Ephemera
m
me
mmm
hum
me humming
me hearing
Sound
me
me seeing
Light
me
feel
me feeling
Touch
me
me tasting
Taste
sweet sour bitter
I am
I know
I float weightless... in what?
I grow
I have no end
I am light I am sound I am matter
What else is there?
There is nothing
I am alone
Empty space surrounds me
I need
I need something
Energy strums through me
It leaves me in flashes of light and matter
These fly from me
I will call them stars
They are myriad
They move together, gather, explode, implode
Become solid
Each one a giant burning mass
Around it lumps of matter
They circle it
They become spheres
They spin
They are rock
They are air
They are water
Elements form
Amino acids, proteins
Forming cells
They divide
They form organisms
These live, grow, change, die
They come from seeds, from spores
They settle
Other creatures come
They live, they move, they eat what is there
The creatures make more in their own likeness
They are myriad like the stars
Some live in earth, some in water, some in air
They are huge, they are large, they are small, they are tiny
They are diverse
Some come from eggs
Some hide their flesh within a shell
Some have bone within and flesh outside
These make more creatures within themselves
The new creatures eat what is there
They grow, reproduce and die
Their bodies return to earth and nourish it
Eons pass
More creatures emerge, change, grow and die
More eons pass
The creatures start to act with purpose
They know each other
They speak to each other
They wonder at the world around them
Together they change the world
They look for meaning
Imagine a being who created them
They imagine me
Now I know who I am
I am god
Another Creation Myth
That the earth was made for all eternity?
That the land and seas would remain unchanged?
Then - we multiplied to be billions;
Now - our planet creaks at its seams.
Over heating; uncontrolled freezing,
Set patterns no longer repeating;
Chaos and uncertainty prevailing
Because we failed to understand.
Too late! We realise our impact.
Too long! We listen to bible and scripture.
That the earth is in the luck of the Gods?
Shirking our human responsibility to act.
Beliefs and stories controlling populations -
Looking the other way while hands pray.
Our planet is creaking at all its seams;
We are waking now to our reality.
And it is bleak.
ANOTHER CREATION MYTH
Lili is full of beans today. Dad is sure she saves up all her energy for when Mum is out.
“Daddy?” She is hopping from foot to foot next to him in the kitchen while he makes (another) coffee, her wonky pigtails flicking wildly.
“What is it, sausage?” He tries to be as enthusiastic as possible, given that she has already asked close to what seems a thousand questions beginning with a long drawn-out ‘daddyyyyyy’ this morning.
“Daddy, where do new babies actually come from and why don’t you and mummy go and get one?” Lili pouts and swings her hips from side to side. She’s very sweet - well, aren’t most four-year-olds? "I want a baby brother or a sister - but more a brother because I think a girl baby might want to use all my things and sometime I don't actually feel like sharing even though sharing is caring."
Dad stops stirring his coffee and smiles to himself. Typical! He gets asked the birds and the bees question while Mum is out, and he has absolutely no idea how to answer his innocent little girl. Has Lili heard them talking? They have discussed the pros and cons of having another child a few times over the past few months. Why has she chosen to ask him right now? What’s the done thing these days? He's caught off guard - mentally prepared for an afternoon of Peppa Pig and (God forbid) glitter, not the intricacies of plausible explanations for the childhood mystery of where babies actually come from. He remembers there was talk of storks and cabbage patches when he was a boy, but surely he didn’t ever believe all that nonsense - hadn’t he always known how babies are made? Deciding this is way too complex an issue to tackle alone, he brushes off the question as best he can.
“Ooh Lily, that’s a brilliant question - so brilliant in fact that I think we should save it for when Mummy comes home!” Dad was impressed with his avoidance and deflection. Parenting pro.
“No, but DADDAY, she’s going to be aaaaages and I want to know about the babies please NOW! not later - Daddy, why won’t you tell me - I don’t want to wait.” Dad sensed a tantrum brewing. Could his parenting skills have already been maxed-out? Could be a problem. Okay - plan B incoming.
“Right, well, babies? So, erm, the babies, the babies all live on a... a planet far far away…”
“No they don’t! They live inside the mummy’s tummies, actually, Daddy. Please don’t lie to me, I’m not silly - you know I'm going to go to big school in Se-tember!”
Lili is a very bright child, always full of questions, absorbing new information with a wide-eyed thirst. So much so that Dad is often overwhelmed by the details his young daughter craves, and he questions his abilities to successfully provide the knowledge she needs. He would usually leave the tricky stuff to Mum - she is so much more adept at navigating what is necessary and appropriate to inject into Lili's young mind. Enough to satisfy them, not too much to swamp them. A tricky balancing act. But the mums talk together about this stuff. They keep abreast of parenting trends, how to answer questions and nurture their children to thrive with healthy bodies and minds. He's been told by Mum not to brush off inquisitiveness or make Lili feel like she's a nuisance. He must provide a response. But what? It's all too much for Dad. He checks his watch. Mum won't be home just yet. It's all on him. Deep breath.
“You’re not silly at all, little Lili! You are a very very clever girl. You’re right - the babies do live inside the mummy’s tummy, but before they get there they start out on a planet that we just see as a star, twinkling away in the sky at night. When the mummy and the daddy really really want a baby, they... they have to wish very hard while looking into the sky - into space, at the planet with the babies on it, it’s called ‘wishing on a star’, and if there’s a baby ready for them, then, then... while the mummy is sleeping, the baby is... is, erm, sent to the mummy, at the speed of light - so fast you can't even see and it lives inside her tummy until it’s big enough to, big enough, erm to, to come out.” Dad has given it his all. Coffee is no longer strong enough this afternoon. Come home quick! He silently implores.
“How? Daddy that’s silly!”
Dad had to admit, it did sound silly. But it's the best he has. He's pretty sure that telling a four year old the realities about how babies are made is not ‘PC’.
“Maybe we can talk to mummy about it when she comes home - she won’t be long,” Dad just wants to drink his coffee and hopefully watch the football, if Lili will let him. He quickly sends Mum a text:
LILI ASKING ABOUT HOW BABIES ARE MADE. TOLD HER THEY COME FROM A PLANET WHEN YOU WISH ON A STAR. PLEASE BACK ME UP WHEN SHE ASKS SHE SMELLS A RAT & I DON’T KNOW WHAT I SHOULD BE TELLING HER! HELP! X
Mum arrives home an hour later. Dad has assumed Lili has forgotten all about where babies come from and is relaxing in front of the TV while his daughter plays with her toys on the floor.
“So, Lili! Have you had a fun time with Daddy today?” Mum shoots dad a smile and an eyebrow rise - she’s testing to see if Lili mentions the babies.
“Mummy!” Lili jumps up and runs over to hug her mum. “Daddy told me babies come from Outers Pace on a planet, and when you wish hard enough on a star, the baby flies through the air at the speed of lightening and lands in the mummy’s tummy. Is that true, mummy? I said it was a silly story and I want you and daddy to get a baby so if it’s true please can you make sure you wish hard enough. Does it hurt when the baby gets into your tummy? Or are you fast asleep and you just wake up with a big tummy and you just know that the baby got in there?”
Mum can't help but laugh while hugging Lili and rolling her eyes at dad. He mouths ’sorry’ and mimes shooting himself in the head.
“Oh Lily, well, it is a bit true. I think Daddy is a little confused. He’s right - the mummy and the daddy do have to wish together, very hard,” at this she winks at Dad and smiles flirtatiously, “and if they are lucky then a baby will start to grow in the mummy’s tummy. But I don’t think they have to come from a planet or outer space or anything like that. Maybe Daddy has been watching too much rubbish on the TV?”
“Yes, Daddy, you do watch a lot of rubbish on the TV, that’s true. You have to be very careful what you believe Daddy there’s a lot of nonsense out there, isn’t there, Mummy?” Mum and Dad are both in hysterics while Lili reprimands Dad in such a serious tone.
In the evening, with Lili successfully bathed, read to and now tucked up in bed, Mum and Dad finally have time to themselves.
“You’ve been in a good mood since you came home, love - I take it you had a good time with Jen and Hattie?"
"Well, actually, I didn't see Jen or Hattie today. I had an appointment that I needed to go to," Mum looks sheepish as Dad frowns.
"What appointment? Where?"
"I took a test the other day - the line wasn't clear..."
"Test..?" Dad's confusion starts to dissipate, his frown widens out into happy disbelief.
“I needed the doctor to confirm - I’m eight weeks!"
Another day, another puny kid trying to punch him on the mouth. Deftly, from years of practice, Dan pinned him to the floor, cuffed his hands behind his back, taking the same time as swatting a fly. This was a minor irritation.
He’d sweated up 20 flights of stairs under his hard hat and heavy police jacket, to switch off a light in a top floor apartment that might guide an enemy plane in the dark. Planes had hit a skyscraper in the financial district at midday.
It was the last one on his patch. Usually on Wednesday evening he coached football at a boys home nearby. After this, he’d drop by and see how they were doing.
Catching his breath, he went along the corridor, towards the light. He knocked, pushed the door open, calling out, “Police” in the hall. Rap music was playing. He called out again and entered the room.
The musty smell made him fear the worse.
Green hair was poking above an armchair. Looked like a child’s toy at first. As he went further into the room he saw a slight figure slumped underneath, a pale face accentuated by dyed spiky hair. The light from the TV reflected off eyebrow and nose studs, above baggy jacket, grey t-shirt and jeans.
The figure was absorbed in a computer game on the screen. Beside the chair an empty pot noodle lay on its side next to crumpled coke cans and half a chocolate bar.
Dan stood in front of him, gently tapping his shoulder to get his attention. The boy flicked his eyes to him and back over Dan’s shoulder to the screen.
“You have to evacuate, son.” Dan said, “Can we turn this off?”
The boy shrugged and continued playing. Dan switched off the power socket.
Dan had the boy’s attention now. He stood and punched upward at Dan’s mouth.
While the boy was pinned down, he shouted in high pitched voice that Dan shouldn’t have put the screen off. Next he was angry that Dan was infringing his human rights, he needed to get his ipad and phone before they left.
He refused to walk. Dan carried him to the stairwell.
“What’s your name? “
The boy replied “Alex”.
“It’s up to you, Alex, want to walk down?” Dan said. Alex didn’t want to do anything this man said but it was less humiliating than being carried. Alex nodded sulkily.
Dan unfastened the handcuffs at the next floor. Alex grabbed the handrail and they moved quicker.
At Floor 10 Alex was gasping. Who used the stairs in the 21st century. He needed to breathe and drink water.
“Got to keep going”, Dan urged.
“More Police brutality,” Alex grumbled.
On the 5th floor, Dan asked, “You seen the news today? “.
Alex hadn’t.
“There was a terrorist attack in the financial district. It’s chaos outside.”
Alex shook his head.. “My dad works there. He’d have phoned. More bull shit.”
They were distracted by a bang shaking the building, then a loud booming noise. Dan shoved Alex in the corner of the stairwell, covering him with his body.
Another boom and another shake. They stayed still for a minute, holding their breath. Even so, Alex gagged on the smell of Dan’s sweat, far too close and personal.
Smokey dust and a few bricks fell down on them. Dan put his respirator on. Whatever happened was not good.
Alex did not expect the energy rush. He’d been bored, killing time until Dad got home. Hardly noticed Dan was there at first. Now it was all too vivid, choking dust, falling rubble, a broken handrail clattering down the stairwell . He ached from the crouching position he’d been in. He’d survived. It was the best day ever.
They moved as soon as things were still. Dan handed Alex a cloth from his pocket to cover his nose and mouth. Maybe the big smelly brute had blown his nose on it but Alex was coughing from the dust and tied it on.
As they neared the atrium, the air was smokier. Dan signalled Alex to get behind and stay close.
The tall glass panels of the entrance lay cracked, broken glass s everywhere on the ground. Burning paper circled around the currents in the dusty fog.
They skirted the edge of the floor to the outside. The smell of burning was getting stronger. It was dark except for the orange glow of fires. Flaming debris was falling. Alex jumped away when a small piece stung his arm. He rubbed out the smouldering with the other sleeve.
Alex’s legs were heavy. His eyes were tired from seeing a way over uneven ground. They looked back from a safe distance. The top two floors had collapsed downwards onto the building.
Dan’s radio did not work.
They paused beside the stream of weary people making their way on the road.
“Maybe I should wait for my Dad,” Alex suggested. He needed to sit on the kerb and not go any further.
“No, kid. Better come with me.” Dan firmly led him on. Where to, Alex wondered.
I’ll take you to a home for boys about a mile from here. They’ll find you a bed for the night.”
“What? “ AIex shreaked.
“What’s wrong with that?”
“A home for boys?” Alex said, “Only thing wrong with that is I’m not a boy.”
“No plan’s perfect.” Dan replied, firmly pushing Alex along the road.
I Am, Am I?
A dweller of forest
Puts her hand to the wall
And presses the ochre in.
She is, she is, she is.
A binary creation
Steals all that it can touch
And tries to create art.
The hands are all wrong.
“You see I’ve known him since he was a boy. Just a little one, fourteen or so. He was a tall lanky thing back then, didn't fit into his feet. His job at the shop was running errands. Whatever anyone needed, he did that. Go pick up some new material, run over to the clients’ house to help with set up, mind the shop for an hour or so. So yeah I known him many many years ago, probably forty I'd guess. I tell you what I feel those years--feel them in my joints. Doesn't get easy being old. But yeah, he ran the errands. Didn't know him that well though. He was quiet, showed up on time till he didn't. Got in trouble once for bringing a girl around the shop late at night. Oh boy did Tom--you know, the boss at the time, the one that made the company into what it is today--Tom did flip a lid on that poor little boy. Went on and on about honesty, chivalry, respect. Woof. Poor little boy didn't have the ears or the spine for that kind of thing. Off and quit the next week, although he never did actually tell Tom. Sorry, what was it again you asked?"
"We asked if you would consider attending the event next month—at the State Fair. Come meet with Mr. Stone, then go up on stage and shake his hand."
"Oh, yeah. That. I always did love going to those state fairs. You ask me, now it's a lot of junk for sale for the most part but the pigs they got are bigger now. Don't know how they manage that. Brought my granddaughter's last year, but my son said they couldn't make it this year what with school starting earlier and all over there."
"...So the fair? Would you consider attending? Mr. Stone would just love to get to meet you again. He really values local business. He says you taught him a lot about hard work."
"I taught him about hard work? Is that what he said? Well I'll be damned, didn't know I left that good of an impression. Tell you what, if I could do that much teaching on that short of a timeline with my kids, they'd be a lot wiser than they are now. Don't tell them I said that though. They are plenty smart, those ones. Not wise yet, they need a couple more years and hard knocks, though I hope they don't get any. I got a kid who teaches science, a captain in the Navy, and a poet. Can you even believe that? How could that come from a guy who sells furniture for a living. God really does work miracles. But yeah, I talked to the wife and we plan on going to the fair. The Warners--well you probably know the Warners since you seem to know quite a bit about the shop--they'll be at the fair, and their grandkids do a lot with all the animals so we'll be there to support them."
"Oh, that's great to hear you'll be at the fair! Mr. Stone's election event is at 4 pm on Saturday--we'd really love if you'd be able to make it."
"Sure, sure. Gotta support the local boy I suppose."
"Excellent, thank you so much! We'll send over the details, get it all set up. It really is so important to Mr. Stone that people understand how deep his community ties are here. He's here to ensure your voices are heard over in Washington, and every bit of support you give, especially your time, we are so grateful for."
"Sure thing, Jesse. Your name was Jesse, right?"
"Yes, sir."
"Well, happy to be helpful, Jesse. I gave you my daughter's email address, right? Send over the details?"
"Absolutely. Thank you so much."
"Thank you and have a good night."
....
"I swear to God, Ken, if I have to talk to any more of these decrepit connections from Stone's past I'm going to die."
"Damn, Jesse. Little dramatic?"
"I have to listen to them ramble on about their kids for an hour, just for a single moment on stage that's going to spend two seconds on the news to convince everyone that Stone's a 'man of the people'. He better win for this to be worth it."
"Hard to argue with the money pouring in to the campaign, but I'm sure the photo op will help as well. Remember, build the bootstrap story, ignore the trust fund. Gotta get the blue collar vote."
Moonbow
In the night he speaks: of tearing delusions down, creating an empty box and
refilling it with big probabilities.
In the night I think: the human soul’s taken a tumble. amidst the loss of petal throwers, celebrants, incense burners,
methodist missionaries with their grand songs, candle lighters, prayers, and Indian gurus.
And what about all those illuminated saints? Or prophets ascending, descending, walking the face of the earth.
Or Rainbow serpents colouring the world red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet?
these distillers of myth— for the millions who cling to a creation story.
In the night I stare: into hollow black as a moonbow
lights up the lunar corner
throws a few naturalist ideas my way; spins a galaxy tale or two of how things might
have started in a big bang
it lures me into my cellular self—
igniting a nuclear reaction of hot gases stuck together—
my pattern forming in random acts of copulation
across the never end of patient cosmos time
In the night I dream: Gaga with immensity
pale lights switching on across my face,
tweaking synapses of hope -
for even without a Santa there are presents.
THE LAST MAN ON EARTH
Problems and worries forgotten for the moment, the last man on Earth sat down in his comfortable, cushioned armchair. He placed his feet on a stool and warmed his toes in front of the study fire. Gradually slipping into a gentle slumber he was awoken by the door opening.
“What is it?”
“Sorry to disturb you, Mark, but I’m not sure what to do about Geraldine. I’m rather worried.”
“What’s the trouble this time? Honestly Esther, why do I have to deal with everything
around here?”
“I just want a man’s view point on this. As you’re the only one left, I have no-one else to turn to. You are also her father.”
Mark sighed. Geraldine again. Why isn’t she as placid as Evelyn or his nephew Adam? Once again he wondered at the miracle that Adam was staying with them when it all kicked off.
“Okay, okay. What’s wrong this time?”
“She wants to be called Gerald.”
“And that’s a problem? Lots of people want to shorten their names.”
“No, that’s not the problem.”
“Come on, Esther. I have got work to do.”
“Mark, I’m not sure how to put this but, she wants to be a boy.”
“A boy?”
“Yes. She will never have babies, wants to have her hair cut short, wear trousers all the time and a football for Christmas.”
“What? I knew we shouldn’t have called her Geraldine. I don’t like to speak ill of the dead but this is your mothers’ fault. I should have stuck to my guns and called her Charlotte.”
“But, Adam that’s…”
“No buts about it Esther. I can’t get involved with this. You’re the mother, deal with it.”
“Mark! You stupid man. Listen to me for once in your life. My goodness the phrase
‘If you were the last man on earth I wouldn’t marry you’, keeps coming to mind.
The trouble is you are and I am, married to you I mean. So I’m stuck with it. Oh, what are we going to do? Why has this burden been put upon us? Why were we chosen and no-one else?"
“Now, come on Esther. You know why. I always said the internet was the devil’s eye.
O yes! I knew alright. Remember how you kept on about the fact that we ‘needed the internet? The children would use it for their homework. Everyone was getting it. The whole world had it’? Aren’t you glad that I said ‘no-way’? Otherwise, the virus would have entered
our home. We would have perished with the rest of the world. Now, pull yourself together. It will soon be dinner time. Can I smell beef? I’ll open a bottle of red. That will cheer you up.”
“But, Mark. What I want you to realize is, that if Geraldine wants to be a boy it means that there is only Adam and Evelyn left to father a whole new nation.”
“Well, I can’t see any problem with that Esther. After all. It’s been done before…”
2.
By Al'S Mam
whatever he did or didn't do
It was all okay by Al's mam
Her blue-eyed bundle weighing five ponds six ounces,
Cocooned in an incubator with little tributary tubes,
Cradled in the arms of a buxom girl
Barely wet behind the ears
She was Jenny the neonatal nurse
the one Al's mam came to resent.
Her blue-eyed bundle didn't suckle
Didn't feed from her
Like all the others in the line
The ones her large breasts enveloped as they drank her milk in a huge hunger.
This one was held by a young one
with no bairns of her own
She chafed at the bit
Resisted the urge to TENTACLE HER ARMS
And reach in behind the perspex glass
to pull him to herself
This last one in the line,
The runt of her litter needed breasts,
The stream of mothers' milk.
When he cried, she did too inside
But gagged it on the outside
She would have shrunk for him
Alice in Wonderland down the perspex
rabbit hole
Just for a tentative feed
Their first communication chord
And real placental shattering.
So from the day she and he were truly
introduced
And she counted fingers and toes on a
maternal abacus
A kiss for every digit,
She made a pact with God
Leave him to me this time and
Whatever he does is fine.
She spoiled her six foot runt,
Still kissing his teenage toes.
And he scanned every street corner
For his Ma,
Wiped the dusty bar seats in the pub.
The Queen must never sit in dust.
He'd bear her on a litter through
Glasgow town,
if she would but allow,
And you know she would,
Because everything he did
Was fine by Al's Mam
I started at PricewaterhouseCoopers on the same day as Gavin. We were both on the Management Consultancy program but in different teams. Gavin didn’t look or sound like a twat, which I suppose is what disarmed me initially. He was good-looking and confident, dressing to impress and grooming himself to match.
We were only an open-plan section of the office floor away from each other. We both had our own social areas and kitchen, so there was no real need for our paths to cross. But he liked to use our fridge as an overflow, popping in his deli meats which he would then cram between two layers of posh bread. Once he sliced up a stonebaked Kalamata and Halkidiki Olive Batard. I pointed at the packaging and asked him if he’d been to private school. He slapped me on the back, a little too vigorously, chuckling softly. He told me he’d boarded at Repton, but they’d never had bread like that. And with a flash of his Union Jack cufflinks, he was gone.
Over the first few weeks in the job, I grew to like him. On our second or third night out he offered me coke in the toilets of The Queen’s Head. We’d been drinking hard since finishing work, and it was nearly kicking out time. He leant back away from the urinal next to mine as if he was abseiling with an invisible rope, one hand on his member, the other extended towards me with a white line over the back of the thumb. Joseph, he said. Have summa dat. I declined, and he shrugged before stowing away little Gav and then smoothly inhaling the party talc. That night, at a bijou and naughty little club in the West End, we became Riggs and Murtough, partners in (solving) crime and (management) consultancy. Lethal Weapons. The ladies did not know what hit ‘em.
The year went through peaks and troughs of intensity at work, only assuaged by our full-on social grandstanding. Christmas, we went out on a predictably massive festive bender. I knew Gavin was probably after the team leader job I’d been eyeing up, and after a few beers and a wrap of speed in the bogs, I stupidly moved my cards away from my chest.
‘Have you given much thought to the team leader job?’ I shouted in his ear.
Gavin looked askance at me, his face bathed in scrolling bars of purple and white. ‘About as much thought as I’ve given to becoming a monk.’
‘Why not? You’d be good,’ I said, nodding sincerely.
He turned to look at me properly. Ignored the question. ‘Aren’t you going for it?’
‘We-ell,’ I slurred and made a face. ‘Maybe. It’s a shitload more money, and I’ve got to keep up with your posh twat lunches. Yeah. Why not?’
Gavin laughed, suddenly seeming more sober. ‘Good for you. The reason I’m not going for it is because I’ve been riding a wave of farts and piss for…well, pretty much since I’ve been born. Things can’t keep getting better for me automatically, and - ’
‘- shut the France. Get the door, the front one,’ I interrupted, insistent. ‘You say all the right things and know all the right people. Guppy Thumb? Jackie P? I don’t even know their real names. You, you’re - ’
‘Joseph. It’s not happening. Come on, let’s go to the WC pharmacy and forget about it.’
So I stopped trying to persuade him about the job. And he offered me coke again. Except this time, I took it. Snorted it right off the cistern. And he was in the cubicle with me, telling me he didn’t want me to throw a whitey as it was my first time. I didn’t notice his phone out. As it must have been.
So in the new year, when it came time for my interview, I got two emails about different things. Neither about the job. One, a notice of dismissal pending investigation of drug usage on a work night out. And two, a line – just a line - from Gavin.
Sorry, buddy. I guess things have to keep getting better after all.
For Better or Worse
Life, like marriage is for better or for worse. One informs the other. So here’s my story, condensed into an hour of frantic telling…..
My father was a violent alcoholic, gave my mother years of hell almost killing her in the end. Domestic violence was so often hidden in the 1950s, but with our doctor’s help she managed to divorce him. My father then disappeared, returning later to our small rented flat to attack my mother in the lounge with a brass candlestick. Sounds like a Cluedo scenario, but this was no game. I was five years old but I still remember the blood stains by the light switch.
We lived above the ‘Bamboo Coffee Bar’ with throbbing jukebox and revving motorbikes outside. The adjoining bakery sent armies of cockroaches under cover of darkness. To and from the toilet, I could feel them crunching beneath the threadbare strip of carpet on the landing.
Even now, I recall the sound of my father’s fists, pounding my mother to a bloody pulp outside my bedroom door. Refusing to submit, she simply looked him in the eye, in silence. That made him even worse. He wanted to defeat her, dominate her, crush her, making up for his own inadequacies. But she would not be vanquished. She had survived the death of her first husband after just six months of marriage, an eighteen year old a war bride and war widow rolled into one. She survived that and would survive this.
Early memory: My father coming in, drunk as usual, grabbing a chip pan off the lit stove and throwing it at my mother, just missing her and passing clean over me, before hitting the wall.
Mum would keep his evening meal in the oven, waited for him to get in from the pub – God help her if she didn’t. God help her if she did and it was dry. Of course it was dry and he’d throw his plate of food across the room then turn his attention to her.
After the candlestick attack, he finally disappeared for good.
Things had to get better.
A period of calm ensued. My mother concentrated on her job at Ogla’s hairdressing salon. She established a loyal clientele. (She was a natural cutter, later training an international champion.) When I was seven, she bought me a special present……… a private education, and for herself, an Austin Mini, 156KTU, one of the very first off the production line. That weekend, we went to Blackpool in it, parked on the front and returned to a crowd that had gathered round. At first, we thought there’d been an accident, but no. They’d just never seen a mini before. I felt so proud.
Thing were getting better.
I was a day-boy at school, taking myself each day, unaccompanied, in a red carriage on a black and heaving steam train. That first week Mum made me travel first class and I sat, surrounded by silent bowler hats and towering broadsheets. With my school cap firmly on my head and my satchel on my knee, I held up my cardboard ticket with FIRST printed on it. At the end of that week I pleaded with her to let me go second class and she relented. Relief!
Things were getting better.
Two years later we’d moved into a small semi, Mum having established her own salon by then. I got my first bike and cycled to the station every day. If I had passed my eleven plus I would have gone to the local grammar school and relieved my mother of financial burden. But she never pressured me. Despite my exam failure, she let me stay on where I was, without a word of criticism or sign of disappointment. I never understood the sacrifices she made. I had pocket money for the first time, a penny-ha’penny each day to spend in the school tuck shop on a blackcurrant lolly to last the day while accumulating fluff in my jacket pocket.
What could be better?
When I was a little older My mother did, however, sometimes, almost in despair, say, “I work my fingers to the bone for you.” And she did. I remember her arriving home at about 8 pm approaching Christmas with fingers stained almost black and split and sore from perming solution and spikey rollers.
She expanded the business, developed her reputation and bought herself a white BMW, a real ‘hairdresser’s car’ with a black vinyl roof.
Things were getting better.
When I was twelve she sent me to night-school at the local Conservative Club to learn how to type. There, at the Willy Scheidegger School of Typing I was marooned amongst a clacking room of women tackling the arcane art of ten finger touch typing. Once I had achieved forty-five words a minute I baled out of the dog-fight, the sound of typewriters like Messerschmitt machine guns ringing in my ears. But if it hadn’t been for Herr Willy, I doubt if I would be so comfortable at this keyboard now. Skills learned young are more easily maintained.
Things were getting better.
At school I had an English teacher who inspired me, praising my awful creative writing, full of hyperbole and verbosity. He even encouraged my poetry which was just as bad. (He also let some of us play cards in his precious ‘Poetry Room’ at lunchtime. He certainly knew how to create bright young writers.) Years later I tried unsuccessfully, to track him down to thank him. I wish I’d tried harder. Later, I became an English teacher myself and I know what it’s like to get lovely messages from ex-pupils, out of the blue.
Makes everything seem better.
Frustrated by bureaucracy and educational jargon, but with a supportive wife and two great kids, I left teaching, to become a professional artist and found a way of successfully blending my art and poetry and, for many years, I travelled the country selling my work at events.
So things got better.
But…. then a setback with a silver lining.
I had a serious road traffic accident, suffering multiple injuries, which put an end to my peripatetic business. The day I came out of hospital (Nov 2022) I wrote my first really decent short story and I have been writing about six hours a day since then, trying to make up for the time I ‘lost’ as an artist rather than a writer. Now the dictionary has become my palette. I find all the words I need are there, ready for rearranging. Less profitable but at least as rewarding.
So things get even better.
My wife and I are blessed with four amazing, ridiculous and funny grandchildren and it is for their future selves I write. Last week I won the Cheshire Prize for Literature with a story, ostensibly, for children. But it is for the child in all of us that I write. My wife’s support has been fundamental to my progression and I can’t thank her enough for putting up with me and my obsessional drive. So, I sit here at the keyboard daily, until the sound of ‘Pointless’ from the kitchen interrupts and I know I’m needed to lay the table.
So things get better and success has come out of adversity.
Although, I do wonder how, in the case of Hour of Writes, a piece of writing that scores 95% (see ‘Soliloquy for a Rotting Apple’ in ‘ephemera’) is disregarded in the final judging when the winning entry scored 62%, questioning the value of the peer review process. It seems almost as pointless as the TV programme that brings my daily writing to a close. So, with that comment, churlish as it may be, I won’t expect too much from this piece and I certainly wouldn’t offer it as a submission had I not one stored credit left to spend.
But still, I have thoroughly enjoyed submitting over the past couple of years. Hour of Writes is a great idea. Writing to a prompt and under pressure is an interesting challenge and marking has forced me to unearth my rusty English examiner skills.
So, I wish everyone well on their personal writing journeys and may things always get better for you as, on the whole, they did for me.
The brown envelopes pile up on the table like a giant deck of cards nobody wants to play with. You'll get in trouble, they say; it's better to know, they say. Yeah, Yeah, I say. The letters are not going anywhere, are they? I'll open them when I do. Will things get better if I open them?
I veer towards the kettle instead, the old, dependable, limescaled kettle. The tea stains on the last clean mug on the kitchen shelf mark the hours of worry and misery, but it's the last one now. The dishes in the sink are piled high, stacked precariously, and ignored for weeks, just like the damn brown envelopes. It will get better once they are washed and back on the shelf, won't it? That's what they say: clean house, clear mind. I've tried it.
The shuffling marks on the dirty linoleum floor created a path between the makeshift bed on the sofa, the front door and the kitchen, a deeply settled daily routine no floor cleaner can wipe away. At least I can follow the shiny and smooth trail of despair to a way out of here and hope without hope that things will get better.
Things Get Better
2000
University life has been in full swing for a couple of years. Here I am now in our favourite pub, again, housemates and course mates filling all the space around the largest table in the place. Laughter and chatter reverberates. I love this. I am myself. My twenty year old self, blossoming into the full person I always knew I would become. This lifestyle of learning and discovering and sharing fills my soul to the brim.
Hungry now, it's getting late. Time for the usual chicken burger and chips 'special' - it's good and it's cheap. I wait for my housemates to collect their orders and we walk the seven minute stroll back to our house. From the outside our house looks solid and quite grand in its mid-terrace position. But there's no mistaking the student accommodation status once you ascend the deep steep steps to the front door. Peeling paint; cracked glass panes; stained thin carpet in the hallway. The heavy fire doors in the entryway to each room we're supposed to keep closed at all times. I smile to myself as I walk inside, jostling with my friends, bantering about ketchup or mayo. Life is such fun.
My room is the smallest and probably the messiest. I don't have much, but what I do have is usually strewn around the floor in disorganised piles of clean, worn a few times, and definitely dirty. It's gross - but it's my gross. My single bed sags in the middle where the slats under the mattress need sorting out, and I don't have proper curtains - just an old pashmina scarf I found abandoned in the pub one day. My shelves have always been wonky - could be the floor? And there's no knob on my little bedside cabinet drawer. This is my space, my home from home, my piece of the planet to rest and think and be. All I can feel is a wave of contentment - I am free to start my life any way that I like.
2005
After my university years I got a job - and a boyfriend. We moved into a flat together in the suburbs, away from the endless streets of brick terraces surrounding the city centre. I learned all sorts of new life skills such as putting away clean clothes, cooking from scratch, getting up hours before I need to leave the house to clean the bathroom, pay bills, plan meals for the week and unload the dishwasher.
At first I found this new lifestyle - and definite improvement to my bank balance, extremely exciting! I said goodbye to all my old cheapest of the cheap kitchen appliances - the dodgy kettle and even dodgier toaster; the broken but still usable corkscrew, and the sandwich toaster that had lost the clip to hold it together. We bought a new divan bed - kingsize! and shopped for bedding. Debts racked up on credit cards were paid off, and only agreed sensible necessary purchases were now put on credit or delayed payment schemes. I was now a proper grown up, with a weekly schedule, socialising only at the weekend, and an actual bedtime.
2030
After marriage we continued to work on our careers and decided to do the sensible thing and build a strong home and financial foundation before venturing into parenthood. The children are teens now.
I became mum to a son and daughter. We could afford all the things they say you should have for a baby - and more. Our detached house in a picturesque village could have been straight out of 'Home and Country' magazine. To the outsider looking in, we were living the dream. The perfect life.
Our amazing 'dream home' had the parquet floors and bespoke farmhouse kitchen - that traditional-yet-contemporary style that people go crazy for. Enormous TVs in the main living room, and the 'den' (for the kids); high-end appliances galore; en-suite bathrooms; loft conversion; solid oak doors - we were in the position that we could more or less mould the house to anything we set our desires upon.
And me? Well, I lived each day for everybody else. I loved my family more than anything and I appreciated my beautiful home and all the things I could fill my life with. But being 'mum' depletes your individuality. It is a heavy role laden with responsibility, sacrifice and expectations. I became a slave to my children - and my husband (as his career continued while mine declined). I felt my sense of 'me' slipping away, seeping into the walls.
2050
I'm an old lady now. My children have careers and families of their own and have moved abroad. My husband died suddenly two years ago.
Here I am, alone, in my perfect home, filled with a treasure trove of beautiful things - works of art; bespoke furniture; the gadgets and technology my children impose on me so I can keep in touch with them wherever they are in the world.
The cleaner comes more often than she needs to. I enjoy her company and we spend hours chatting. I also go to the hairdresser in the village for regular blow-dries and sets, just to have an excuse to socialise a little. I am often complimented on my beautiful home as though it is the bricks and mortar we live within and the contents inside that define our place in the world.
I think back to my younger days and remember the lightness and happiness of the freedom I had. A permanent sense of adventure prevailed with the excitement of what each day might bring. My daysDrinking warm beer and scrimping change together to be able to get something to eat on the walk home. Sharing cigarettes and eating the cheapest bread, picking off specks of mould. I had nothing back then. But I had everything. I smile to myself.
The lunar valley cradles me. Parallel lines that peak with sharp shadow edges and soft pools of dust that settle in low hollows occupy my nearest vision. This sector is a landscape devoid of color. It blurs to monochrome grey as I stare beyond.
A distance so vast that even though I journeyed it I cannot feel it gapes before me. Everything inside me calls to the void. This ache, this ache. Needles stab outwards from my heart.
I beg for the laws of physics to unravel themselves. For the atoms around me to unleash their quantum rules into our realm. For gravity to abandon its steadfast post, let go its embrace, and allow me to float freely away from it all.
Past my body and the valley, sitting in the middle of the void, the source of this pain: Earth. Earth and what happened there. What is still happening. A puddle of gravity surrounds it, keeping the halo of debris close like a coveted crown.
How did we do this to ourselves? It is the question we've been trying to answer even before it happened. Since before we knew it was possible. And here we are, empty handed.
I scream, the sound isolated inside my helmet; waves crash against its transparent face and back to my ears, a tree falling in a forest.
My god, my god.
My mother would have filled in the rest for me. But she is down there, and I am up here.
Grief suffocates without atmosphere. It is contained to my form and insurmountable because of it. The oxygen I breathe is sterile, unsympathetic.
Somewhere in my mind I hear the training: slow, shallow breaths. Conserve what you have.
Breathe in. Do not think about it. Breathe out. Close your eyes, don't look. In. Feel the moon beneath your feet. Out.
Out. Out.
Alarms begin to sound, messages for me that start as a friendly beep and crescendo to a wailing siren. The monitors attached to my body tell the life sustaining systems that SHE IS NOT OKAY.
