EMBROIDERED FOOTPRINTS
Transcript for Embroidered Footprints, Episode 10 of An Author’s Dreams podcast
My best friend, Sarah, is moving house. In my dream life, she lives in a huge crumbling pile on the outskirts of a small town. She’s already left with the first load of her possessions. Darkness has fallen and I’m heading over there to check over the property as I know everything will be in disarray and she’ll need some moral support.
I’m skiving off at my job at an advertising agency in order to pop into Sarah’s. In a darkened backstreet, illuminated only by the large windows of a commercial building, I bump into two of my colleagues from the agency. They’re senior to me, they’re at exec level. They’re eager to promote me to the exec but at 62 I feel I’m too old. I know that I don’t have long left here on earth and there isn’t enough time. I never planned to have a career as an exec at an ad agency. This path is something I’ve fallen into by accident when it’s too late to make a success of it.
My colleagues stop me. They take me into their confidence regarding an issue at work about which they’d like my advice. Then they enter the building illuminating the street to have a meeting, which takes place on a balcony with glass walls overlooking the street. I secrete myself in the balcony above and by doing so I can just see their feet below and hear their clandestine conversation. But the meeting is dull as ditch water. I’m wasting my time.
Now I’m back in the street, clutching a fistful of large pins with flat, plastic heads in pastel colours of lemon, tangerine, pink and sherbet grapefruit. There’s a lime green pin in there with the others but it looks out of place so I remove it.
When I finally arrive at Sarah’s house, I discover that it’s been turned into a hostel. There’s a huge courtyard in the centre of the property, which resembles Tudor Square in Sheffield, where the world snooker championships are held.
The courtyard is scattered with crash mats on which young people are chilling with their friends. In the centre of the courtyard is a vast platform on which stands a huge four-posted bed covered with a canopy of voile. I’ve designed the whole area and it’s been a huge success, perpetually teeming with guests relaxing, but now I’d actually like to spend some time on the bed myself. It’s about thirty feet long, more of an entire living area than I bed. I climb up to the bed and draw back the voile canopy. A young couple are reclining there, deep in earnest conversation. They were in love, but now they’re splitting up. I know they need privacy so I go to a different part of the bed.
A young man with a beard and long hair has been reclining on the bed. He gets up and leaves as I approach and I see that he has been using the pillows to rest his feet. An imprint of his dirty feet are embroidered in the pillows, so the dirt been turned into something quite beautiful.
Even though I’m pissed off he’s used resources I’ve designed to be a pristine showcase for guests, in order to rest his dirty feet, on reflection the result is more beautiful than just boring white pillows on a canopied bed. I’m enchanted with the accidental creation of something artistic from the dirt on someone’s feet.
At the end of the night I walk around the hostel switching off the lights before leaving, but notice the attic lights are still on. I can hear noises up there so I climb a narrow, twisting flight of stairs to reach them. A bunch of students are up there, chilling. They want to spend the rest of the night there, so I let them stay. Sarah won’t mind, everything is turning out far more beautiful than I could have imagined, despite my fears.
