘best day’ of these newlyweds’ life. (Strange expression, as if it’s all downhill from that manic day. I wish them more luck than that.) Lucky that they had such beautiful weather for their day, bad luck that the construction work intruded, good luck that their photographer knew how to create a fiction, a misfortune that I happened to take my non-fiction as the bridesmaid was picking her nose.

When we left the theatre I reckoned I just about had time to reach Paddington for the last fast train to Oxford. Running to the underground station I tripped and landed on my right hand and my glasses. Nothing broke and I was unhurt – astonishing luck – but I missed the lift down to the underground, reached the platform as the train was drawing out and had to wait two minutes for the next one. At Paddington I missed my mainline train by two minutes.

I was sitting on the 30-minutes-later train for Oxford when we were told that no trains were leaving Paddington – there had been a fatality down the line. After a few moments absorbing the information we trooped off the train and back to the concourse. Passengers act strangely when this happens – first milling around the railway workers with complaints jammed in their throats then hunching in resignation. I expect I hunched too but my throat was empty: you can’t complain about the ripples of random events. I hoped it was a suicide not an accident, wondered what misfortune had led to such an end and thought about the bad luck of the train driver who was rostered for the train involved. I wondered what might have happened to me if I had caught the train I was racing for. An encounter with a long-lost friend? Getting caught up in a fight?

My train left two hours later. When I got to Oxford station at 1.45am I discovered that my bike had not been stolen and I hadn’t lost my keys.

I was not hit by a car as I cycled home.

O Fortuna, velut luna



If only

As she pedalled hard, head down, against the solid wind,
- the moon eclipsed behind a gold-edged scudding cloud -
unseen, a speeding driver wrapped in a rain-blind windscreen
did not see her, caught her back wheel such a glancing stroke
the driver did not feel it, but she went spinning wildly across the road.
Another car then tossed her free of the buckled frame.
She bounced again and landed slumped against a wall.

Except,
that night, she started on her journey home one minute late
so by the time she reached her fate it had already gone.
The driver of the car, unseen, too fast, with rainswept windscreen,
did not see her, was some distance past. One minute on,
as she pedalled hard, head down against the growing wind,
a glorious moon climbed bright from angry storm-grey clouds.
And she reached home complaining of the wind and biting rain,
never knowing.