I gasp, suddenly desperate, and pull in what now tastes like fresh mountain air. Slowly the cacophony of reminders to live die away again.
A hand touches my shoulder. It is familiar, and I reach up to grasp it with my own thick gloved hand.
"Amy." The voice sounds funny filtered through the radio. Far more serious than how I'm used to hearing it, playing card games at the station, cracking jokes while doing chores, telling stories at dinner.
He sits beside me, staring out into the same void, at the same form of the waning Earth.
"It will be okay."
I almost lose my balance on the ground as I whip around at him, anger gripping me. I want to rip off his helmet and look into his eyes. I want to show him how it will not ever be okay again, how it is over, but all I see is the reflection of the void and the earth in his visor.
As quickly as the anger descended, a wild, chaotic mirth travels outwards. Loud, high pitched hyena laughter bursts from my chest, trapped in my helmet but for the escape over the radio to Ben. He remains motionless.
My laughter consumes minutes, tearing a deep hole inside me. It is gone, it is gone. It is all gone.
And then I am done. What is left in the wake of the grief and the anger and the mania is silence.
"It will be okay." Ben says again.
And in this stillness, I feel it could be true. Maybe not for us, but for someone, someday, somewhere. My breath again comes shallow, slow. Like it should.
I rest my head on Ben's shoulder. He leans on me.
From across the void, I feel it. The soft heartbeat of humanity that has sustained us from the beginning. Its rhythm is slow, but not yet yielding.
Things are bad. They will get better in the same way they get worse. In my bones I know it. Things are as they always were. It is a world without end, without beginning.
Things get better. They get better. They get better.
I close my eyes and breathe in.
I'm sitting here, waiting for my PhD thesis to print.
What a thing of complete retrospection to be doing on a Monday night. I will never live up to the idea of Scientist, because the left side of my brain scratches and spins against the rules and regulations of an experiment. The creativity to create the technique, the meticulous thought of hypothesis--these are left unacknowledged in my acknowledgements section.
I sit and I wait for the printer to do its one job.
The stairs in this building are designed to look like DNA as they wind upwards.
The act of printing is going to be the only action in this...poem. Essay. Rant. Whistling into the wind.
At the end of a PhD, there is only endings. Oh, you know you're about to move to Seattle to work your dream job as a cancer researcher. You know you'll be close to friends and family again. You can smell the campfire that you'll build in late September, and the pine warm in the sun. You remember all this future yearning? Yet, there is the ending, ending, ending, thunderous in the background veins, pumping toward the end, surging towards the shoal, mixing all the metaphors.
Galway will be the end of me. And, I suppose, that as an American I will never be more Irish than experiencing the act of leaving Ireland, and of yearning for her shores months and years from now. The diaspora was real, and I am a continuation of it four generations after my grandparents. Great-great. How many years pass before you forget the name of your childhood? How many years before pints are not a drawback to my thesis, to this ponderous study period, when I researched a protein called ZC3H14?
The printer is still printing, and I am still yearning.
A monstera plant has been moved to the second floor. Beata, the building manager, loves plants, and now the whole building is bursting with greenery. She started planting after the lockdown, when she was brining life back to the empty hallways. There were whole days where she planted and repotted her cuttings. Spider plants, snake plants, fly traps placed cleverly near the Drosophila lab. Can you imaging making the world so much better, so consistently, and in the face of disapproval of the budget holders? I suspect my budget holders have never approved.
Five years in a lab, with the twirling learning of nucleic acids, and all I can say for certain is this: ZC3H14 is phosphorylated by ATM after DNA damage occurs. It is a substrate, in this substrate-driven world. The proteins, they pass messages like students in grade school, hand-to-hand, spreading word like gossip, saying hey! Something here is broken! The good ones ask to send aid, the bad, they propagate negativity, crowding the one who is laying in a puddle of her own tears.
I am afraid that clichés exist only to the young. I want the PhD to become so common that it can become cliché, yet I don't want my degree to become obsolete. How can everyone not want to learn, their whole life? How can that not be the goal?
The printer printed the first copy. I want three--one for each examiner, and one for me to reference when in my Viva.
I know well that my worst writing habit is a lack of action. I am a poet, but not a story teller. Have you made it this far? How much further are you willing to go? I am only thirty minutes into waiting for the printer, only thirty minutes into writing. How much random shit can I get onto the paper in the meantime? Isn't that the joy in life? Or is it the job? Have I made it five years into my PhD? Have I passed the hurdles enough to come to the next ones?
Oh. My sister wrote a short story that is better than any I have read. Think Jonathan Seagull, but in magical human terms rather than philosophical seagull. The story is called "Pushing the Boulder," and its about growing up pushing a rock, being proud to push the bigger rock when its your turn, learning to push a squared rather than rounded boulder, pushing it and becoming stronger the character's whole life, becoming burnt out when people expect you to do it and no longer offer praise. Of course its a metaphor, and on explanation the metaphor is obvious to me, printing out my PhD thesis. Stop pushing the boulder just because you can; find fulfilment in walking away from the boulder; don't be dependent on 'good jobs' from others caught up in the pain of their own lives. But, when reading this story, this clear meaning is somehow distilled and clear yet not directly allegorical. There's a better word--not directly preachy. It is an allegory, in the same way that Plato's Allegory of the Cave is allegory.
I think, because I asked earlier what the point is without continuous learning, I think that both my boulder and my fear is a life without learning. What if my PhD has been so specific that it has dug me deeper into the cave, rather than turning my head to my right? What if, when I see my friends, they're all in chains, and the call of the wild from behind me is calling in the clear light of day?
What do I want?
Do I want Knowledge, or do I want to be Kind?
Because, I think above all, I want to be kind, I want to be kind, I want to be kind. And I want my thesis to print, without becoming bogged in retrospection. And I want action to lift me forward into my life. And I want to be kind, not just to others (that's easy), but to myself, with my thoughts and my insecurities and my five-pound theses that I will soon put behind me in the past and not read again for ten years.
The printer has a red line developing on the bottom of every page.
The trees outside are swaying in a strong wind, and the clouds are fast.
I turn towards poetry, towards writing, towards teaching, towards learning guitar, as solace. People can't understand the draw to art from the scientist, but its only the past two hundred years that they've been separate--the word 'scientist' was coined in the 1800s in juxtaposition to the word 'artist.' Before that, scientists were called 'natural philosophers,' and they were all polymaths, studying art and anatomy, biology and poetry. Think Da Vinci. Sure, they were mostly white men who had servants and free-time, but they were never shoving themselves into a corner of thought. Its still called a doctor of philosophy, philosophiae doctor in Latin, and I'm sure we can imagine a world where the true sciences were the sciences of thought.
I gear away from action, towards the philosophy that my doctorate is truly in.
And still, the printer prints; the ink is warm and I can smell it where I sit.
Madman Immortal
"Things get better" Reverberating through my mind.
Echoes and rings of a false affirmation chiming from well wishing yet clueless parrots.
Swallow the pill, take a breath and understand.
"This year is my year" A fictitious mantra that fuels my engines, running on steam and a faltering will. With each coming day, a new terror, a new pain, a new agony to survive.
"The future is bright" A spurious fantasy to encourage my incessant trudge to move mountains. Ignoring the fallacy that the future will never be my present, the future remains as a slice of optimistic pie that will long go cold and rotten before I take a bite.
I take compliment at idealist proclamations and hopeful thoughts,
I'll never allow my life in another person's prayers go ignored or unnoticed.
I just envy an understanding of my realist values.
In my bedside drawer lies two notes, both final messages from my closests.
Through blood, sweat and far too many tears, I held them close.
Those letters are now just paper, a reminder that I could change fate and rebuild our destiny, to keep them safe.
I am the last of our trio to stay steadfast, to never falter.
How can I? The Cornerstone, the one who held our heads above the water as the devil tried to drown us like helpless puppies trapped in a binbag.
How dare I show a sign of weakness, How dare I write a third and final note.
Is it Grand Design? Am I an image of Atlas? To carry the world on my shoulders for the good of others? Sacrifice my life to never die?
If I had made a decision, If I had ran the path before them? Would the worst have come to pass?
I've been robbed. The final God-Given right to any living creature to decide when I've had enough.
To be burdened with the eternal knowledge that through my suffering, by me holding onto the thin threads of our reality, I can keep them safe.
And if that morning comes when I can take a breath and step back into my own self, I would do it all again, in half a heartbeat I'd pick up the Earth once more.
Because one day, things may get better.
PALSY
She scrutinised the right of her for signs of movement - brow, eye, nose, cheek, lips, chin.
The aftermath evident to all, of that violent virus she had no warning of.
Not so her other palsy - the loss of feeling in her heart.
The aftermath known to none, of her secret lover withdrawing from their shared love, that she had no warning of.
Her appreciation of symmetry assaulted by what she saw and felt, she stood back . She stumbled, forgetting the imbalance of her inner ear, impacted too by the withered dying nerves no longer stimulating life.
She slumped to the floor.
immobilised.
Tears fell silently.
She cried pain, frustration, abandonment, longing for the familiar and for love.
Face broken, heartbroken, life broken.
Desolate she cried for recovery.
Confessions of a conspiracy theorist
“Mind if I sit here?”
“Be my guest.”
“Sure?”
“No-yeah, go ahead. Strangers are just people you haven’t ghosted yet.”
“You looked a bit jumpy?”
“Jumpy?”
“Yeah, jumpy as a roo on the razzle-dazzle I reckon.”
“One must be careful what one thinks these days.”
“Too right. This yours?”
“Yeah, taking a break. Thinking about stuff.”
“Mind if I?”
“Sure.”
“The centre of inertia...three letters...third letter x.”
“Rex.”
“Rex?”
“As in king or queen.”
“Serious?”
“The centre of inertia is the letter ‘r’, often an abbreviation for rex, or regina for that matter. But it’s only three letters. And a constitutional monarchy is inert, so...”
“Wow.”
“Practice makes perfect.”
“Reckon it does. Are you a monarchist?”
“Um...probably. 51%. You?”
“Don’t suppose it matters now.”
“No. Very diplomatic.”
“Did you stay up last night? See the new year in?”
“Nah. I’m 78.”
“78 is old?”
“Some wear it well. Not me.”
“Is that a fact?”
“Our family don’t live to be ‘old’ old.”
“Didn’t think you’d see 2054 then?”
“I never thought I’d end up in Australia. Spiders, snakes, crocs. No thanks.”
“You’re a bit of a celeb in these parts. Can’t have you living in a swamp.”
“Touché. So you...know me then?”
“Came especially. ‘The Stargate at Pine Gap’ is one of my favourite albums.”
“Mine too.”
“Annoying question. Is the stargate at Pine Gap a thing?”
“Well, what say you?”
“I don’t know.”
“I don’t know” is a sound philosophy. Once, I was a barman in a pub talking to a regular about life, the universe. I’m for the afterlife, he’s ‘you live, you die, you rot.’ This goes back and forth, da da da. Then a pisshead called Barry pipes in with, ‘Nobody fucking knows.’
“So you don’t know?”
“About what?”
“Pine Gap.”
“If asking questions about aliens and secret bases is your bag remember to price in the whole equation.”
“What do you mean?”
“So, imagine aliens are here but their presence is top secret and that status quo has to be maintained. How would I even convince you?”
“I don’t think you can keep things like that a secret…”
“So why ask if Pine Gap has a stargate if you think stargates can’t be kept secret?”
“Guess I love wild theories. Part of life’s rich tapestry.”
“So many people think they would know if aliens were here. All the jigsaw pieces would be nicely assembled on MSM. But the jigsaw pieces aren’t assembled, some don’t even belong to the puzzle and most are missing. That’s the machinery maintaining the status quo.”
“K.”
“You can’t imagine a scenario where aliens don’t want their presence to be formally announced?”
“Sounds a bit unlikely.”
“You think of all the agendas aliens could have and what Earth’s place could truly be in the galaxy- laboratory, prison planet, place you can stop off to surgically mutilate nice juicy cows- you would know them?”
“So you believe in aliens?”
“What’s your name?”
“Greg.”
“Greg. I sit on this bench every day in the heart of old-fogey-ville watching the world crawl by. If a spaceship landed with little green men who ate Kit-Kats and danced on roller-skates I’d be on a breakfast show later on blabbering about it. And I’d be damn sure about what I saw because I don’t see shit like that everyday. But for balance I’d have to sit opposite a celebrity sceptic telling me I’d no idea what I’d seen. It was a cloud, or Venus or swamp gas or something far more improbable than aliens. And I’d be no different to countless others. Policemen, military personnel, schoolchildren. If the weight of anecdotal evidence holds no sway with you perhaps we’re wasting our time.”
“We’ve had disclosure, no? Don’t you remember Brian Cox announcing they’d found primitive jellyfish on Europa? He won the David Attenborough award. So yeah, I’m sure there’s intelligent life out there somewhere.”
“But not here? Plus ça change. We had a false dawn in the early 2020s. Whistleblowers in congress swearing the US government had alien bodies and spacecraft. Barely made the news in the UK.”
“Aliens crashing spacecraft?”
“Just probes with soulless biologics inside. Done deliberately. Everything is smoke and mirrors.”
“K. And you think Brian Cox is shadow government?”
“Actually, no. The point is a population’s attention is easily diverted. Stories easily killed. Take the 2020 pandemic.”
“What about it?”
“Actually, maybe I shouldn’t say. It might be an infringement of China’s National Security Law, which as you know has global reach.”
“I reckon anything potentially subversive can always have a disclaimer tagged on.”
“Yeah, but. Ah, screw it. I had this mad fever dream that China lied about transmissibility, openly menaced the UK into keeping its borders open during a crucial window, then had the most draconian lockdown itself and refused to co-operate with an investigation of the virus, which bore all the hallmarks of….not being zoonotic. And for that it got scant scrutiny while the UK went bonkers about why a man called Dominic Cummings went to Barnard Castle. How’s that?”
“Yeah, that works. Why would the UK have not held China to account?”
“They had our ass on a plate. By that time China had cornered most of the world’s medical supplies and they weaponised the asset. Plus America was involved in gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and they didn’t want that can of worms- ”
“It’s a bit of a stretch from that to Pine Gap.”
“Look, I couldn’t even convince the doctors that a strange mystery illness I had as a child was an allergic reaction to Benylin. I’m on a hiding to nothing, I get that. But you keep asking so I’m trying to help you conceptualize.”
“A secret alien presence on Earth. It sounds like a TV show.”
“You can learn a lot from TV shows. You remember the Traitors?”
“My Great Aunt was on that show.”
“You know why it was great TV? It showed how hidden hands can manipulate the majority. It also revealed how those on the right track are often afraid to stick their neck out, and when they do…”
“Yeah, best way to win that game is to keep your head down.”
“You’re not convinced, are you?”
“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”
“You know, sceptics tend to be Sherlock Holmes fanboys, his being an evidence junky. They don’t realise they’re actually Watsons and Lestrades who can make neither head nor tail of the ordinary evidence hidden in plain sight.”
“Maybe if you give me an example of a conspiracy theory that was proven?”
“If the powers that be do their job there’s never any grand exposé. Canonised conspiracy theories are trifling ones. The Gulf of Tonkin, the Reichstag Fire-”
“Any examples of your own country being involved in one? Even a small one.”
“The Horizon scandal was a conspiracy theory, of sorts. Until it wasn’t.”
“Never heard of it.”
“No, well. The Post Office are hardly deep-state but...almost got away with mass false-prosecution. It took a TV drama to expose it after the usual apparatus failed. It’s not aliens but it demonstrates how easily people are gaslit. And if a minnow like the Post Office can do that- extrapolate accordingly.”
“You could use this argument to justify any conspiracy theory.”
“Not without smoking guns. A sudden spike in light-fingered sub-postmasters made no sense.”
“Any examples of conspiracy theories you don’t believe?”
“Some are bananas. The ‘Paul McCartney is dead' theory was genuinely conspicuous by its lack of evidence. And I was never on board with the moon landing hoax, the controversy was astronauts being muzzled about the aliens they saw on the moon. But something like 9/11 has smoking guns. When I was a whinging pomme I saw a BBC documentary debunking the 9/11 conspiracy theory that picked all the low-hanging fruit and ignored the serious points. That’s a strawman argument.”
“And what are those serious points?”
“Now there’s a rabbit hole! The thing about 9/11 is the quality of people who sacrificed good jobs and marriages to question the narrative. Lots of senior pilots said they simply couldn’t fly a plane into a building at that speed if they tried.”
“How was it was done then?”
“The Boeing Honeywell Uninterruptible Autopilot. Not actually patented until 2006 and for good reason. As you may recall, one of the planes didn’t make it to New York but they pulled WTC 7, the tower that plane was intended for, anyways. Not many people noticed three towers collapsed into their footprints that day.”
“You think America would kill thousands of its own?”
“I’ll give you that. That’s quite the stumbling block. But the lives of ordinary civilians have always been expendable and what 9/11 ultimately led to was the Iraq War- launched on the flimsiest of pretexts. Many more people died there.”
“I don’t really know much about Iraq or 9/11. It’s all a long time ago.”
“That’s the thing. One day TWA 800 is downed by a navy exercise missile, it’s all over the news, air traffic controllers seeing it on radar, eyewitnesses jamming television networks, loose-lips, amateur footage. It’s a tragic friendly-fire incident. Then the FBI step on the NTSB’s toes, the networks flip the narrative, Boeing do a sweetheart deal to take the rap, witnesses are intimidated, footage confiscated...tick tick tick- given time TWA, 9/11, MH370 and countless other controversies are deep in the bosom of the ocean buried. When Shakespeare said truth will out he was playing the long game.”
“What else d’you reckon on being covered up?”
“Look, it’s a long list. Who cares?”
“Me.”
“Why? What is this?”
“You’ve got an eye-opening perspective I’m happy to listen to.”
“Well, I talk too much.”
“One more story for the road, then.”
“This’ll scare you off, anyways. Animals are biological robots.”
“Biological robots?”
“The lights are on but no one’s at home, your pet is a biological cuddly toy. Well, some animals have souls, those will be family who want to be with you. So be careful. Your cat could be your mother.”
“So...could your Dad come back as your pet goldfish?”
“I see what you did there. Fish don’t get treats and belly rubs so what’s the point? Of course, none of this is easy to research. The wild west days of an unchlorinated Internet are gone.”
“I’ll add that to the list. Michael Gonzales, you’re under arrest for subversion of the Chinese state, misinformation crimes and conspiratorial beliefs for which there is no proof. You do not have to say anything, but anything you do say may harm your defence.”
“Oh crap.”
“Just kidding. You Gen Xers are something else. Last generation who grew up without Internet.”
“Funny you say that. My UFO quest began in 2000-ish when I, an Internet newbie, met an RAF reconnaissance pilot in a Yahoo chatroom. She didn’t talk shop but I asked her offhand if she’d seen a UFO and she told me a craft tracking her jet took off as soon as she went weapons warm. She and her co-pilot chased it from Scotland down to French airspace and were debriefed by three big wigs the next day, who said NASA tracked the thing leaving the atmosphere above Brazil at 38,000 miles an hour.”
“And you believed her?”
“Someone says they’re raped we take them seriously, someone saw a UFO there’s no evidence.”
“Right, just lots of stories.”
“I think it was Stalin who said quantity is its own form of quality.”
“Don’t you think you might be wrong?”
“I wish I was. I’ve lived a lonely life. Don’t YOU think you might be wrong?”
“I believe we choose our illusions, John. And I believe in kindness.”
“Good project. Respect.”
“Gotta go. Great talking to you. Stay lucky. And...get a shave, man. You’ve let yourself go a bit.”
“Will do.”
“Which way is the bus station?”
“That way.”
“I’m walking. Oh, and John? John’s your real name, isn’t it? Remember, we’re watching you.”
For a few blissful seconds Annie forgot where she was. Her alarm had gone off, interrupting a dream about her old school. She'd been laughing with her oldest pal, Eleanor. They used to laugh all the time. She could feel the smile on her face as she stretched out to stop the alarm and she wondered what time Eleanor would appear so they could walk to school together.
No, that wasn't right. Her smile dropped away and she opened her eyes. She'd thought, for those precious seconds, that she was still young, waking up to go to school, laugh all day long then come home again, curling up in front of the TV whilst Gran pottered in the kitchen and her mum came back from work and it was sunny outside and there were simply no complications.
'No,' she mumbled, and closed her eyes again, willing the dream to take her back.
Of course it didn't work. She opened her eyes again into her beige adult room they'd never got around to repainting and the brownish curtains left by the previous owners.
She groaned and pulled the duvet over her head.
If she just stayed here, maybe everyone would leave her alone.
Maybe she could just sleep the day away.
Maybe all the jobs that piled and piled on top of each other would be gone, if she just went back to sleep and ignored them. But now she'd allowed the word 'job' into her head here they were, lining up like soldiers in a firing squad, ready to shoot her down if she stood up.
Get the kids out of bed (all three slept through their alarms. Every. Single. Morning.)
Feed the kids (attempt to get grumpy teenagers to eat.)
Remind them of whatever million things needed reminders.
Shoosh them out of the door. Don't expect a kiss or hug.
Turn and look at the kitchen.
Groan.
Graham's mess would have been buried by the teenagers' mess. His excuse was he didn't want to wake anyone unnecessarily early by clanking crockery about. Annie knew it was an excuse to avoid emptying the dishwasher. There would be dirty stuff everywhere; milk sloshed on worktops, a trail of crumbs leading from the toaster to the table, as if the teenagers couldn't find their way back without them.
Annie would work through the mess then sit and eat some toast whilst the dog whined for a pee. She'd have let him out (nobody else would have thought to do it) then fed him, fed the cats, taken washing from the machine to hang out, hoovered, wiped, tidied, then locked up the house and taken the dog for a walk, bought something for tea, come home, shoved the something into the oven on a timer, stroked the dog's soft head and then, finally, gone to work herself for her shift at the care home.
At least she got paid for being there, but it was non-stop. She'd not sit down until she got in the car to go home, when she'd jump on another roundabout, one which involved navigating arguments and homework and food. Then Graham would come home and ask her nothing about her day but complain endlessly about his.
'No,' she said again and buried herself deeper in the bed.
She thought about how easy life used to be.
Lately it seemed harder every day. Harder to get up. Harder to smile. Harder to give, anything.
The teenagers used to be three bright and loving children. Whilst Annie knew they'd come back to her one day, that day was taking a bloody long time to come.
INERTIA. She'd looked the word up when she suspected it was what she was feeling. 'A tendency to do nothing or remain unchanged'. Yep, that about covered it. Except she had to keep doing the things, all of the thousand things that needed doing every, single, day.
She yawned and sat up.
Walked down the stairs.
Made herself a coffee.
Opened her mouth and...
...closed it again.
If she didn't wake them up, there would be no demands. No bickering. No questions: 'Mum! Where's my...?'
'Mum! Can you drive us to school today?'
'Mum! He hit me!'
'Mum! Where's the bread?'
'Mum!....'
The tendency to do nothing. Yes, she thought. I'm not going to do it today.
The dog whined and she stroked his head and he wagged his tail and she let him out. It was easy, and he was polite. Annie stood by the door watching him stroll to the lawn and pee. He stretched, yawned, kicked his back legs and did a funny little dance as if to say, I'm alive! He returned to the door, licked her hand and sat next to her. She sat down on the back doorstep. She closed her eyes and felt the sun trying to come though the clouds. Listened.
Birdsong.
Far off barking.
Cars.
Distant siren.
Wind in leaves.
Herself, sipping coffee.
The dog breathing.
She didn't move. Nobody woke up, angry that they were late.
The dog lay his head on her thigh and she stroked his soft ears. She'd promised him a longer walk today. Unlike the teenagers, who remembered every promise she'd ever made, the dog didn't care. He'd love her anyway. Unlike Graham, with his utter lack of curiosity about her (when did that go, she wondered. When did he last ask her anything? ), the dog seemed to care about what her life contained: he watched what she did, patient, waiting for the magic lead to be taken off a hook, a talisman that took him to other worlds.
Annie frowned slightly, cocked her head like a child, drew a sharp breath then smiled and shook her head. No, that was a stupid thought. They'd never forgive her. (But they might not notice, whispered her subconscious.)
She looked at the dog. Looked at her watch. Thought about the fact that the house anchored her into this huge circle of shoulds and had tos and musts.
What if she left the circle? Walked out of its centre, just for a day? Or... for more than a day. A LOT more than a day. What was the worst that could happen? The best that could happen was the sense of inertia (quite a beautiful word really) might leave her. She might find a desire to do... something.
The memory of the laughter in the dream hadn't quite left her. There didn't seem to be a lot of laughter in her house any more. Loads of snappiness and shouting and long drawn-out sighing, but no joyful laughs. In the past all she'd had to do was tickle the nearest child - instant joy.
Annie stood up. The dog looked at her.
'Go on,' he seemed to be saying. 'I'll come with you.'
Annie crept back to her room. Pulled on jeans and a sweatshirt. Grabbed her trainers and a backpack from the bottom of her wardrobe. Whilst the dog watched her from the doorway she threw a few things in - clothes, underwear, toiletries. Her passport. The dog's canine passport they'd got for a trip they didn't end up taking.
She was back in the kitchen in minutes and the house was still asleep. The dog wagged his tail, seeming to catch the sudden quickening of her heart.
Annie looked around the kitchen, at the mess. Felt the weight of it all. Picked up a pen and a shopping list, turned it over and scribbled a note on it. Not that anyone would see it, but still.
She made her way down the hall like a burglar, the dog following. As she took his lead from the hook, shrugged on her favourite jacket, the dog's tail wagged harder as if to urge her on.
She paused for a second with her hand on the snib.
Thought about the vortex she'd fallen into when she woke up.
Annie opened the door and stepped out. She closed it ever so quietly behind her and wondered what time the teenagers would wake and who would see her note, if any of them. Perhaps it would be Graham when he got home from work, ready to regale her with his dull tales of office lore. He'd pick up the piece of paper, perhaps to add something to the shopping list and he'd read her words:
GONE FOR A WALK. TAKEN THE DOG.
and he'd frown.
Annie laughed, and it sounded just like it did in her dream.
Soliloquy for a Rotting Apple
Hanging by a twisted stalk,
I am ignored,
allowed to suppurate
and left to drop.
Centred in my core,
my precious seed
holds firm,
cradled by soft rot.
A severed thread,
a moment of denial,
followed by an ecstasy
of falling.
I lie in idle grasses
but I do not sleep,
I gaze at wisps of
lazy cirrus curling
and vapour trails
stitched across
a sky so blue
I want to weep.
My body shrinks
and puckers
and I surrender
to the suck of flies.
I make no attempt to think
and no attempt to hide,
but lie impassively and
wait for wasps.
The first wanderer
arrives
in black and yellow
battledress,
droning just beyond
the edge of sight,
posing more than just
an idle threat.
It lands,
turning on the spot,
finds equilibrium then
stops to test the air.
With twin antennae,
flexible as whips,
it then advances
on six-legged fingertips.
More wasps
gather in my folds,
but I am inert,
unable to resist
as they claw
at my pale breast
in their frenzied eagerness ~
my insect-children.
They rip me open,
wounds red raw
and tear my tender flesh
with plier jaws,
then blindly creep
towards the centre
of my sweet
corruption.
I am wrapped in
writhing buzz-saw madness,
trapped beneath
their frantic bite,
but I am complicit
with their plan
and pledge
my autumn sacrifice.
My seed exposed,
each one black
as any field mouse eye,
I am disrobed.
Then evening shadows
press them home on
drunken wings,
swallowed by the folding dark.
In the first frosts
beneath a frigid sky
they will forget
and curl and die and
with daggers aimed
toward their own cold hearts,
I will forgive the part
they played in this.
Centre Of Inertia
There’s no such thing as writer’s block. If you want to write you will. But write what? Even with a prompt or title, how to expand a theme or convey an idea? How to build believable characters. And pace! It needs just the right amount of pace.
And then even when it’s written, it’s best to leave it days, weeks, even months and years before going back and reviewing. Is it still as good as you remember (or as bad)? Can it take a rewrite or maybe, if you’re lucky, it just needs a tweak & polish? Or is it just another load of amateur trash - good for nothing other than leaving more room for better things in the ‘cloud’ or another pile of A4 for recycling?
Then there’s the style. Is it your own authentic voice or one you’re borrowing from your current favourite author or even from the random short story you’ve just read online?
Maybe not today then. And there’s washing piling up, the cat’s paw prints on the patio doors plus the fridge is running on empty which is not environmentally friendly. So maybe today’s just not the day and it’s just a thinking day. A mulling it over (and over and over) day. Tomorrow will be a better day. A writing day. Thoughts will be clearer, ideas sharper. Perhaps there’ll even be a plot and a perfect device to convey it. An unreliable narrator? Everyone loves an unreliable narrator!
Tomorrow, as we all know, never comes… but this week… every time I check my emails there’s the flagged one. An hour to write anything. The title is ‘Centre of Inertia’. Maybe I’ll actually give it a go this time. I’ll have a think and see what I come up with. Perhaps I’ll have time later or maybe tomorrow…
The next day I’m wishing my vocabulary was bigger (at least I wish it wasn’t shrinking). I wish I sounded like I know what I’m talking about. An expert in something; science would be good. Anything really but something that helps with metaphors and similes and would give my writing an edge, poetry, power. Momentum. Something that stands out from the crowd.
I think about it again the day after and the one after that. It starts a conversation over a bank holiday lunch.
So what, exactly, is inertia? I mean I’ve been trying to think of similes.
We talk about the draining of bath water, a spinning wheel when the motors are disengaged, a hamster wheel. Like my life, I think. Words and thoughts race all day and often most of the night without going anywhere. It can be exhausting.
You attempt to explain the difference between centrifugal and centripetal force and my mind races like a disengaged motor.
You say, inertia is basically an inherent resistance to a change of state.
I say, perhaps I’ll think about it again later. Or maybe tomorrow.
A slog and a mire,
The spire haunts overhead -
A reminder of all things left unsaid
Is whispered finally like a lullaby. A reminder of all things
Left undone with joints that stick all stiff from stillness.
A headache that haunts like a fog or a murmur,
A hum without spark, no heart but instead
A hoard of men with heads held low, with cogs moving or
Birds chirping,
Prayers soaring above to break this deadly cycle.
The home is burning,
The piecemeal stars are slowing,
This body's decomposing
And the moon won't hold us here for much longer.
(Memoir)
Centre of Inertia
It was September 4th 2016 at about midday, the sun had scorched through the grey clouds, warming the surface of the deep water that remained icy cold beneath me. I could feel burning. Not the red hot kind, but the burn born from friction, like sliding down a rope with bare hands. It was in my chest, my lungs and across my back, but pride dictated that I couldn't falter. I had to keep going, the momentum of movement pushing me on, my shoulders solid and heavy as I imagined the overworked joint grinding, bone against bone, rotating my arms. My ankles clicked to the constant six-beat kick, propelling me forward in a constant, steady motion.
Cheers grew louder as I approached the final few hundred metres. My own name whooshed and gurgled in my ears. My final few pulls were weaker, temporarily broken by my overwhelming desire for this to end. What a shame to be seen this way. The previous seventeen kilometres had been a strong, solitary but relentless experience of alternating brown water and blue sky. Moving forwards. I'd had the time to reflect on why I was here and to feel the invigoration of the cool water supporting me. In that final stretch, I wished the spectators could have seen me strong and determined, slicing through the early morning mist as I had been as I entered the water at 7am - the sum of all the hurdles broken, rebuilt and overcome.
I had considered several times how I would feel at this moment. They teach you to do this in training, to see the ending and to feel the pride and relief. It's the only way to get through endurance training. The beauty of the location can only take you so far, so as the final few metres approached, I decided to put on a show to satisfy the audience. High elbow, reach, catch, rotate and pull, a snaking s shape below the water, my thumb brushing my neoprene thigh, as my hips rotated and my shoulders dipped deeper. I stopped at the last buoy, gliding up behind another swimmer and his kayaker. Only now did I let myself breathe deeply and allow the oxygen to whirl and penetrate my lungs, soothing the heat. Then I reacted. I hadn't visualised this during the long swims and it blew me away.
I let out a mighty roar from deep within my stomach. It rumbled up my aching torso and out past my quivering blue lips. It was the sound of someone else - a person I imagined to be hiding deep within me. For the first time in my life, whilst sitting silently on the hillside after the swim, I considered that maybe it was my soul that had spoken out. The roar was superb. It was everything. It was years of dedication and painful setbacks, of missed social gatherings, but most of all - it was my life force. It wasn't about the eleven-mile swim, from the bottom of Lake Windermere to the top. It was about the darkness, the overwhelming sense of doom within seizures, and the journey towards the light at the end of a very long and torturous tunnel.
It began in early spring, 2004. It was March, or thereabouts, and I was experiencing my first dose of proper flu. The kind that deadens the legs and forces you to remain horizontal for days. The sort that causes hallucinations in your semi-conscious sleep and unintelligible blabberings. I'd been aware of my family checking on me, snoring alongside me during the dark hours, hovering over me in daylight, and I had heard the giggles and felt the jolly bumps of my sons, as they snuck in the bedroom together and joined me for cuddles. Mostly though, what I remember, are the brief shapes of daylight on the ceiling, the sodden cold bedsheets and the vile taste of the virus. I pictured a gloopy sack, hanging above my throat from the back of my nose and with each breath I smelled a sour stench. It wasn't just the flu. It may have started that way, but it became something more sinister and it changed the entire course of my life.
The persistent microscopic bacteria in my sinuses had set up camp on the lining of my brain. They fornicated and multiplied and feasted on my cells, a powerful colony resistant to the usual drugs supplied at Boots. It was on the fourth night of delirium that my body gave up and my brain surrendered to the infection; the beginning of a long-term debilitating condition, you'll know, as epilepsy. From the moment of that first seizure, the life I was living changed and with each seizure I experienced, I lost an aspect of my life that defined me.
Following my diagnosis, I spent hours online, trying to settle my fears and find answers to the questions neurologists couldn't offer, such as, why me and what next? I found salvation on the forums of the Epilepsy Society, where there was an abundance of advice from fellow sufferers about the non-medical side of the illness; the bits neurologists don't tell you. It took time, years, to finally accept what had happened and to stop finding a reason why. Why was holding me back. Why was stopping me from continuing with my life. Why was a powerful force against me. Acceptance gave me the power to move on, to regain my centre of inertia and start moving forward.
There was a resounding message amongst the forum posters to exercise. Everyone agreed it was the best way to deal with the fatigue and gloominess of seizures. Well, I'll be honest and tell you that I found this prospect nearly as horrifying as the seizures themselves. I'd never exercised consistently and didn't know how to start. Flashbacks of huffy puffy trudging around school playing fields crowded my mind, but those forums were extremely convincing with their tales of achievement, so I squashed those memories and vowed to give it a go. I'm not built like an athlete, so I needed to consider which exercise would suit me best.
By a twisted stroke of luck, I was able to abandon my body hang-ups and embrace my ample shape as a tool for exercise. If you've ever seen otters and seals swimming you'll understand the benefit of a little extra skin for swimmers. Think of a seal. Think about its shape. Its body is fuller in the middle and narrower at the head and the tail and it doesn't have ears that stick out. This shape is ideal for moving through the water fluidly, with little resistance. Now consider an open water swimmer in a neoprene wetsuit and swim cap with a bit of extra around the middle. That's me. A natural seal shape. Swimming was the one sport I did well as a child and the only time in my entire life thus far that I've enjoyed the sensation of weightlessness.
Swimming became more to me than fitness. It was my reset button and the rhythmic movement in swimming was my hypnosis and my tool for survival.
I began swimming because I hated my body for what it had done to my life, but now I swim because I love my body and what it can achieve. I'm moving forward and I'm not looking back - because I'm not going that way.
Stay Where You Are
The will to change was there. It was hidden in the bottom of the crisp packets her hand was always stuck in, in the crinkled foil lining of those ephemeral chocolates, a mere granule in the glorious cup of caffeinated sugar she relied upon. The will to change was there, but Janie couldn’t bring it to the surface. It remained at the bottom, the very bottom, of everything.
The curtain was open only a crack to let the evening light in, but it was enough. Enough to see the momentous swish of her neighbour's cinnamon ponytail. Janie moved the curtain over a little and saw the shiny mauve leggings and cropped black hoodie moving forwards in her street. Janie was filled with disappointment at the way she looked, and felt. She desperately wanted to be like her neighbour, emulate her glow. Janie reached back into the crisp packet, fingers greasy with inertia.
Janie left the house to buy more crisps.
Cinnamon jogged gently past her, this time a neat braid kissing the air either side. Something welled up inside of Janie. She turned around and went back inside the house, no crisps.
