The Meaning of Boondoggle and Other Stories
Fraser Edmond
The day is the 20th of June 2008.
The day is a Friday.
The day is sunny and warm.
The day is today and, at first glance, today would appear rather depressing.
I wake early, which is a rarity, not due to some fresh flush of inspiration or determinism to do something productive but because today is a workday in the heart of the Edinburgh International Film Festival and overtime is expected. The day is dull, too many unknown staff, not enough work to keep everyone busy. I wait it out with impatience, desperate to leave, to get home with no thought of what I'll do when I got there.
The day is sunny and warm. There are no windows at work, it is twenty-seven degrees inside.
The sun is blinding while walking westwards home at just after five o'clock but the journey doesn't take long.
My wife is home before me, swooning over a 1963 Hillman Minx convertible on Ebay that we can't afford but it's pretty and that's all that matters.
After a brief, microwaved dinner and with a stomach that feels like it's plotting something I walk into town to meet a friend. She has to leave early because she is pregnant and tired.
I walk all the way home again.
With the sun setting prettily behind the architecture of Edinburgh I consider picking out a good book, a good beer and, most importantly, a good cushion and heading down to the park at the end of the street but I can't take the thought of dog-walkers and Frisbees and, heaven forbid, children. Instead I settle for a night of insular darkness with a DVD randomly plucked from the ever-growing 'yet to watch' pile. My wife, keen at first, falls asleep on my arm within minutes.
I go to bed early.
The day is the 20th of June 2008.
This is my day. My day, at first glance, may appear rather depressing but God, as they say, is in the details. It is the minutia and small moments that bring joy to lives, that lift our souls and carry us through the tedium and monotony. The details of a life cannot be seen at first glance. So let's run through that again, but this time let's focus a little more closely.
Getting up early means the local bakery is still open. Bran flakes for breakfast may be good for the body but doughnuts are better for the soul.
Work is so quiet that no one minds/cares/notices that I take half an hour to sit outside with an ice cream. A pretty girl that I don't know smiles at me as she walks past and unconsciously sways her behind most alluringly as she walks away. On my lunch break I read in the Metro newspaper that Roddy Woomble is spearheading a new writing competition and later, as there is a lot of it going on, I learn the meaning of the word boondoggle. Plus, of course, the film festival is in town. I love stories in any form they can be presented, thus a two week deluge of new and varied stories from around the world can't fail to be invigorating. Just because this day is dull doesn't mean that those around it are. In my time of tenuous association with the EIFF I have had the opportunity to meet with some of my personal heroes, such as the brain-meltingly talented artist Dave McKean and the delectable Glaswegian actress Laura Fraser. So while I may not exactly love my job, I do love the perks it provides.
On my walk home my eyes may be watering but my face is warm and I feel, if only for a fleeting time, healthy.
My wife, Felicity, who is sprawled across the sofa as I get home, is an incredibly kind, sensitive and easily excitable human being with the soul of a bruised child and the arse of a pageant swimsuit round winner who I love dearly and constantly feel proud to come home to every day (but don't ever tell her I said so, she's also fun to annoy.)
And the 1963 Hillman Minx convertible really is a very pretty car. Felicity tells me of her theory that not all cars are, in fact, girls. The 1963 Hillman Minx convertible, for example, is an eight year old boy, it wears shorts and likes stickers. It is good to dream.
The friend I meet in town is a local artist and animator with whom everyone I've ever met is secretly in love. We're meeting to discuss ideas for my next tattoo and before she leaves she is able to pass on a series of design sketches for me to peruse at my leisure. They are uniformly beautiful.
I walk all the way home again, listening to the new Dresden Dolls album and smiling.
Yes, I may have a touch of misanthropy in me but why the hell should you care?
As I draw the curtains and settle in for a night of insular, cosy, womb-like darkness the DVD plucked from the pile turns out to be Pollock, a touching biopic of the troubled and controversial painter with whom I've developed a mild fascination with over the previous few weeks. Whilst watching it, with Felicity's head on my shoulder and her breath tickling the hairs on my arm, I begin to question the nature of art.
We go to bed early, but this is a common euphemism.
So this is my day, just another one of my days in the long string of my life. A life lived through the art of others. I lie awake and return to my previous thought, just what is art anyway? And as the clock ticks over to 11:59 an answer comes back. Art is whatever gets you through the day. Movies, music, pretty girls and doughnuts.
The day is the 20th of June 2008.
The day is now over.
It was a good day.
