In the world of sensitives, those folks who are open to extrasensory perception, the individuals who hear the sound of the spheres, or music of the spheres, are considered of a different octave than those who see into the world unseen, as their degree of sensitivity is closer to the breath.
I can’t lay much claim to any of these attributes, yet the occasions when my sensitivity showed itself are indelible.
When I was little, I was always allowed to play in the street. We didn’t have a garden, as such, and the streets were different then, anyway. Even during the war, if an air-raid siren went off, I was told to run into the nearest house. Toward the end of the war, we moved farther east to our house in Plaistow, which, these days, is considered one of the most dangerous areas in London.
In 1942, Chadwin Road, E13 was a peaceful suburb. Nobody on our street owned a car, and the road was our main playground. Halfway up the street was a shop called Price’s, a family-owned grocery. The thing that separated the Price household was that they had a refrigerator, in which they made ice cubes flavoured with something, which they sold for a penny each in summer. Everyone used coal, and the horse-drawn wagon from which the coalman delivered his sacks fired up all the hearths in our neighbourhood. Of course, we regularly had serious fogs.
One afternoon after school, I was given a shilling and told to buy a loaf from Price’s. I opened the front door to discover a fog had formed. It was a real pea-souper. As it was a regular occurrence, I didn’t give it too much thought, although when I put my hand in front of my face, I couldn’t see it. Even these kinds of fogs didn’t grind the East End to a halt. The conductors on the trolley buses had flares, which they lit, and walked down the road in front of their drivers.
I set off on my errand, walking with one foot in the gutter and the other on the kerb to give me my bearings, but after bumping into a lamp-post (gas, but unlit), I measured three long strides into what I judged to be the middle of the road and continued on my errand. After a few minutes, I completely lost my bearings—and two things happened. Through the fog I felt snowflakes in my face and on my head. I recall sticking out my tongue to catch some flakes on it, and then: blank.
It was as if I had disappeared. I guess thought simply stopped. There was only the cold on my face and the beating of my heart. I have no idea how much time passed during the curious absence, and I assume the body stopped walking, for when I returned, so to speak, I became aware of the light from Price’s window in the distance, which I began walking toward.
Nothing untoward accompanied these moments out of time. On the contrary, whenever they came to mind, I had a nice feeling. It wasn’t something I spoke of; a secret. And like a wish, diluted when shared.
Another unfamiliar occurrence happened when I was about five years old. For many generations, London’s working class were invited to the fields of Kent for the annual hop harvest. The wives and kids were billeted in corrugated huts close to the hop fields, while the men-folk continued their jobs in London, sometimes travelling down at weekends.
I guess it was a tough working holiday for the womenfolk, but for us it was heaven, our only interaction with the country. Our farm was aptly named New Barns. There was a country bus, green, which stopped at the Woolpack Pub a hundred yards or so from the common where we lived, but it was notoriously irregular, and the mile and half walk to the village, Yalding, became a familiar trek. As the hop-picking was a six-day a week affair, we kids were entrusted to pick up staples from Yalding. Our mum or one of the aunts would do the weekly shopping with our help.
Yalding itself comprised a main road and a T-junction with a medieval bridge over the Medway River, a bakery, a post office, a pub, and a general store. The general store was fascinating to me, primarily because of how trusting the owners were. Newly baked bread, hocks of ham, huge wedges of cheese, jars of pickles were all on open and unprotected display. I understand that a few seasons after the blitz, when the marauding “hoppers” from London markedly depleted their on-the-counter displays, stock was relocated to less tempting accessibility. On the morning in question, however, it was still on display and uncovered. Our Aunt Maude was in charge of us. Maude was the youngest of the Perrott sisters and I always saw her as the prettiest. She also let us get away with more stuff, and on the walk into town turned a blind eye to the foraging of wild blackberries, damsons, and even apples whose branches hung over the walled gardens. So when the little motley crew arrived, our hands were stained purple, on top of the hop resin that seemed to accumulate on the fingertips of all who regularly picked them.
I don’t actually remember feeling hungry when we entered… which wasn’t usually the case, but I mention it in view of what happened next. As I came through the front door, I inhaled the shop’s aroma, a collage of all the gastronomic perfumes I associated with good food, but stronger, more intense than on previous visits, even when I had been ravenous. Which was most of the time, due to country air and its increased oxygen, growing noticeably, and the daily proximity to the harvested hops and the residue they left on our fingers that seemed to permeate everything we touched, including all foodstuffs that went into our mouths. What we didn’t know then was that the hop, Humulus lupulus, is a close relation to cannabis sativa, the grass that is much inhaled today. The aroma that day was overpowering and stopped me in my Wellington boots. I have a tendency to increase sensation, which is so ingrained I am no longer aware of it, but on this particular occasion, I didn’t even close my eyes to center myself on my sense of smell. I just stood in the doorway, inhaling every breath as though it was my last. The aroma underwent a change; the aroma of cheese and spam segued into something resembling new-mown hay, and before the shop returned to normal, the periphery became an attar of rose without any source I could see. I seemed to exist in a timeless void, awash in this sweet scent, barely aware of Maude’s soft dry hand taking hold of mine as she entered the shop. I realised later that this entire event could have only taken a mini-second, another step out of time.