Janie choked down her sugarless coffee with great difficulty, however, the sense of accomplishment it left saw her wipe her memory instantly of the bitterness. Replaced with something that felt like hope, Janie threw on some old clothes and her only pair of trainers, deeply adorned with scuff marks. She likened it to how she felt inside, and therefore, it was perfect. Janie’s ponytail was curly brown and not the long, swishing kind, but it would have to do. She stepped outside. Fifteen seconds was enough, all she could manage. Janie was devastated. What was she thinking? But hang on, she realised, snapping out of it.
I can keep trying. I’ll just keeping trying.
So Janie ran another fifteen seconds, then walked for a while, then did another short burst before a long recovery walk. Without realising, Janie had done this all the way to the park. It wasn't much but it was more than she’d done in years. And even though her ponytail waddled rather than swished,
she felt good. Janie had taken action. She was the right side of sweaty.
Out of nowhere, Janie felt the unwavering desire to eat the biggest packet of crisps she could find. Alone and cold, the desire was a strong pull. She grabbed her keys and stepped outside.
-Hey, l've seen you running!
Janie swung around to face Cinnamon. You have?
Her neighbour smiled at her genuinely, introducing herself as Chloe. Was Chloe interested … in Janie?
-Why don't you come along to my running group?
Janie's insides twisted with a hopeful kind of fear.
***
Happy tears tickled Janie's hot cheeks as a marshal placed a finisher's medal around her neck. She looked out for her friend (affectionately called Cinnamon), who had finished well before her. Six months prior, Janie couldn’t run for thirty seconds. Her days consisted of eating all the food she could get her hands on, stuck in a darkened place that remained unchanged. That swishing ponytail changed Janie's life. It was a sign, a shift, a call to action. Janie was
a Janie she’d never been before. She could see her wings now, and so could everyone else. And on that gorgeous day, Janie knew she could achieve anything.
Stock still.
‘Sorry to bother you mate you got a light?’
Mac, whose gaze had not risen from its customary downwards trajectory, registered the girl by sensory message. The aroma of unwashed body and stale clothes reached him first. Her voice had that raw quality as if she had been screaming or not slept for days. She stood in his path. He could hear a wheeze as she took breath.
Reaching into his pocket for a lighter he lifted his chin enough to see where her hand was and stretched his arm towards her. As she turned her arm over to allow the lighter to be placed into her upturned palm he noticed scratch marks on the pale white skin around her wrist. She was moving from foot to foot, in a sort of excited anticipation as she cupped her hands around a half smoked roll up held between her lips. He saw that she was young and scrawny. She took a long drag ad breathed out a moan of relief. He could feel her expectant eyes on him. His head remained where it had been half raised. She bent down and looked under the peak of his baseball cap pulled down covering the upper part of his face.
‘Why you hidin' under there?’
She made a small child like chuckle and handed back the lighter.
He coughed and looked away. He hadn’t spoken to anyone for weeks. He’d forgotten how much it interrupted his thoughts to have to listen to someone speak. The unfamiliarity paralysed him. It didn’t really matter though because she would be gone in a minute and he could carry on to the shop to get his milk.
‘Hope it stays dry tonight the thing is I’m sleeping in a tent coz I got kicked out of the homeless place they said I was usin' but I was just holding the gear for someone its a nightmare trying to get my stuff dry they won’t let me hang around in the day centre for more than 5 hours so I got to walk around town now til I can face getting back into the tent coz I hate getting into a wet sleeping bag.’
The unbidden words came out of her in a stream between drags on the cig. She did not move from the spot. He realised with dread that she thought that they were in some sort of conversation even though he hadn't actually said anything. By handing over his lighter he had created in her a legitimate expectation that he was capable of doing what normal people did. He searched his mind for something to say.
‘Oh fuck my feet suddenly feel really heavy I was only going to the shop for milk see I haven’t been out the flat for 3 months my sister was bringing my shopping but now she’s gone away for a holiday and I’m on my own so I was feeling hungry I tried cornflakes with water coz I ran out of milk but it tastes like shit I can’t talk to anyone I need to feel safe and that’s why I never come out of my flat she’ll be back next saturday but I needed to get the milk and I thought it would be ok if I came out late at night coz there’s no one about.’
These thoughts went through his head but the only sound he made was a low groan.
Now she was rolling another cig. The adrenaline pumping through him triggered his nicotine addiction. He’d smoked the last of his tobacco. He was gonna get more with the milk. He held out his hand and she placed the almost too thin to smoke roll up in his palm. That chuckle again, they were complicit in something now. He didn’t know what. By the time he’d lit it and taken a deep lung full the scratched forearm with open palm motioned for the lighter.
‘Thing is Frank will be looking for me now he will need some gear for tonight he knows where my tent is so I gotta stay low coz I don’t feel like working sometimes I just can’t be arsed with blow jobs and weird guys in their cars I know he’ll kill me tomorrow but so long as I can keep out of his way til he gets something I don’t know where he’ll go but he knows plenty others who can sort him out so that’s his problem anyway.’
The girl took another drag and looked over her shoulder. Her words came out just as fast but she took a couple of pauses to suck on the cig.
Mac felt a pang of something. He wanted to protect this skinny girl from her life. Images of her in his flat floated across his mind’s eye, all soft cushions, low lights, breakfast in bed, cosying up to watch films on his laptop. And locking the door to keep Frank and all the bad stuff out. She’d need to have a shower thought, the smell of her arm pits was stronger than the tobacco.
‘Whats your name?’ He surprised himself that he could dredge up what used to pass for a chat up line. He didn’t fancy her but it was all he could think of to say.
‘Its shit being on the street hiding from everyone if its not Frank its the other girls they hate me coz I’m younger and if I’m out they don’t get any business so that’s how come I said yes to Frank when he said he’d protect me see this bruise around my eye that was Kate she landed a fist on my head one time was I was out.’
She shuddered as a chill wind blew over them. He noticed that the skin on her face had an unwashed weathered look - she lived more outside than in. The faint outline of blue/black on some skin that was slightly raised around her left eye. His fingers felt the heat of the end of the cigarette as it burnt down.
‘So what did you say your name was?’He didn’t really want to know but felt he should say something. It was ok to remind her he had asked. This was an achievement for him. Something about practising the things he found difficult was registering in the back of his memory from some online CBT shit his sister had made him watch.
Then from down the street came a man’s voice.
‘Jemma! where the fuck you been? Frank’s looking for you.’ Before Mac knew what was going on she leant forward and grabbed his belt buckle. She was tiny but she leant into his body and he felt her push. His mind was freaking out but his centre of gravity was powerless to resist her force in pushing him towards the alley bending them. She waved her arm behind her. She had manoeuvred him so he had his back to the road. Mac Looked over his shoulder. The man was hovering at the end of the alley.
‘Make like you’re enjoying this will you?’ She whispered to him and knelt down so her head was in front of his groin. He tried to step back but the guy was still pacing.
‘He’ll fuck off in a minute. Stay still.’
Mac let the heaviness he’d felt earlier take over him so he felt as if he were sinking deep into the ground. He really didn’t want to be here with this smelly girl but he was incapable of moving.
‘For fuck’s sake all I wanted was some milk and tobacco why did I have to get mixed up with all this shit I want to be back on my sofa with a cushion over my head closing out all this that’s what you get for having feelings when you let someone talk to you fuck all the CBT shite I’m not doing it any more fuck what my sister says about getting out of the flat this is all her fault for going away I don’t need anyone I’m not letting her into the flat again.’
He had closed his eyes and could feel his heart racing but his feet staying stock still.
If was like a long long time passed but when he looked round she was gone and he was alone in the alley. His belt was undone but she hadn’t done anything just pretended so the guy would leave her alone. Motion returned to Mac who went quickly to the shop. With his milk and tobacco under his arm he went from leaden weight to flying dart. By the time he leant against the back of his flat door he could hardly breathe. He turned the key, slid all the bolts across and pushed the draught excluder along the bottom to block out the hallway light. Slowly the feeling of relief tingled through his motionless body. He was safe. He was unable to sleep. He smoked all night. The smell of the girl returned to him. He wondered if she was back in her tent or whether Frank had caught up with her.
Centre of Inertia
Chapter 1: The Experiment
Anna was a physics student who loved to explore the mysteries of the universe. She was fascinated by the concept of inertia, the resistance of an object to change its state of motion. She wondered if there was a way to manipulate inertia, to make objects move faster or slower without applying any external force. She had a crazy idea: what if she could create a device that could alter the centre of inertia of an object, the point where the mass of the object is concentrated?
She decided to test her hypothesis by building a prototype of her device, which she called the Inertia Manipulator. It was a small metal box with wires and circuits inside, and a dial on the top. She attached the device to a wooden block and placed it on a frictionless surface. She turned the dial and observed the block. To her amazement, the block started to move by itself, as if an invisible force was pushing it. She turned the dial in the opposite direction and the block slowed down and stopped. She had done it! She had changed the centre of inertia of the block, and thus its inertia.
She was ecstatic. She had made a breakthrough discovery that could revolutionize physics and engineering. She imagined the applications of her device: rockets that could travel faster than light, cars that could accelerate and brake without fuel, machines that could operate without energy. She wanted to share her findings with the world, but she also wanted to keep her device a secret. She knew that there were people who would misuse her invention for evil purposes, or try to steal it from her. She decided to write a paper on her experiment and submit it to a reputable journal, but without revealing the details of her device. She hoped that the scientific community would appreciate her work and respect her privacy.
Chapter 2: The Intruder
A few weeks later, Anna received a letter from the journal. They had accepted her paper and invited her to present it at a conference. She was overjoyed. She packed her bags and her device and boarded a plane to the conference venue. She checked in to a hotel and locked her device in a safe. She went to the conference hall and met with other physicists and researchers. They were impressed by her paper and asked her many questions. She answered them politely, but avoided giving any clues about her device. She wanted to keep it a surprise for her presentation.
The next day, she returned to her hotel room and opened the safe. To her horror, she found that her device was gone. Someone had broken into her room and stolen it. She panicked. She called the hotel manager and the police, but they could not find any trace of the intruder or the device. She realized that she had been followed by someone who knew about her invention and wanted to take it from her. She wondered who it was and what they wanted to do with it. She feared that they would use it for evil or sell it to the highest bidder. She felt helpless and angry. She had lost her precious device and her chance to present it at the conference. She had to find it and get it back, before it was too late.
Chapter 3: The Chase
Anna did not give up. She decided to track down the thief and recover her device. She had a clue: the device had a GPS chip inside, which she had installed for safety reasons. She used her laptop to access the GPS signal and locate the device. She saw that it was moving fast, heading towards the airport. She guessed that the thief was trying to escape with the device. She grabbed her coat and ran to the taxi stand. She hailed a cab and told the driver to follow the GPS signal. She hoped that she could catch up with the thief before he boarded a plane.
She reached the airport and saw the thief. He was a tall man in a black suit, carrying a briefcase. He looked like a spy or a hitman. He was walking towards the security checkpoint. Anna ran after him, shouting and waving. She tried to attract the attention of the security guards, but they did not notice her. She saw that the thief had a boarding pass and a passport. He was going to fly to another country with her device. She had to stop him. She pushed her way through the crowd and reached the checkpoint. She grabbed the briefcase from the thief and opened it. She saw her device inside, along with some money and a gun. She smiled. She had found it.
The thief was not happy. He turned around and saw Anna holding his briefcase. He recognized her as the inventor of the device. He cursed and reached for his gun. He aimed it at Anna and pulled the trigger. Anna dodged the bullet and threw the briefcase at him. It hit him in the face and knocked him down. She ran to the device and picked it up. She turned the dial and pointed it at the thief. She changed his centre of inertia and made him fly across the room. He crashed into a wall and fell to the floor. He was unconscious. Anna had defeated him.
Chapter 4: The Reward
Anna was a hero. She had recovered her device and stopped the thief. She had also saved the airport from a possible terrorist attack. The security guards and the police arrived and arrested the thief. They thanked Anna for her bravery and asked her to explain what had happened. She told them the truth about her device and her experiment. They were amazed by her invention and praised her for her genius. They asked her to keep her device with them for further investigation, but she refused. She said that it was her property and her responsibility. She promised to cooperate with them, but only if they respected her privacy and her rights. They agreed and let her go. She took her device and left the airport. She hailed another cab and told the driver to take her to the conference hall. She still had time to make her presentation. She wanted to show the world her device and her discovery. She wanted to share her knowledge and her passion. She wanted to make a difference. She was happy.
CENTRE OF INERTIA
Centre of Inertia
The earth is crawling slow
No time to pause or think straight
Who'll give the world a tow
Grinding to a standstill
Sinking in quagmire
Who's there to fan the flames
Anyone to quench the fire
Snailing at one pace
Can't break into a run
Left staring at the future
Down the barrel of a gun
Lost in blinding thoughts
The mind is easily led
Is there no escape
From the dungeon in your head
Slowly getting weaker
No one there to throw a rope
Praying for salvation
May be your only hope
The Ferris wheel groaned like a rusty colonoscopy machine, as the inky sky dropped lazy spots of rain on the old coastal amusements. Evangeline, perched precariously on a frayed vinyl seat surveying the greasy drama beneath her. The thumping air had a whiff of cheap sex and shebeenish booziness, the night seemed like it knew something she didn’t.
Her gaze snagged on the flickering neon sign of Madame Zarina's 'Palace of Lost Time', pulsing on a garish wooden shack. It was a place whispered about in token asides that went nowhere; a place scarce visited or understood. The owner, after all, was just another washed-up fortune teller, a Romany woman, perhaps, with hand-to-mouth skin who used to peddle her bad tarot readings on the beach before the local council swept her aside. Now, she was back 7 years later, venturing some kind of time-warping swizz.
“I’m thinking of turning Muslim. I like the clobber,” said a displaced Cockney on the seat in front of Evangeline, to her mate, who was shoving fresh candyfloss into her gob.
“What, like Madame Zarina?” her friend mumbled, gesturing towards the vivid depiction of the fortune teller on the hoarding steeply below, all flowing robes and mystical trinkets. But what grabbed Evangeline, as it might a five year old, were the eyes peeping through a sequinned veil. They seemed to gaze across time itself, and know all of Evangeline’s intimate hopes, as their eyes met.
Possibilities swirled around Zarina, buoyed by tell of her ability to rewrite destinies, bend the gamma ray proof fabric of time. These suggestions, mind you, came from one not-very-popular post on a local online forum and a half-remembered bus conversation Evangeline wasn't even sure she'd ear-wigged correctly. But still. Evangeline, clinging to the wreckage of a life bobbing nowhere in particular, set Madam’s Zarina’s wares in her sights.
Curious though she was, in her mind she was more inclined to call Madam Zarina out for being a fraud than a cosmic life-coach.
And so Evangeline disembarked from the creaking contraption and headed towards the fairground attraction like a woman on a mission. The burlesque entrance was a maw of tattered velvet, draped with strings of fairy lights cheaper than their berth. As she stepped through, a not unwelcome cacophony assaulted her: the raucous heckle of the bazaar, the mournful wail of a gypsy violinist, the hypnotic thrum of a belly dancer's drum- otherwise known as a compact disc player programmed to repeat track 2.
A woman, her skin the colour of a Benidorm busker’s, sat under a dim light. Her eyes, the colour of a gathering storm, held Evangeline captive.
"Yes darling?" Her voice was a gravelly purr, laced with the scent of Silk Cut and the spell was broken.
Evangeline asked, "Um, is this a fortune telling thing?"
Madame Zarina motioned a manicured fingernail towards a cheap sign that read: "Three Questions About Your Time: £5."
Perplexity ran through Evangeline’s face like a swarm of hornets looking for someone to sting. This was a business model that surely had no place in the rough and tumble of a pop-up amusement park.
“Ask me about your life, but make sure all questions are time-related,” Zarina prompted.
“Right. Er…So...The universe is 14 billion years old…” Evangeline began, unsure. “So why me, why now?”
"Time," Zarina purred, "is a Marxist materialist construct. That will pass. In time. But in reality, the universe is infinite and no age at all.”
“Marxist whaaaat?”
“Materialist. A person who believes we our flesh and blood and nothing more. That life is nothing but a walking shit bucket. You are familiar with the mind-body problem, no?”
“Wow. You use quite high-brow words. Did you go to university?” Eva exlaimed.
“I use Chat GPT to help me express myself when I’m selling gigs on Fiverr but what you see now is what you get.”
“Nice.”
Zarina nodded casually and took a puff on a cigarette that had appeared faster than a non-smoker’s frown.
“Anyway, to answer your question-cos I don’t think too much mystical talk is going to be much good with you. Why are you here? Why now? Well, let me tell you,” Madam Zarina said.
Evangeline leaned forward cockily, in spite of a former wish to remain contained.
"You're adrift, darling," Zarina rasped, her voice a glum tremor that hung closely in the shack's rickety frame. "Lost in the Sargasso Sea of unfulfilled potential. But the currents have a way of guiding even the most rudderless vessel."
“They do?” Evangeline, with unrestrained sarcasm, which Madam Zarina ignored. The flowery speech borrowed from artificial intelligence is strong with this one, Evangeline thought.
“You have another question?” Zarina asked.
“I do, oh cosmic one. Why not stick with basic fortune telling? This time thing is confusing the punters.”
Madam Zarina shrugged without moving her shoulders.
“Everyone’s fortune is the same. All readings are about love, death or money. You can only tell people what they want to hear. And the truth is, fortune will not smile on anybody unless it meets them half-way. I wanted to try something different. You’re right, though. Business is bad and I’ve less money to spend on designer shoes.”
A fortune teller who used Chat GPT and spent her ill gotten gains on fancy shoes? This was peak low-rent mystical.
Fortunately, our girl Evangeline had imagined the whole thing, as she was wont to, projecting a future coloured with her own concerns. Obviously a fortune teller is not going to say, ‘Time is a Marxist materialist construct.’ That was some graffiti she saw on a wall and she had no idea what it meant, other than nothing. And there she was, still on her vinyl seat on the big wheel wondering about what that damn Palace of Lost Time was actually about. Was it some kind of hall of mirrors, was it a ghost-train type thing?
She had to know the purpose of that overwrought but rather nicely painted shed down there. She would spend a few quid. Why not? The Ferris wheel curtseyed Evangeline back onto the teenage playground. She wandered through hot-dog scented convection and stuffed toy con artists toward the Palace of Lost Time with a bit of a skip in her step. On the fortune shack a rusty sign proclaimed: "Enter at Your Own Peril."
And in the inner reaches sat a woman, shrouded in darkness. Her face was obscured by a heavy veil of crimson silk, only the glint of obsidian eyes piercing through.
"Welcome, seeker of lost time. What is it you seek?"
Evangeline swallowed, her voice barely a whisper. "I...I don't know. Maybe a glimpse of what could have been? A chance to undo a mistake?"
There was a long silence, punctuated only by the relentless ticking of the clock. Then, the voice.
"Ah, the siren song of what-ifs. Imagine how precious now is. I hate to quote an INXS song, because it makes it sound so feckin’ trivial, but all you’ve got is this moment. What is it you are so afraid to grasp? Isn’t it about time you just started living? Quit the job at the McDonald’s drivethru?”
“How did you know I worked there?”
“And maybe it’s time to let Dave go. That relationship is so 2019.”
“And how did you know...”
“Ah, but this job is all bullshit, isn’t it?” Madam Zarina said with a left -handed flourish or her slender fingers.
“Nah, that’s not it,” said Eva, who was still on her ferris wheel, trying to conjure how things might pan out in the beguiling Palace of Lost Time. “Might just as well, go and see what it’s all about,” she concluded.
And so she hopped off and trod forth with the resignation of one consigned to inevitable disappointment.
In the confines of the shack once again she found a woman seated on a table in the centre of some sort of boudoir with an Eastern feel. Incense, low lights, cushions, curtains, tassels.
“My child. What is it you wish to know?”
“Why is this called the Palace of Lost Time? Is it because I am wasting my time coming here?”
“Is that your question?” Zarina asked with wide-eyed surprise and languid eye lashes.
“No. My question, what I’ve always wanted to know is: does all time exist at once or is the future really some as yet untrodden vista?”
“I’m afraid all that can be exists now.”
“Really? Even 120 men having sex in a line with a hippopotamus in the middle and a giraffe eating jelly?”
“And brushing its teeth. Seriously, is that weirdest thing you can think of, innocent child!”
“Then if such things can be why am I working in McDonald’s?”
“You raise a fair point. I guess time is not to be trucked with. Unless all parties in that line are consenting adults.”
There was something about Madam Zarina’s eyes. They were shining with love. Then she looked down at Aisha’s hand. She was holding Evangeline’s own and putting a ring on her finger.
“I was waiting so long for you to ask,” she said as they sat in their upscale restaurant with a view of the sea in some permissive but not-so-very-far from the Middle East locale. Lesbos, perhaps.
“I have waited for this moment for a hundred lifetimes. I have waited and waited. But now we are here. And I’m never going to let you go,” Aisha Zarina replied.
The eyes. They were making her very sleepy. She was looking into the eyes, the eyes… of the Muslim nurse.
“Evangeline?”
“Yes.”
“You’re awake!”
“So it would seem. Where am I?”
“In hospital.”
“How long have I been here?”
“About 6 weeks. You’ve been in a coma. Wait a moment. There’s a young man who wishes to speak to you.”
The young man was already at her side.
“Evangeline? It’s me, Dave.”
“Where is Aisha?”
“Who’s Aisha?”
“What’s happening? Where am I?”
“It’s okay. You were on a ferris wheel that collapsed.”
“Oh my God. Was anybody hurt?”
“Yes, there were a few injuries, unfortunately. And one person died."
"Who? Please tell me..."
Dave looked at the nurse for guidance and then down at the bedside table.
"Someone called Madam Zarina.”
Evangeline gasped, but Zarina's words were sharp in her ears: "Isn't it about time you just started living?"
"Dave," Evangeline said, her voice stronger now, a newfound resolve settling in. "I need you to leave."
Dave's eyebrows shot up in surprise. "Evangeline, I—"
"Please," she interrupted, her gaze unwavering. "Just for now."
He lingered for a moment, his expression a mix of concern and confusion. And loneliness. The nurse busied herself. Finally, with a resigned nod, he turned and left the room.
Evangeline looked at the newspaper on the bedside table. The nurse paused, wondering if it was right to overload her senses but instinctively picked up the newspaper.
"Please. Let me see it for a moment. It's so important."
The nurse held the local newspaper headline in front of her and her eyes slowly wandered across the print capitals until they landed on a picture with a caption: "Fatal Ferris Wheel Accident: Fortune teller identified as victim."
She looked into the eyes of the woman. The eyes. Gazing across time. Deeply into hers. How would she ever find her again? A hot tear ran down her cheek and splashed onto the torn vinyl seat on the ferris wheel. And she looked down on the Palace of Lost Time. This time she had to throw caution to the wind. End all doubts and all fears.
She alighted from the ferris wheel. Taking a deep breath, she pushed aside the velvet curtain and ducked inside. The air hung heavy with incense and the smell of something vaguely floral. A woman, shrouded in darkness except for a cascade of shimmering silver bangles, sat on a pile of plush cushions.
"About time, seeker," the woman's voice purred, smooth as silk. "What is it you yearn to know?"
Both time and tide they wait for none,
I feel dragged back yet I succumb
to life's vast portal without a shield.
I stop to count my winning yield.
The trophies tossed, the mantle worn,
heart in tact dignity worn.
Swaddled babies at my breast,
Cast far and wide to do their best.
Upon life's tide without an oar,
some plummet deep while others soar.
We throw them out to what truth brings,
determined not to clip their wings.
Their foot prints etched in earth's grey dust,
Competent hands reach out in trust,
seeking wisdom from the wise,
we weave our answers with family ties.
Then age crawls in without a knock,
our focus soon becomes the clock.
The hands move faster, a shroud of fear
will time permit another year?
A Winter's breath, a Summer mild,
I treasure you child of my child.
The coil of life cannot unwind,
forgotten days to hard to find.
I grasp life's hand take what I need,
time may move on but I still breathe.
Long night shrouds the sunken stones,
The creeping reaper seeks lost souls,
Drumming echoing the heart's arrythmia
Like a stammering clock,
Whispering crows chorus - bury your hurt,
They will dance, while you dream,
Life's trials will turn to dust.
Stars awaken the light within,
Time is on your side - fight against the night.
Swathes of electric blue and marine green paint waves,
Illuminating light bleeding into night,
Eastern bluebirds swoop and swirl around the stones,
Air's buoyancy lifting their wings,
In a timeless dance of eternal love,
An invisible thread tethering their souls.
The benevolent sun is a timekeeper,
The longest night receding into the shortest day,
Stones lining up to welcome the rising sun,
Pink, purple hues chasing away the shadows,
New day bidding farewell to inky night,
Glimmering effervescence of energy
Unshackling the confines of the mind,
Where sacred hearts take flight,
A fresh consciousness opening up life.
My nails scratch at the jagged edge of the flaky red paint on the metal pole. Mindlessly searching for weaker parts, I slide my nail beneath and chip away, the delicate patches breaking into fine dust before I can feel the pain in the soft skin beneath my nails.
I'm watching you. No. I'm staring at you, and you have no idea. You're lost once again in your own head and my heart is pumping at the blood in my veins so heavily, I'm worried you'll hear it and turn your head.
I'm holding my breath without thinking and when I release it, the tide of hot, stale air judders from my lungs.
The midnight hour struck seven minutes ago, but you're still standing there, so still I blink my eyes again and again to refocus and convince my ludicrous mind that you're not a statue.
I ache to come to you; to hold your hand and lead you away, to stop this cycle that is breaking us both.
The tide has sucked a few inches more from the beach since midnight and your toes now sink with each sweep of the sand beneath your feet; your heels perched on a pedestal of amber. Your speckled skin curves from your chin, snaking your shoulders and hanging loose around your hips like an apron. I long to touch it, to remind myself of the satin finish and the barely-there feel of the areas that nobody else ever gets to see. A few steps behind you is the neat pile of clothes you discarded following the ritualistic strip tease you performed for me, your voyeur, and resting on top is the worn, tatty, blue envelope, roughed at the corners and damp from the salty wind of many seasons.
Your head is high, heavy with the weight of your invisible crown and you are looking out across the water - into the inky black canvas. What do you see?
You take a breath and step forwards into the ocean - in as far as your knees. Your fingertips graze the surface, feeling the purr of the beast and I swallow back the bile that's been rising into my throat, move forward onto my toes and ready myself to pounce, to pull you free from the foamy talons. To save you. Your saviour.
I watch as your body slumps over and your head becomes too heavy to hold. Your body shudders as your hands sweep up to your face and the heaving energy of release floods through you.
I hear you, from my hidden spot inside the shadows of the old bus shelter, I listen as you empty yourself, until your mind is free. My eyes bleed for you - a blinding torrent of helpless tears, of sleepless nights and private, scecret pain of knowing.
Wiping my eyes free, I see you dropping your nightgown back over your head, holding the envelope between your teeth. As you reach the foot of the steps up onto the promenade, I slip into shadows, darting in and out of doorways and race back home to bed, to slip beneath the covers, reset the clock, and pretend I'm asleep, as my mind fights away the horrors of the words in your letter - the letter I hope I'll never see!
Age 5
Already, you've learned the world is a difficult place to navigate. You used to leap out of bed laughing, but now you want to stay curled in your duvet, warm and safe and tucked away from the difficult navigation of family life. You'd dream marvellous dreams of places that were all your own, with colours and softness and nobody shouting or hitting.
You own a clock. In the morning its alarm is unwelcome but at night the glowing numbers help you go off to sleep because you're always afraid in those first few moments after getting into bed, afraid that the day's events will follow you. The fear and the anger, mostly at you. You watch the glowing numbers and string them together in larger amounts: 1, 12, 123, 1,234, 12,345, 123,456, 1,234,567, chanting each one softly. Westclox, says your clock and it's a friend. In the morning you hide from it, burrowing down, wanting to return to the dreams that you had if you were lucky and it wasn't a night full of unnamed terror. You lose a best friend, your ally against the world who has two of the same names as you, when her mother is killed in a car accident and she moves away. You move across the world for a bit, and then you move again. You learn that you can reinvent yourself, but that you'll always end up the same unlikeable person after a few short weeks. You know this because of what the adults tell you.
Age 15
You hit the snooze button again and again until there are only minutes to get out of bed (you go to sleep dressed to save time), tame your hair with half a tin of hairspray, put on your mask of make-up and dash out of the door. Hardly anyone is up and if they were you'd want to scowl at them. Most days you wake up angry. The biggest voice in the house has left but is instantly replaced by another, weirder one, who you know right away isn't a safe person. You room is a refuge, apart from the times he comes and lays down next to you on your bed, close, too close, making you want to squirm away but impelled to stay by some part of you that is just too afraid to say, Go Away. You plan your escape. It takes three years; three years of mornings when you haven't slept enough (you were reading half the night, unable to sleep) and you hit the snooze button again and again, wanting life to just go away and leave you alone. You're not safe because he comes into your room at will and either lies down or tries to talk or asks you to give him foot massages. You ask for a lock but are not allowed. Exams will allow you to escape. You miss your siblings. You miss your best friend with whom you fight a lot, you two who are cut from the same cloth.
Age 21
University isn't what you thought it would be. You attach yourself to an older, domineering man and get stuck. You fail a year. You disentangle yourself and meet a lovely man who's as messed up as you and though there is lots of love, you fight. You're unable to stop being angry. You experiment with drugs. You spend long nights sitting by your window looking at the cars passing. You go for walks on the beach, crying at you don't know what.
People have died, in between 15 and 21. Three friends, one ex, two grandparents. You wonder who's going to go next.
You sleep. You don't even bother with the snooze button because you no longer have a clock. Sleep is a place you can escape to, but it mostly happens during the day. You look at other people, the popular people and wonder how they know what to do, what to say. You frequently say inappropriate things, thinking they're appropriate. People might find you weird. You try not to care. You cry a lot. You wish you were anyone else.
But you do make a good friend, one with whom it seems you were always destined to meet. You miss your teenage best friend but when you go home you have a terrible argument and it's over a decade before you speak again.
You travel. You come back and live with the boyfriend you fought with. You fight.
Age 25
You meet an unsuitable older man. You have left the boyfriend. You have a string of part time jobs which involve sleeping at odd times of the day due to shift patterns. You hate your alarm. The snooze button is your friend. You're often late. You find a full time job. You find a room in a house full of strange people. You meet a house of ghosts. You frequently hate yourself. You want to be anyone else. Your friend stays by your side down the phone line and never stops listening and you love her but wonder why she loves you back.
One day you run.
Age 31
The years took you on a wandering path and now you live on the other side of the world. You have a boyfriend. You fight, but he's not older and unsuitable and you do make up. Your teenage best friend is in your thoughts so often and you have guilt and wish you knew her, now. Against all odds and in all strangeness (person least likely to become a....) you're a teacher and you find you're really good at it. You meet a lost soul and she becomes a daughter to you. Years later she'll visit.
You're always tired. Always. You drink too much, you sleep in, you stay up too late. The alarm clock's snooze function gets so overused it goes on strike. You're often late.
You wish you were anyone else. You write a list of things you'd like to be:
Happy.
Loving yourself.
Popular.
Not angry.
Confident.
The list has 15 other items like this. (Decades and several house moves later, you find this list in a box and realise with a shock that you are now these things. Somehow, in all that wandering, you sort yourself out. But that's leaping ahead. Other things have to happen first)
Age 36 and you are back on the side of the world you started on. Took you 8 years plus 2 to get back here. You're pregnant and terrified. You know you'll be a terrible mother. You think you'll die in childbirth. You're exhausted and you argue with the boyfriend from the other side of the world. You are so afraid you will make a mess of it all you find a therapist and you talk and you talk. And she helps, but then you move house again.
You have one baby, then another. You don't die. You think you're a bad mother. You become ill. You move house. You don't sleep much. Sleep becomes the thing you crave most in the world. The snooze button gets broken. In the end you don't need a clock, screaming needs wake you.
They grow and you've found another therapist and you think, Actually, actually, I've done an all right job. For the first time in your life you start to sleep properly.
When your first baby is in a pram, you go to visit the teenage best friend, and you realise you have to be in each other's lives. You talk about those messed up dangerous years. You forgive each other and although the guilt doesn't quite go (because you're good at guilt) you loosen your hold on it, just a little.
Age 43
You become ill. You survive. You go back to work. You parent and you do OK. Your children are who you live for. You adore them and you try to be the person you needed. They grow up unafraid to sleep, they don't have nightmares, they like themselves.
You get married. Shock! It was the cancer, you tell everyone, I reassessed. Soon after that you speak out about the unsafe person who made you leave, and most of your family stops speaking to you. You go on antidepressants. You struggle at work. You make good friends. One of them is taken by cancer.
Age 49
You have a big fat breakdown. You leave your job one day and don't stop crying. It's almost a relief, as you stop holding onto everything quite so hard. You find a good therapist. You try not to let the children - now teenagers - be affected by it. You are angry, often. The menopause decides now would be a great time to up its game with you. You consider it's all, just, a, bit, too, much....
You can only sleep well during the day. You hit that snooze button because the day is just too much... you never want to get up.
Age 51
You find a fantastic CBT therapist.
You stop being angry.
You accept.
You look at yourself and you think, Hello. Welcome. I like you.
And one morning
the alarm goes off
and you leap out of bed, in anticipation of lovely coffee
and you look around
and you see two amazing teen children who you've helped shape
and a man who adores you
and a house that is full of colour and warmth
and friends you love and who love you back
and chickens
and cats
and a smiley dog
and the sort of life that you'd
EXACTLY
wished you could live
when you were little
the sort of life
you dreamed about
the sort of life
that you created, once you stopped hating the very idea of you.
So you look back, peer backwards in time to that 5 year old, that 15 year old, that 21 year old and you hug them and whisper, get up. Reset the alarm and get out of bed and start work on this life. Because one day it will be perfect for you. Just hang on, because you're a good person. You're not bad, angry, awkward and difficult. You will be liked. Life has some tricks and tips you must learn but if you get up, reset that clock, turn the alarm off and start the day, you'll be OK.
And you look back, peer backwards in time to that 25 year old, that 31 year old, that 36 year old, that 43 year old and you say: Look at you, becoming. You whisper in her sleeping ear: when the alarm goes off, get up. Start the day. Start the work. Joy is coming, and it's all yours. Every day, reset the clock. Open your eyes. Step out of the cocoon and unfurl your wings. Fly into the day because good things are coming and you're starting them now, you just don't know it. You look back and you smile and you tell yourself to just keep going and it'll get better and it'll get better and it'll get better.
And when the bad things do happen, as they will, you will step out of the flames and shake the soot out of your hair and you'll go to bed and rest. And in the morning you'll reset the alarm, reset the clock, and you'll go make a coffee.
And you'll fly into the day and into the next wonderful part of your
wonderful
life.
Sleeping Beauty (the Irish version)
I woke up to someone hammering with a rivet gun. Trouble was, they were hammering inside my head. I staggered to the bathroom and looked in the mirror.
I looked again…. I’d disappeared.
I mean, I simply wasn’t there. I stared at the space I should have occupied but it remained stubbornly empty. I had a hangover but nowhere to hang it. I was lost in a mist.
In desperation I wiped the glass…. Relief.
It was just steamed up. My sister, Eileen, must have been in before me, probably shaving, (don’t tell her I said that).
My mother’s sweet voice drifted up the stairs. “Declan, are you up, you little shite?”
Somehow I got dressed.
Downstairs, Ma was clearing up. “Oh, if it isn’t the Sleeping Beauty.”
“Good morning Mammy,” I said, keeping a civil tongue.
“Morning is it?... Good is it?... What’s left of it! You disappear for months then come home as if butter wouldn’t melt. You can’t just reset the clock and start from where you left off. This isn’t a hotel. And if you think I’m making you breakfast, think again.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Oh, my breakfast not good enough for you, is it?”
“I thought you said you weren’t making me breakfast.”
“Then you’d be right…. What time did you get in last night?”
“I don’t know, Mammy. It was dark. And if you could possibly keep the volume down, I’d appreciate it.”
“I’ll tell you what time it was. It was twelve minutes past three.”
“So, why ask?” I didn’t want to argue but I couldn’t see the relevance of what time it was sometime last night when it was this time in the morning now. “I’m sorry Mammy.”
“Oh, sorry is it? Well let me tell you………..”
Last night I’d been out with my mates comparing the Guinness at McConnell’s with the Guinness at Finnegan’s, till somebody said, “What about The Hole in the Wall? Surely we should include that?”
The rest agreed and off we went.
To get to the Wall you have to go past Mulligan’s which is renowned for its Guinness. So we called in there for the sake of accurate comparison.
There was Billy McGovern, Patrick Rafferty, Burt somebody, and me. While we were in Mulligan’s we met up with Michael Doyle and his brother, Liam. A discussion ensued about the way draught Guinness performs in the glass, from the initial pouring to the final settling of the head.
