supermantra

We were on the markets when a tiny, white-haired lady came up to my partner and offered him a brochure. “Save Victoria Park!” she said. He is two metres tall. He looked down at her with his arms full of leafy vegetables and said, very gently, in a deep voice, “I will.” “Oh, thank you!” As I watched, her whole body relaxed. She believed him. She laid her hand trustingly on his upper arm. From the juice stall behind us Bob Marley was still singing, One love… One heart, a song he started singing forty-odd years ago and he has not given it up yet. As we drove home we both had that song caught in our heads. I said, “That lady! She looked up at you so sweetly. ‘Oh! It’s Superman!'” He laughed, singing, filling in the lyrics he didn’t know with only a slight hesitation: “One love, one soul…” “One love, one groove…” All the vegetables nodded on the back seat whenever we went over a bump, frondy and inviting and waiting to be sliced for German soup.