Just a story of islands

 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1687004994

That London summer 1979 had exceptionally been long and mild (London whether, at middle August, it is usually already cold). Such a whether allowed me to make profitably the ice cream sale. We sold them to the passer-bys, leaned out in the street with a freezing machine “Carpigiani” that, in the evening, after the sale, we located inside a shop of souvenirs along the Oxford Street. Working together had contributed to strengthen our knowledge and we became so good friends.

Of George I appreciated the self-confidence that showed in the practical and small things of everyday’s needs, as for instance knowing how to cook rather than to be skilful in the use of English language. This assurance of his, nevertheless, was oddly conjugated with his strenuous internal search that seemed finalized to understand the deepest sense of our life on the earth. That after all was the main reason which had pushed me in to London town.

These things I had realized through the great discourses that, alternate to long silences, we had along that time.

George was rather a reserved man, who didn't love very much to speak of himself, at least not in direct and explicit manner. Neither he seemed very interested to pick up the alien confidences.

He apparently gave the impression to have something to hide or have run away from someone he needed to forget, in a city where also a celebrity would pass unnoticed. But after a short time, I had realized that his silences, his reservation, his misanthropy were together the fruit of a shyness and the result of a reflexive and deep character, projected towards a spiritual search that, absorbing big part of his energies, detached him from the material things of daily life, except those strictly necessary for living through.

The search of an ideal world, through dimensions and experiences untied from the normalcy and the usualness of everyday life, had been soon the point of contact and more important welding in our relationship. Furthermore, apart all this, I had found on him a disinterested support, without which my London adventure would have soon ended up. Then the summer, suddenly ended, and slowly but surely, also vanished the savings put aside in the ice cream season.

to be continued...