Today I went and sat on the terrace of a restaurant / bar on the seafront, at a picnic table, with a book and a Coca-Cola that I had ordered from the bar. I was reading the book and drinking the Coca-Cola, which had been my intention when I’d decided to go to the restaurant / bar. It was a bit breezy, and I was worried either the glass of Cola, or the tin that they’d given me, would blow away, but both were heavy enough not for this to occur.
But the more I drank the Cola, and kept tipping it into the glass from the tin, the more likely it became that the tin would blow away in the breeze. The trouble was that I was also reading the book, which meant that I didn’t have a spare hand to hold the tin while also turning the pages of the book, and if I let go then the pages would flutter in the breeze and I’d lose my place. I had my bag on the table, which I tried to use as a rudimentary wind-break, but this was insufficient, and the Cola tin, now that it was less full, kept wobbling in a worrying manner.
When I decanted the last of the Cola into the glass, the tin was now prone to rolling off and clattering on the floor of the terrace, and I didn’t want this to happen because I’d have to put down the book I was reading. I thought about putting the tin into my bag, but I considered that this might look odd to the other customers and to the staff, even though there was a logical explanation. It was a lovely sunny day, but it felt chilly in the breeze, and I hadn’t brought a jacket.
The book was an account of an Arctic expedition to measure the sea ice and it had some fascinating passages about the way that the ice flows around the Arctic Ocean, and another section which detailed the way that the magnetic North Pole has moved over the years, wandering from the far north of Canada in an easterly direction. I must admit that I am not entirely sure what the magnetic North Pole is or why this is important. When there’s no wind, I can read the pages uninterrupted without having to worry about losing my place in the book. I am drawn to books or documentaries which take as their subject the frozen North and I wonder if this is because of something primal deep within me, and a need for exploration, or maybe I just like being away from other people. The nose tusk of the narwhal is slightly off-centre because it isn’t a tusk, but a very long tooth. I learned this from the book about Arctic exploration, the one that I was reading on the terrace of the restaurant / bar, while also worrying about the cola tin.
Robert Garnham 