Pat said, "If you look really closely it’s like a million tiny silk balloons, slowly rising, pale into a midnight sky. Poetry in motion. Obviously, the glass is important too. You’d not be drinking Guinness out of any old receptacle."
We decided to examine the time it took from the pouring to the moment it was ripe for drinking, the hypothesis being that the longer it took to separate, the better the taste. Billy had a stopwatch facility on his watch, so he timed it. We gathered round and slammed our hands down on the bar to mark the moment we saw a sharp line between dark body and creamy head. Billy kept resetting his watch and we repeated the procedure a number of times for the sake of scientific accuracy and worked out the average.
Then Liam stood up, waited for quiet and said, “The glory of Guinness is teaching human beings the virtue of patience.” He sat down again.
“I’ll drink to that,” said Billy and we all followed suit and then ordered another round.
Round followed round and the next profound statement came from Burt.
“I can’t feel my face,” said Burt. “Will somebody help me to the gents?”
I offered to assist but wasn’t feeling too steady myself so I let Pat do the honours.
After repeating the pouring experiment once more for extra verification, a discussion followed regarding the colour and the taste. Michael said Guinness isn’t really black but has a tinge of ruby and to prove it he undid his trousers and held his glass against his underpants, which we all agreed were black, as the label in the waistband confirmed. We leaned in and scrutinised it closely, our eyes flicking from the glass to the underpants and back again. “You see what I mean?” said Michael.
“How do we know your underpants have not changed colour in the wash?” asked Billy.
“They’re new on,” said Michael. “Would I expose myself in grubby Y-fronts?”
“I propose,” said Billy, “that the colour of Mick’s underpants and the colour of Guinness is fundamentally the same. The ruby is an illusion.”
“It certainly is not,” retorted Michael.
“Exposure to daylight will provide a definitive answer,” said Pat rising to his feet.
“Hang on,” said Michael. “It’s getting dark and not the weather for dropping trousers in the street. And, anyway, holding a pint glass at my groin with my breeches down, I’ll either get arrested or hospitalised.”
So we stayed put and the rest of the evening became a blur.
We never made it to The Hole in the Wall. As I remember, we all piled into Michael’s Morris Minor and went to the Golden Chopsticks takeaway. I think there was seven of us, unless I was seeing double, in which case there was three and a half. Anyway, I was rammed in the middle of the back seat. The little car seemed to be constantly going over the brow of steep hill, even when we stopped.
Someone said, “Declan, what are you having?”
“Make mine a pint.”
“No you balm-pot. What are you having from the Chinese?”
“Oh,” I says, “I’ve a liking for the sweet and sour. Chicken, prawns, I’m not choosey. With egg fried rice and chips. Can’t beat a few chips with the sweet and sour. Oh, and a pot of curry sauce and a bag of prawn crackers for dipping in. And don’t forget the soft noodles. And what are those things wrapped in filo?”
“Spring rolls?”
“Yes, spring rolls.”
“Are you sure now? That’s an awful lot and a terrible richness on top of a belly full of Black.”
“Sure I’m sure.
“Your funeral.”
We ate our Chinese at Pat’s parents’ place because they were away. Midnight found us listening to Engelbert Humperdinck on their radiogram because it was either that or Des O’Connor, Val Doonican having broken when we used him for a frisby.
After the fifteenth, ‘Am I That Easy to Forget’, I decided I’d had enough and walked back home.
Anyway, back to this morning and Mammy giving me the third degree…….
“……..So, where were you until three in the morning?”
“I was listening to Engelbert Humperdinck at Pat’s.”
She hit me round the head with a wet dishcloth, which is not what you want with a hangover, especially when you were being truthful for once.
I don’t know if it was the Guinness, the Chinese, or the indelible memory of Michael Doyle’s underpants that did it, but, in the end, I decided it was good to be home again with the clock reset and, as long as Mammy refrained from killing me, the rest of my life was still available.
The air con is getting uncomfortable, but what's really making me shiver is a cold realisation that sticks to my throat. The thought of doing this job for the rest of my life, or even a few years, drops my body temperature right down. The little hairs on my arms rise to attention, to the panic that hovers over me. A patient with a tall, grey topknot hands me her slip. I take the orange paper with dread, unable to shake off the meaninglessness of it all. I do what I always do. 'Is there any particular day that is better for you?' 'I'm afraid the Hygienist is all booked up until October, but we can put you on the cancellations list.' 'Would you like your appointments emailed to you?'
My first day was filled with such nerves, I felt like a child not wanting to go to school. So much to learn, a new team to navigate, a fresh client base ... I even convinced myself the uniform looked alright. But now, I dread zipping up the grey pencil skirt that does nothing for my figure; the black blouse with its unnecessarily straight, pleated neckline; the shoulder-padded blazer with its crushingly fake pockets. Just leave, you think. You do think that, don't you? The problem is, it's my third week. I'm as fresh as a baby's bottom and I can barely summon my body to get out of the car each morning. Arriving back from lunch is worse still. The effort it takes to return is phenomenal. On Tuesday, I had a glass of wine. On Friday, I walked around for an hour looking for signs; something, anything, to guide me in a direction that wasn't this one. A pigeon fluttered in a tree (was that a sign?); my coffee was £3.80 (a sign?); a mallard glistened in the sun (surely, a sign, but what?).
The wall clock shows a time I don't understand. I've been here for hours yet mere minutes have passed. It reminds me of Lucifer's hell loop, but I'm not on television and there's always hope on television. The white background of the clock melts into its silver dial, which in turn melts into the white wall and disintegrates into nothing. I feel like I will disintegrate here.
I don't fit in. I always fit in at work, but not here. It's an unfamiliar feeling that lingers on my skin, emerges from behind corners, cupboards and doors. I don't feel like myself; don't lift people's spirits, my creative skills lie dormant. I avoid the staff room, eat on the move, go to the bathroom just to breathe. I am not me here. I am, quite possibly, nothing.
It's Monday afternoon. I stand on the opposite side of the road, staring at the building. The sun beats down on me, causing me to sweat, but the air con is still full blast inside. I can't go back in but I can't stand here either. Cars fly impatiently past. My eyes sweat until my cheeks are sticky. Maybe the pigeon was a sign. They can find their way home from hundreds of miles away. Pigeons can smell the very scent of their home. How can I do the same? Home is a feeling, not a place. Where can I look for this feeling, how can I recognise its smell? Despite not knowing any of these things, I swear I can taste a piece of it; subtly sweet with a smooth, thick texture. The kind of texture that doesn't go cold or disappear into walls. The kind that regulates time. Lunch is over.
It's Sunday afternoon, again.
I've learned to dread the weekends, as this is when I will become abandoned while he reverts to his (obviously) preferred persona; that of a single young man, cruising the bars and nightclubs until there is no option but to return home. He's not single though. He's my husband.
I'm relaxing in my favourite chair in front of the telly - a small glimmer of happiness I've learned to clutch on to. At least when he's out 'doing his thing' I have some freedom in the house that he doesn't trample all over. He also favours this particular seat. Between Friday night and Sunday afternoon, it has become mine. The race cars on the screen zoom and whine. Another familiar comfort. I've always loved to watch the race, ever since my dad and I used to sit together, placing penny bets on who would win.
The clock on the opposite wall ticks on, piercing the peace I'm forcing myself to feel, a reminder that he will return soon. Our toddler is napping upstairs. I'd have popped out to the supermarket already if she hadn't needed to sleep. There's nothing left in the cupboards for me to cook this evening. No doubt he will use that as a reason to call me useless. A bad wife. A justification for his absences. I check the time against the list in my head of all the tasks I should complete to avoid his wrath. It's approaching three o'clock. He could arrive, clattering through the front door, (definitely still under the influence though he'll deny it) at any time.
I've learned not to attempt to contact him during these disappearing acts. I've never been able to get hold of him so I don't bother wasting my time any more. His phone will ring and ring, or I'll only reach voicemail. I'm well and truly conditioned to put up with it and shut up about it.
The laundry needs folding and putting away; another load needs to be washed; the dishwasher needs loading; the bathroom needs cleaning and the stairs need vacuuming. Whether or not I put the effort into these mundane household tasks to show him I am competent and capable and that I am a good wife, the outcome will never change.
The clock reminds me that time is running out until his return and anxiety blooms from my gut to my chest. Tick-tock he'll be back any time now; tick tock you'd better get on with the chores. Tick fucking tock I don't want to feel like this any more!
Is this my life? Is this who I am? Small, quiet, cowed? Reframing moments of enforced solitude as a reward for putting up with being bullied, belittled and coerced into submission? I'm angry now, feeling restless and alive with an unfamiliar sense of realisation that I can take back my power. I don't have to repeat this never-ending empty drudgery of a life. My child doesn't need a cold emotional battleground as the backdrop to her youth.
What will my life become if I stay here? Undervalued, unloved, underwhelming. The clock ticks on, the seconds pushing forwards as the days of my life flash by; each one the same, each one as unremarkable as the last yet each one a moment of the rest of my life to endure.
When he returns I'll be gone. He can have the chair, the telly and the clock - ticking onwards through the days of his sad, wasteful life.
My time will be refreshed, buoyed by renewed freedom and hope and happiness. I will move through the days without the destructive weights of fear, unfulfillment and unfair expectations.
My clock has been reset.
Love is a Game
Roger May started this week with his computer at full speed. Outside, February's crew cut lawns filled the university quadrangle with vivid green, young men and the ever-delightful young women. .. His large glass office window aanother piece on his pandora bracelet of journal articles, permanent tenure, travel, board positions and research grants. He moved the mouse into research mode. It was Monday morning tea time and his life was a full tank. He had so much to offer. Love is a game and he liked a challenge. Time. It was time to put a systematic evidence based approach to attracting the right partner. A partner for him. Not the bloody al gorrr ithm . If love was a game then dating site algorithms made it like a nuclear war – and he needed code breaking skills or advanced intelligence to get anywhere.
In silence his keys started to recraft his profile.
Fifteen years of blissful independent living had healed what the profiles called ‘baggage’.
One woman had said she carried her own baggage. Perhaps he’d borrow this phrase. ‘Lets see I could say I only have light carry on baggage’.
A rather satisfying set of images and descriptions flew up and into his face. The two sided match making worked well today.
He gazed. Nigella the tax accountants profile spoke of fun and an active lifestyle. And then despite all his optic confidence his mood slipped. His baggage burst open showing its stuffed dirty contents. Did he? could he? Could he have been the cause of his divorce? Was it some monster home movie that he shone on to his ex wife, that caused him to run away and leave her? Had he, in some way, distorted who she was? And then he caught himself. No, impossible, it was the ex not him. She was just so quiet, such a homebody,onstantly wanting to stay in and cuddle or watch a movie. The womans favourite place was under a blanket in bed with a cup of tea and her favourite book. She hated talking on the phone, writing texts, and attending university events. The time he had bought her a Christian Dior dress to wear to the annual university staff dinner, hoping she might put it on out of guilt she jus said
‘forget it’.
'If you wear your beige polyester suit one more time, I'll cut it up and burn it on the balcony!'. Yes, he had shouted these words quite loudly.
And she did wear the Dior, but later he realised that it was not to please him but because she hated wasting money—the day after, she donated the blue Dior to the local animal shelter for fundraising.
Ok well 'fun'. He was a fun person. Most nights he worked and perhaps his life was a little empty and maybe every now and then he felt a little lonely. His children did worry about it . But what did he do that was fun? The best laugh he’d had recently was with his online therapist who said
‘Machine learning only gets to know your surface optics’
‘So?
‘ Well human truth and daily feelings are like a type of reality incontinence, they seep out into conversations and so people start to not trust.’
Fun Ok. He wrote ‘enjoy being a family man and having fun with the kids’. Last week he had spoken to both of them after a two year period of not speaking.
Active. Lets see active lifestyle. At this point he stopped. This really was going to far out of who he was or is. At ten he’d been thrown out of the basketball team for ducking when the ball came to him
Good commicator tactile and affectionate. That finished the profile and then lovely Nigella sent a message.
Please check out my profile; would love to hear from you …
She: Roger, lovely to connect here. I am wondering what you do. .
I was hoping you would get in touch. You can find out more about me here: [link]
She: I am not able to find that on google. I keep getting that the page does not exist. You will have chat here about what you do.
Strange.
She: I have had another look and its not coming up for me.
The address seems correct, just checked
You can also check this. There’s a couple of more pictures there…
She: Pictures are fine but don’t tell me about you. So what is it that you do?
Its in the link
She: You are getting me to chase up everything on the internet instead of chatting on here. The purpose of this site is to chat here which you don’t want to do. Sorry but you don’t want to talk on this site and you are making me work to find out about you. Good luck.
He closed the computer, groaned and then cancelled his subscription to Elite singles. Perhaps he was better off just staying at home. Maybe he’d call his ex wife.
John almost didn't see it at first. He was walking, thinking about life and how he should spend the rest of his when he realised Rosie was no longer by his side. Looking back, he saw her sniffing at the base of an old oak, lightly pawing at the dead leaves and earth beneath.
"Here girl." He called, but she didn't hear him. Almost twelve years old, too old for a Lab really, she needed a surgery he could not afford. The vets had suggested euthanasia, and so he had had to stop taking her.
"What is it, eh? Leave the poor thing alone."
But there was no squirrel, or mouse, as was her customary victim. Instead, half hidden amongst the debris of the forest, he found what looked like an ivory chess set. The board glowed in the evening sun, and upon it sat thirty-two intricately carved pieces. They were all in their starting positions, as if waiting patiently for the game to begin.
"Well I'll be damned." He said to Rosie, who had since lost interest and was rolling gleefully in a nearby puddle. "Do you think someone left it here by mistake? Seems an awfully strange place to be having a game of chess."
Rosie, satisfied with her new look, did not respond.
For a moment he considered taking it back home with him. It was a small village and surely before long he would have been able to find the owner. Then he remembered something his wife had shown him many years ago. Little trinkets hidden around the countryside. Geocaches, she called them, where hunters would replace what they found in little boxes with items of their own. They had even found a few themselves, he seemed to recall; a fridge magnet depicting the mountains of India, and a marble figurine that looked remarkably like Rosie.
And so, rather than taking it away, he carefully moved the white's F pawn forward two squares and left.
At home, he gave Rosie a bath, cooked a meal of fried eggs and beans, and tried to settle down to read a book. Each time he tried, however, he couldn't get through more than half a dozen words when thoughts of what he had found distracted him. He'd never been much of a chess player over the years, assuming that he had little skill in this regard, and that to develop any would require a level of attention he could not afford. Still, the mystery intrigued him. Had it been placed there intentionally, and if so, who by? Was there perhaps a prize to be won, or something to be lost if luck did not go his way?
If only his wife had been there. She would have loved this. He remembered when she had tried to teach him chess strategy not long after they'd got together. Even then he hadn't cared for the game, enjoying the lessons not for their intellectual challenge but for the chance to spend time with her. To hear her talk passionately and get caught up in a world he did not understand. It was too late now, of course, and he wished he had paid more attention. Maybe then, he would have been able to make her proud.
The next day John returned with Rosie to the forest at the crack of dawn, and sure enough, the game had progressed. On the opposing side, glistening with dew, a black knight stood before its row of pawns. Glancing around to see if the perpetrator had hung back to watch, he played his counter-move. Keep it simple. A bishop came to protect the queen. Then, taking the note he had written late the night before from his pocket, he placed it jutting out from one side of the board.
It was a long shot, he knew, but grief had instilled in him an element of desire that went beyond the rational. In life he had had little time for her superstitious beliefs. Whenever she had come to him with horoscopes or psychic premonitions he had dismissed them as childish illusions. Now, he was trying to make amends for his actions. As he returned home he recounted the note he had written.
"To my darling Steph,
I doubt you will ever read this. You are in a grave not far from here. You are returning to the earth, as they say, and it is foolish of me to try and reach you. Still, I thought I should try. Do you hate me now? I still remember the last argument we had, and how your face looked when I said I was leaving. It was such a terrible thing to say. If I could take it back, I would. If you are angry with me, I understand that, too. I would be angry with me. So, if by some miracle you are reading this, and if even more you do not wish to forget all about me, I would like to propose a deal. We will carry on the game I believe you have started. I will return here every morning as early as I can. I will not come looking for you. I will not try to trick you in any way. If I win, you will allow me a chance to explain myself. You will come to me in whatever form you are able to take and we will talk. That is all I ask. On the contrary, if you win, I will leave you alone. As much as it will pain me, you will not hear from me again, and I will have to learnt to live with the damage I have done."
Over the course of the next few days, John emersed himself in the world of professional chess. At the local library he used the computers to research certain strategies and moves. Using the sketches he made of the board in the forest each morning, he would play out possible sequences on a board back home. The stakes had been raised. Despite his philosophical beliefs, he was now playing for much more than mystery or ego. He was playing - nay fighting - for the closure he'd dreamt of through two years of mourning. What he had said to his wife was inexcusable, but part of him believed that this alone was a path to possible redemption.
After two weeks of the same routine; rising early, leaving with Rosie for the forest, assessing the position of the board and carefully deciding on his next move, then, dropping Rosie at home, spending the rest of the day hunched over at the library computers, the game was coming to a close. The note remained under the board, now half disintegrated by rain and insects. Each move was taking immense concentration. It seemed that each time the sophistication of his play increased, it was rebuffed by an even more advanced mind. White than black raising the level of the game, always leaving him on the back foot.
On his penultimate visit to the forest, John saw that he was doomed. With one more move his king would be cornered, and he would have to admit defeat. It was over. For almost an hour he sat beside the board, trying to think of a move that could avoid the inevitable, but it never came. In the end, he left without making a play. One more day, he thought. One more day before he was ready to handle the truth.
It was with great reluctance that he returned the next morning. In one hand he held a note. The words of farewell he had never got the chance to utter while his wife was alive. When he reached the board, however, something was clearly off. Where the day before each black piece had stood precisely in its dedicated square, they were now laying on their sides, some having rolled off into the foliage. As he neared, John saw the second unexpected change that sent a coldness snaking down his spine.
There, tucked nearly under one corner of the board, was a white envelope. With shaking hands he tore it open.
"I'm sorry." It read. "I am not your wife. Or if I am, it was so long ago I do not remember. Time works differently here. We do not have mornings and evenings, days and nights. Nor do we have the same identities as we held in life. Forgive me, but I fear I have allowed you to believe something truly harmful to the conscious world, and only now do I see the truth. This game was intended simply as a way to pass the time. I wish I could give you the answers you need. I wish I could come to you as you ask and listen to your story, but alas our time is over. The game, as you must have seen on your last visit, is over. I hope you will accept my meagre offerings of apology. Under the board you will find enough money to cover poor Rosie's treatment.
Until we meet again.
Yours sincerely,
The Player."
No one smokes at ball games anymore
As a kid my best memories were of my dad and me and the ball game. My dad was blue collar, wore jeans and a work shirt most days but on Sundays, ball game days, he always dressed smart.
We'd sit on wooden benches, me in my Dodgers shirt and him in his jacket and blue check shirt, newly pressed with a polka dot bow tie. He wore slacks that I thought were sacred as I only ever saw him wear on Sundays and a little white sun shade hat that come rain or shine he would always wear. In this picture of tailored perfection he would add his own eccentricity and wear red baseball sneakers. He said they were comfortable. Dad never smoked except on ball game days, three cigars, one before, one during and one after the game.
Our games against the Yankees were always the best although we hardly ever won. We'd made four World Series in the late forties and early fifties and lost them all to the Yankees. I remember the second time, in 1953 when we lost, Dad was distraught. He locked himself in his den that afternoon and didn'€™t come out until next day.
The first words he said when he opened the door were "Next year kid."€Â
Next time came two years later. 1955. The Dodgers had a great season and won their division with ease. We had great hopes going into the World Series again to face our nemesis, the Yankees. We lost the first two games and it seemed we'd be forever the bridesmaids. Then things clicked. We won three straight with the Duke of Flatbush, the great Duke Snider giving the Yankees hell. Dad puffed his way through his three cigars and screamed and hollered louder than most. The Yankees won game 6 and it was all set for the final showdown. Yankee Stadium. October 4 1955.
I was eleven years old and I'd never seen so many people in my life. We took the subway to 125th Street and started walking. Dad had checked his wallet at least ten times that afternoon, making certain the tickets were safe. He began looking around at the thousands making their way to the game.
"We'€™re gonna be late,kid, " he said then grabbing my hand, he started to run. I never knew Dad could run so fast. We made it with half an hour to go. Dad was sweating and blowing and started his second cigar early, a sure sign of nerves.
"This is next year son,"€ he muttered, " this is it."
He rocked in his seat all the way through the game, mulling over bad decisions, softly cussing so I couldn't hear. I did of course but I never let on. Johnny Podres shut the Yankees out. We won 2-0. Game over. Our first World Series!
Dad never left his seat. They said it was a heart attack brought on by the excitement but I guess he had nothing left to live for. A policeman took me home to my mom. She cried a lot. I told her we'd won the World Series but she still cried.
Brooklyn never won another World Series although we came close and a few years later the Brooklyn Dodgers upped and left for the sunshine of LA. It was never the same after that.
Nobody smokes at ball games anymore of course but I still carry three cigars in my pocket just for dad. I watch the Mets now, not every game though but when I do, I walk.
I always walk.
Jigsaw
Finding the scrap of paper was the missing piece of the puzzle. Written on years earlier, when Pat was still alive, and I sat with her whilst we dug into my history, it was like a message from the afterlife. I stared at her handwriting, remembering birthday and Christmas cards, letters to me when I was a student, postcards from her travels. Then I switched on my computer, and used the information to fill in a very large gap in my life.
***
It began as a bit of a laugh, a game. For Christmas I'd bought us both Ancestry DNA tests, out of curiosity and a sense of fun: Who was the most Scottish? Who was the most English? Where did our traits come from?
The results took weeks to come back but when they did they confirmed what I'd already guessed - I was a mongrel, a mish-mash of seven different areas. And the lands that had called to me in the past were indeed a part of my story. There was a reason I felt a connection to Scottish hills and Welsh valleys and Yorkshire accents. My husband's results were just as interesting.
I clicked on 'DNA matches' and up came a list of names and possible relationships. Many were 5th or 6th cousins; 7th or 8th cousins. That was to be expected - go back far enough and we are all linked, after all, but to see my shared DNA in over 10,000 other lives was powerful. I loved connecting people - one of my biggest joys is introducing two of my best friends and watching them get on well. I love meeting new people and often discover coincidences that join us.
However, games aside, one of my reasons for getting the DNA testing done was to fill a great big hole in my life. My father and I are estranged but before we stopped being in touch I'd learned there was no family (according to him) on his side. There was an aunt long ago (I thought) but my father is an only child, there are no cousins and a great big space where family should have been. My father showed no interest when I asked questions and I'd accepted I may never know where he/I came from.
So when my own surname popped up in my list of closer DNA matches, I felt a surge of excitement. Could be a coincidence but my surname isn't very common. The link was 2nd/3rd cousin. I messaged her immediately and she messaged right back. I knew straight away here was someone like me: someone open and friendly, keen to make connections, keen to know more. We messaged back and forth on Ancestry, moved to whatsapp and after a few days we video chatted. The click was there; we just got on and it was as if we'd known each other forever! It turned out our birthdays were a day apart although she's much younger. We went digging and found the connection - my great-grandfather's half brother was her great grandfather. It sounds tenuous, but it made our dads second cousins and when we compared photos there is a resemblance - for me it was a missing piece of my puzzle. We now message every few days and video chat every week or so, and are digging into our shared pasts together. Later this year we're going to meet in person (she is as far away from me as it's possible to be in the British Isles!)
Through our conversations I discovered where some of my health issues came from, that she has my dad's distinct earlobes, that there are certain traits that run down the families. What started as a bit of a game turned into an event that made me feel complete. I'd grown up knowing everyone on my mum's side of the family; now I had people to meet on my dad's.
Whenever I have a spare hour I go onto Ancestry, find a gap in my tree and work on filling it out. I've made connections all over the UK, Australia and Europe. My distant relations pop up on their trees and they are happy to share information. I haven't clicked as much with anyone as much as I have with C, and I just cannot wait to meet her.
As I was digging, there was one gap I just couldn't fill. This was my paternal grandmother's side so C couldn't help as she's on my grandfather's side. No matter how much I tried I just didn't have enough information. I vaguely remembered doing some digging into my grandmother's side with my aunt but had no idea where this information had gone.
Until last week. I've begun a project to deal with all the random pieces of 'important' paper in my house. Piles of documents that lurk in corners, disorganised. We have lost passports, car ownership documents, medical letters and certificates. I bought a filing cabinet and took a deep breath.
It was on day three that the piece of paper appeared from the middle of a messy pile of sheets of A4. As if a message from wherever Pat's soul had gone, there was the missing information I needed - some birthdates and places; and a name. With slightly shaking hands I did a search, and there appeared an ancestor I could add to my tree. Pat was a real gamer - not a video gamer but an everything-else gamer. Her side of the family played cards, board games, did quizzes, jigsaws and puzzles. It felt as if this was a treasure hunt, and here was a clue she'd left me, a last gift. It took me back to that afternoon digging into old records, searching for connections, playing at being detectives. Like yesterday.
Pat is gone. My ancestors are names on old documents but reading them starts to reveal the stories behind them. Joining the dots between censuses shows who has left, who has moved in, who has died. Children disappear all too regularly - whole family trees felled before they have taken root.
The story that brings C and I together is this: My great-great grandfather had four children in quick succession with a woman called Mary-Ann, who died when she was 31. Her widower then got together with their lodger, a woman called Sarah, who became pregnant, took his name but never married. It's from Sarah that C's line begins, and links with mine.
I try to imagine what their lives were like, what Sarah was like, how it was taking on four young children and pretending to be married to their father. I think about what she took on in terms of work - how hard everything was back then. How survival was literally that. We joke about surviving the winter; they lived with no modern luxuries to make life easier. I want to go back in time and visit them because there is precious little information and a lot of gaps to be filled. C and I would like to go to where we are from - Staffordshire, about halfway between our present addresses.
I imagine us looking around churchyards, finding our ancestors, completing the puzzle. And I don't have to imagine how I will treasure the time with this new lovely relative; I know we will enjoy it and I know how much fun we will have.
What began as a bit of fun has changed my life, made me feel whole and reminded me that we really are all connected. The joy is in putting the jigsaw pieces together.
Choking on a Chevalier Sandwich
The Maurice Chevalier playful song lyric, "I’m glad I’m not young anymore" comes back to me. Ah, if only it was true. Why it should come to mind now, after all these years, I have no idea. Anyway, I think back to a time when youth and inexperience conspired against me…..
"Ah, yes, I remember ‘eet’ well." It’s not something I really want to remember but if my unfortunate experience goes some way to helping anyone else, then I might as well express it here and now, in the form of a confessional, if you like….
Suddenly I am student again, on my way to the bus stop, in the pouring rain. I turn the corner and face a dilemma. I am puzzled, faced with an awkward choice…..
Carry on walking and hope the bus will wait. The driver can see me coming although, to me, his face is little more than a pink blob behind a smeared windscreen. But I know his little game. We’ve played it before. He’s bored and probably jealous of those who travel with the freedom to go where the mood takes them. At least, that’s what he thinks.
I think he has too much time to dwell on his miserable life, trapped in a goldfish bowl and wedded to a steering wheel, always on the move but going round in endless circles, day after day; the mindless drudgery of the number 38 bus.
He can think what he likes, but I need to take the bus as a part of my regular routine, five days a week. But in his mind, I am a free spirit, a dilettante, one of those long haired students with nothing better to do than smoke pot and enjoy another endless ‘summer of love’. (I wish – but this bus goes to Macclesfield not San Francisco!)
He, on the other hand, has nothing better to do than humiliate his paying customers. I know this to be true. I’ve met him before. One might almost say that he is imbued with evil intent. Okay, that might be an exaggeration, but he is mischievous to say the least.
This is probably how it will pan out….
I’ll approach the bus. He knows my intent. He’ll wait, looking like butter wouldn’t melt, then pull away just before I get there, leaving me stranded on the wet pavement in a plume of blue exhaust, a row of smirking faces looking at me from the windows as the bus gathers speed, leaving me stranded.
But, if I run? Oh, yes, if I run! That could be even worse and extend the agony. I’ll clamber aboard like some desperado with St Vitus dance, fumbling for my change, dropping half of it on the floor, take my ticket and then stumble down the aisle looking for a seat and collapse in an embarrassed heap. The driver will then deliberately take his time, filling out his pools coupon or writing his memoirs or whatever else he can think of to cause a delay and have us all sitting there indefinitely and I’ll feel a fool, perched like ‘piffy on a rock bun’, hot and breathless.
And he will have won…. Again!
Yes, the game, if it was boxed and marketed, would be known as ‘Humiliation’. It would be in bold letters and probably have my photograph on the lid and I don’t think I would be smiling.
I’ve got to concentrate, puzzle this out. Play him at his own game. Try a new strategy. Something he won’t expect. Something new.
So, it’s ‘GAME ON’…..
I put on my game face and lengthen my stride and lower my centre of gravity. My gait might look a little unusual but my speed increases. I hope I don’t look like a geek or someone who needs the toilet. But it’s a risk worth taking.
I try not to look stupid.
I look stupid, a loser at a game I could never hope to win. He’s played it so many more times before, against so many other players. I’m just an amateur, an ingénue, innocently drawn in to his dark world of deception and practical jokery. He’s a professional, been at it for years. It’s probably an integral part of bus driver training, lifted straight out of the manual, something to boast about over a cup of tea in the staff canteen. It’s probably in the chapter headed ‘Alleviation of Boredom’ found just after the chapter headed, ‘How to make passengers wish they had walked instead’.
I don’t stand a chance. He’s taken on all-comers and chalked up victory after bloody victory.
It’s no good. I blink first. My will crumbles and I break into a run. I try to pretend that I’m running straight past, on my way somewhere else. Then, as soon as I’m parallel with the open door, I lunge sideways, tripping up the steps, missing my footing and spilling my fare over the floor. (Deja vu!)
The driver looks at me as if I’m some kind of idiot as I scrabble around on my hands and knees trying to rescue loose change. I find most of it but the longer I look, the more self-conscious I become. An elderly lady sitting on the front seat, wearing a knitted tea-cosy for a hat, points helpfully with her umbrella to a corner and nods. I smile and salvage a penny from the grime, black dirt forcing its way under my fingernails.
“Park Green,†I stammer as I deposit eight ‘new pence’, a ring-pull and a cigarette butt on the driver's little oval dish.
He hands me a ticket along with the ring-pull and the cigarette butt and says, “Your change.â€
The elderly lady smiles at me as I pass and I feel my cheeks burning.
I grope my way down the crowded bus, my ruck-sack swinging dangerously from side to side, close to unprotected faces, making passengers take avoiding action. I apologise automatically as my bag rebounds from shoulders bordering the aisle. I avoid eye contact, hoping I don’t know anybody.
I stumble into the only empty seat I can find but it’s next to a girl. I’d rather it wasn’t.
I glance across. Oh, God, it’s Louise!
"Every ‘leetle’ breeze seems to ‘whispair’ Louise." That Louise!….
The Louise I’ve been trying to impress since last September when I joined the extra-curricular art group and found the most beautiful girl in the world.
I had hopes. I had dreams. Well, not any more.
‘GAME OVER!’
A mountain of tasks lies before you as you lie in bed. Puzzles and games, remember. It's only a day, REMEMBER, it can't be that hard. The email, a puzzle, make it fun. Don't be afraid. Clean the kitchen, make it a game. Don't forget the cheese for dinner. DON'T FORGET.
Now sit down and work. Mind flits around the room, catch it and point it at this puzzle. Make it work. Set a timer if you need, change places, move around. But come back to this. DO THE DAMN THING.
This isn't fun, this isn't working. A mind that won't stand still, one that won't get moving when you need it. Four letters like puzzle pieces. This is the hand you've been dealt, now play the game. MAKE IT WORK.
Shit... Forgot the cheese.
PARTY GAMES
'Where's the blooming thing?' Santa searched the shed's spidery shelves, stacking boxes, then restacking them, shifting tools, and balancing tins and items that may be useful one day.
Not the real Santa, but a good likeness. Rotund, with a flowing white beard and a fondness for wearing red, he earned the nickname when he moved into the street.
However, he swiftly became a red devil, terrifying kids and irritating adults, constantly complaining about the most insignificant matters and reporting all and sundry to the local council, the police, and the newspaper.
Wielding rusty bolt cutters, Santa returned to his bicycle that was chained to the lamp post outside his house.
'When I find out who—′ The cutters slipped on the chain, grazing his knuckles. He swore as he wrapped a hanky around the wound. Tried again. Failed. Swore some more.
Jim, and his miniature chihuahua Tyson, watched from behind number eight's curtains. Jim toyed with the padlock key, and the dog expressed his approval with a broad grin.
A bag of dog poo, massive turds almost the size of Tyson, had been deposited on Jim's doorstep during the night. Not the first time Santa had wrongly accused Tyson of fouling the pavements.
Jim transferred the package to the doorstep of number fourteen. The Doberman living there was more likely the dumper of the massive doggie-do.
Santa's face was scarlet. Not the rosy glow of the gentleman who resides at the North Pole, and Santa's Grotto had never echoed with the blasphemy spilling from the lips of the white-haired soul maniacally attacking the chain.
He stood back, glowering. Why would someone do such an idiotic thing? Yes, he'd recently had 'words' with certain individuals regarding various issues. Litter, dog poo, loud music, slamming doors, drunken behaviour, undisciplined kids and empty bins left on the pavement for hours, sometimes several days, after the refuse collectors had called.
This, however, was downright petty, and he reckoned it was to do with the recent bag of dog excrement he had scooped up; he shuddered at the memory. He'd left it on ... whose doorstep was it this time? He couldn't remember and decided to create a spreadsheet once he had freed his perishing bike.
Patrick and his retriever, Tiny, watched the pantomime from behind the blinds of number eleven. Jim had accused Patrick's dog of being 'overly friendly' with Tyson. Tiny's amorous advances had traumatised poor Tyson, and the vet had prescribed an expensive tranquilliser. So, for a lark, Patrick had transferred the poo bag that had been left on his doorstep, to Jim's.
'Good game this, isn't it, Tiny?' Patrick sniggered. He had seen Jim nip along to Dobbie's house with the offending article. Tiny wasn't impressed. His nose was pressed against the window painting the glass with sticky, wet smears as he lustfully eyed Tiny sitting at the window across the road, deliberately ignoring him.
The Doberman's door opened.
The owner of number fourteen stepped out onto the poo bag.
Her spiked heel pierced the plastic.
Her weight squished the whoopsie across the step.
'Oopsie,' chorused Jim, Patrick and several other dog owners who had been involved in this game of Pass-the-parcel.
Sometimes – when you look at me funny – I imagine we’re game pieces.
Like you’re a dark blue plastic disk
Small enough to fit on my tongue,
And I’ve got dice in my hands covered in sixes.
I stand still as your mouth bleeds black paint.
I squeeze my fists so hard they fuse,
Your breath tastes like tar and I’m covered in it.
Pawn.
I don’t like the way you smile – with those licorice teeth.
Make me the iron to your battleship,
smoothing out all these creases,
turning this ocean into
A little plastic disk, dark blue.
PAWN!
blank canvas turned oil spill
from your bubbling saliva.
file me down
into a little cardboard square
so I don’t quite fit the way I used to.
into my own clothes,
into this bed,
flat – like a paper doll,
my words just sound like
letters, in the wrong order.
my throat full
of black paint
my stomach full
of black paint
And you look straight through me.
With those dark blue discs.
Like being swallowed by the ocean.
a Puzzle it be;
a Conundrum as it were.
Not intentioned to solve; per no answer to be heard.
As woven of conglomerated design should we tee,
the bases to run at the behest of herd.
A pickle, a pear, shall shin splints tear;
for caught between intentioned adversaries to tire, maim, and hare.
Shall we falter of fate; to the dark recesses of hate, to a life merely resigned to that of pin and pate.
To the contest they say; that game of which at play.
For delights and desires pursued tamed long of gray.
Who will stand to let a victor be seen; none say thye for sake of humanly inane humanities way.
Beatty stared at Erica sleepily, his eyes still drowsy from the effects of the anaesthetic. Erica stared back at Beatty, studying his face, his head, his body. He was perfect. Beatty’s eyes were perfect, focusing first at Erica, then, slightly hazily, beyond her. His little nostrils flared slightly as he breathed, his fine whiskers stood out like fine needles from his cheeks. Erica couldn’t believe the quality of his fur: every detail was perfect, the colouring, the texture. Erica tentatively put her hand out and gently stroked Beatty’s fur. Beatty purred and put his head down to stroke his cheek against Erica’s hand. Not only did he look perfect, even his behaviour was perfect. He sat on the table like some sort of fine sculpture. Only he was for real.
