I’m not superstitious.
Mostly.
I do say good morning to magpies, and I have been known to go back indoors rather than leave by a different door from the one I came in by. So perhaps “not very superstitious” is fairer.
Today is Friday the 13th. It is also World Kindness Day. And it is the second anniversary of my dad dying.
That’s quite a lot for one day to carry.
So I went looking through my scans for something gentle, and I found this.
I took it in Norwich back in October. I had the camera in my bag, as I always do. I had a coat that was slightly too thin for the weather, as I always do. And I had no particular plan, which is the best sort.
And then Bruce looked up and called me back as I had wandered off with Annie. As usual.
A window. An old one, set into a wall of flint and pale stone, with a heavy ledge of a lintel above it and a frame painted a soft, dusty blue. Nothing unusual so far. Norwich is full of flint walls like that, and I never tire of them.
But across the top row of panes someone had hung a washing line.
A tiny one. String, strung from one side to the other, and pegged along it, all the little clothes. A striped jumper. A white dress. A pair of trousers in cream. A red jumper, bright as a postbox. A flowery frock. Yellow trousers. A blue top. A pale blue all-in-one. A little skirt. A hooded thing. Brown trousers at the end, and something patterned peeking in at the far corner.
All of them doll-sized. All of them pegged up properly, as if they’d just come in off a rinse and a spin.
I stood there far longer than a sensible woman should.
Below the washing line, in the bottom row of panes, sat a couple of paper carrier bags and a plant with long, green, leaning leaves. Everything quiet. No sign saying look here, no arrow, no little card explaining itself.
Just a window, doing something kind.
Because that’s what it felt like. A kindness aimed at nobody in particular. Someone had gone to the trouble of making a small, cheerful thing, and put it where a passer-by might happen to glance up.
I did glance up.
I’d have missed it if Bruce hadn’t called me back, I had walked straight past it as I focussed on photographing something else. He called me back and just looked at me and then the window, allowing me to take it in and then to photograph as it he knew I would love it.
Some mornings I wake up and everything is slightly too loud and slightly too much. Some mornings I’m fine until a bin lorry reverses and then I’m not. I’ve stopped pretending otherwise, and I’ve started to notice that the days I walk with a camera are the days I come home a bit softer round the edges.
Small things are allowed to be enough.
The window made me think of my dad, as plenty of small things do. He’d have stopped too. He’d have said something dry about the standard of the pegging, and then he’d have stood there just as long as I did. I miss that. I miss being able to say, “Look at this,” and have someone look.
So I looked for both of us.
I took the photograph from across the pavement, careful not to step in anyone’s way. Then I took a second one, because I always do, and stood there a moment longer just to be sure I’d really seen it. Then I wound on and carried on with my day.
That’s the thing about film. It holds on to things for you until you need them.
And since then I’ve been noticing more. A man holding a gate open for longer than he needed to. A neighbour’s recycling box put back square against the wall. The sort of thing you’d never write down, which is rather the point.
Kindness, I think, is mostly like that. It isn’t grand. It’s a bit of string and some pegs.
Two years. I still don’t quite know what to do with today.
But I think I’ll go for a walk. Camera in my bag. Coat slightly too thin.
And I’ll look up. Just in case someone has hung out the washing.