No need to get up early for work this morning - for which I am very grateful, as it is cold, cold, cold. The kitchen floor has a clammy graveyard chill, and I jig around while coffee brews, to minimise foot/floor contact. I could just go upstairs and find some socks, or some slippers, or both, and perhaps even a jumper, but I don't. I quite enjoy the gritted teeth jig. Coffee made, I bolt back upstairs and to the warmth of my bed, where I get on with the important task of web-based research. I am randomly looking for stuff that will be interesting, life-enhancing, useful, entertaining. Some directionless dithering, and I suddenly remember a friend's documentary that I've been meaning to see. It's about bottle-digging. Which is as it sounds. He goes in search of likely sites where rubbish was dumped in years gone by, and armed with a spade and patience, he rootles out beautiful old glass and earthenware bottles. The film is called 'In Search of Codd'.
A Codd is a mineral water bottle that was in production in the 1870s. It has a marble for a stopper, and is opened by pushing the marble down into the neck, where it's trapped in a valve. Tip the bottle to swig or pour and the marble rolls aside to allow liquid to flow. Right the bottle and the marble settles back into the valve, keeping the fizz in. A beautiful and brilliant design. My fingers itch to go back in time and push a marble, to hear the plop as it breaks free of its rubber seal. The marble ends up captive in the empty bottle. And the bottle ends up smashed by small boys (and no doubt girls - although probably secretly) in order to liberate the marble.
So while many Codd bottles are found on dumps, it's rare to find one intact and with marble. Jerome's dream is to find one. In all his years of bottle-digging, it still evades him. He could, like many bottle collectors, simply buy one. But he wants to FIND one. He's constantly excited by the knowledge that at any point he could be just 'two inches away' from his prize. The triumph, when it comes, will be hard-won and all the sweeter for it. But importantly, it's not all about the outcome. He just loves bottle-digging.
Although the Codd is the ultimate goal, he has a long list and a short list, and finding anything on either of these makes his day. At the end of a fruitless and frustrating dig, he finally unearths a tiny jewel of a poison bottle, and smiles in recognition - 'Oh, it's YOU I was here for...', like it's been waiting patiently for him. The Codd is still elusive, but he has faith it will turn up. Eventually.
This film puts me in a good mood all day. It's slow and charming and full of good things. Hope, and graft, and care and beauty. And a prize that is important but in many ways secondary to the joy of the chase.
Which is how life should be.
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