Erica could not believe it.
She turned and looked at Alfie. He was pretending to be asleep, lying curled up near the radiator, but she knew that he was watching herself and Beatty closely. Erica was interested to see his reaction to Beatty, his identical twin.
The three of them sat close together in her studio, as she called it. It was actually more than a studio: it was more a laboratory, maybe more a workshop. For here, Erica had worked on 3d printing for the last decade, first of all producing models of things in three dimensions using printers she had bought. Then, being frustrated with their shortcomings, she used her skills as an engineer to develop them further. She increased their quality, increased their accuracy. Early printers she had bought could print items to resolution of 1600dpi. Erica could now scan and print at molecular level. This of course required incredible computer capacity, but Erica had formulated software which simplified the structure even of living tissue. The printer itself, similarly, was impossibly complicated, with tiny needles extruding matter of a size that could not be seen with the naked eye. But she had found a way of producing mass extrusions of differing materials from banks of tiny needles which enabled much faster production times.
Erica had started off small with inanimate objects, had then tried her hand at simple living forms, and now she was confident enough to reproduce living creatures. Alpha – Alfie – was her first cat to be copied. She liked the name Alfie – A Life, if you swopped things around a bit. Beta, the copy, was Beatty – that meant “voyager through lifeâ€. He was her latest living copy: he was a perfect copy of Alfie. She couldn’t help smiling proudly as she admired her work.
She would change the medical world, revolutionise it, producing tissues, organs, complete limbs, complete bodies even. As she sat and mused, she could perhaps even – goodness – give people eternal life by reforming them into younger bodies. Now that would be interesting.
Alfie also thought Beatty was interesting. Very interesting. He had been watching Erica and Alfie out of the corner of his eye, pretending to be not at all interested. He didn’t like this new cat on the scene. He didn’t like the way that his beloved Erica paid such close attention to him. Even stroking him! And looking him in the eye like that! This was too much. He waited his opportunity and he didn’t have to wait long: he saw Erica’s eyes glaze as she thought of her strange dreamy thoughts: so he pounced.
Beatty scarcely saw what was coming: he scarcely had time to widen his eyes before Alfie was upon him, a solid missile of teeth and spit and hair and claws, scrabbling sharply for a hold on him as they tumbled together onto the floor together. Beatty managed to recall from his reproduced brain the basic instinct to defend himself and together the two cats became one screaming, hissing bundle of fur writhing on the floor, locked together by their identical sharp claws. Alfie of course had the advantage, with Beatty scarcely awake and still getting used to using a body that felt slightly strange because even at molecular level there were always going to be microscopic manufacturing tolerances which would make him slightly different to the original.
Somehow Beatty managed to tear himself free from Alfie and ran frantically around the room trying vainly to escape, but no matter how he leaped up onto tables, hid behind chairs, ran behind Erica’s legs, he could barely escape Alfie’s snapping teeth and scratching claws.
Erica meanwhile screamed in hysteria as she saw her masterpiece being torn to shreds. Then, as she watched, Alfie caught Beatty again and together they rolled on the floor again, just one big mass of fur and legs and hissing and claws. Erica couldn’t even tell them apart.
Then, there was an agonised scream, and the explosion blew Alfie across the floor to hit the filing cabinets at the end of the room with an impact that knocked the breath out of him. Erica was knocked off her chair by the explosion and now she too sat dazed on the floor, covered in blood and teeth and lungs and liver. The walls were grossly sprayed with internal organs and part of Beatty’s fur hung limply from the door handle.
Alfie and Erica exchanged dazed glances.
Erica swore under her breath. She needed to do more work: her printouts were still proving to be unstable.
The Cats of Christmas Present
The cat’s been getting in the crib again
and she sits there with aplomb.
She’s making a mess and the crib looks like
it’s been hit by an atom bomb.
There’s shepherds scattered across the floor,
the kings are on their backs,
the cat is beaming; then, licking her lips,
resumes her wild attacks.
The cat’s been climbing the Christmas tree,
assaulting it day and night,
there’s baubles rolling around the tiles;
she’s swallowed a fairy light.
The toddler is taking tips,
delighted by the clamour,
she’s eyeing up the Christmas cake
and looking for the hammer.
We know the cat’s a Christmas fan
in fact, she is devout,
but a look at the crib or the Christmas tree
and common sense is out.
So, here I am in my new room. Finally. I am warm, dry, safe. No longer will I be cold, perpetually damp – if not wet – and in danger. The plague on the seawall at Burnham on Sea should have warned me, but instead I ignored it, instead I seemed to have taken it as a personal challenge.
The plaque stated that centuries before, in the 1600s, the sea had inundated not only Burnham on Sea but had flowed inland, far inland, five leagues in fact, as it would probably have been measured in those days. It had reached as far inland as the very foot of Glastonbury Tor. Nowadays it would be called 23km, 14 miles. This was a distance difficult for me to comprehend as a kid, until the following day when Dad drove me and the rest of kids and our Mum to Cheddar Gorge, which is around half way to the Tor. We climbed slowly up Jacob’s Ladder, which led us to the top of the gorge at its lower end. Then followed an interminable trek up the hill, following the unseen frightening drop just metres away, until we reached the top. The undergrowth which had concealed the yawning gap had become bare grassland and we stood on the very edge and admired the crags and buttresses, the birds wheeling lazily in the depths below us. Then, turning around, we gazed in awe at the incredible view, with field and hedge and field and hedge disappearing endlessly into the horizon, the horizon itself with a fainter horizon beyond it, now just the grey outlines of trees in the distance, followed by further silhouetted outlines beyond until they merged with the sky. Over to the right in the distance the sun glinted on the sea, then over to the left, inland, one of us spotted a tiny hill with a stumpy matchstick standing erect on the top, so small you could barely see it: Glastonbury Tor. Dad said that at the seaside here you had to be careful on the sand and mudflats when the tide was out, not to hang around and be caught by the tide. There were other places in the country, he said, where the tide came in faster than a galloping horse. When the sea came in to the Tor, 20,000 people died, or so he said. We were all silent as we imagined the awful, unexpected fate of those folks. In those days the sea had barely left the land, it being low lying, some areas we now knew even being below the level of the sea.
That was forty-odd years ago in 2022, when I was a kid and now the sea was returning to the land. There was a race to protect some low lying towns, but in the country parts the expense could simply not be justified.
Nevertheless I loved the area, so I found myself buying a house at a crazy low price and accepting that it would sometimes flood. Over the years though this became more frequent, I ended up living upstairs and venturing downstairs only at the end of the summer when the place had dried out a bit. In addition, being near to the dunes, as these were worn away by the steadily rising sea levels, the sand itself inundated the land, so in the end my little house was engulfed not only by sea but by the beach itself.
Finally I had to accept defeat, so here I am in my lovely new room. It is certainly smaller than my house, but it is all I can afford. It’s the same with countless other folks around here. We have all moved into the accommodation provided for us, though it is not cheap to rent or buy. The reasoning was that while they were building a massive concrete wall to keep the waters away from Weston Super Mare, just up the road from Burnham on Sea, they may as well make use of the structure to make it multi-purpose.
So here I am, looking out across the countryside from my small patio, admiring the view towards Sand Point, one of several random ridges which suddenly erupt from the land like a pod of giant whales coming up for air. They are all aligned west to east and in fact the structure in which I live is built as a continuation of Worlebury Hill, just to the north of Weston. I live atop this large sea wall between the hill and the M5, which has been rebuilt higher and protects the eastern flank of the town. The south of the town is protected by a third whale, which reaches nearly to the sea but stops abruptly with cliffs which denote where the original shoreline must have been millennia ago. From there, another basic sea wall circles round towards the north and runs up the shoreline in front of the town, to meet up at its northern part with Worlbury Hill. Protests were made about it blocking the view but I suspect that in due course there will be protests about it should have been made higher.
I am the equivalent of ten stories up from ground level, although the building itself is considerably higher, about twenty stories worth. It’s not what used to be called a high rise building – in fact they had to invent a name for it. Vertical structures were abandoned a while back, the norm now being with new builds that they have a sloping face angled back to catch the sun as best it can, for the benefit of the solar panels which cover the south face and in fact much of other faces too. The solar panels are incorporated in the glass of the windows, so I have a large window at a shallow angle leaning back into the room. It slides upwards if I wish to walk out onto the patio. Below my patio is the rear part of the room below, the rest of it projecting forward as part of the sloped façade of the building. Similarly, the rear part of my room has the patio of the flat on the next floor up above it.
Behind and below are offices. They don’t have windows. Personally I’ve never had a problem with the lack of windows in an office – I have usually worked at the inner part of the office so I couldn’t see out, and on the occasions when I could, the view was not worth viewing. However, now there are the large screens as big as window which show whatever view the occupants of the room wish. It might be the view outside, the view I am looking at, to see what the weather is doing, or it might be some exotic far off scene. Inevitably there are always arguments about where we are going to look today.
Below the offices are shops and below them are the entertainment areas for conferences and theatre performances and the like. There has been quite a significant amount of space allocated for that.
Below those areas are the car parks, for those that need them. I don’t possess one, I don’t find it necessary and just cycle into town, or if it is raining use one of the autonomous cabs on the tramway into the centre. The route also takes me to the new railway station, the main line to London, which is at the end of the building, adjacent to where the existing railway into Weston crosses it. We’re very well connected here, you know. I forgot to mention – the building is about four and a half kilometres long, between the M5 and Worlebury Hill, so needless to say it even has its own transport system, connecting the various areas.
Standing here musing about my lovely new room, I’ve suddenly felt a chill in the air. The clouds to the north are changing to an ominous darkness and so I turn away from the view. It’s dinner time anyway.
I shut the window, and turn to the cooker. I select my meal, its cooked for me. Although it is made up from some sort of mushroomy mush which originates from large vats in the darkness somewhere in the deep depths of the building, it does actually taste like real food. When the cooker has finished gurgling and hissing I sit down to look at the window now streaming with the rain and as I tuck in, the room becomes dark as the steel shutters roll down to protect the glass from the dangers of the storm, with the high winds we now have being another reason for the building being on the slope, a hill in fact, mimicking the contours of the nearby ridge. The building is streamlined.
I am glad that I am warm, dry, safe in my new room.
Michelle had never considered therapy - thought it was for beings lesser than herself. It was a sort of snobbery - this idea that she was better than everyone else, could cope with whatever life threw at her, was strong. And she felt she was, right up until the moment she found herself on the bridge, looking down at the river far - so far - below, wondering if it would hurt. She didn't remember getting there, only that she'd walked, was alone and had lost her phone.
Just two days previously, her life had been perfect. She was respected at work, she had a fiance, she owned a property and felt she had succeeded. And so what if she didn't always feel 'happy'? She was a success; she'd transcended her beginnings and she was going places. Going places - it was an Americanism she hated but her boss had told her that's where she was headed just two months ago when he offered her a promotion.
He used another Americanism when he sacked her, too. 'Life can spin on a dime', he'd said, as he explained why she had been chosen to go. Michelle protested - showed her boss her stats for the month, explained that the company couldn't do without her and he shook his head and made a flicking motion with his fingers, possibly to show a dime being spun in mid-air.
'Ok,' Michelle had said to herself. 'I can cope. I am strong, I am successful, sod him, I'll rise again.' And she left with her head held high, before lunch, waving away his insistence that she stay for a final meeting.
She headed home to her fiance, Ed and found him poetically in bed (it was strange what her mind did, to protect her) with the cleaner - until now a sign of her success. She had a cleaner. Ed had a cleaner. Ed was having the cleaner, in their bed. Ed in bed.... all this raced through her mind as she stood in the doorway and watched him bury his head between her ample thighs. Ed likes me skinny, was the next thought she had, as the cleaner screamed and tried to cover her similarly ample stomach.
Ed must've watched too many films about indiscretion because he tried cliches and platitudes. Michelle watched him squirm, then turned (on a dime) and left, texting him as she did.
Get Out Of My House
And,
NOW
She kept walking until she was in her favourite bar, with two drinks lines up in front of her, telling herself she would get through this, tat she was strong, that Ed wasn't worth her, that she'd find another job and another man and she'd carry on.
But it was strange - the more drinks she drank, sank, drunk, the more she felt stunted, stopped in her life, stuck at a red light...
'What happened?' she said, out loud and the whole awful day played itself out to her again. If she couldn't get another job, she'd lose her house and her car. The house and car were part of her success. Her job and fiancee were who she was.
Jesus.
Michelle lined up another three drinks, waving away Alberto's concern, even as she tripped on the way back to her table.
It went blurry then, and then later, when it was dark, and cold, she was on the bridge, looking at the floodlit water, so far below.
A sign she'd passed urged her to call the Samaritans, but she knew she didn't need them. She could pick herself up, right?
She was a success.
She was
a.....
'I'm nobody,' she whispered, and knew it was true. In a flash she'd disproved everything she thought about herself.
She gripped the railings, and looked down.
Behind her, a car stopped. She dimly heard the door slam and footsteps grow larger until they brought somebody to her side.
'Hello,' said a female voice.
Michelle turned and saw a woman about her age in a warm hat and gloves. It made her realise she was cold.
'You're a s'maritan,' Michelle said.
The woman shook her head. 'No. Just a concerned passer-by. I stopped in case you needed help.'
'I'm fine,' said Michelle, and then burst into tears. She didn't remember crying but by the ache in her head and the burn in her eyes this obviously wasn't the first time today. She stumbled out the story.
'Oh. Is that all?' said the woman.
'?'
Michelle couldn't speak. Then she yelled, 'Is that ALL?'
'Ah. Spirit. That's better. No, you're not a jumper. Good. Here, take this, go home, sleep off this self-indulgent stupor, and call me in the morning.'
And with that, the woman turned (on a dime) and was gone.
Michelle watched her go, then looked down at the card. It was too dark to see properly so she shoved it in a back pocket. before anyone else had cause to stop and meddle in her life, she walked home.
Ed was gone. The house was in darkness. Fully dressed, Michelle crawled into the spare bed (she'd burn her own bedding) and closed her eyes.
In the morning, reality hit her bit by bit in a series of stomach-lurching inner clenches, as she remembered.
She got up, groaning, dealt with her hangover with a practised succession of remedies, and looked at the card.
Need a new room? Call Amber Trevil on 07653 330998
was all that was printed on there.
A new room?
Michelle shrugged, and used her landline to dial the number, her phone still being absent.
In a few minutes she'd been cornered into an afternoon appointment she didn't want with a woman she didn't know to do goodness knows what. A new room?
Amber answered the door in the same sort of practical attire she'd worn the previous night.
'I'm glad you called,' she said. 'Business usually finds me. Not the other way around.'
'What sort of business?'
'I'm a sort of ... consultant. I help people find new places.'
'Like a recruitment consultant?'
'Yes. And no. Close your eyes.'
'But I haven't agreed to...'
'No? Then why are you here? Close your eyes.'
Michelle did so, more than anything else because her eyes stung from dehydration and crying. She sighed.
'Now. I'm just going to... hang on...' Michelle heard Amber grunting slightly with effort as she edged her chair closer. She jumped as Amber's hands manifested on her head.
'Um, I'm not...' Michelle tried to edge away.
'Keep still,' said Amber and dug her fingers into Michelle's hair, prodding against her skull.
'What are you...?'
'Shhh.'
Then,
'Ah. Oh. Ummm... yeah. Right. Ok, that makes sense. Ouch. Yes. Right.'
With each word she pushed one of her fingers harder until it felt to Michelle as if Amber was digging into her very mind. She was strong, Michelle discovered as she tried to pull away. She was about to push at Amber with her hands when the woman stopped touching Michelle's head and said, 'Ok, eyes open. Feel anything?'
Michelle shook her head.
Amber sighed. 'Damn horses to water, make them drink as well,' she muttered.
'I'm sorry?'
'Don't be. Listen to my voice.'
And in a dreamy, soft yet certain voice, Amber began to speak.
'You're a classic case of perceived success. You've perceived it but it was never there. You entire life is an illusion. You built your life on a floodplain. The rains come and whoosh, no umbrella. I've made you a new room. Inside. Look into your brain now. New bit is open. New space. Inside it are tools and things. Now we go in. Close your eyes again. Walk. Past all the success. past all the unsuccess. Into the dark bit nobody wants to go, the bit between. Look. You see doors?'
Michelle, to her surprise, nodded.
'They all have names. Most will be shut, yes?'
Again, Michelle nodded.
'Good. Best not to open just yet. But you can read them.'
Michelle muttered, 'Mum and dad. Gran. Cancer. Fear. Teddy. Ed. Thumb. Peas. Dad. School. Mrs Stevenson. Sick. Oh my god. Are these all memories?'
'Hmmm, sort of. Keep walking.'
Michelle stopped. 'It's the end. No, wait. There's a door.'
'Ahah. There it is. Right, open it.'
Michelle imagined herself opening the door.
'What do you see?'
Michelle felt herself squinting - into her own mind (?). The room was empty.
'Nothing.'
'Perfect!' cried Amber. 'It worked. Sometimes there's a little too much resistance. But despite all that prickliness, you really needed and wanted help.'
'Prickliness?' Michelle opened her eyes.
Amber waved her words away.
'We only use a small percentage of our minds. My job is to open up new rooms. A room is as good analogy as any. That's fifty quid please, discount.'
'Eh? But I didn't...'
'Cash or cheque.'
'Wait a minute-'
'I have another appointment. Cash or cheque.'
Michelle got up. 'I'm not paying you anything until you explain.'
Amber sighed. 'Fair enough. Thought you were clever.'
'I am.'
'Then work it out. What did the door say on it?'
'I... I don't remember.'
'Sure you do. Think.'
Michelle closed her eyes. Imagined herself walking up to the door. Looked at it. Opened her eyes.
'"The Future,"' she said.
Amber smiled. 'That's it, love. The future. That room can be filled with whatever you choose. Keep the other doors firmly shut, and fill that one. Easy. Fill it with promises to yourself and optimism and cake and soft chairs and a new career - everything you like. It's yours.'
'Shouldn't we sort of talk this through?' Michelle said.
'Thought you didn't want therapy?'
'How did you...?'
'Off you go. This session is free. Go and move into the new room. If it works, I'll create another for you. Then you can pay me.'
'How many rooms can you make?'
Amber smiled.
'As many as you want,' she said. 'An infinite number. You just need to open the doors. Remember, life can turn...'
The End
The old room, repurposed
from some deposed
principal, will not
suffice.
No place for tools,
and narrow stairs; hard
to manoeuvre a dead
weight.
And cleaning.
The carpets are
a nightmare to wash
each time.
Not to mention
the noise. When
the men are
off shift the can
hardly sleep.
The new room
is much improved;
Ground floor. Right
beside the forest.
Tiled walls, floor
and ceiling.
Good drainage.
Sound-proofed to 125 decibels.
She sat on the bus and watched the greenery slowly turn into grey city buildings. She was caught in the middle of contrary needs. She didn’t know if it was possessiveness or what but she was really excited at the prospect of having the room all to herself.
But she also really didn’t want to be alone.
She wanted to burrow into a space that was hers, hers, hers but when the silence came he filled it and she was left with a worrying gnawing need for noise. For all the noise that had always been there. Step one would be to buy a clock radio or something similar.
She didn’t want to share her wardrobe and let her jumper and socks mix and match with someone else’s. Now that they were hers and hers alone they took up an almost comically small space. She didn’t want books that didn’t belong to her sitting on a shelf next to the three she’d been given on the ward.
But she also didn’t want the responsibility of looking after all of it. She’d never had that before. She’d never had things that were only hers. The psychologist said it was okay. These conflicting thoughts were a reasonable reaction to not having her own space growing up. To moving around a lot. To being with the group for so long. “You’re searching for home†he’d said, lowering his glasses and giving her the thinly veiled pity smile they all gave her.
“You’re trying to figure out what that means for youâ€
She pressed the button and stood up to get off the bus with her two bags, one full of clean clothes that one of the nurses had washed for her this morning and left in a neat, folded pile at the end of her bed. And one that was empty except for a notebook, a letter telling her when to come back for her next appointment and a card that said “Good Luck†on the outside. She hadn’t read the inside yet. She’d save that for in a few hours when the gnawing started.
“You’re looking for yourself†she repeated under her breath. She stepped off the bus onto the pavement, it was raining, she didn’t have an umbrella. Another new thing she’d need to get for herself.
“Loads of people are looking for themselves at this ageâ€. That’s what they’d told her.
That thought satisfied her for a while, it felt like a reasonable excuse to not knowing the answers to questions like “What is your favourite colour?†“do you like the monarchy?†and “what are you going to do now?â€
At first, on the ward, in occupational therapy, helped by staff and meds and the police, it had felt like a game. Fitting new square blocks into the old square holes in herself. They loved it when she got one right, she’d pick a topping for her jacket potato at lunch and they’d smile. Cheese please, grin. Beans please, smile. They wanted timelines to things she didn’t remember. I was there that night, gentle smile. I don’t remember where they took him when they took him off me, no smile. I don’t remember where they took him, no smile.
After a while though, it stopped feeling like a colour in children’s book, the choice of pastels, bright blues, dark reds, oranges to fill in the lines got overwhelming she didn’t even know if she cared anymore whether she preferred beans or coleslaw or cheese or nothing or all of them or if she thought a man had been on the moon or if she’d see him and his little hands again or if there was even a point to any of these opinions.
Even though she was apparently entitled to all of them, just like she was entitled to space. That’s what they’d been telling her. This is what she needed, what she was allowed. Her own space. To fill with all these thoughts and opinions. Theories. Needs. Colour them all into the black and white templates on every single page, a dog, a cat, a couple holding hands, a barn. A pool of blood. A baby. It was all a lot of work.
You’re allowed it. You’re entitled to it.
Entitlement could be such a negative word, you’re so entitled, you think you can have things just handed to you. She thought of the rows and rows of women sitting side by side listening intently. You have to be grateful for what you have. And she had been grateful. She had always tried to be grateful.
And she had had some things handed to her. And other people didn’t, and that was bad.
But what about what they’d taken? She didn’t want to think about it.
She pushed the door open of the new flat, one room. The bottom of the bed touched the sink. The window was covered in a dusty net curtain.
“My room.â€
She put the bags on the floor and sat on the bed wincing slightly, it still hurt to sit.
She pulled her appointment letter out of the bag and smoothed it out in her lap. 14th of November. 2pm. That was exactly 3 days away. 3 days to fill with whatever she decided to fill them with. She’d clean the room. Get it ready for him. She’d fill the fridge with all the good jacket potato toppings. She’d get some new bedding, get rid of those dusty curtains.
“My room†she thought, “my new room, our new room.â€
The New Room
Having come through the door
To the space her heart knew
Like the map of her skin
She paused
For something had changed
A door never seen before beckoned
Drawing her in
Hesitating for a moment
She wondered at what was beyond
A flutter in her throat
Led her to believe she had found
The missing piece
The one she had been waiting for
For such a long time
Turning the handle, she gently pushed
And there it was
A new expanse of whitest wood
Stretching towards the greenest trees
Tall outside a wall of glass
How her heart danced!
All the years of reckoning
Now bearing fruit
Her heart and mind balanced out
As she worked her way through
Pain and hurt
From a lifetime spent doing the best she could
Here it was
This precious space
Hers to own and grace
With whatever pleased her hearts desire
For the space was an expansion of her skin
A blossoming which had been
Internal in its manifestation
Now surrounding her
As a new space to live in
Opening her eyes
She knew she'd arrived
Floating
Through the corridors of sleep
To the new room
The room of a thousand
As yet unmade, memories
The New Room
Marion Foreman
You were so delighted at first, weren’t you?
‘A baby? We’re having a baby?’ you said. ‘A little human being that we have made? You and me?’
Well it would hardly be an elephant would it? But I didn’t say that. You were so excited. Like all first time fathers, you thought you were superman. You thought that no man had ever done so well before. No man had sperm like yours.
But they did and they had. I was sweating. When should I say that this wasn’t my first? When should I mention the one you didn’t know about? The one that should never have been, that never was? Could I persuade every doctor and midwife that I met to never ask and to never mention – to call me a primigravida? I knew you would find out and I also knew that I had to tell you.
My first little baby hadn’t been yours. My first baby didn’t have a dad in the real sense. Of course I wasn’t a virgin Mary – don’t be silly – it’s just that I didn’t want that man to be her daddy. It might have been one of many, but it was his. But I can’t tell you that can I?
You have only ever seen the one side of me. To you I am a clever and ‘together’ sort of woman. I have a decent job, a good figure and dress well. But there is another side. The slut. The woman who hangs out in bars, chats up men. Leaves the bars with them, fucks them hard then gets out. I rarely know their names. Except for this one – this one had been different – he had class and with class he had money.
‘Darling’, my eyes full of tears, ‘darling, I didn’t want to have to tell you this and please promise you won’t do anything in a rage?’
You looked at me, surprised, trusting. Ready to do the right thing.
‘What is it honey? You can tell me anything. ‘What’s happened?’
I gulped, ‘five years ago I was out and decided to go home before my friends. I walked back to my house. They said to take a taxi and I told them I would. But I didn’t. I will regret that forever’.
I turned to him, eyes brimming with tears. ‘I got raped. He attacked me and left me. It was hideous. I can’t talk about it. I couldn’t identify him. The police couldn’t prosecute’.
He looked at me, full of love and understanding. I didn’t miss a beat.
‘But that wasn’t the end. 8 weeks later I knew I was pregnant. I had his baby. I’m so sorry. I should have told you before. I am so ashamed’.
‘What happened to the baby? You have to tell me’ he looked so conflicted.
‘She was adopted. I knew I couldn’t manage. I haven’t seen her since she was two weeks old. I missed her for months. But I have put it all behind me. But I need your help. Being pregnant again has stirred those memories’.
I waited – he was a kind and gentle man. Open and honest and naïve. It wouldn’t occur to him that my story was anything but accurate.
‘You told me that all you have ever wanted is to have a family, to be a mother. That you wanted that more than anything. But you are a mother, you’ve already had a baby. That somewhere in this world is a little girl who looks a bit like you – a little girl that you gave away.’ He practically spat these words at me.
‘You gave her away because through absolutely no fault of her own – you were damaged. You rejected her. You deprived her of your love. And now you think you can put that right with our baby. Doesn’t say much for your maternal instincts does it?’
I was flabbergasted. I had been so confident that he would be understanding and kind, surely my story was plausible?
‘None of it is true is it? You see, I know you and who you are. My mates knew you, they knew you were a tart. They warned me. But no, fool that I am, I reckoned that you had changed. That you were really a great woman. So you want me to wonder whose baby it was? You weren’t raped were you? It was one of those ‘causal sex’ things, wasn’t it? Do you think I’m stupid? Do you really think that I don’t know enough about a woman’s body to see that she has had a baby? But I wanted to love you, to have a baby together. I bought into your whole ‘family’ plan. More fool me. ‘
I turned my tear stained face up to him. Surely he wasn’t this cross? Surely I could make it alright?
‘Wipe your face, you look a mess’ he said. ‘Well, I’m keeping this one. This one is mine, and I’m not giving it away’.
Still that naivety, still that boyish acceptance. ‘Of course its yours and of course we are keeping it.’ I whispered, head hung now.
‘There’s no ‘we’ in this. The only ‘we’ is that baby and me – you’re not part of this. You will give this little one to me and move on – just like you did before.’
I gasped. ‘I can’t do that. You can’t make me.’
An expression that I had never seen crossed his face – scorn, anger, derision – I didn’t know. ‘Oh I can and I will. If you don’t I will make sure you get a new room – a prison cell. That’s where they put blackmailers isn’t it? ‘
‘Blackmail? What are you talking about? ‘
‘I’m talking about the poor man who made one mistake and has been paying you ever since. The married man that you told was the father of your little girl. The man who, month after month bought your silence and paid maintenance for a baby you gave away. ‘
‘That’s not true’ I cried. ‘Whatever are you talking about?’
‘I’m talking about my brother. The one that never comes to any family events. That’s what I’m talking about. I’m talking about our baby’s uncle. You’ve made his life hell. So what’s it to be? Hand over our little baby and walk free or your new room? The choice, you bitch, is yours.’
I turned my head away, I turned my body away. I felt the first gripping pains, felt the first smear of blood between my legs. My heart bled as I lost another little bit of me.
Where Monsters cannot Touch
“And this is your room,†my mother said, when we first moved into the small end-terrace, upstairs flat, above the ‘Bamboo Coffee Bar’.
Had I been and adult, I’d have been able to touch both sides of the room at once but I was only four years old, if that, and found myself slotted in a narrow bed with barely room to shimmy down the side. In fact, very soon, I had no memory of any other room.
The fact that I was an only child prepared me for my nights of solitude within those walls, subjected to hours of perforated silence, serenaded by a muffled juke box and the counterpoint of kerbside motorbikes coughing their metal guts. And then there was my father’s drunken rage as he beat my mother to a pulp, at midnight, on the landing outside my bedroom door.
Each night, this was the cage of my existence, the exit barred by monsters hiding in the wardrobe by the door. I dared not extend my naked foot beyond the bed’s cliff-edge for fear it would be bitten off.
Fear always lurked somewhere in those shadows, though perhaps less so when my father wasn’t there.
My room was always dark, even in the summer, as the mean window behind my bed looked out upon a crumbling wall and a narrow passage like a canyon, separating gable-ends.
I couldn’t see the sky from there but it couldn’t stop my flights of fancy. As dusk fell, I’d kneel upon my bed with my elbows on the windowsill inventing stories suggested by pictures hidden in the withered faces of the old red bricks.
From there, they’d follow me to sleep, chase my dreams and open up another world where monsters couldn’t touch me.
Congratulations! You won the race to run the country
into the ground (even further).
The previous resident of Number 11’s been Trussed up by her own incompetence and sent packing.
The new room you’re moving into, well over a hundred Tories high, could do with a makeover, apparently.
Here’s thirty grand from the taxpayer to change the drapes.
Maybe spring for a decent cabinet instead?
The one you use most, next door at Number 10, isn’t fit for purpose.
Not now, and not when you used to sit in it and act on the whims
of your Johnson.
It was always going to be you, wasn’t it.
You just had to wait for the Penny to drop, for your Mordaunted opponent to concede.
You’re no stranger to dropping pennies though, albeit from the wealth of the nation.
But hey, it’s fine! (A £50 one if I remember correctly.)
Enjoy your success for a bit, teeter there at the top.
Ignore the calls from the electorate for a say, but know
you’re doing it out of fear.
An election tomorrow would lead to some great headlines.
Risky Soon-axed! would be my favourite.
So sit up there in the new room for now, the one my tax money decorated.
You know, and I know,
you’re only delaying your downfall.
Change *is* coming to sweep you out of office,
and Keir away your mistakes.
I am clearing out some papers when I find them. Letters from twenty years ago, in your unfinished cursive. Schoolgirl spelling mistakes: defiantly for definitely; only one m in commitment. It’s the handwriting that transports me straight back to your old, teenage bedroom (do you remember how we taught ourselves French up there, writing and rewriting je suis, tu es, nous sommes and je serai, tu seras, nous serons).
Your teenage bedroom is a large, bright room in your parents’ tall, terraced house. There is a wall of white wardrobes in which your salwar kameez are permanently on show, radiating with primary colours, sparkling in the sunshine. In the other half of the wardrobe, behind the closed doors, tower stacks of art materials: stretched canvases, colours, geometric designs. You’re going to continue with your painting, you say, no matter what.
We sit in a pool of sunlight on the carpet and swap books. You give me Of Mice and Men – I still have the copy with your inscription penned on the inside front cover: 'I’m giving this book to you because of its important message about friendship.' Even at sixteen you give the impression of looking back over your life, as if you’ve already had all your experiences.
Another time, perhaps a year later, just before you are about to go off, you hand me Pride and Prejudice and say if I want to understand what you’re going through, I should read it. I have no idea what you’re talking about, having never read any Austen and knowing nothing, really, of your culture. Still, we go on for a time, swapping A Level essays and imagining our futures. When it comes to your turn, you speak with excitement about what your parents have arranged for you. Perhaps you have decided you’re going to have the Elizabeth Bennett experience. I am too naïve to think you might have doubts; they are buried deep, away from your parents’ gaze. They’re eager for you to be happy and, being a dutiful daughter, you will grant their wish. We sit together in that first bedroom of yours eating chocolate oranges and drinking cups of tea and deciding on our futures, as if we can engineer our own fates.
Not long after and still at your house, we sit in the living room, this time in a circle of aunties. What I am trying to avoid looking at is the startling vision of you without your hijab. All those afternoons lying on your sunlit carpet, all those sisterly secrets between us, and I have never seen your hair. Until now. The room is filled with all sorts of women whom you’ve never once spoken about, and here you are, just casually wearing your hair. As if you wear it and show it every day of your life. Have they seen your hair before, I begin to wonder, and feel at once a distance between us that has been signalled in the weeks preceding, but that we ignored like an accidental splotch of paint on the carpet. Your hair is black and full and gives your face an entirely new shape. You sit across from me. We don’t speak but I watch you nod and obediently hold out your hands for henna patterns.
The room is noisy with advice and warnings and sudden shouts across the circle. Your mum brings in a platter of brown rice and chicken and chapattis, and she kneels down next to me to ask if I would like my hands decorated too.
These memories are prompted by the letters in my hand. You wrote them twenty years ago: hurried scribbles made during lectures whilst you are trying to get an education; sealed and posted before you exit the building to be met by your husband who has been waiting outside all that time, fretful of you bettering yourself above him. Don’t write back, you scrawl. His parents don’t like you sending letters. And don’t keep calling the house. I’ll write again.
Another letter, three months later, is longer and written apparently in the library. He is waiting outside, you write. But I don’t care. He can wait all day, I have an essay to finish. In it, you detail the meals you are expected to cook for his family, but say there is hope of getting your own place soon, just the two of you where it will be much easier. He won’t be influenced by his parents so much; it is really only his parents who are the problem. They are the ones who say you would be pregnant by now if you weren’t going off to the university all the time.
The last letter in the pile is brief. There has been a big family blow up. Ultimatums have been delivered and your parents are called in to make you submit to your husband’s will. They see how sick you’ve become, how reduced by the bullying. They wonder where their daughter has gone because you sit in the middle of the room, empty eyes staring blankly ahead, whilst his family fight over the scraps of your life.
The next time I see you is back at your family’s terraced house. You are tucked away in the small box room at the back. It seems dark in here: the curtains are always drawn. Did it once belong to your brother? It is a teenage boy’s bedroom - a halfway house; a twilight. You lie in the single bed.
I am away at university, and in my final year I don’t come home much. I write to you: long letters about the books I’m reading, the plays I’m in. I wonder if you have kept those. There are no more letters from you.
After graduation, I return to our small home town before catapulting my way out into the world. I knock on your door. I find you in your final bedroom of your parents’ tall, terraced house. It is only with hindsight that I know it is your final bedroom and that two years later you will meet him, your second husband, when you’ve broken free of our small home town.
There is light again in this new room. It is forward-facing, bright and airy. Your sketches are blu-tacked to the walls, the wardrobe, the desk. You talk of your plans. You say there is a scholarship, a housing scheme, a relocation programme; you have a contact, there’s a community, you know of a group…
You make it to London before I do, and by the time I get there you are already set up in a new-build flat overlooking Victoria park. There is an empty room in the flat below, you tell me in a letter, and won’t it be nice to live so close to each other?
I put this post-script letter with the rest of the bundle and return them to their box. Perhaps in twenty years time I’ll find them again and be reminded of that first room where we sat in pools of sunlight and swapped stories across the carpet.
At last the message is getting through. People are starting to realise how important it is to save power. But how effective are their actions?
I’ve just popped upstairs. It is dark, so the light has come on automatically and will switch off when I am not on the stairs. This is not a mains light, it is a small battery-operated light which cost £5 in a DIY shop I visited in passing. I use used AA batteries which do not have enough power for the old camera I sometimes use, but which have enough power left over for a torch. Or sometimes I use rechargeable batteries. This is instead of paying an electrician to drive out specially and use power to fit a more sophisticated light which has no doubt cost more to manufacture than my little £5 light. However, how long will my little £5 lamp last? Probably not so long as the proper light, so maybe I will spend more in £5 lamps in the long run than fitting a proper one. Does it cost more to the environment manufacturing several batteries than making a proper fitting and using a bit of electricity? Maybe electrical items need to indicate just how much energy was used in creating them, same way as food now contains comprehensive information on its ingredients.
