A man dies to the sound of laughter escaping from Blankety Blank. A nurse loses her temper with a bunch of flowers too cumbersome for their vase. A woman goes up in the lift to see the mother she has never met. Porters smoke on the stairwell and remember the worst and the best of Friday night. A Pakistani gentleman says prayers to himself, too old to wait, and ignores the football commentary coming from an adjacent radio. A doctor checks a chart and remembers his wife's birthday, and out in the corridor a confectionary machine jams and keeps the money. A bone is set, and a lady who grew up in Cornwall remembers the long walk to school.There will always be the words to other people's songs, but Michael is here now, and I am here, and the fresh air my God you wouldn't believe it. When I look up I think of all the miles the air has come to reach us, I think of it passing stars and planets, falling through clouds, and blowing over the English Channel, our mouths open to catch the air and to say what we want to say, to speak now, to speak out loud, and before long the land begins to appear over there, another coast. The day is beautiful, we are far from home, and the boat moves like a prayer over the water.
Andrew O'Hagan, Personality (London: Faber and Faber, 2003), 160; 327.
