S is for Sweet

Week S | Monday | What’s in a name?

Given that I’ve been publishing this Substack for nearly four years already (!!!!), I thought it was time I explained its name, or at least my understanding of it, anyway. [Brace: quite an autistic post even for me.]

It started with uber-horror film Aliens in the mid-1980s (which I had to watch multiple times in order to really see the whole thing, because I kept hiding behind my hands. Suspense makes me uncomfortably anxious). I do love the film, and especially this scene. The military drumming is such a genius sound choice. Michael Biehn is so beautiful. Most of all, Colette Hiller as ‘Fly Me Friendly’ Ferro is utterly note-perfect.

I loved the phrase “We’re in the pipe, five by five” purely because of the way she says it. It’s iconic. It was many years before I learned what it meant, as military jargon. ‘In the pipe’ is ‘on course’ or ‘as planned’. And ‘five by five’ is an old radio term for the perfection of sound: five out of five for both volume and clarity; that is, loud and clear.

‘Five by five’ cropped up again in the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, as the catchphrase of complex co-slayer Faith. Its meaning had morphed into simply ‘fine’ or ‘great’. I still loved it, but it was many more years before it Dawned on me (see what I did there, Buffy lovers?) that it could refer to other things I find deeply significant.

Birds have five forms of feathers – contour, semiplume, down, filoplume, and rictal bristles – to meet five primary needs: flight, protection, identity, attraction, and concealment. My favourite species of bird, corvids, are often depicted as having five long flight feathers on each wing.

And most humans have five digits on each of the hands they use for surviving, thriving, communicating, and creating wonderful things for themselves and the world.

Many people I’ve known have had tattoos. I had been toying with the idea of getting one since my early 20s, but could never imagine any image on my body that I wouldn’t be bored by within a year. Then, at fifty-two, I was visiting friends in SW France when a cousin of theirs also came to stay. I’ve known her since her teens as a preternaturally talented artist. She’d just come from a tattoo convention in New York, had her tools with her, and made me an incredibly generous offer. After a few days of serious thought, I gratefully accepted. Here and Now, Be and Do – they have those and other names and purposes for me – came into my life, for the remainder of it.

As well as a mindfulness tool, I thought of them as a way to draw a line between a creative and a more corporate life, a commitment to creativity of sorts – not least as it would become harder to get ‘serious’ jobs when having very, very visible tattoos. Then I was headhunted for another job in Saudi Arabia, and needed it. I was living in Thailand, where I found gloves at the market, and bought concealer while waiting for a visa in Bahrain. In fact, many Bedouin women on the programme I managed had tattoos, including on their faces; within a few months some of them had copied my handy birds. (I can’t and don’t expect such a reception here in the UK, mind you).

I grew to love ‘five by five’ so much that I saw it everywhere, and greatly looked forward to being fifty-five. As it turned out, my 55th year was … 2020. So let’s draw a veil over that, mostly, shall we? It could have ended my love affair with 5x5, but didn’t. Even the grit of that abominable year, which started with losing both my parents 18 days apart and carried on inexorably in that vein, formed many pearls.

In July 2021 I was forced by Brexit back to the UK, where I hadn’t lived in seven years and had no home or job. It was only thanks to the kind generosity of Twitter people, including some here, that I was able to do so without it being a nightmare journey.

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet”

✨ William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

On my last evening of the housesitting years I wandered the Marais in Paris for what I thought might be the last time in a long while, scanning the pavement as ever for ephemera to be used in collages. Urban beachcombing. There, glowing warmly in the crepuscular gloom, was a small, rough rectangle of pink paper – a discarded ticket of some sort, possibly from a drycleaners. Or a raffle. Only numbers were visible on it.

Fifty-five. Well, zero-five-five. But then, I’ve long thought of a zero as being a pipe.

Written in invisible ink around the numbers was, “We’re in the pipe, on track, on course, your path and voice loud and clear, it’s fine, you’re good. Fly. All will be well”.

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