A SPINNING COIN
By Gavin Collins
It’s said only Kafka can start a story with a character alone in a room. And only if they then turn into a giant insect. It’s only with Kafka talents and metamorphosis that a lone character can be the beginnings of a good story.
Seems a bit hero-worshippy to me. I’m not saying Kafka’s no good. Just seems a bit over the top.
Take this story for example. I’m alone when it starts. And if a story which promises to reveal the meaning of life is not a good one, then we may as well all give up.
I’m not, in absolute truth, alone. I’m in a pub. In the middle of a Wednesday afternoon. It’s the dead hours. The hours when only souls like me lurk in places like this. It’s a good pub, make no mistake. It has the same carefully arranged bar furniture, natural wooden surfaces, and corridors of late afternoon hazy sunlight that attract the swarms on a weekend. Draws in the after-work crowd on evenings as well. But right now, it counts a disinterested barmaid, a recently off duty post-man, and me as its only heartbeats.
I sit here, at a table in the corner, with a newspaper I’ve read slowly from cover to cover and back again. I sit here as I have nothing better to do. I’m jobless. Homeless in the sense that I sleep on a different friend’s sofa every night. Prospectless. Dreamless. Hopeless. I sit here, standing guard in this pub until the atmosphere arrives. Until it becomes filled with humanity again, and I can drift amongst it, trying not to be noticed, occasionally inserting myself where tolerated.
In the meantime, I just sit here.
Until an old man walks in. He strides in. He strides a stride alien to this time and place. It has purpose and meaning. Neither are regular visitors on Wednesday afternoons in suburban pubs, but this old man has both in bucketfuls. He’s here for a reason, one he believes in. It raises an eyebrow. It raises all of our eyebrows. All three of us. That’s six eyebrows, raised.
He makes for the other side of the room from me, and it’s only then I fully appreciate it isn’t just his manner which has raised eyebrows. It’s his appearance too. It’s a green appearance. All green. Head to toe in what, from a room’s distance, looks like crushed velvet. Trousers. Jacket. Erol Flynn, Robin Hood style hat with a large mottled peacock feather in it.
It’s an outlandish costume. More at home on a fancy-dress party than on a weather beaten, white-stubbled, leathered old man. But he wears it confidently. Wears it as if it’s supposed to be worn, like he couldn’t possibly be wearing anything else.
Show-off.
He sits at a table in the corner. It would be prime property in pub rush-hour, when the offices let out and the earners scramble for the best areas, the corners where they can arrange their chairs and set the stage for the unravelling evening. But in these hours, it’s just another empty table. Stained. Chipped. Tired. Alone.
He sits and he takes a silver coin from his green crushed velvet trouser pocket. He takes the silver coin out, sets it carefully upright on the table in front of him, supporting it between the thumb of his left hand and the forefinger of his right hand. He sets it this way, and then spins it. He spins it, and he watches it as it moves, cutting the hazy sunlight as it goes.
This is not an ordinary occurrence, I promise you. I’ve sat in this pub at this time on more occasions than I care to remember. Mostly, I look for any distraction, anything to divert my mind from my own problems. Anything to stop me having to admit I’ve lost my rudder. Ordinarily, I can find precious little to do the job. Jenny, the barmaid, has the day shift because she’s not a small-talker. (In her defence, neither am I). And the off duty post-man, the one with whom I’ve shared this pub’s dead hours countless times, I don’t even know his name. We’ve never spoken. We spend most of our effort avoiding eye contact with each other.
And now this. This old green man. This intruder. And his obsession with a spinning coin.
This is not an ordinary occurrence.
I watch him. After a few minutes, after weighing it up, I decide to go in. Explore. In for a penny, in for a pound.
“I’m sorry, what are you doing?”
He looks at me from the corner of his eye, clearly keen for his spinning coin not to be interrupted. “Sit down, sit down.” All the while, his hunch over the coin unbroken. “Watch the coin with me. Sit down sit down, and watch the coin with me.” A grin appears across his lips, new wrinkles appearing with every inch of smile. Not the sinister type of smile, the friendly type. The happy type. “It’s a helluva coin. And when it spins, man, I’m telling you, I’ve heard it gives...” He stops, suddenly self conscious.