At last the government is encouraging us and the industries involved to explore alternative energy sources. But why didn’t they do that back in the 1970s, or even earlier, when the warnings first started of what would happen if we continued with our pays of creating power and moving transport. Are they doing the right thing now? A decade ago they encouraged us to buy diesel cars, but now frown upon them. A decade ago they encouraged drivers to scrap perfectly good cars, some of them classic, in order to buy new, less polluting cars. But how much more pollution was caused in dragging the raw materials out of the ground, forging and moulding and assembling them to create new cars, compared to saving probably a smaller amount of pollution caused by keeping the old cars running? They are encouraging us to buy new, electric, cars, but the materials to produce them are scarce and cause their own pollution in their creation.
But things may be looking up. “Alternative†power sources such as wind and solar energy have been sneered at by many quarters and they certainly need improvement – had we started serious development years ago the technology would have been a lot more advanced by now. It is acknowledged that their main disadvantage is their unreliability – it is not always sunny or windy. And sometimes they produce so much electricity the energy they produce goes to waste.
The answer is to find a way of storing this excess energy for use when the energy source reduces. In some geographic areas this can be achieved with hydro-electricity, where water flowing downhill from one lake to another generates power, then when there is excess power – at night for example when the demands on the grid are minimal - that can be used to pump the water back to the higher lake. The lakes basically act like a rechargeable battery.
But hydro-electricity is not possible everywhere, so alternative “rechargeable battery†systems are needed. And here it gets exciting.
Although exotic materials are commonly used at the moment for battery systems, there are other far more common materials that can be used. Iron-air batteries are being developed. Yes – that is iron, not ion as in lithium-ion. Iron, clearly, is far more easily available than the current exotic materials: used in a similar way to conventional batteries, passing an electric current creates or disperses rust on the iron, causing an electro-chemical reaction. Too heavy for use in transport, it could however be useful for stationery applications, at source in the vicinity of solar or wind farms.
Another contender for battery applications could be sodium. Sodium (that is, common salt) is very similar to lithium: they are immediate neighbours on the periodic table and they can be handled with very similar technology and behave in similar ways. Sodium is less effective than lithium but in many ways would be far more suitable, not only because it is so prolific. The mines where it is obtained can themselves also be used for other purposes, such as storing other materials which could be used for storing potential energy.
When an excess of electricity from wind or solar can be used to create “green†hydrogen, for example, that can be stored in the salt caverns. The hydrogen itself is versatile enough to be used not only to create electricity for the grid when required but also to power vehicles – that is already in progress. Of the alternatives available at the moment that looks the most viable.
There are exciting times ahead and there is a race between the various technologies. Which one will win? The information I have seen is at a basic level – videos on Youtube – so maybe I too am making incorrect assumptions – like the government has done at times. It is an interesting discussion. Judge for yourself, as a start checking out the links to the videos below.
However: the best action is: to Cut Energy Use.
References:
Iron-air batteries
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDjgSSO98VI
Sodium-ion batteries
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHNELRnJ_4Y
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vobMl5ldOs
Green hydrogen
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYBGSfzaa4c
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6_OVfrc_5A
Normally, I would enter this contest with a poem, a short story or a fragment or outtake. Today I'm writing a short manifesto, a minifesto if you will. I'll try to be honest and objective, and to cite a few sources.
Why am I doing this? Well, I'm an Energy Auditor, Consultant and Engineer, and my job is reducing non-renewable energy usage for businesses, communities and regions.
First, why do we care? There's a couple of reasons for this.
Firstly, the humanitarian: in 2021, according to Forbes, the EU spent $296m per day on Russian fossil fuels. [https://tinyurl.com/bdd6687f]
That's more gas from Russia than from anyone else (about 40%), more solid fuels from Russia than from anyone else (nearly half),
more crude oil from Russia than from anyone else (about a quarter).
When you account for domestic production, that means we (Europe) import about a quarter of all of our energy usage from Russia. [https://tinyurl.com/y6vdte66]
The inclusion or exclusion of the UK (post-brexit) doesn't materially alter those figures.
The "rents" (essentially profit) from exporting oil and gas amount to nearly 40% of the total Russian federal budget, or 14% of the entire GDP. [https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20211115-climate-change-can-russia-leave-fossil-fuels-behind]
Where did Russia get all the money for tanks and cruise missiles and precision strikes on Ukrainian cities?
Well a lot of it came from us, propping up the faltering Russian economy for decades by buying their fossil fuels.
And cutting back supply didn't really help actually. Supply-and-demand is a pretty basic response mechanism.
Supply dropped, demand went up, and in early 2022, Russia doubled its monthly revenues exporting fossils. [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/27/russia-doubles-fossil-fuel-revenues-since-invasion-of-ukraine-began]
The only way to really hurt oil and gas economies is to stop using oil and gas. That's the long and the short of it.
Accounting tricks don't work, and sanctions will be a bit toothless while we still need, in abundance, what they are selling us.
Let's remember here, that these revenues represent hundreds of millions of metric tonnes of CO2 emissions. Hundreds of millions. [https://www.statista.com/statistics/1241828/ghg-emission-european-union-eu-by-country/]
Anyone who isn't convinced by the reality of the climate crisis, I encourage you to read the IPCC special report, or Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells, or look out your window at the storms and fires. It's not in the future. It's now.
This is the second reason to cut our usage, because the climate crisis is not like a dictator who we may one day defeat.
It's not a question of whether we can win, but how much of our collective home we can save from the ravages of fires, floods, hurricanes, plastic, chemical pollution, and the chain-reaction impact of biodiversity collapse.
We lose 200 species a day.
Let's rephrase that: as early as 2010, the UN Environment Programme estimated that we humans are extincting 200 species of animals every day, or a thousand times the background rate. The biodiversity crisis and the climate crisis are horrifically closely linked, with each driving the other (and us driving both).
There's a lot of facets to the climate crisis, but the biggest one is energy (followed by agriculture). [https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector]
So what do we mean when we say energy? Most people think of electricity, but that's actually only a small part of the puzzle.
The system is insanely complex [https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/indicators/overview-of-the-european-energy-system-3/assessment] so we'll have to simplify a bit.
A rule of thumb for most European countries is that we use about 20% of energy for electricity production, 40% for transport and 40% for heating.
It varies a lot country-to-country, but electricity is not really the problem, as its the smaller share and the only bit we're sort of doing okay decarbonising.
Transport is much harder, and heating is harder again for a lot of countries.
The third reason to cut our usage is the cost to us as individuals and businesses. They. Have. Soared.
You may be paying four times as much per unit for energy as you did a year ago. That's enough to put some businesses under entirely.
I won't smugly note that if we had a renewable electricity system and electrified heating and transport we wouldn't give a fuck about gas or oil prices,
and our operating costs would be a tiny fraction of what they are.
Okay that was a little smug, but it doesn't really help us.
I put the cost issue last because everyone puts it first.
When can we act? Honestly, it's a bit late for this winter. There's things we can do, but when a client calls me asking if we can prepare their facility for the winter of high prices my answer is "sure, just call me six months ago".
I'm being flippant, but for buildings the time for assessment, system design, the necessary planning permissions, regulations and grid supply changes, procurement, testing, commissioning etc. of equipment is quite lengthy, not to mention any attempts to obtain grant aid for projects.
For transport, you can make changes much more immediately at an individual level- by taking public transport or jumping on your bike.
Many people can't or won't though, and solutions like electric cars are facing huge supply issues, largely I believe due to semiconductor supplies.
What we can do it to stop fucking around and get started. It will help us a little for this winter, but it won't save us.
What it will do is help us a lot for next winter, when the gas reserves that we've been storing up all year this year are gone, and we're really staring down the barrel.
So, what to do straightaway? It's a how-long-is-a-piece-of-string question, because every individual is different and every facility, community and region is different.
Some things we should all do:
-Plan and measure (upload meter readings, keep records, make little graphs).
-Work on the obvious (if I could make people do one thing it would be to close the doors in buildings. This is so laughably obvious I honestly despair at businesses who leave their doors open as though this will magically bring customers and wilfully run oil-fired heating systems to heat up the mainstreet).
-Make it a priority. It's now necessary for our pockets as well as the survival of the human race, so we can finally act.
-Engage with professionals where possible. Every euro/pound/dollar/generic-currency-unit spent in the planning phase saves many multiples down the line, it's like early childhood education.
-Focus on the routine. Fixing something you do every day is much more effective than something occasional. Need to make a one-off trip across the country to visit a relative? Of course, go for it. Have the option of working from home 4 days a week and not-commuting? That's where you can make a big impact.
-Lower the Temperature. We've gotten used to 21C+ inside buildings. Wear a jumper. People shouldn't be able to wear t-shirts in December, even indoors. It makes a huge difference.
-Look out for inefficiencies. There's no reason to have a single bulb that's non-LED in your building in 2022 (be a bit more careful with outdoor fittings, because of insect life). Only boil the water you need. Don't waste stuff.
-Make dedicated plans for removing fossil-fuel using equipment. Not everyone can get rid of their petrol car or oil boiler this year or even next year, but plan now for how you will get rid of them, what the replacement will be and how you will finance it. Green tech is cheaper in the long run but has an investment cost. Look for grants. Put aside savings.
-Don't expect miracles. A solar PV system on your roof is not going to take you off the grid. It takes time, planning and hard work to make significant change.
-Don't virtue signal. Don't greenwash. We don't need this. Nobody needs this.
-Educate yourself and others. We don't need to re-invent the wheel here.
Energy runs our lives. It gets us from A-B. It heats our homes, makes our goods, helps grow our food, pumps our water and waste.
Energy is, in a very real sense, the lifeblood of society.
Reducing it is hard. Nobody is saying it's not hard.
But staying with fossil fuels leads to only one path- a burning world in which dictators use force to via for the remaining limited resources available as the biosphere crumbles around us and people at every level of society suffer very rapid decline of quality of life, followed by mass displacement, terror and chaos as the scrabble to survive kicks in.
For me, it's worth the effort.
Cut Energy Use
This is how I remember it:
When I was a student at Swansea University in the 1990s, one of my courses was a green politics course, run by Clive Ponting. The lecture material was his notes on his book, 'A Green History of the World' - a bleak view of how we got to where we got and where we were going to end up (not in a good place.) As an idealistic student I'd read the book, walked the walk, got endlessly frustrated at the then disbelief that climate change actually existed, made my small contributions to save the planet, talked and talked and talked and got hideously depressed by the fact that we were doomed and nobody cared, or did care but understood that everybody was essentially powerless.
Then Mr Ponting gave us a light at the end of the tunnel of doom we were all travelling in, during his lectures. He told us the final two hour lecture of the year would be a message of hope. It would be a lesson in what was being done, how we were going to save ourselves. I looked forward to this with all my being. My boyfriend at the time and I turned up to that final lecture ready to be hopeful. To lay our arms at the door of a cause and to do something. We turned up knowing we'd be saved from feeling there was no hope, no future.
As we approached the lecture theatre we could see a board propped up outside.
'Lecture cancelled due to lack of material.'
He made his point, and it was brutal.
Quite possibly, we cried. Undoubtedly we went to the student union bar and drowned what remained of our hope.
Fast forward 30 years.
Pretty much everything we were told during those lectures has come true. My boyfriend worked for a better future and has stuck to his convictions and helped to change the world; I became a teacher. We are still friends, went to each other's weddings, catch up every year or two. When we were together we used to get mind-boggled at the very idea of the internet - the world has changed immeasurably since then.
For the worse.
I don't know what became of Clive Ponting - I will google him right after this.
We are overwhelmed now in information, and most of it bad. As a teacher I am faced by students' lassitude on a daily basis. I try my best to live a good life but by moving to the country we are now car-dependent - buses, what buses? - and although we have made our house as eco friendly as we can it's not enough. I try to stay upbeat for my children but feel constantly overwhelmed. There's a sense of helplessness - just as I felt when I was a student. The problems are too big, too far reaching, just too overwhelming.
(There is a message of hope coming, I promise. I'm not a Clive.)
I don't know what the answer is. As individuals we look around and see the world spinning and everybody singing to their own tunes and doing their own thing and being wasteful and using lights when they don't need them and buying plastic bottles and switching off the news because it is easier not to know and mostly, people are just trying to survive, especially at the moment. We are going to be forced to cut our energy use this winter, whilst large corporations and the rich carry on exactly as they were, thank you very much. So as individuals we look around and feel overwhelmed and think, well, everyone else is doing it, I might as well join them - which then feeds into itself and the whole
damn
thing
starts
all
over
again, as Matt Johnson said.
However.
I am still an optimist. I will nurture my children, grow my veg and keep my bees and support the politicians who get it. I live in Scotland and the country is investing in renewables - that all feels very hopeful. I'll switch off my lights and use the wood pellet boiler sparingly. I'll try not to be overwhelmed and I'll cut as much energy use as I can.
I'm not going to be a Clive Ponting and leave this with a note of hopelessness. I think there is hope.
The student I was had a poster on her wall with the slogan Think Global, Act Local. I think that's never been truer than it is today.
Make whatever changes you can make, right now
Support anyone in power who works for the future, not the present
Sign petitions
Eat seasonally and support local shops
We can all use less power. Switch it off
Help those in need
Plant things wherever you can
Find the good news stories
Join with others - togetherness is the way forward, not the trend towards isolation
Re energise if you're feeling overwhelmed.
I could add to this list indefinitely but my hour is nearly up. There is much we can - and must - do.
If there is any message it's this, that you and I are alive, and while we are alive, there IS hope. I have made a conscious decision to stay hopeful, just as Clive made a conscious decision to take the hope away. We are alive. We are alive. Find and cherish the beauty, and do whatever small things you can.
Heading into Winter is a difficult time to stay positive, I know. But brighter days are coming. It's been an avalanche of bad news but this MUST be balanced out by an upswing eventually. It must be. Life is a balance. The sun will rise again.
There is hope.
PS
I have just checked on Clive whilst writing this - he died in 2020. I hope he found some hope. Going to go and read about him now.
Happy Monday, whoever and wherever you are and may your week have some brightness in it, however dark it may seem. Hold on.
Every little helps.
Looking at the ‘Ephemera’ section of Hour of Writes with just twelve hours to go until the deadline for submissions, the lack of entries would seem to indicate that the subject of Energy Use is regarded as rather dry. After all, we are up to our eyes in the subject as if forms just another part of the general malaise that grips us as we are confronted by crisis after crisis, domestic and international.
I am sure that we are all well aware of what we as individuals can do to cut our energy costs and I have no need to list them here. Indeed most of us are trying hard, either out of need or desire to do the right thing. But we are still left with the feeling that whatever we do will make no difference to the overall situation. We feel helpless in the face of events we cannot control.
There is a theory called ‘learned helplessness’ that describes this and it is something we need to be aware of. Because we are bombarded with news of external problems that we as mere individuals have no power to influence, we simply ignore them saying that there is obviously nothing we can do and so we must just try to look after ourselves. We will hunker down and try to ride out the storm. This produces inertia, a reduction of self-worth and can even open the door to mental health issues.
All this is reinforced by the ‘Nanny State’, health and safety regulations, threats of litigation for negligence, unnecessary rules and advisory information, etc, which abound to dull our senses. I have only got to visit my local Sainsbury supermarket that has a moving walkway from the ground floor entrance to the first floor shop area to witness an example of this. As soon as you step on the walkway a recorded voice commands you to ‘stand still and hold the handrail’ and this is constantly repeated as you ascend. Not wishing to be controlled by a mindless recording, I always walk at that point and there is no way on earth that I am going to grip that bloody handrail! I am happy to make my own judgement and take the risk of tripping over my own feet. Then, going down I am berated with the same banal voice again stating the obvious, ‘be prepared to push your trolley off the walkway’. I am tempted to wonder what the alternative would be.
And what about the sign that tells us not to stand too close to the cliff edge. Are we not aware of the possible consequences?
Then again, about roadwork traffic lights on empty county roads where you can see that there’s nothing coming the other way. I make no comment on the legality or otherwise of such portable and temporary lights but, do you stop out of obedience to a mindless machine or do you assess the situation using the most brilliant computer that has ever existed and just happens to reside within your skull and proceed if it is safe to do so? In this case there is a fairly compelling argument that rules are for the obedience of fools and the guidance of the wise.
However, I cannot blame anyone for obeying such commands as we have been conditioned for years to do just that, regardless of their efficacy.
An interesting experiment took place in a small town near me where all traffic signs, markings and proper pavements were removed and a single sign declares the area (including a very busy large roundabout) as ‘shared space’. Suddenly, motorists and pedestrians alike are forced to wake up and look around and make decisions for themselves. This was instigated a few years ago and is still in place so, presumably, it is working.
Is this a glimmer of hope I wonder?
So, let’s all pull together, be alert, don’t overfill that kettle, switch off that light and believe that every little helps.
Sectioned
This is what happened before then.
-------
The white stuff fell and muffled the streets for a while before it turned to grey slush.
And then the big freeze happened, in the coldest winter I could remember.
There were seven of us burning with potential in that frigid three tier house across the river.
Surviving usually by congregating in the poverty kitchen with the ancient open oven, providing heat of sorts.
Bubble wrap on the windows and frost on the walls.
We all got on OK though, the rent was low and no-one marked the milk in this student garret.
There was a fair degree of bed swapping too but on those nights alone, I slept in my clothes with a bonus layer of coats.
On the coldest weekend in January, we all decided to decamp to our respective parents, for the warmth of it.
Except for Nick, the would-be genius art student whose mission had been to stay stoned for three years of studentship. It was year two now and he was doing pretty well so far, nodding out in the attic skunk room of this Victorian pile.
So we decided to go and left Nick behind as guardian.
I went too on the Friday night, reluctant but hoping relationships would thaw with the folks back home perhaps.
It turned out that things were still frosty - the dad still not forgiving me for quitting the building trade in the name of art. His world view was that the sole life path was to leave school, get a job and work until it was time to keel over.
Which would be exactly his own journey ending with a heart attack some years later at the age of 63.
Before that and not for the last time, the mother asked, ‘What is it exactly that you are doing now?’
At least the house was warm but after an awkward couple of days, I left early on the Sunday with some hard feelings but without regret. And thinking rightly, that it would be the last time I would visit the place I grew up in, which was no longer my home.
And some hours later, arriving back at the cold house to find that those drugs had taken the toll that drugs do, that Nick had finally crashed, smashed up our ice palace and all the furniture. Which was now piled up in the middle of that oven ready kitchen.
I said, ‘What the fuck have you done Nick?’
‘I got cold’, he said. ‘Got a match to light my bonfire?’
You know the saying. That you go out of this world as you come into it. Alone. It's not true.
My memories are with me, some of them complete, some of them misshapen, haphazard. Fragments. Some soft like pillows, some jagged like broken glass but they surround me and keep me company.
I remember my school, the smell of polish and plimsolls and ink spills. The bell at the end of lessons, the bell at the end of the day. It's ringing now. Time to go home.
I always loved 3:30. Would hold hands with my best friend, Rachel. We'd skip to the gates to meet our mums, promising each other eternal friendship. My first love.
Home. The garden. Hollyhocks, sweet honeysuckle growing to hide the ugly concrete post securing the washing line. The bees buzzing in the warmth of the summer sun. Trying to make perfume from rose petals. Snapdragons. Squeezing their bases so the flowers moved like jaws.
There's a gate I cannot enter. No matter how many times I approach. Again and again. I want to go through it. Loved ones are there. I keep trying but an invisible force pushes me back to where I began. I want to scream: either let me through or leave me be. It feels like torture.
I'm in the kitchen. The pressure cooker is hissing and there's a steamy smell of stewing beef and suet. I hope we've got crumble. Just apple. Not with blackberries. The pips stick in my teeth.
Mum is upstairs but I can't get into her room. She's crying. Let me in mum. Please.
And then you're there. On the beach, in the dark. A party, with a bonfire and lots of cider. Students home for the summer with some or other reason to celebrate. It didn't matter. Any reason would do. Sitting on the shingle with a good friend, two boys sitting behind. A boy we knew and you. My best love. The one.
A party for us. A car with tin cans and ribbons, balloons tied to the bumper. I don't remember who caught the bouquet. Nothing mattered. Only us.
A tiny fist. Our only child. Reading Winnie the Pooh out loud while legs and arms kicked and waved. The first crawl from one room to the next. Pride at every step, at every stage. The growing of roots, spreading of branches. The knotty mass of emotions. Gut filling. Love, hope, fear, anger, forgiveness, love, love and love again. Beautiful. Honest. Ours.
Here's the gate again. Still can't get through. I don't want to be out here any more. I'm cold and afraid. The memories are fading. I don't want to be alone.
I can hear mum's voice. Time to go home now. Time to sleep. It's been a long, long day. I'm so tired.
Is that my brother? He sounds annoyed. Always late. Always keeping us waiting. I say, I'm trying. I want to come through but I can't.
A voice says, it's not time. You can't go through. A warm voice, your voice. I feel a hand in mine, squeezing gently. An urgency. Can I open my eyes? Can I wake up?
There are tubes everywhere. An oxygen mask. And you, smiling.
Hour Glass
Our love’s trapped in an hour glass,
an hour here
an hour there
an hour in true loves arms.
Let not love be trapped
shatter the glass
let the hour spill over
& keep it roiling
until hours become dawn
and dawn becomes dusk,
day after day,
year after year.
Love is natural after all,
not dark and seedy.
So break the glass
or break my heart.
Break the glass!
Break the glass!
Patricia
Aunt, second Gran who partly brought up my mother, advice-giver, sometimes-lecturer (you're not very organised, are you, Dear?) who bought me things to help organise me. Who listened. Who sat up late to drink a whisky with me. Who loved my husband - 'My favourite Scotsman!' Who danced. Patricia who lived a life that included being a land girl in the war, working in a borstal, purchasing and running a magazine in her 60s, taking up golf at 78, visiting me in Malaysia at the same age, breaking a foot dancing on NYE with my husband and wandering around the golf course with it not knowing it was broken, who lived countless dramatic days with her unusual family. Pat, who lived in the same house for nearly 70 years, a time capsule where nothing had changed my entire life and where I as a nomad could go to touch my roots. Fragments of time in her company; always loved, always secure. Never changing.
When the call comes all I can think of is I'm glad I wrote the letter. When the call comes I'm in a tent in Somerset, and I pack up and get a train to Leeds in under an hour. We hadn't spoken properly for two years, bar one or two awkward phone calls where she told me I needed to apologise to the man who sexually harrassed me, who of course didn't harrass me, or any of the other women or friends of mine. Of course he didn't. He wasn't creepy, not the reason I left home. Why would I hurt my mother like this. Why would I break up the family like this. Why, why, why. She didn't mince her words, didn't Patricia. Told it as she saw it. Was unmovable. Full of pure Yorkshire stubbornness. I was clearly in the wrong; she was angry.
I missed her 90th birthday party week away. I wanted to go - it broke my heart, and still does, that I missed it. But he was going to be there. I wanted to go, but I'd vowed never to put my daughter in his path again. I said to my mother if it would be possible for him to go out for one of the days during that week of the 90th party, we would come, of course we would. But he wouldn't. Of course he wouldn't. I'm still not sure if she was told of this conversation, because it was easier to put everything at my door, but it's a moot point now.
The last time I could have seen her was in my neck of the woods. They were up playing golf, all of them. Mother, Aunt, Cousin, Predator. I met up with my mother, alone, for another awkward visit in which she begged me to put the past to bed and when we dropped her off at the place they were staying, I knew my aunt was inside. She didn't come out. By this point it had been a year since we'd spoken and as we were driving away I felt the pull of my roots.
'Stop,' I said to my husband. We pulled over and I phoned my mum and asked if she and Pat would come to the cafe where they were staying and meet us all. The children, in the back, were silent and bewildered. Why can't we see Pat? they kept saying. The answer given was that if I wanted to see Pat, I could come to the apartment and see them all.
We drove away. I cursed him - my stepfather, the predator, my mother's husband, all over again. And I was angry with Pat - but her loyalty to my mother was stronger than any bond I had with any of them.
We drove home.
Fragments of time at Pat's, all through my childhood, my teenagehood, my adult life. My children. All of it in the time capsule that was her house. Fragments of my life in her house that smelled of smoke, until she gave up smoking in her 70s. Still the smell of cigarettes takes me straight back there.
When the call comes I think of the letter, and I think of the letter all the way to Leeds, just thankful that for once, I was organised and posted it before I went away. Thankful that her lectures about me being organised maybe sank in, and she will have received the letter in which I've tried to explain, that asks if we can go and visit her in the coming school holidays. I wrote it because I had one of those impending doom feelings, the ones that have always preceded a death. But it's September and we can visit her in October, if she agrees. It's almost a year since the missed party - we can still have a small celebration. It's still her birthday year. She will have read it and know I am sorry for everything and that I miss her and love her. I read it from memory in my head.
In Leeds General Infirmary she's attached to machines and her face is all wrong. Her hand is blue where she was lying on it before she was found. Nobody knows how long she was there. I know my mother and the predator are in the cafe downstairs so I don't know how long I will have alone with her. I speak in a gabble of apologies and rushed tearful sentences. But I repeat what I said in the letter - that we wanted to come and see her in just over a month, and it is possible to regain some life after a stroke. And I ask her to fight with some of that stubbornness.
She doesn't open her eyes. Nobody knows if she will survive for more than a few days.
I hold her hand and I lay my head on her bed and I listen to the beeps and watch the machine making mountain ranges out of her heartbeats.
*
When I get home I hug my family close on the doorstep and I go inside.
'Just thank God,' I begin, before I see what's on the kitchen table, propped up against the fruit bowl, ready to post.
*
When she dies six months later it is a blessing. She never recovered and spent months in limbo-life, seeming to beg one of us with her eyes to put an end to it. It's 2020; nobody is allowed to her funeral.
There are fragments of time during which I completely forget she is dead. Like the queen, she was always there. There are fragments of time during which I imagine we can still make up, talk, meet in the middle.
And the letter? I still posted it, hoping somebody would read it to her. I don't know if they did, but I can almost see her shaking her head and smiling a little. 'You're not terribly organised, are you?'
In my kitchen hangs a weekly planner blackboard she bought me one Christmas. Every Sunday I fill it in. I still forget things. I'm still pretty forgetful. But her present is there as a reminder. Don't put things off. Remember the important things. Make that phone call. Post that letter. Tell that person you love them.
There are fragments of time in which I still forget. She was Constant, and I catch myself thinking about her house - long ago sold and changed, the contents of the time capsule mostly chucked into a skip (it's covid, nobody can travel to help; no charity shops are open) as if the house is still there. Fragments in which I imagine bundling us into the car, disorganised and chaotic and driving to Yorkshire, seven hours away, to my roots and to her. She'll open the door, forever unchanged, and my children will rush into her arms, just as I used to, and run inside to play with the same toys on the same carpet in the same house with the same smells.
Fragments of time.
Snapshot memories.
Patricia 1928 - 2020
The first thing they said to my mother after I was born was that President Roosevelt had died. A historic event, like the death of a president, fixes my birth in time, but...
The new pictures from the James Webb telescope remind us that cosmic time is a bi-product of the speed of light. The telescope has shown us images of an ancient galaxy, apparently formed three hundred million years ago. The James Webb has only looked at it for a few hours, a tiny fragment of the time that galaxy may have existed. Those images have led us to fill in a gap of three hundred million years. Very clever guesswork no doubt, but...
Imagine the disappointment of a team of plucky space travellers setting out to go to this galaxy. Assuming they could travel faster than the speed of light, they might get halfway there, only to find that the whole galaxy had vaporised millions of years previously. A lot can happen in three hundred million years.
When we look at the sky at night, what we see is no more real than watching a Hollywood movie. We see images formed by mysterious processes some time ago, and we connect the dots and draw conclusions.
We see images whose interpretation and meaning depends entirely on man-made theories that have changed in many ways over recorded history. The Greeks thought those lights in the sky were something to do with the gods, but how were they to know — the telescope was centuries away from being invented.
To go back to my birth, for a moment, not that I can, but just imagine. Somewhere in deep space, way beyond Pluto, there is no evidence of my birth.
If, and we are talking science fiction here, if, you happened to be on Kappa Phoenicis, for example, which is a single star in the southern constellation of Phoenix, and you happened to be looking this way, and you had extraordinarily good eyesight, then, with luck, sometime in mid-April next year, you could see me being born.
If you watched for a few more days, you’d see me catch pneumonia. My grandmother was convinced I would die, and told my mother so on the second night. Looking back now, that sounds heartless, especially as I was her first grandchild. In some respects though, her cynicism is understandable. We are all prisoners of our times. When my grandmother had my mother, child mortality was a hundred and fifty in a thousand, when I was born it was half that. Throw in five years of war and Grandma’s pessimism can be understood, even if not forgiven.
Fortunately, my mother had more faith in my recuperative qualities. I recovered but the tough times didn’t end there. A week later, my dad was shot down over Denmark. Five weeks after that he escaped and made it home. In the middle of all that, Hitler died. It seems that in the time before I remember anything, my life was very eventful. If only I could get myself to Kappa Phoenicis by next April, I could see it all, seemingly as it happened, rather than hearing it second hand and connecting the dots.
There are fifty-nine star systems close enough for them to be able, theoretically, to know that I exist. Beyond that, no one has a clue, because my time, or more precisely, light that left earth when I was born, has not got to them yet. There are another two hundred billion trillion stars waiting to know about my birth. On those stars, and any associated planets, there are no dots to connect, no fragments of time to interpret. I don’t exist — yet. I don’t dwell on this because it can make one feel insignificant.
On some of those stars, the ones in the next concentric sphere beyond evidence of my birth, assuming they care a damn about such things, and have a suitable telescope, Roosevelt is still alive — along with Hitler, of course.
If we connect all the dots, all the knowledge that we have accumulated from the fragments of time that have been observed, we conclude that when we look out at the universe, we are in the centre of concentric spheres of time, but it’s more complicated than that, because every other celestial body has its own set of time spheres, and they all overlap and cut across each other.
If we met some traveller from a different zone, you can bet it would be hard to communicate, starting from their time telling them it’s Tuesday, when we know for sure it’s Saturday.
If I had a suitable space ship, and by that, I mean some device that could get me to a spot light-years away, then I could put myself on some elliptical orbit around the earth, cutting across those time spheres, so that I could watch myself be born, live and submit this story, twice each time around, and, I could not change a word of it.
I don’t know if you have ever had a spell of deja-vu, that phenomenon where you have a strong feeling that you have been somewhere, or done something before? It can be quite disturbing. If it happens, don’t let it bother you. Be excited by it. Think of it as like my imaginary space travel, only without the funny suit and some nerd from Houston telling you when to breathe.
Fragments of Time
-----------------------
Are fragments what we throw away
Or shards that pierce us in the heart?
I gather all my torn scraps up
From my long-held , unwatched basket...
And, all at once, they show me to a life,
A part in many scenes, each one unfilled,
A kind of every-moment in- now note-
All distant now, but which I know by rote.
Am I that girl, who made her arrows fly,
Or sought for silence? These don’t reconcile
To one clear shape, a shape that might be I,
Through chinks of time, that flow erratically.
It took an age to tease
Apart those moments of an age
Where every second must gain equal weight
With every other one: child’s vision...
An orange segment shared
Glowing sunset hands;
A sweetness on the tongue
As vital as a teacher’s praise, to me.
I hold a piece like this, indefinitely.
That dreaming child who could not tell
Her dreary, lonely moment of long hell:
I stood before the pale school clock.
I dared not share my inability.
Its tick was brutal. Its dark arms
Meant only ill to such a child.
The time itself was split
In stabbing me.
The cruel hands turned
The time I could not tell
Relentlessly, the minutes ticked.
And as the minutes ticked, I cried.
Fragments of Time
“Just a minuteâ€. “Could you just………†Before you go can you……….â€
“It will only take a minuteâ€. “It won’t take you long.†“I’m sure you can fit it in.â€
“It’s not difficult.†“Can I have a minute of your time.†“You haven’t even got a minute to listen to me?†“Can you just stop talking for one minute?â€
Take five. It will only take you five minutes.
After that we'll reconvene with a plan. A plan - what plan? They are expecting me to deliver a plan in five minutes? How can I do that?
I’ve got to be there in half an hour. My train leaves in half an hour and I’ve not packed yet.
The taxi will be here and I've gone into a spin, forgetting where I put my keys.
He said he’d ring me today but I’ve heard nothing.
He said soon – what does that even mean. In my mind it means the same day, or certainly by the next evening. Soon – it doesn’t mean soon – it translates as "I don’t want to talk any more now, I might never want to talk to you again but I don’t know how to tell you. I want to keep you hanging on in hope so that when and if I decide I have got time for you, you will be so bloody grateful that you will do whatever I want, wherever I want, whenever I want".
All this worrying it’s such a waste of time. Can time be wasted? Of course when that minute is gone, it’s gone. Even as I write this for an hour, once the 60 minutes have gone they are never NEVER going to be here again. Not unless someone invents a reliable time travel device which won’t fry brains or send me back to a century when I could be burnt or ducked or hanged for daring to speak at all.
I have read about the Babylonians’ sexagesimal systems for mathematics and astronomy.
And the Egyptians who invented shadow clocks. I’ve blown dandelion clocks. I’ve counted steps, my own and up and down the 108 steps from the station to the market place in varying degrees of exhaustion.
It is still confusing to me – all the different times in different countries and remembering when it’s possible to ring someone in Australia that’s so huge that there’s more than one time zone.
Then there’s the bell – specifically the school bell, although there’s also timers on cookers,
alarm clocks, sleep timers, stopwatches, and of course the times prescribed in recipes which are, in my opinion, never reliable, depending as they do on temperatures of oven, temperature of room and action of raising agents.
School – bells for waking, going to breakfast, lesson bells, end of day bells, lights out bells,
and so many more. It’s no wonder that I’m always punctual – well actually I’m always early and hang around a bit because I’m so scared of being late. On April 1st one year we put socks in the clappers of all the bells on the landing at school so that there would only be a thud. Then we got shouted at, maybe I can hear that shouting “hurry up, don’t be late†ringing like an echo in my head.
But there are other fragments, precious minutes when I can be halted in my steps by a bee on a sedum, dragonflies over the pond, the way grass makes shadows, a hundred white feathers on a beach but no skeletal bird shape, the patterns of waves in the sand. These can halt my walk as I study the colours and forms with all my senses and as I concentrate on being in a time bubble which seems to stretch deliciously like the taste of new baked bread on the tongue, I am stilled in appreciation of one sense at a time. The sight of rock and weed, water and sand, scuttling creatures, feathers on the ground and flight above me. The taste of salt on my lips more delicious than any savoury snack. The sound of the sea licking the shore, then a slap and tumbling of water. The smell of the clear salt air all around me. If I glance at my watch after a period of concentration, ten minutes has passed in which my senses have been stimulated and energised. Ten minutes is all it takes.
A favourite path over the golf course and between two sand hills and the first sight of the sea for months does in fact take away my breath. Comforting and familiar, yet always a ten second surprise, living as I do over a hundred miles from the coast.
And then there is the sixty second experiment.
Try it. Maybe hug a loved one, maybe sit in your living room, lie down, walk, look at a painting. And count the seconds to sixty. What might arise? Think about this tiny fragment of time and the possibility of stillness for sixty seconds. We all have sixty seconds. Go on. Try it. Then clock how you feel after allowing yourself sixty whole seconds to be.
CAMERA OBSCURA
Not the usual memory film of life recalled.
No – these are the retina burned conscious visons cognisant with the perceptions of my soul. Fragments of time, slipping through the pinhole of light, reframed and replayed, in the Camera Obscura of my mind’s eye .
Not very old at the top of the road she stands watching the back of the figure walk away. Diminished in stature to the point of disappearance. Longing for him to look back even, then eventually to return. He never belonged to them their father as his had not to him. Abandoned young with no explanation, or so he thought until letters found 70 years too late saying “sorry sonâ€. Too late to remove his remoteness from that created “absent†memories that aren’t forgiven.
A teen dipping her toe into adulthood. Saturday working, finished early. Eager happy enthused with youth, rushes in, rushes out. Saw what a child shouldn’t see. Traumatic, secret never spoken of, messed up her early adult relationships until cried out in a shared bath of trust with a lover.
Standing on Nevsky prospect on a white night holding hands tight with a lover married to another. Pretending to be Anna Karenina. She was Anna Karenina, surrendered to love, wrenched apart when they left Russia in love. An extra marital affair that lasted a lifetime.
The Crystal Horizon of the Himalaya and the wonder of Sagamartha, the highest crystal tip. A vision that beckoned, to reach high to the bottom of the top of the world. Pushing personal physical boundaries, stopping smoking, achieving fitness, breathe in deeply, breathing slowly in the so thin air. A different world, a changed life connecting with nature and aliveness. Inspired by the ghosts of those that went before to that mountain.
