Dolphins, art and migration

 

Mum and I stared at this dolphin mural for more than four hours last month when we waited in A&E at the Royal Sussex. It's in a corridor and honestly was little consolation at the time, surrounded by chaos and sickness, a prisoner in manacles, a woman muttering angrily as she walked up and down. But I thought of it this week when I went to a Brighton gym with a friend on a guest pass. There was no-one around to show us how to use the machines but Tony, a maintenance man offered and in between told us about his boat, his pride at keeping the pool so clean and the pod of dolphins that lives between Newhaven and Brighton. 

Years ago (it makes me queasy to think about it) a dolphin was kept captive in Brighton's Sea Life Centre. I associate wild dolphins with wild places, not my crazy, dysfunctional city. But Tony assured the two of us that the pod is growing and were leaping around his boat when he took it out of the marina recently. 

I wish I'd known that staring at the A&E mural, but it's consoling to reflect back. I can't add anything to what's been said about the A&E experience. But I'm joining the gym because Tony was right - the pool's the cleanest I've been in and means I can swim again because the Brighton municipal pools are the dirtiest I've been in and I've missed swimming so much. 

Which takes me to a tiny fridge covered in magnets from holiday destinations from my daughter's exhibition at the Breda Photo Festival . Her lyrical description of the project, A Neighbourhood, asks what constitutes a good immigrant. It's a big subject and the fridge magnets are a small element showing holiday destinations which are also places the Netherlands has colonial links to. Sometimes the big issues of modern living are overwhelming. But I am starting to understand I don't need a plan to make sense, only people, chance encounters, and art's fabulous focus.