I’m not. This is my pub. He’s the oddity here. “It gives what?”
“Well, I’ve heard it’s magic. It shows the meaning of life.”
Tone is a difficult thing to write down. All I have is black and white. Twenty-six letters and a handful of punctuation marks. Tone can be born in context. It can be inferred by the situation. But not here. Here, the situation is an oddball sat in a pub on a Wednesday afternoon. Not the type of context in which world changing pronouncements breathe with confidence.
But I promise you, as this man told me the meaning of life lay in the silvery rotations of an ordinary coin, he said it with a belief that changed the air. He said it in a way which made clear he held it to be unshakably true, and you should too. He said it with a tone that hit like a wave and was impossible to send back to the sea, to dismiss as a splash and shake it off.
If I wasn’t there, I wouldn’t believe it either. It was a tone I’d never heard before. One I didn’t know existed. But it made the unbelievable believable. If you’d heard him, you’d have laughed at anyone who doubted the coin.
Needless to say, when presented with such a revelation, I could do nothing but settle down and stare at the coin. We both did. Minutes passed. Then the oddball stood, his chair falling behind him. “Bah! It’s not working today. It’s not working at all. It must be your fault.”
He snatched his coin from the table and marched out.
I returned to my corner and started spinning my own coin. I was still looking for the meaning of life two hours later when the after work crowd started to arrive.
Not quite true to say that the next 24 hours passed in the usual way. They did. Of course. An old man dressed in green professing to find the meaning of life in a magical spinning coin wasn’t enough to change the pattern of my day, no matter how much conviction he preached his gospel with.
I spent the evening flitting on the edge of social groups in the pub. I spent the night on an acquaintance’s sofa. Fourth night on the same sofa. Distinct impression that I was wearing out my welcome. That the “I just need a place to sleep for a few nights” was becoming thin. That it may be time to move on. Where to, they didn’t care. Just on.
Next day, same long walk in the morning, just for something to do. Then taking up the same position in the same pub.
So the pattern of my day was the same as the day before and the day before. But my mind was preoccupied with the old green man and the spinning coin. They hadn’t changed my life in a material way. But they’d changed my thoughts. They’d fascinated me. They’d bled into every corner of the 24 hours.
The next day at the same time, in the same pub, in he strode again. Same purpose he had yesterday. Same sense of mission.
He made a direct line to me.
“You were doing it wrong!” Said loudly. It was a quiet pub. Just me, the off duty post-man and Jenny the silent barmaid again. But he still felt the need to exclaim this. Not to be heard. Just because he could. Because he was letting out an excitement. “I’ve figured it out! You did it wrong, yesterday. That’s why it didn’t work. That’s why it didn’t come to you.” A knowing smirk. A narrowing of his eyes as he stooped in to put his face inches from mine. In a more hushed voice now. “You were inside.”
It’s true. I couldn’t argue. Yesterday we had indeed spun the coin inside.
“You see, it only works outside. You need to be outside. So the magic can work properly. Unhindered. Naturally.”
He straightened his back and marched toward the back door. The one leading out to the beer garden (a must have facility of any zone 3 London pub.)
Still fascinated, still every bit the convert to this old green man’s unbending belief, I followed. Nothing to lose. But it was more than that. This man was not your run of the mill muttering loony. The kind eyes are averted from. The kind everyone sees and no one acknowledges. This man was different. I felt it. Nothing more than that. Just feeling. No logic. A belief.
I followed him outside and we both sat at a table in the middle of the beer garden, either side of a picnic bench. He took out his coin and he spun it. We both leaned in and watched. “No no, your own coin. Spin your own coin. This is mine. This is my meaning. You need your own.”
I obliged.
The post-man and Jenny the barmaid came to the door of the pub to observe. Two men hunched, examining their spinning coins. One dressed in green crushed velvet. The other wearing the nondescript clothes of the unemployed. The daytime pub dweller.
I watched. I focussed in as much as my eyes would allow, and I concentrated. I saw light dancing on the surface of the coin. It filled my vision. The more I stared, the more beautiful it was. A spectacle. A simple one. An every day one. One made out of light and dark, of movement. One that suggested so much. A sight that grew the more you stared.
