Power and the People's Party

Before the electricity gives up the ghost, sparks sometimes fly. They fly from the wires in displays of fireworks. I passed a pylon once when blue fizzled and flashed. I remembered, remembered the 5th of November when I had turned homeward after a good show happy to have been so dazzled when - surprise - the encore stopped me in my tracks. It happened again there on that path. I'd just got back on my way when rockets whizzed out of a Catherine wheel and then exploded into blue fire and smoke. Then, at last, I got going.

Electric blue: it's also the colour of the river we cross on a wooden bridge for the school trip to the power station where the water hurtles past three turbines and generates enough electricity for the whole city (as long as we're good and turn off the lights). But the water looks so charged that the children think the electricity is in the water and our power station somehow extracts it. Gravity is too serious, too prosaic an explanation. The children also do a lot of hurtling past the turbines too, and generate enough sound energy to supply another city. The engineers stay safely in their control room smoking and, um, controlling things, yes, that's what they're doing, from comfy chairs strewn around. A peon comes out and offers my colleague and me tea but the wiring of their tin kettle looks dodgy and we decline. They leave us explain to the kids what D-A-N-G-E-R means. One impudent child, Lisa Simpson, asks a foreman if it's not dangerous to smoke here. He takes a drag and in a cloud of smoke asks her why ever should she think that. 'Fire and electricity,' she says archly, 'they don't mix'.
I assess that she has learned and is able to apply the learning objectives of Monday's science and safety lesson.
He stubs out his cigarette and turns to leave. We were such a cute group until she opened her mouth. We too leave and eat our packed lunches downstream.

Nature is also going out in a blaze of colour. There's the new blue of the river as glaciers cease pouring out their torrent of melt water that in summer churns up sediment that gives the river the appearance of much tea. My garden wall is purple with vine leaves who seem to be trying to apologise for not bearing any purple fruit. Above it, the fig tree that did bear fruit (purple) is yellow. And so, increasingly, is every tree in the valley.

The colour is rising.

Election fever has infected the town and every street, every wall and post-box, bus-stop and pillar is positively gangrenous, bursting with green bunting and angry red banners. It has blinded the populous to nature's more decorous display. One taxi driver is blinded to more than just decorum, too: on his windscreen there's a banner telling us to support the party symbolised by the bicycle. It's all empty words; the way he's driving he doesn't support cyclists at all. I should have taken another cab.
Most of these other cabs have been commandeered by boys, some of whom will have to wait a good few years before they'll be enfranchised but can't wait till the procession begins soon when they will open the sunroof and stand as tall as they can for their age, raising high a picture of a waving gent and flags of his chosen symbol: a kerosene lamp, arrow, kite, bike or one of several constellations of a moon and star. They'll honk their horns, play some tunes and bellow a name and slogan memorably so that on the great day two weeks hence we'll be swayed by that carnival memory and tick - now whose was the kite box again?
The men who've set up campaign stands are all wearing sunglasses these overcast days. They are looking forward to a bright future, you see; and there are a lot of luminaries around.

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The betrothed is swathed in orange, the orange like that of autumn leaves: sad. This is her engagement party and I have never seen my friend looking so sad. She is pinned into place by safety pins down the back of her dress and the stares of the women who will be her world one day: a host of in-law aunts, their unnumbered offspring and in the middle of them all, one supreme Mother-In-Law-To-Be, the queen bee, the victor who has won this precious jewel of a girl.
(The fiance sends his apologies. Work, you know.)

There are no party games. No music (until the in-laws leave). No chatter, crackers or clink of glasses, just a long hard stare at this latest addition to the clan. She is beautiful when she is happy.
When the men are done and only their cigarette smoke lingers, it's feeding time for us. This lounge is normally a terribly civilised arrangement of 1 coffee table, 1 vase of flowers and a 3-piece suite but now is 2 parallel feeding troughs. Bums down, tuck in. If you can't reach what you want, lady, lean further.
Everyone is eating more than the recommended daily allowance and soon scarves hang limp, lipstick is smudged, tissues litter the floor, women are on top of each other, some laughing raucously, most shouting to be heard.
A nephew walks in. "People's Party of Pakistan," he says, and walks out. Nobody noticed.

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In early winter there are days when we are surrounded by cloud not mountains. On such days it is a cozier, moister and more muffled place than when the sides of mountains stare us down and make us feel small, lonely and lost. Under the staff tree, we stamp our feet, sit closer on the bench so our shawls touch and brew tea in the first break because we can't wait till one.

But then sometimes the clouds part and a distant valley between two hills in the sky is revealed, or an alpine meadow - sometimes basking in sunlight - comes into view. They are impossibly remote and I wonder why I never saw them before on clearer days.

Then I remember the songs we sang in Sunday School.