A backward look at the top of the track . Uncle Jacob’s sheep track. The view up to Snaefell and down to the sea. Before I’d even gone in the house she knew it was her new home to be. Peace and tranquility on this small independent nation standing proud in the Irish sea, on its legs of three. “Quocunque Jeceris Stabit†a foot to land and always stand whichever way you throw it – the epitome of resilience.
And then her face as she left us. A profound privilege, being there, that moment, that death did us part. And whilst grief happens when a loved one departs, the unpreparedness for the visceral painful recoil of the umbilical connectedness of a daughter to her mother, of birth and death.
And the stopping of the world in 2020. Isolation panic and fear, and the end of world as we knew it was near. She gloried in her aloneness, not loneliness on that Christmas day she now holds dear, when a small sea became an ocean between family and her.
Camera obscura replaying fragments of time that have made me, me, reframed me, and replayed me .
The girls
I was sorting through some photos from our childhood the other day and I noticed something which hadn’t occurred to me before. There are hardly any photos of just me on my own, or you on your own. It's always the two of us. You and I sitting on the sofa, our legs so short they didn’t even reach the edge of it, you and I on the first day of school in our navy uniforms, you and I at a birthday party with cake smeared all over our faces. We were always together, to the point where everyone- mom, our grandmother, the rest of the family, teachers at school, just referred to us as ‘the girls.’
Even when mom (to our embarrassment) put us in matching outfits, complete with matching hair ribbons, we always looked so different. I had dark, frizzy hair escaping out of its ponytail, and yours was long, nearly down to the ground, white blonde. It used to shine so brilliantly in the sun- still does. I was scared of everything. The dentist, the doctor, climbing trees, roller coasters. You would always say ‘I’m not afraid' and run ahead of me, even though you were half my size. One time I had a bad dream and I tiptoed into your room to sleep in your bed. When the light from the hallway fell across your face, I saw that you still sucked your thumb while you slept. I never told anyone.
I was there beside you when the drama teacher called out who would be playing the roles of the orphans in Annie, and one of them was you. They made programmes and everything and printed your name in it. I told anyone who would listen. ‘My sisters in a play!’ I remember your voice ringing out through the auditorium as you said your lines, with not a hint of nervousness. I was so proud that the world got to see you like I’d seen you my whole life.
Last year, I sat near the front of the theatre and cheered too loudly while I watched you play a leading role, and okay fine, maybe a few tears slipped out when you first walked out on stage. You were a young woman now, you weren’t the tiny child with a crooked fringe and no front teeth. When you took your bows at the end I saw your eyes scanning the room, until they met mine. You smiled.
‘Did you cry?’ you asked me after, a glint in your eye, already preparing to make fun of me.
‘No I didn’t. Shut up.’
There are some memories I have that you don't remember at all. Most of them are insignificant- the stray cat near our old house that we used to feed ham to, the old video store that used to smell like popcorn before it became a supermarket.
There was one night when the fighting between mom and her boyfriend got really bad and I covered both your ears with my hands while shutting my eyes really tight trying not to listen. I remember the feeling of your hair, it was like silk. We were both scared that time. I hope that's another one of the memories you forgot.
We never hugged each other much or brushed each other's hair, like you'd expect sisters to. We didn't need to. We knew we loved each other without having to say it. Even when I was going to the airport to go abroad for four months, the longest we’d gone without seeing each other, we didn't hug each other goodbye. We waved at each other until the bus turned the corner and I couldn't see you anymore. That was enough.
I’m not sure what the point of this letter is. Maybe one day I'll actually give this to you. I’ll wait for an important day like your wedding, or some kind of milestone birthday like your 30th. It would be a bit strange to randomly give you an envelope, like I’m handing in my two weeks' notice to my boss. You might get your hopes up and think I'm giving you some money, and then you see that instead it's just me reminiscing for a page and a half, and you’ll probably leave it aside, telling yourself you’ll read it later. It's okay, I’d do the same.
I know we don't say this often, but I love you, and as Claire said in episode six season two of Fleabag, ‘the only person I'd run through an airport for is you.’
Love, your big sister.
P.S. I want my shirt back.
Well before Wells had water
I’m in a well
But I have not fallen
I’m plastered to the side
Constantly crawling
From my first blink
I’ve been trying to get free
From these cold floors
Trying to claim me
Something’s above
It’s all brighter than before
But my bones are lead
My fingers ache and my hope is sore
I haven’t looked down
Not once since I was born
The bottom isn’t near
But it’s loud and calls
I made it out the well
And I looked up to see
An empty space, no floors or face
Except a voice that spoke to me
“You fought too long against yourself
Never considering below,
If you had just looked around
You would’ve seen it’s the bottom that glowedâ€
I screamed at the well
Shouted that it knew for years
Now the walls were different
But I drowned them with my tears
I dove back in
The water salty and warm
But there was no way down
So I stayed trapped between the walls
“I won’t let you sink
You thought yourself so clever
Now all to do is
Float in your regret forever.â€
Forever and a day and to the moon
Remnants of promises made, broken, recast, broken
Again leaving shattered slivers
Glowing as fire, dancing across
Moments puddling on a kitchenfloor
Entire lifetimes melt into the sad
Notes of a fading
Song sung as
f
r
a
g men
Ts of
a
p
oe
M
First Born
(A father’s lament)
Almost a stillbirth,
twenty-eight weeks, then
just an hour of life.
So, not quite still, but still
long enough to live and die.
I rushed to the hospital,
but by the time I arrived
and had a chance
to hold him,
he had already gone.
It was just his hand I held,
though I still remember
a little wrinkled face,
lined with a wisdom
I couldn’t comprehend.
As if he held his breath,
his mouth was closed,
as were his eyes.
I never saw his eyes and
he never saw my guilty tears.
Then, registering
a birth and death
together,
arrival and departure
at a single stroke.
I followed her efficient eyes
behind bi-focals as
she wrote in black ink
the details and date
in duplicate.
Then to an undertaker
near the hospital
where I signed away
those precious remnants
with an ancient face.
At the crem’ they
simply slipped him in
with another funeral,
I don’t know when,
they never said.
That’s just the way
they did things then
with those
that barely lived
then died,
no earth to earth,
no dust,
no cries,
no ashes,
no goodbyes.
I can only hope his tiny hand
was held and guided by another
as they rose together
in the balmy evening air.
Now, all I see are
fragments,
bright summer days
stitched together by
threads of darkness,
a mosaic of
broken memories
scattered upon
the stony ground
of recollection.
PART 1
When I was eighteen, my Mother asked me to visit Mr Kovalev. “It might be your last chance love†she said, with a powerfully earnest tone. He was a kindly old man who had lived next door to the family home my entire life. Although we didn’t speak often, he was a constant in my life, and Mum always encouraged me to call him Uncle Walter. She said it was a kindness to give him some sense of the family he didn’t have.
Uncle Walter had been a widower since before I was born, before my parents had even moved to the house next door, some thirty odd years ago. If he had children, he never mention them, but he was full of stories about his late wife, Vanya. When he spoke of her, his eyes glistened like a child recalling Disney Land, or perhaps like treasure twinkling in the lustful gaze of a pirate.
I knocked on the peeling front door and it creaked open a little. “Please come in†he called out, in a faded Belarusian accent.
He was sat in the usual spot; a brown corduroy chair angled slightly towards the window. More often than not, you would find him ignoring the view completely and staring intently at the old photographs placed in his lap. He seemed to be utterly transfixed by them.
“Beautiful Kelly!†he exclaimed when he saw me. You could tell from his energy that he wanted to spring from his chair and hug me, but it was no use. He channeled it into his smile instead.
He gestured for me to sit on the old settee he kept for visitors and we talked for what seemed like hours. I told him about my new life at university and the things I was learning. We talked about romance and food and music and travel. He regaled me with tall tales about his escape through Poland and we laughed until his voice was giving out. We always talked about photography.
Eventually, when it was time for me to leave, I went over to give him a customary kiss on the cheek.
“I want you to have something†he said. He leant, with some difficulty, over the arm of his chair and grabbed a vintage Kodak SX-70 camera. “Don’t worry, it still works†he smiled. I thanked him profusely for the unexpected gift, and as I went to take the camera, he placed his hand on mine.
“There are two shots left in this camera Kelly. It is a very special film, the only film of its kind left in the world. I wish there were more. Please… promise me you will use it carefully.â€
I looked in his eyes and I could tell how much it meant to him. I promised. I said my goodbyes once more and moved through the kitchen to make my exit. As I pushed the door open, it’s wailing reminded me of Mum’s grave words. I quietly crept back through the kitchen to see Uncle Walter, once again, engrossed by his photographs. I quietly unfolded the camera and readied it for the shot. I lifted the viewfinder to my face and carefully framed the scene.
The camera clicked and it’s old mechanism gave birth to the photo with an urgent, whirring noise. Mr Kovalev looked up with a start. “Kelly? I told you that film was very special! Why would you do that?â€
“Because you’re very special, Uncle Walter†I said, wearing the smile that he had taught me. He blinked a tear from his eyes.
“Promise me you will visit whenever you can†he asked.
“You know I will†I replied.
PART 2
My mother’s words turned out to be prophetic and Uncle Walter passed away in his chair a few weeks later. I think it may have been the same day I used the last photo to capture the setting sun over Lake Windermere.
I think he would’ve liked it; such a broad, romantic scene. The hills cloaked in rose and amber. The lake, glowing like a pool of fire against the ebony shore.
Uncle Walter was right, the film was very special indeed. Every detail was rendered with exquisite precision. The colours are so vibrant, so perfect I can feel the fading sun on my face.
I swear, some days I spend hours looking at that single frame. In my mind I can walk through the frozen landscape right to the shoreline. I can trace the tree bark with my fingers and pluck the falling leaves from the air. Sometimes I will kick off my shoes and paddle through the water. I am always surprised by how cold it is.
They say the lake is polluted now, with toxic blue green algae, but I will always have the lake of fire and the gentle scent of citrus and moss.
I visit Uncle Walter like this too.
It is a strange feeling. He always felt like a giant to me, even in his last years. Such a strong and burley man with a tendency to dress like a lumberjack, almost always clad in plaid. His presence seemed to grow beyond his frame as though he had too much life for his body to contain. When you spoke to Walter, it felt as though the centre of the universe was located in his breast.
But in this stillness he seems so small. Delicate like porcelain. His paper thin skin reveals the map of veins that cling to the scaffolding of his bones. He is almost a husk.
I talk to him anyway, and somehow I always know what he would say. How he would always counsel love and bravery. I regale him with stories of my own adventures, and, when it’s time to leave, I kiss him on the cheek. I am always surprised that it is warm. I look at the photos on his lap:
A candid photo of Vanya by the sink.
My Father pushing me on a swing in the front yard.
A dog without a name.
THIS WAS THEN
In the end it’s the legal drugs that get his reformed heroin addict right hand man.
Turned now into the model citizen but then handed a Hep B death sentence diagnosis.
Unless he agrees to this drug cocktail trial.
Which turned the right hand man suicidal.
As he pulls up to the house she runs out. Hysterical screaming. Screaming.
He exits the car but thinking about the dog in the back seat, wastes seconds opening the window to let in air that is little use to the right hand man.
Inside she is still screaming. ‘I cut him down!’
He kneels by the figure in the hallway, beginning urgent CPR. Or what he thinks is CPR.
She screams.
He shouts, ‘Call the fucking ambulance!’
She does and through the snot and tears begs for help.
He shouts ‘Put the phone to my ear!’
He explains in a sentence. ‘This man has hung himself, I’m trying to do CPR and please send medics now!’
The calm voice at the other end says they are on the way and meantime counts him through the technique.
The dog is howling now. The screaming continues.
And the calm voice counting him through this madness.
And the images which stay in his mind are the red washing line thick neck welts and how peaceful his right hand man looks.
A look he has never seen before in the face of this ex-druggie.
Fifteen minutes spent to exhaustion when the paras arrive. He knew it was too late.
‘Get her out!’ One orders.
He gets her out and says it’s going to be OK. When he knows it isn’t.
The dog still howling.
The cops arrive. Questions, questions.
And then a police woman takes him to tell his wife that her brother is dead.
"Fragments of Time"
by
Donald L. Vasicek
We met on a blind date.
We talked like we'd known each other for years.
We held hands.
We hugged.
I kissed you.
You kissed me.
We got married.
We had kids.
Our marriage glowed with love.
Then, you bolted.
And now, I cannot find you anywhere.
Nothing, Nowhere, No one
If this were a story it would be about nothing. You would find yourself nowhere, where no one was calling you.
Desperately calling you.
Euphoria and Me.
Sometimes, Euphoria is all I need.
At quarter to midnight, I wait for her in my dressing room. My nerves are shot but luckily, she arrives sooner than expected. She is bright, confident, and raring to go.
“Just one last time.†I tell myself, as Euphoria tries to calm me. She then helps me change into the last part of my costume — a well-practiced smile.
At midnight, we step on stage together. We’re surrounding by glittering curtains and shining eyes and I feel the panic in me rise once more, but Euphoria holds my hand, and I slowly feel myself lulled into something like composure.
The audience is hidden behind a sea of coral chiffon as we move with the music. The bangles on my wrist help to hide deeply etched scars layered with concealer, while their jingling dulls the noise from the crowd. I forget where I am and who is watching and soon, I remember why I enjoy it so much. I am entranced by the melody, by myself, and by Euphoria. Nothing and no one else matters and I think to myself, maybe this won’t be the last time after all.
Hours feel like minutes and before I know it the show is over, and the spell is broken. As we take our last bow, I feel part of me shrink as I begin to awaken from the trance, but Euphoria is still there, by my side. She holds my hand again and quashes my fear, helping me to bow with grace and confidence to a standing ovation.
It's the early hours of the morning, and I am walking home barefoot; I stagger a little even though I’m carrying my heals. Euphoria is struggling as well, and though I’m tempted to ask her for more help, I think better of it. The scent of alcohol breezes past me as I flip my hair behind my shoulders. I wrinkle my nose and tell myself, again, that tonight was the last night.
“Just one more time,†says Euphoria quietly, as if she were reading my mind, “come on, it could be so much fun!†I try to ignore her, but her voice is unparalleled in its seductive tenor.
After almost an hour, we finally reach the neon lined windows of The Epicure, a club across the street from my flat. I stop outside the window and try to peer through the tinted glass. Euphoria urges me to go inside.
“Come on, I’ll cheer you up.†she says, but her voice is now quieter, and I can almost ignore her.
We take a step closer to the window and a woman with a curious and confused expression looks back at me. She looks pained; her face is haggard and pale with a large, dark shadow covering one eye. I move as close as I can get without bumping my head, and I can just about see Euphoria, or what’s left of her. My pupils have somewhat constricted and are almost at their usual size, but there’s still some redness in the whites of my eyes — Euphoria is still clinging on.
There was once a time when I could barely leave my bed in a morning, let alone step foot on stage in front of a crowd, but then Euphoria came along. She is everything I want to be. She is mood-altering and she is vibrant. She is confident and always happy, and sometimes, only when I’m with her, I’m happy too.
She is there for me when no one else is, lulling a deep sadness in me that no other worldly pleasure can quell.
Sometimes people need a hug, sometimes people need alcohol, but sometimes, all I need is Euphoria.
"It's none of your business , Mum. But, even if it was, HAPPY is a really stupid word.Mr Greave said it's super vague .No content.There are REAL words that SAY real things. So-Mum. LEAVE ME ALONE ."
--------------------------------------
Martha:
My heart feels as if it is cut in two. My darling daughter KNOWS what I mean by the word , happy.
I remember what it was to be fifteen . But I really don't believe I was as cruel as she is -to my parents. I wish I knew if, at least, sometimes, she is happy. My thoughts are, all over the place , I know."
--------------------------------------
Matty:
I wish Mum would just leave me alone. I would be a lot happier if she would. She has no idea, no idea AT ALL.That word, "happy", is so STUPID. it doesn't convey anything, Mum must think I am idiotic.
Sure, I am "happy", sometimes, but I can't get a handle on what this word might really mean.It is too vague.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Martha:
I get what Matty means, finally.
Yes, it is an over simplistic word. When I am making the dog's dinner, I hold so many emotions. When I think about it, I am bored=out of my skull. I am happy-that dear Sorley survived his kidney episode and is doing well.I just get cutting and cooking and listen to music. The wine helps.But i cannot pretend this repetitive action is exactly enjoyable. Up to a point, this is , however, pleasurable, since the wine is gently thrilling . I am not happy at the thought Matty might catch me drinking it.
-----------------------------------------------------------
At ten past ten, Martha heads up the stairs, to clean her teeth, content that this ritual will prevent her drinking more.
At twenty past ten, Matty slips out of the kitchen door, and runs down the lane till she spots Keith in the shadow of the hedge .
TONIGHT, she has decided, will be THE night.She tries to describe to herself how she feels. "Happy" is too SMALL a word, Excited?NO-she is terrified.and flattered. Simultaneously.
You can never have just one feeling at a time, in a kind of linear sequence. No-feelings crowd in, one meshed with another, in the kind of way plastics meld into kelp.The best feelings can't be confined to words anyway.
Keith smiles.His hands tremble.
"Are you ready, my darling?"
Matty breathes deeply. She nods. She holds his collar.
"Happy?"
"Oh yes, always with you", she whispers.
SMILE
“Good morning, you’re through to the UK Business Helpline. My name is Josh, how can I help?â€
There was a slight pause, then a nervous cough.
“Hi, my name is Rangeev, I am from India. I am thinking of starting a business .â€
“Would this be in the UK, Rangeev?â€
“This will be worldwide. I can base it in the UK. It will employ thousands of people and solve many problems.â€
Josh smiled to himself. “Right, okay so tell me about it,â€
“I have drawn up a plan for a flying car.â€
“Sorry, did you say a flying car?†Several of Josh’s colleagues turned their heads. Josh arched his eyebrows.
“Yes. It would revolutionize transport across the globe. As you know road networks everywhere are congested…â€
“Sorry, flying car,†Josh interrupted, “isn’t that a plane really,â€
Some of his colleagues giggled.
“Well, perhaps it can be thought of like that,â€
“And when did you come up with this idea, Rangeev?â€
“I was watching a James Bond movie. There was a flying car in one of them. I have drawn a plan of my version.â€
“James Bond.â€
“Yes, The man with the Golden Gun. It is very good.â€
“Don’t think I’ve seen it. A bit before my time. Okay then, a flying car. Let me take some details and we’ll see what we can do,†said Josh although he knew this would be a waste of time. Oh, do you have a business plan?â€
“No.â€
“We will need to see a business plan before anything can be processed. Do you have investment?â€
“No. I was going to ask for Investment from you.â€
“Well we do provide some investment, Rangeev but only if you have money to invest also. Look on our website. There are business plan templates and ideas on where you can source finance for your start-up.â€
“That is a good idea. When I have everything in place, I can call you back, yes?â€
“Of course. You can ask to speak to me if you like. My name is Josh.â€
“Thank you, Josh. I will speak to you soon.
Josh turned to Mary, his colleague. “A flying plane! Going to be one of those days.â€
Josh smiled. He loves his job.
The next day, Josh’s phone rang again.
“Hi you’re through to the UK Business Helpline, my name is Josh…â€
“Hello Josh, it is Rangeev.â€
“Rangeev? Oh, Rangeev hello. How can I help? Did you go onto our website?â€
“Yes, it is very good.â€
“So do you need any help with your business plan?â€
“No. I have changed my mind?â€
“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. Any reason?â€
“Well, I could be sued if the flying car crashes. I would not want that. It would not be good.â€
“I guess not. Such a shame. It was a good idea.†Josh tried to sound sympathetic.
“I have another idea, though.â€
“Okay, tell me about it,â€
“Well, I was watching a film last night…â€
“Another Bond film?â€
“No, no, no. They are so far-fetched, wouldn’t you agree?†Rangeev said
“I guess so.â€
“I was watching a film called Back to the Future,â€
“Oh, I haven’t seen that for years,â€
“Yes, it is very good. Anyway, my idea is to build a time machine…â€
Josh smiled again…
Wake Sleep Repeat
Spread these wings of crimson red,
Behold my image through dreams of dread.
This white glow is blinding,
Forever my surrounding.
Binding,
So tiring.
My silver frame absorbs the white light.
It is my friend,
Companion,
Protector.
Do not anger me,
I forgive no man, pardon nor plead.
My crime was faith,
Punishment eternity.
Do not forget me,
I can shout no louder in this space,
No cry has pierced its thick skin to the ears of a soul,
Nor returned a hope of liberty.
Within these lines I shall stay,
So for longer I shall bask.
Stretch my wings in these glorious rays,
For in these beautiful lines of creation I am at peace,
And for a moment,
I forget.
At the end of my appointment, the man explains why I cannot see a future. I've gone in to the room black, grey and dark, dark brown. I've lost my shine. I've cried at him and tried to explain.
'You have the blue sickness,' he says. He doesn't say this, but I can't admit to depression, not even in my head.
I cry again, even though for most of the appointment I have cried on and off as I've explained that every morning, I wish for the night and an end to the relentless day, even though I am accompanied at every step by two tiny people to whom I am Goddess and know that I should be happy. All I can think of is that they deserve better.
I don't feel like a goddess. I spend my days wishing for bedtime; I spend my time trying to go backwards into my life when I took a different turning, knowing it means I am not present, but not caring, only wishing for it to be over. And the guilt that comes with that is horrendous. It is a constant cycle and I don't know how to stop it.
Do I wish for it to end? Not in those words, but I cannot see the future; it is as simple as that. The shaman says: What do you see in the future? And I open my mouth to speak and nothing comes out. No future. So, he tells me what is wrong with me and that I need help and that there is no shame, no shame in it.
The man's words resonate within me and suddenly I see it is simple. I have not asked for help because in my family there are countless Amazonian women who have dealt with far more than I, so therefore I don't need help either.
The man - my doctor, a shaman, a healer - writes me a prescription and off I go with a crutch, red-eyed and feeling small and weak.
Within a week, I start to feel more like myself. The only way I can describe it is that I am a sponge, full of holes, and suddenly the holes are being filled in, and I start to feel more solid. Another week passes and more holes are filled, then more, and I rediscover elements of myself I thought were lost. I look at the two tiny people with eyes of wonder and I take more joy in them than I thought possible.
In a few months I am a different person. I have stopped crying every day; I sleep better; I can make plans. Best of all, a path stretches out before me again. My home is more peaceful; my relationship better. I'm followed up by the doctor and it's decided I stay on the magic pills for the blue disease. For my depression.
Fast forward seven years and it is summer 2022. My shaman has long since left the local practice and the world has changed beyond recognition. More LIFE has happened, which means inevitability, death, loss, events unforseen, disease - mine and others, a return to work, a house move, a new business venture, two tiny people growing up. They are remarkable - and I wonder how on Earth they are so, only that I always knew what I SHOULD be doing, and I did it, even when I cried at the same time.
There has been plenty of joy, plenty of grief.
But this summer, I decided the tiny white magic pills had done their job. I couldn't stay on them forever. There had been attempt to stop using the crutch twice, but each time I had a breakdown of sorts and ended up in Winter, when I struggled the most, pill-less and lost. So I'd planned ahead this time and started cutting the dose in Winter, knowing I'd struggle but that brighter days were coming - literally.
I took the last pill on my Summery 50th birthday, grabbed hold of the handrails and held on tight. For a few weeks, I bobbed along in the wake of my hectic and joyous life. But I noticed I was snappier. Anger, mostly absent for the past few years, crept back in on padded feet, clawing me when I least expected it. Old habits raised their ugly heads and I thought many times: I can't do this.
However there was a balance.
I realised I hadn't grieved for the awful and untimely loss of one of the best people I'd ever known. Suddenly I was crying for her every day, and grieving as if from the start. To balance this out though, I found myself laughing more than I had in years. I found myself having days that were dark and grim and full of the old demons, but I was able to ride them out and the gift for this was days of joy, better, bigger joy.
I googled 'bipolar', just in case, but no. What I was experiencing was simply undiluted emotion, and I was stronger and able to deal with it. Back when I went to the doctor I'd been in a strange place, for a variety of reasons too long to dwell on here.
Whilst using the crutch I'd also done some serious therapy and explored the issues that had made me feel so utterly unable to deal with life. The biggest of these was self-hate. Lack of self-belief. A cold and deadly inner voice, that gave me an incredible ability to self-sabotage.
So, fast forward to this summer and I'm half a century old. I've been on anti-depressants for years. I've spoken to more shamans - for that is what these healer are, these healers of the mind and body - and I am better. Better in the sense I am fixed, or as fixed as I can be at this point in time.
On the happy pills I was a muted and safe version of myself. I could cope with anything and I did - loss of loved ones, family issues, a cancer diagnosis, going back to work as a lion-tamer (secondary school teacher) - to name a few of the things that constitute a normal, full life. On the happy pills I was able to face my inner demon, the one who told me I couldn't do any of it. And I put her in her place.
For a few weeks this summer I rode the roller-coaster of emotion. I worked through every emotion at speed and it was frightening. I understood my journey is still only just beginning, but that I could walk it without the aid of a stick.
As I sit here typing this the rain is pelting my window. I am safe inside. My life is busier and fuller than I could ever have imagined, back when I was deep in post-natal depression and trying to cope without any help. I could never have seen this woman I have become.
The pills had their place and I'm not saying I will never need that crutch again - life has been kind in so many ways and I am blessed. You never know what wickedness this way comes, so you can never say never and you can never say always. Maybe one day I will need that crutch.
In my story I know that at 50, I have reached a place of inner peace. It's not a perfect place, but I am no longer scared to feel sad, because I know it will pass. The fact that it didn't pass, not for years, was the frightening thing. Now it is a few days, and I am back. Just a bad day. Days are like this, a wise friend told me when I told her how I was feeling. I had forgotten that, that there can be bad days and that's OK. You can be angry and it's not the end of the world. You can cry, and you'll stop. You can feel sad, and it'll pass. It's all just a colour.
Sometimes now I am happy; sometimes not. On balance I am happier more often and it is a brighter happiness, cerise instead of baby pink; verdant emerald instead of pastel green. It's frightening, almost like learning a language again, but I like who I am now, and that is the difference. I like who I am and I trust that I will wake up again seeing different colours.
I'm a paint pallet that has had colour mixed all over it for years and years and years. I have relearned to use those shades with stronger stokes and I am living once again a life undiluted. I needed the extra water in those paints and I'm now painting with more abandon.
Thank you, Healers. Thank you for helping me heal so I can in turn help others learn to paint their own picture with confidence.
Red, Orange, Yellow; Green, Blue Violet.
And Indigo.
These are my colours, and I'm a rainbow.
Sometimes I’m Happy
sometimes
out of boredom
a vast jumble of unfiltered thoughts
come ambling along others follow racing by with furrowed brow
some images appear assuaging others torment
meanwhile the wind and rain make music on the house that shelters and makes me happy
the feline couple arc and stretch and purr and rest
while the young blast loud music disturbing my equilibrium and restoring the chaos and electricity bills
a nap may still be on the cards otherwise I may have to work
Mr Aqil will hack open my body next Friday and insert a ceramic knee replacement. I'll be fine china.
I once knew someone else with that name. Except he spelled it A-K-E-E-L. He came from Iraq and he was nineteen.
It was when I was married to Saleh and we were living in Amman. Saleh wasn't the name he was going by then. It was his real name but since to leave Iraq he'd needed a passport and he wasn't eligible for one because he hadn't done his military service, he'd assumed a different identity. Having older brothers, always an irritation, suddenly became an advantage and one who'd done his time and had two kids loaned his name. Don't ask why Saleh had to leave Iraq. This story is about Akeel.
We had a flat in Sweileh. For two people to occupy a whole two bedroom flat was practically unheard of. The rent took most of my wages. I worked at the Conservatory, writing textbooks, teaching. Saleh wasn't allowed to work as a doctor. He was paid to translate what I wrote into Arabic. It was a symbiotic relationship: I wrote, he translated more exactly than anyone else could have and the Conservatory got two for the price of one and a few extra dinars.
We celebrated Christmas with my British friend and her two kids. I roasted a chicken in our useless oven. I'm not sure why I chose to do that because it took ours and the shop on the corner had chickens permanently spit roasting in a rotisserie cabinet outside. Tradition, I guess. I'd made a pudding a couple of weeks earlier. Saleh went with me to the butcher to buy suet. He was embarrassed because they usually threw the suet in the bin, so he asked for kidneys with the suet as an extra. I could tell from the way he prepared the kidneys, cutting out all the nasty bits, that he'd be a brilliant surgeon. The mixture had looked very white, so I put some of his mum's date syrup in it, jumped in a taxi an went over to Julie's house so the kids could stir it and make a wish. The chicken was pretty underdone, but the pudding made up for it. Afterwards we went to the cinema, a rare expensive treat.
For New Year, Saleh invited his friends, eight of them, all Iraqi men. He wanted a traditional roast dinner, so I bought some chickens and stashed them in the oven, served them up with mash, carrots and frozen peas. No roasties but nobody was any the wiser.
After dinner, without warning, Saleh announced that I would read tarot for everyone. They all had glowing futures, asylum, wives and families, money, fancy cars. Of course. But one man did have a bright future: that man was Akeel. We saw the New Year in with a Michael Jackson concert. Everyone, except me, danced.
The next day Saleh quizzed me about the readings and after teasing him a bit I confessed it was Akeel who was going to have a good life; he was the lucky one.
Akeel began to come to our flat regularly, usually when I was at work. Sometimes he'd still be there when I got home, more often there'd be a couple of istikhans, thickly coated with sugar, in the sink or on the coffee table. Once I came home early and found Akeel putting his shirt on, strange marks on his back, Saleh screwing the top back on a jar of antiseptic cream. When I asked Saleh later he eventually told me that Akeel had been tortured with hot screwdrivers in his back. When they released him, he fled, like so many, to Jordan. I didn't need to ask why. I'd lived in Iraq and seen the fear on people's faces. I knew something of the abuse of power, how the police would arrest young men to augment their pathetic wages and demand money from the families for their release. Akeel's family obviously didn't pay up in time.
One day in February Saleh told me Akeel had gone to the UN High Commission for Refugees, the UNHCR. I'd seen the queues outside their building and didn't hold out much hope for Akeel, but we learned they had put him in their hostel while they investigated his case.
Everyone thinks of the Middle East as being hot all the time. It isn't. If Jesus was born in a stable, it was most likely freezing, draughty and it might have been snowing. Somehow in our heads, our Christmas is a Victorian snow scene and in the Middle East it is a balmy haven of sunshine. In Iraq, Jordan and Israel, when I spent Christmases there, it rained most of the winter. My birthday is in February and Saleh sold his leather jacket to buy me a present and a cake, and went around shivering.
We needed a treat and on 27th I knew I'd be paid the next day, so I spent all but the busfare to work on some fruit and a tin of Heinz baked beans.
Around 4pm there was a knock at the door. I answered it and there was Akeel, smiling. No words were needed. I was looking at a man about to start a new life. How do you welcome someone like that into your home? With tea, and food, lots of food. Akeel said he was fasting in gratitude to Allah for granting his wish.
When the athan sounded, Saleh and Akeel went to wash and pray; I knew what would be needed afterwards. I ran down to the chicken shop and I'm quite sure they never expected me to say:
Ureed dejarge.
Markoo felooz.
Bukra.
Felooz bukra.
Shukran.
I need chicken.
No money.
Tomorrow.
Money tomorrow.
Thank you.
I walked home with a chicken, bread, rice, salad and two bottles of Coca Cola.
That was in 1997. My life took a strange direction in 2011 when set up a charity in the UK for asylum seekers. It's always a huge pleasure when someone gets leave to remain. We have cake and candles. It gives people hope. They think: me, I'll be next. I always think of Akeel and soon Mr Aqil will give me a new life, a fresh start.
So, sometimes, I'm happy.
From above, I see a calm, crimson circle.
There is something special about this shape. I am reluctant to use the word 'perfect' - but truly, there is no other. I envy its simplicity.
I find myself wondering more often whether I should bother with a glass at all. The only thing that keeps me drinking straight from the bottle is this childlike game I play, leaning forwards over the glass and looking down, closing one eye, then the other, trying to move my perspective so I see the surface of the wine in a perfect circle.
It makes me smile. It is not wide or endearing - but a smile, nonetheless. They are hard to come by.
I pour a few more drops into the glass, trying my utmost to ensure the liquid lands precisely in the centre. Of course, I fail. My hands are so unsteady these days.
The fragile circle is upset, wavelets expand and contract across the surface. I feel a strange sense of guilt. Not the guilt I live with every waking hour, the guilt that anchors my mind to a night three years ago - an overturned car, a vision blurred by smoke and booze, a dead girl in the passenger seat next to me...
No, this guilt derives from nothing more than the simple act of topping up a glass of wine, disturbing the surface as I do so.
Isn't that odd.
It occurs to me that if I pour, maybe, a quarter of a glass and drink the rest from the bottle then the circle I made would never need to be disturbed.
Yes, that's the solution.
I stop pouring and take one last urgent gulp from the glass leaving it a fraction full. Equilibrium - my circle - is restored. The same shape, only smaller. I appreciate its beauty and again, for the briefest of moments, I forget my guilt.
I raise the narrow neck of the wine bottle to my trembling lips and wonder if there is hope for me after all...
Unexpectedly, Joy
(1505 words)
“Watch out!â€
Joy yanked the startled, young man away from the kerb as the bus doors hissed closed in a burst of heat just inches from his face, wafting back his dark, glossy quiff like a shampoo advert. The vehicle lurched away with a whine, its pursed-lipped driver tapping a temple and shaking his head.
The rescuee looked at Joy, then frowned up at the laughing seagulls, before pointing at the travel agent’s window behind them – filled with images of tropical beaches, smiling Geishas, and the monolithic Uluru behind a group of grinning Aboriginals.
“I wanted to go there,†he explained, in a foreign accent that Joy, for all of her travels, couldn’t quite place. He had to be a day-tripper from the Supported Living Centre. She looked around.
“Is there someone with you, hon?â€
He stared at her.
“I am … travelling alone. I am here with work and want to see the … sights.â€
The guy seemed more lucid now. Just foreign, then, perhaps.
Joy realised that he was, in fact, staring at her lips. The moment stretched a little uncomfortably, and she fiddled with her ever-messy hair, wishing she’d not forgotten her make-up.
“Well, you’re in luck – so happens I work here!†she cocked a thumb at the travel agents. “Come on in!â€
Inside, he sat at her desk, staring at the ranks of glossy brochures and milling customers and a child who was bouncing like a kangaroo, chanting “Disney! Disney!â€
“I very much like the peoples here.†he marvelled.
“That’s Dubliners,†Joy smiled –– a warm welcome in every bar, and a bar on every corner…. Now, what do I call you?â€
The young man frowned.
“I am… Juan … Juan O’Tooleâ€
What a name, poor fella. Half Mexican, maybe? Maybe looking for family?
“So… is this your first visit?â€
Juan was peering at her photos – a grinning Labrador and a bobble-hatted party group.
“Ah, my thirtieth birthday in Iceland.â€
Juan’s expression remained blank. Joy beamed at the memory.
“We went to see the Northern Lights. Blew a whole pay cheque in one go! Worth it though – apart from wearing five attractive layers of thermals.†She could feel herself waffling as she usually did around good-looking men.
Juan looked at her, up and down. Probably thinking ‘Babbling eejit woman, just book me some tickets!’ But his gaze made her feel about fifteen and faintly fluttery inside. Then he leaned closer, bringing a little gust of warm, masculine scent that gave Joy a breathless rush last felt in the nineties.
“Clothing is …unimportant.†he murmured, pointing at her smiling lips.
“This is most attractive thing. It is -†he squinted out of the window at the sky,
“radiant – like sun.â€
Joy opened her mouth then then closed it again - utterly lost for words and a little light-headed. Poeticism amongst Irish men was not entirely uncommon, but not like this…
Meanwhile, Juan had turned his attention to the photo of her Labrador.
“A beautiful animal. You and he look … alike.â€
An-n-nd back down the other side of the emotional roller coaster. Thanks, fella!
“I beg your pardon?†she mustered, politely.
Juan pointed at Rex’s huge, canine grin.
“His… face - it is doing the same as yours.â€
“What, smiling?†Joy reached for her notebook and her colleague’s pen, ignoring the scowling looks on the perfectly contoured, trout-pout face of its owner.
“Smi-ling…†His finger touched the photo. “Where I live, no one does that. â€
Joy felt a pang of guilt – maybe this poor guy grew up in some poverty-stricken South American backwater, maybe saved for years to go travelling, and all she could think of was flirting with him. Shame on you, girly…
“So, where do you want to go?†she held the pen poised, wishing she was asking about a date, not a travel itinerary. “How about…†She glanced at a five-foot, cardboard Eiffel tower. “Have you been to France? Paris is a must-see - very romantic†she blushed, unable to resist thinking of them both there. “Or Venice?… or do you already have plans? Travelling without fixed plans is no picnic.â€
“Pic-nic?†he frowned. “What is that? …â€
“You know – a meal outdoors? – when you get out of the city smog and find a pretty meadow with a cow-pat-free spot for your blanket and fight the ants for your sandwiches and cake?†Joy turned and pointed at a forest holiday poster “… Like that?â€
Juan still looked blank, but now with a hint of perplexed, like a billboard model.