But meaning of life? Magic? No. Of course not. Nothing. No great proclamation. No realisation. Just a pretty sight.
After fifteen minutes of spinning and staring, I straightened up in my seat. The green man did the same and stared at me.
“Still not working?” he asked.
“No.” I felt bad. I wanted to tell him I believed. That I wanted to figure it out. But the words stuck on their way out of my mouth. I heard them in my head before I spoke them and I knew they sounded ridiculous. And I knew Jenny and the post-man were watching.
The old green man stood and strode out. Shoulders hunched. Everything hunched. Defeated again. All his confidence, his self assurance, the volume with which he first walked in yesterday, it had all gone. Replaced with impatience. Simmering agitation. The old green man was perplexed.
I was too. My belief had been shaken. And I had another 24 hours in front of me. They passed again. The same way. Well, much the same. Apart from being thrown out of my latest abode. I’d spotted the signs accurately. Welcome duly worn out, a quiet word was had. I was asked if it was perhaps time for me to move on. I lived on the generosity of this extensive network of acquaintances. I couldn’t afford to upset the balance. No doubt I’d be relying on this man for a few days on his sofa again in a year or two’s time. I packed my small rucksack with my t-shirts and a toothbrush, and left the next morning. Friday morning.
I was sat in the pub again, this time with a rucksack at my feet. You know what’s coming now. The clock rolled around to precisely mid-afternoon. In strode the old green man. Familiar march in my direction. Post-man and Jenny watching.
“You were doing it wrong! I’ve figured it out.” He delved into the plastic bag he was carrying and brought out an armful of green material. “You weren’t wearing the clothes. You’ve got to be wearing the clothes. Green, all green. Bright green.” His eyes sparkled as they had done the previous two days. He was excited. So was I. My own suit for our fledgling religion.
The materials were thrust in my direction. Thrust with force. Thrust (to labour a point) with belief.
“Wear them. Then we can spin.” Easier said than done. These were not clothes. They were rags. Brilliant green rags. I stood and took the offering, and did what I could to arrange them on my body. The effect was a sort of cape, with a skirt of green tucked into my belt and hanging about by thighs. I even found a piece that could be tied around my midriff. I looked like a post apocalyptic fashion cousin of the green man. His was a more fitted, conventional outfit. Mine was clearly improvised. But a connection was drawn. There was no doubt I was a green man too.
We marched, both of us, outside. Out to the same beer garden.
We sat. We took out our coins. And we began our ritual. We span.
And we concentrated.
And then the world grew.
The post-man came out and spoke. The first thing I’d ever heard him say other than “a pint of Fosters please, Jenny.”
He said, “What are you guys up to then?”
And he was followed by the un-chatty Jenny. She asked the same question and got the same explanation. I outlined the beauty of the coin. The promise of meaning it held. The importance of being outside. The need for the green outfit.
And the world continued to grow.
The post-man and Jenny talked about our new faith. Debated it. Mocked it gently, good naturedly. I joined in.
The green man (the original one, the one not me) joined in the debate too. He talked of the amazing secrets the spinning coin had revealed to him. He sent me knowing grins at intervals.
All of us, the four of us, we talked. We sat in the beer garden of the pub we’d shared in silence for countless days and we talked.
And then the world grew some more.
After-work pub goers arrived. And they came up to us and they asked questions too. We were a spectacle. Our green outfits. The beer garden we commanded. The show the spinning coins were putting on. They invited queries and they built relationships.
What? You expected some revelation? Some explosive magic? A wise being, descending on our stage and imparting his design for life? A meaning leaping from the spinning coin that was something other?
No. None of that. Just this. Just people. Speaking and debating and engaging. Being entertained. Having an activity. Congregating. Creating their own magic.
The green man eventually stood and left, his prophecy fulfilled. I was none the wiser on what happens after we die. I knew not where the soul of man comes from. Good and evil remained a mystery.
But I knew the meaning of life. I knew that living was it. Trying new things. Creating beauty.
Join our religion.
Wear a strong colour.
Spin a coin.