“ - that’s - that’s ... if you work in a city, of course.†Joy stammered “ What line of work are you in?… Not being nosey, sorry - I’m just trying to work out which sort of destinations you might like.†She felt her cheeks flush with heat.
Ooh, you little liar. Stop blathering, woman and do your job, already!
Juan was giving her an odd look, as if he was trying to work out the square root of 103.
“In my land, I do… transport of people for job too … but all places I go are bad - like home. But then -†Hs face lit up with something like wonderment as he looked out at the colourful riverside buildings and waterfront trees swaying in the breeze “… I see your land - in pictures - so colourful, so clean and so much green. So, I get work on a big ship to come for visit.†Juan waved an arm at the destination posters and brochures. “I see these places only from ship - this is first time I can leave it.â€
“Oh, I feel for you – I do.†Joy nodded. “I only worked for a couple of months on a cruise ship, but I know the frustration of working long hours below decks, only getting glimpses the amazing places you pass through. Not quite the escapism I’d hoped for.â€
Juan touched her desk with a gentle fingertip.
“One day I will have job like yours - finding unspoiled places for my people to make escape journeys to. Places that make them do this.†Juan reached out and ver-r-ry nearly touched her lips. Joy barely stifled a little whimper - torn for a moment between savouring the delicious closeness of such a beautiful man and remembering the teeming shanty towns she’d passed through on her gap year. If his home was anything like that pitiful squalor, it was no wonder no one smiled there.
“SCUUUSE meeee!†Travel Agent Barbie interrupted, grabbing back her pen and batting her inch-long eyelashes. To Joy’s surprise, Juan completely ignored the porn-face looks and gazed so intensely at Joy’s embarrassed smile that she forgot to breathe for a moment. Her colleague arched a brow, huffed and retreated with an eyeroll.
“Um… “ Joy tried to sound calm, “Of course, if you need a tour guide while you’re here, I’m qualified … and I know some great picnic sites.â€
Was that too cheesy and unsubtle?
Juan was frowning again.
“The people I work for – if they learn of these places, too many will come. They always spoil the places they go. I want that they don’t do that here. Have you ever visited somewhere so - †His eyes seemed to search the ceiling for the word, “so… beautiful that you didn’t want to return home?†Joy smiled and nodded with a wide-eyed sigh as Juan leaned back and glanced around at the customers.
“And I have become fond of the peoples here – the smiling, it is…â€
“Contagious?†Joy murmured, as a soft bleeping made Juan sit up suddenly.
“I must go now - and make report to boss. I will tell boss and rich people on my ship that … that this is not good place to come. So, they will not come and spoil it, like… like much litter after picnic.â€
“That’s very considerate.†And refreshing… and even more attractive! she thought, sighing inwardly, before an insistent nail tapping drew her attention to a tiny post-it that Barbie’s scarlet-tipped finger had pressed onto the corner of her desk.
‘Not a hope - he has to be gay!’
In that moment of indignation, Joy took a deep breath and gave Juan her warmest smile.
“I could call you, if you like?â€
Juan looked puzzled, and Joy felt her cheeks flush again as she slid the notepad toward him.
“I - I mean, when you decide which destinations you fancy, I could help. Do you have an email address or phone number? A way to contact you?â€
Juan looked at the notepad, then at her, then at the pencil she was handing him. As he wrote, a strange expression grew upon his face. His lips twitched and curled, then slowly broadened into an utterly delighted smile, making Joy very glad that she was sitting down.
As he left, walking straight past Barbie’s open-mouthed bewilderment, Joy looked down at the paper.
‘Crewman 1102 – Intergalactic Cruises Holo-channel 3649421-1102’
---- END ----
Sometimes I’m Happy by Marion Foreman
She walked with purpose, aiming to get to the lighthouse. It was a big decision but she would do it. The sea was to her left and the marshes to her right. The light was good and the path ahead, at the moment, was clear.
The difference between the sea and the marsh wasn’t clear. The relentless pressure had blurred the edges, the road being dragged in by the waves. She felt the pull and the battle.
There were few people out today, sometimes it boarded on crowded, but not today. The grey sky had combined with the cold, making the bleakness inhospitable. But she was confident, she would do it. She had her kagool, her shoes were serviceable; all would be well. She had done it before of course, with him.
They had walked together often. She liked to remember the lack of words fondly. And it didn’t matter if they didn’t hold hands, after all, they did go to bed together. She had loved him. She did love him.
The wind caught at her and she stuffed her hands into her pockets. The rucksack felt heavy. Was the flask really necessary? The lighthouse seemed to recede with every step. The waves were high today and the tide was in so far. The marsh seemed to be filling up. She scrambled over the broken path. The concrete was in great chunks, no longer a way thorough, simply a tangle of obstacles to be navigated.
For a few moments she felt him walking beside her. Strong, capable and protective. Then he was gone and the fragility returned. The clarity that she once had between the him she loved and the way he behaved seemed to ebb and flow. Like the tide, her doubt came in fast. She was a broken as the stone. She had been scared so much of the time; living with him was perilous.
The couple heading towards her looked like professionals. Proper jackets, sturdy walking boots and sticks – nothing left to chance there.
‘You need to be careful’ the woman said, ‘its likely to flood and you’ll get cut off – did you know that?’
She nodded and mumbled her thanks. Of course she knew that. She had read the note in the shelter. She knew that today was one of those days. The days when the sea fully met the marsh and the path just didn’t exist. One of those days when your thoughts clashed with your emotions and overwhelmed. She had got through before and she would again.
When she got to the lighthouse she sat at the table and drank some tea. She nibbled on the biscuits she had carted all this way. She knew she should start back but it was so hard. Turning around was difficult. She had struggled to get this far, but she knew she couldn’t rest long.
Her pace back to base was slow. Going back on yourself seemed so fruitless. There were so many obstacles but she couldn’t stay where she was, she would get swamped. One step at a time – it was all she could do. The wind was biting cold now and her eyes were watering. But she had no choice, she couldn’t stay where she was, she would drown.
When she reached the lowest point the water was lapping over. No clear boundaries any more. She paddled through. It was icy and unkind. It would have been easier to stay where she was. She dithered about which way to go. She pressed on; she knew that if she went back she would be marooned. She wanted to get back to her house, to her home. The peace and quiet. She wanted to leave the inhospitable to flood and die. Her feet were wet but she had no choice – if she wanted to survive she would have to go through this pain.
Her hands were almost too cold to manage the car keys, but she wasn’t giving up – she had come so far. The heater warmed her up, the dregs of the tea defrosted the inside of her.
The sea raged now but she was safe again. She would have a curry this evening.
‘Sometimes,’ she thought ‘I’m happy’.
Sometimes……
Sometimes we search
for happiness like suicidal moths
beating wings at candle flames
and pining for the moon.
Personally, I’m happy with
a well-chilled glass of chardonnay
in the summer shade of a lazy
Lloyd loom afternoon.
Or, lost in a field of seething wheat,
chided by shabby rooks,
rising raucous against
the yellow and the blue,
smeared by a palette knife
in oily flecks, black with threats
against a swirling sky
that only Vincent really knew.
Sometimes to find
brief happiness,
I walk through autumn woods
to make the most of shorter days,
where through the falling
golden leaves of ash and beech,
slanting sunbeams
cast their silver rays.
Sometimes I wonder
at the sound of distant thunder
snapping at the heels of vanished
summer gone asunder.
I love the crackle-snap of a
bonfire at the bottom of my garden,
until the chill October dusk
sends shivers down my back,
then through gathered gloom
the kitchen window beckons
to me with comfort food
and a promise to relax.
Later I watch leggy spiders
scamper round the skirting,
hunting for love while winter
waits behind the curtains.
Did you ever do the same?
I must confess that once
I longed to join the human
version of that feckless game.
Happiness is an elusive wish
in the way that KitKats
sometimes, (for a moment)
taste of fish,
or in the way that long forgotten
perfume surprises for an instant,
but looking round, there’s nothing
there but emptiness and distance.
I don’t expect or even hope
for happiness to last,
I know it’s only temporary,
it never stays for long,
so I let contentment
settle in its place and
raise a smile as I recall
some fond-remembered song.
Maybe I am crazy. The wind is like knives right now. I think my left glove is filling up with blood but I can’t take it off to check. I’m so tired. This might be the most tired I’ve ever been, and you know that’s something. This damned cold, it leeches the life from your bones. I’m worried I might shatter like a lightbulb. Breathe. This is just where I am right now. keep moving. Reduce everything down to the simplest actions and repeat them until you reach your goal. Focus on surviving each moment and if you survive enough of them, you’ll prevail... or die trying. Is there some sort of nobility in that? I’m not sure.
“This is an incredibly bad idea Tom. You’re a forty year old man who suffered a massive stroke in his early thirties. Your recovery has been impressive but… Tom, I don’t want to be harsh here, but there’s a reason you had that stroke in the first place. You are not physically equipped for this in any sense. It is, quite literally, suicide… Look, Tom… I… I don’t want to overstep but, I get the sense that you haven’t been happy for a long time. I think some part of you is looking for a purpose, something to get out of bed for, and that’s laudable, I applaud it, I really do. It’s good for you to push betond your comfort zone, really beneficial, and I support it, but… You’ve fixated on a really dangerous idea here Tom. I can help you find someone to speak to. In fact, I think a good friend of mine could really help you out. He’s not NHS but I’ll happily put in a word. But… I’m sorry Tom. As your physician I cannot possibly sign off on this, and you… you really shouldn’t want me to.â€
He’s a good man. He would’ve sectioned me if I’d told him the whole truth, but there are private doctors with less scruples. I was happy once. I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t. I know what I want now.
Do you remember the picnic in Chipping Camden? Well, the first picnic at least. That place has such a hold on you. I was going all out to be as swanky as possible, trying to go fully artisanal, real hipster stuff. I bought that obscenely expensive sourdough… I think the starter predated Edward the Confessor. I wasn’t trying to show off, I just wanted it to be good you know? But I made the fatal error of trusting you. “Oh yeah, I’ll find some pâté, no worries.†No worries… I can’t believe I had to spread Tesco potted beef on a loaf that cost fifteen quid.
That was happy.
That loaf was shit too.
God, you would be so angry with me right now. No, actually you’d laugh at me. Both? I’m seriously climbing up a mountain to find a man who grants wishes. Actual wizard shit- Shit!
That is a deep crevice. Like, ‘there’s no coming back from that’ deep. Hang on a second, I need to focus. Make smart moves Tom. Hah. This might be that abyss Nietzsche was talking about. It’s narrower than I was expecting but it’s definitely gazing back at me. I think I’ve got a good hold but it’s hard to tell. I have so little feeling left in my hands. Christ.
Look, I can’t stress this enough… It’s not like I don’t know that this is stupid, I swear to you I do, but… I don’t know. It’s symbolic maybe? Like, when I used to read the cards for you. We both knew it was bollocks but the ritual meant something. It did to me at least. Anyway, I t’s a mystical mountain and that’s pretty alluring.
I’m really just working through some stuff. When I get to the top all I expect see up there is the clouds… maybe the stars at this rate.
I hope it’s glorious. I hope that I’ve earned that. Can you physically climb your way to an epiphany? God, listen to me, it is a bit unhinged. I think that’s just how I am right now. Is that alright?
I like the stars. Remember when I pointed out Vega through the conservatory roof? I told you all about Lyra and how Orpheus ventured into the underworld and, you knew all of it, obviously, but… I was still struggling with the words back then. You were the first person I wanted to say them to so you let me. I wonder if Orpheus could play like you? I mean, he’d be baffled by a guitar but… I bet he wasn’t all that.
It’s always like this when I reminisce. I feel myself getting morbid now and I really don’t want it. That’s probably dangerous in a place like this. I mean, true story: at this exact moment, my index finger is the only thing keeping me alive. Don’t worry about it.
Memories are ghosts. Their ghosts you can only reach through a lousy medium with a torn Polaroid. You really can’t go home again, so…God help you if you lose track of it. Find a new one I guess? For me the past has always been inherently mournful. I really wish I could remember you without the sorrow but it’s hard. I don’t know… it makes me feel ungrateful I suppose.
There are some crazy icicles here, like a rack of glass lances. I kind of want to lick one. Oh crap, Knight Rider! Remember that? Punjabi MC? I had to carry you back so, yeah, probably not. I don’t think that would fly anymore. You know, two super white people trying to sing Bhangra at the karaoke? God, I loved that track. Almost makes me feel warm.
You know, I can carry a tune pretty well now. I want to join a choir but I’m kind of embarrassed. I need to get over myself.
I’m almost scared to give into the hope but… I think I’m pretty close. That would be great timing because I’m starting to feel a little euphoric. I think, in a mountaineering context, that means my brain is dying? I’m supposed to be worried about that right? I dunno. Would this be a good way to go? Is this a good story? I think it’s probably lacking important cont- Wait…
Shit, I think I see something. There’s a little red flag peeking above the horizon. It’s on a thick wooden pole and it’s been blown ragged by the wind. It was roaring so loudly before but now it’s like a dull hum. Might be my ears. I think there’s a building… It’s a tiny hut made of stone, but it looks solid.
I think there’s a light through the cracks of the door. It’s so small but… God, I can’t believe there’s really something here. It might all be nonsense but there is something here. There is someone on this damned mountain.
I might be crazy, but I’m going to march in there, even if it gets me an ice pick to the face. I’m going to march in there and do what I first dreamt of when I heard this stupid story.
I’m going to tell them about you. I’m going to tell them what you mean to me and how much I owe you. I’m going to tell them just how wonderful you are, and I’m going to get it wrong because I never had those words in the first place.
I’m going to tell them that, tomorrow, the love of my life is marrying the man of her dreams… and I’ll bite my lip.
I’m going to ask them, please, make sure it doesn’t rain in Chipping Camden.
Sometimes I'm Happy
Corners up and corners down- they give the game away- or do they?
A slight incline, a slight decline - emotions they define - or do they?
That gesture to the sky or ground tells something quite profound.
Up, incline, to the sky I smile - happy? maybe
Down, decline, to the ground I smile - sad? maybe
That subtle move is all it takes to swing the pendulum of feeling.
In between that up and down, 19 smiles we harbour.
Baring all, masking truth- our communication armour.
Eyes and teeth, fine lines and skin give context to this mouth sign language.
Schadenfreude, sad despair, flirtatious, fake and lying!
In reality, you see,
Only sometimes am I happy when I'm smiling :-)
Weathering
They are the child's notches on the wall,
Counting time with length,
The reflection of the sun's rays about the eyes,
The wind cutting the ridge,
Etches of the smile on midsummer eve,
The dive from the rocks,
A cold dry winter's night with snow underfoot,
The cliff walk in hailstones,
Memories creased and minded
Like knots on a string.
He felt as if he had not slept for days, for weeks. But finally his head had relaxed on the pillow, his body had sunk thankfully into the softness of his bed.
He hadn't realised the tension in his muscles, but gradually he felt it ebb away, as he breathed deeply to consciously slow his heart rate and try to steer away the onslaught of thoughts that threatened to overwhelm him.
These past three weeks or so had been a sudden frantic burst of activity that seemed totally endless, schedules upon schedules deluging from all quarters, all meticulously planned years in advance but still needing co-ordination and co-operation when there was a realisation that not everybody had the same plans in mind.
Somehow, though it had worked. The public had seen a militarily precise operation carried out by innumerable different organisations with scarcely a fumbled moment. They had noticed the uncooperative pen that squirted ink all over his hands and wondered if it had been a bit of sabotage by some minor individual. But apart from that he was relieved that the days had passed without major incident.
The past had not been without it's crises, sometimes of a terribly controversial nature where the media had been cruel and critical but he had to bear all that, all those things he had to tolerate and in addition all those things he had to do but not necessarily wanted to do, with the best face he could muster.
He had learnt long ago that it was difficult to please everyone all the time and relieved that now, of all times, the media as a whole had been supportive and sympathetic. Despite their criticisms in the past, they had honoured his Mother, his predecessor.
His Mother. How he missed her. And his Father, also not long passed away. They had both been strong, the strongest people he could imagine. They had helped him grow into this position, though it had actually taken a long time for him to arrive here.
He knew that his position was a unique one. How many men, or women, would pass retirement age, then take on such a challenging job knowing that it was, literally, a job for life. He would be doing this now until his deathbed.
How many people would have taken this career choice, not knowing how long they might wait before stepping into dead men's shoes, or in this case, a dead woman. And they were big shoes to fill.
Had he chosen to take this career? He might have refused, as other had before him in the past. But his Father had pointed out that free as this country is, not many people actually have a choice in the passage of their lives. Best thing is, to make the best of it. There will be certainly things he would not wish to do, but that applies to everyone.
So, here he was, in this situation he had waited patiently for. It seemed surreal. Perhaps he would wake up in a minute.
The thoughts crowded in on him, random, without rhyme or reason, the voices of a thousand people, a crowd of heads all looking at him, talking at him, a thousand wise counsellors giving him sage advice but each with their own agenda and each of whom he had to give consideration to and choose what he felt was the best and most achievable course, without offending those he wished not to follow just at this particular time.
Then he realised it was of course more than a thousand, for beyond them was another sea of heads, all demanding his attention.
Amongst them was a little boy, small, surrounded by smart trousers and portly stomachs. The little boy looked up to a sea, an ocean, of serious, stern faces, ignoring him as they consulted wisely with his Mother or his Father. Occasionally one might glance at him and remember to smile patronisingly. He was only a small boy and not worthy of more and he could not understand the significance of his own future.
Suddenly he realised that the boy was himself and felt his heart gallop and race in panic, overwhelmed by the pressures put upon him, by the trousers and polished shoes surrounding him. He was a little boy again, turning to look for the reassurance of his little friend the teddy bear, the only one he could turn to and share his worries and his secrets. But the bear was no longer there, had not been for decades. His Father had sternly reminded him that Teddy Bears are only for little boys, not for him now that he was growing into a man, a leader of men. Leaders did not have Teddy Bears. Leaders of men did not cry. He had not seen his Mother cry, despite the cries of the media who thought that, sometimes, she should be seen to cry. But still he felt her warmth, her gentleness, her humour and . . . well, her motherliness as she smiled at him across the years, from decades before when he was that little boy.
Suddenly, he felt alone. So alone. After a lifetime of support from his parents, although he had made his own decisions for decades they were still made within the general policies of the family, of the firm. There was always co-ordination and co-operation, but now the Principals of the organisation were no longer there: he was the Principle and he would have to make the decisions from hereon, treading the knife-edge between what is popular and what he felt was right. He felt his Father's reassuring arm on his shoulder and his pulse slowed. He had a lifetime of advice to help him with his new responsibilities, as well as of his own experience.
He would make the best of it.
The voices reduced, the small boy stepped back quietly into the past and once again he breathed slowly and deeply and reflected on this strange new experience.
Yes, it was a strange thing,
being a King.
SUN KING
Consider reality
a window
I look through
at you
Hiding
from the one
who burns
to make you
visible
The man who would be king circles me like a shark; watches me through his tiny flitting eyes and waits for the moment I am weak to strike, drag me down and drown me, before finishing me off with his nasty pointy teeth.
I exaggerate, a little, but this is how it feels as I go about my kingly business and he exists and covets my life. It's always been like this even before I was made king - him, and me, caught in an endless power struggle to get to the top.
I made it first. I won over the people and their tributes reflect their respect for me and all I do for them. He isn't to be trusted. It's in those eyes I mentioned, the ones that flit about, looking for danger - or opportunity - his furtive whispers, his quiet meetings when he thinks I'm not watching. He thinks I'm stupid and that I don't have a clue about what he's trying to do. He wants my job, the one I was given by birthright, and he's not getting it.
I'm safe. I have loyal bodyguards; he has acolytes who follow him about and try to be like him, even to the point of flicking their eyes about. It makes them look like they're having some kind of episode, but they think they look like him, and that's fine. The weirder they look, the better it is for me and the people who follow me.
Our country is small. I watched The Godfather once, and it reminded me of us and our endless circular power struggle, caught in the tides of our lives. None of us has any power or choice, not really, even kings are bound by laws. The Godfather and all the dark cinematography reminded me so much of our country it made me cry. My two most trusted bodyguards, who were with me, subtly pulled tissues from their pockets and handed them to me.
My rival is called Angus. King Angus. He things it has a ring to it but I think there are far too man gs in there. If you say it with a Liverpudlian accent, like the doctor, it sounds like you're choking.
My name is Jon. Simple, strong, and chosen by me. For the longest time it was my secret name, but now I get to live it every single day, live Me. King John. Biblical, almost. If I had the power to start a religion I would, because I live a life of kindness many would benefit from , if we all chose the same way. I'd call it Jonway, my religion. It's how I try to rule - Jon's Way. King Jon's Way. Angus's jealousy and meanness make him ugly; Jonway makes you beautiful inside.
It has been a beautiful year. My reign. Things have been better here; the people happier. If it weren't for Angus, I would feel entirely safe, and so would everyone else.
Only lately, the last few days... it's hard to explain. I've not felt myself. I've felt like Old Me, Jon-before, when I had the name I hated. I don't know why. I don't tell anyone, because kings have to be strong. They hide their feelings. They have to, to rule with equity and
*****
Two days until I expose him. Literally. I have had to plan it right, so the correct people are watching and the right backs are turned. If not, at the last minute my carefully laid plans could be ruined. The overthrow of a king is no easy business. It's taken months of careful planning and secret meetings and whispered promises. My new PM. My new Doctor in charge. My new Princes.
I began slowly. A bribe to an unscrupulous Princess Nurse (leading to a cut in the royal dose "Jon" was given); some acting on my part (just enough to unsettle him and freak him out with my Freaky Eyes); a few promises to the hard bastards like Grainger (I will need his protection, and I can give him much much more than "Jon" can. King Jon. What a load of shite.
King Gus - almost like a new word in itself. Kingus. A way of being. A way of living. A leader who's not paranoid. A leader who is a true man, not a fake one.
Joan was her name, but I'm guessing you guessed that already. I mean look at him. Her. Some trans men are just so manly. Jon is just... Fake. I'm a bloke's bloke. I'll be the proper king.
I knew Joan before we came here. Joan does not remember. I knew Joan when Joan was just a worn out crazy shell of a woman, beaten by men, mistrusted by other women. I'd have felt sorry for her if I had that capacity but I've been told I'm a psychopath, and incapable of mercy. That's fine by me - how many benevolent kings do you know anyway? They're all completely up themselves, so it'll be the perfect job for me. I've been told many a time how selfish I am. Fine. I do not have a problem with that.
Joan does, though. Joan thinks she's a bloke - not just that but a king - and Joan's biggest problem, out of all of them, is that Joan sees me as a problem. That does make sense. To me, anyway.
So. Joan's royal meds got cut, and suddenly Joan's not quite so comfortable. The royal nurse looks almost as uncomfortable, but the royal nurse is on a shitty wage and I'm rich. All it took was a couple of phone calls and the promise that when I'm king, everything here will be calm and controlled, not the chaos and riot it is under "King Jon".
When Joan feels bad enough, Joan's paranoias will really kick in and she'll be back in the soft room for a bit. I'll step in then, to my rightful shoes.
*****
I've done a bad thing. Angus the terrifying offered me money to cut the dose of another patient. He said it was because the other patient has been bullying him and he's sick of it not being dealt with by the doctors, and could I do him a wee favour? I didn't want to, but I really really want a new car and Angus set up a few quid (turns out Angus is loaded - who knew?) to go into my bank account each week if I help. A few quid. A few hundred, actually. Angus also promised to make my life easy and not tell the world who I really am (he may be bluffing, but I really need this job and if my PVG is exposed as being fake, I'm done.) Looking after crazies doesn't pay that well, but it's not bad either. Crazies. I should not call them that. But honestly, man, if I told you some of the stuff that goes on in here your eyes would pop out of your head. It's pretty mental. Scuse the pun. Living on site means I have a house and a job, all in one. And I'm allowed a fair bit of freedom, even when I'm working.
Some of them are convinced they're in other places. Bit like that Leonardo DiCaprio movie where he thinks he's a copper and he's actually an inmate. Honestly.
It's a mixed ward, which brings its own difficulties. This is where my conscience really gets pricked - I know how hard it's been for Jon, and here I am helping destroy his Self. The drugs he's on keep him being a bloke, and keep him in his happy place (which has been as God, Jesus and once, Prince Harry's secret dad), and without them, he'll be back in the locked ward, which we all call Lala Land because nobody knows where they really are in there. I was in there for a bit before my shift pattern changed. Once Jon is in there, Angus will stop paying me, which is a bugger, but at least I'll be able to sleep at night. Cutting his dose is not easy. I take the meds from the doctor and give him a lesser amount without the doctor seeing. I'm good at my job, though. Derek, you're the best, is what I hear from docs and patients alike.
******
I'm worried about one of my patients. Jon, once Joan, isn't doing as well as he was. He's been in a great place for almost a year; so fully, finally in his own skin he almost looks regal. yes, that's the word. He looks Regal. And people follow him. Jon as his true self is a beautiful gentle giant of a man, not an awkward and unhappy cross-dresser. We have been talking about an operation to finalise things and I thought he was There. Ready, soon, to be rehabbed back to his proper life. The that asshole (should not call patients that) Angus got involved and winds him up constantly. I have fought for his transfer to The Sands but the cogs of the NHS move far too slowly and he's still here, in the wrong place. Keeping him and Jon apart has become my biggest challenge when I'm on shift.
Another recent issue is Angus's relationship with Derek. Derek used to believe he worked here and it took months to reinstate him to his proper station in the world, so to speak. he used to turn up to staff meetings and changeovers, with his own notes and everything. It seemed as the moment we got him 'right', so to speak, back in HIS right skin, he developed this shift friendship with Angus and I see the two of them plotting all day long in corners. They pick on Jon, no matter how hard I try to protect him. Jon's always been a favourite.
I like to think I know everything that's going on in here, more than anyone else. I take time to talk to the patients, see, and the others just treat them as if they're Things to be kept in order. Like books on a shelf. But open any one of those books and inside is all this LIFE. Dr King, who is the top doc in this place but has a God complex (maybe needs some treatment himself?) says I care too much and it'll be my undoing but at least I know what's going on in here. He has not got a clue. He may be in charge, but what is he in charge of? he hasn't a clue, not really. He doesn't talk to people. He doesn't know them.
I do. I understand everyone. I should be running this place really. Get rid of Doc King and his grand gestures of fakery, when he smiles and puts a hand on a shoulder... The people here are people, still people. Not patients, commodities, Things to be fed and medicated.
Take Jon. Gentle, lovely, caring Jon. If he wasn't here as a patient, he'd be a great Dr King. He'd have the place running so much better. He'd probably start by moving Angus, before Angus stabs us all in our beds (OK, I'm a bit over-dramatic there, but he freaks me out, and I would not put it past him to be able to sneak a knife into the hospital.)
I can dream. And in my day time job, not dreaming, I can try to help, understand, and medicate. And wish there was another way.
Kings sigh.
Heavy lays the crown.
Quite literally, solid gold.
Bejewelled New and old.
I will play my part to judging eyes.
I'll wear this mask with stout pride.
Heavy is this crown.
The ones who came before.
Their tales streak royal blue.
Even if they are not true.
Dull pain upon my brow.
Heavy, heavy crown.
Surrounded by dead wood, clamped and tugged.
Bed for 6 o clock.
The sun may bring a slither ray.
Sadly reign another day.
Who would be king
The guard stumbled backwards as Noah’s sword met it’s target. The prince grinned offering his hand to the guard, helping him up. The future king was known all throughout the city for his fighting prowess, “ he will lead us through many victories†the people would say.
Noah ruffled his younger brothers hair as he listened to him rant about his day in the town. “ He’s kind and caring, the city will flourish under his control†they would whisper.
Everyone listened intently as he gave a speech during the holiday festivities. “An amazing spokesperson, destined for greatnessâ€.
His hand went through his fathers shoulder, a failed attempt at comfort. Watching unnoticed as his family mourned his death.
The only fight he lost, soon became his last.
Would Be King
Marion Foreman
The flowers were meant to be a lovely gesture she thought. Delivered to her work place they had caused a bit of a stir. She had had to go down to reception to fetch them and that overly made up, heavily eye lashed twelve year old had cooed over them and was clearly itching to know who (and why) any one would send her, Ella, an old lady, a fairly indifferent bouquet.
Ella was no more old than the receptionist was twelve, but its all in the perception isn’t it? She took the flowers back to her desk and puzzled what to do with them. They were a gesture but she wasn’t really sure of what. She wanted them to be lovely but actually they looked like the cheapest that the cheap florist could put together. And she knew that they were meant to say something but she couldn’t quite think what the message might be.
Last night had been one of the worst. She didn’t hold out any hope for today.
‘Ella, what’s for tea?’, he had demanded as he walked in. She counted to three, she knew the exact timing.
‘Is it ready? Where’s my post?’.
‘Its nearly ready and there was no post’. Bloody postal chess. Furtive little envelopes, meticulously reposted with a new move inside. Why couldn’t he play online like everyone else? The board stood, poised on the chess table. Untouched and untouchable. The one time she had dusted it – but she wasn’t going to think of that again. One wrong move and a whacking great bruise on her cheek.
He hung his jacket over the back of his chair. How she wished he wouldn’t do that. He took out his newspaper and a pen and settled on the crossword. With any luck it would be finished just as the meal finished. She would sit, quietly. Once she had tried reading a book at the table but the punishment for that lasted a week and certainly wasn’t worth the crime.
He ate noisily. He slurped his drink (beer, one bottle per night, no more) and burped. She held her breath, waiting to see how the crossword progressed. The occasional days when it was ‘done by a rogue compiler’ and deemed to be ‘unsolvable’ were purgatory. He never asked her – if he had done she would have told him; she had finished it on her phone over her lovely breakfast that she had had that morning after he had left for work.
She had needed extra time this morning. She had had to change the bed sheets even though it wasn’t the weekend. She couldn’t face sleeping in them after what had happened. Hopefully he wouldn’t notice the change in the schedule. But surely he wouldn’t want reminding either? The rage had been bad and made worse because she hadn’t seen it coming. She wasn’t braced ready.
The flowers would be all the acknowledgement; they were meant to say sorry. There had been no card. He used few words. They were in the bin at work. After much staring at them she couldn’t bear the sight. She had texted a thank you few words and then erased them. Unsent. Hypocrisy wasn’t her thing but she knew she would have had to big them up and tell him that she had left them at work so that she could see them all week whilst she worked.
She cleared the plates and brought in the ice cream. Chocolate, it was a Wednesday. She could see that there were only a few clues left.
‘4 across would be ‘king’’ she said, reading the clue that said ‘piece that is subservient to its female part’.
He grunted, cross with her. He looked up and what she saw did it. Never again would she play that game.
The blow to the back of his head from the rolling pin was swift. Dazed, his head fell into the chocolate mush.
‘Check Mate I think’ she said, quietly, and the second blow wiped the board clean.
Would Be King
“I would a tale Unfold …â€
A simple sentence, softly spoken. Yet, everyone in the room heard each word as if it were murmured personally by a trusted voice breathing close into their ear, to them and to them alone. The wall lamps in their polished brass sconces flickered , then dimmed, trimmed by an unseen hand: the flames dancing in the log fire stretched taller for a moment, as if making compensation.
All conversation died. Each held his or her breath. An expectant silence rippled across the room as the Seanch’ai settled more comfortably in his chair.
“There was once a King†His hood was folded back, revealing his pure silver locks. His face was still in shadow: he leant heavily on his staff, the polished bole of a rowan tree.
“His name was Cormac Rú, wise and brave, with hair the flame-red colour of the sun in a spring dawn. He frequently wintered in his castle close by, on Trinity Isle, Lough Key.â€
“He had a daughter as fair as the day is long, by name Una Bhà n, which means ‘the One with Pure White hair’. Many princes and noble suitors courted her, but Cormac deemed none of them worthy.â€
“Of these, one was the son of a close neighbour, Tomás LaidÃr Costello. Of all her suitors, he was the only one for whom Una Bhà n had feelings, and his love for her was sincere. For a short, blesséd while they succeeded in finding a few stolen moments together, until Cormac discovered them and immediately banned Tomás from his demesne.â€
“Before riding away, Tomás declared that unless Cormac sent word of a change of heart before he reached the boundary between their estates, he would never return. Una Bhà n was distraught, and begged her father to relent. On seeing her so upset, Cormac sent word: but Tomás had crossed the boundary, and determined that as a man of Honour he could not break his Word.â€
“Cormac had Una Bhà n confined to a room high in the Castle on Trinity Isle. She wept continually, falling into a melancholy. When Tomás heard of this he rode each night to Lough Key, swimming to the Island to profess his love.â€
“It is said, Una Bhà n died of a broken heart. Tomás LaidÃr caught a fever from his nightly swims. On his deathbed he begged Cormac Rú to allow his body to be buried alongside Una Bhà n, on Trinity Isle. Cormac consented, and to this day you may still see two roses grow, one from each side of the Castle door, entwining overhead.â€
“Tomás LaidÃr: King of a Princess’ Heartâ€
In These Times of “Western Civilisationâ€
-------------------------------------------------
Who would be king, must abdicate
All wish to rule. His attitude
Should stay inferred, unless it fits
The country’s governance, lest they
Should boot him on the other foot
And boo his humble protests...
So you are born to it? Your lonely choice
To spurn your birth-right, and accept discord
In seeking after urges of your heart,
Means: Leave your destined hearth, and risk being cast
Out coldly from your dearest kith and kin.
If you can bear this, then take, brave, your leave
And hope one day to speak with those bereaved
Of your planned turn in vested dignity
That hangs upon the brows of monarchy...
The cost that way is great, dear Prince, and most
Resist that call, that road of mingled mirth
All mangled by the gossips of the world-
The meanest tongues from meddling minds you’ve heard.
Easier to stay with where you find yourself...
You are no Buddha yet, to break away
And sit for years in dust to meditate
Till deepest knowledge opens your eyes wide
To blessed peace in poverty’s sunrise .
So bow your poor throned head, Unfortunate,
Content yourself with smiling, tea, and dogs
To follow you through many dreary walks
The nation’s width, pat wide-eyed children
On their shampooed heads, and chat
Of nothings in the rehearsed etiquette...
I pray for you that duty’s lure
Will, as in ancient times, suffice:
A Roman governor gained much respect
From joining ranks, and leaving out a voice
Of dissent from the citizens accord
For common good. E’en though it abased slaves
Within the system, rulers were well served
In their appointed place, the royal- with the rich
And purple cloak which, if Caesar abused,
Would lose him his esteem in the known world...
Keep thou, o King, from such a tragic fate!
Your murmurings may bring much needed good
And hope for people in this breaking world.
A crown, a promise, held through joy and grief
Can give those crying in the dark, relief.
You’d still be King? Then may your plotted life
Prepared for thee by others, well suffice,
And, while you serve your duty, find delight
In caring for us all, in giving wealth
To help your country to much better health
Than now it lingers in. The poor can’t wait
For food, or shelter, as they crowd your gate.
The ancient writings summon thee to share
With all who plead: THIS is the Royal care!
He who Would be King
Each November
outside my bedroom window
is revealed the face
of one who would be King.
It’s no surprise
that he resides inside
a mighty oak,
the very King of trees.
He bathes naked
while he braves
the steaming cold
in early winter sunshine.
He is the jewel
resplendent
in the oak’s
high crown.
He looks down at me
while I lie in bed
and drink my
morning tea.
His eyes follow
every move I make,
even as I step
into my underpants.
He probably thinks
I’m bowing
in deference
to his glory.
And when
the wind is up
I see him mouthing
and thrashing,
marching on the spot,
puffing and blowing
and swaying
with the storm.
He is a perverse
incumbent
of my winter
garden.
It just requires
imagination
to recognize
his kingly gaze.
The shapes
between
the branches
form his regal pose.
Squirrels chase
each other
round and round
and scratch his back
and magpies
cackle
and flip their tales
in deference.
I call him
'Beerbohm the Mighty'
residing as he does
within a Tree.
I am struck
by his theatrical
countenance
and airy gestures.
He is the
Great Pretender
but
I applaud him still.
No Caliban
or Thane of Cawdor
was more
splendidly portrayed.
As always
he delights
in standing
centre stage.
With the drapes
of summer gone
he reigns until
return of spring,
when new leaves
swell upon
the boughs
to hide his majesty.
And now
September wanes
and I count the weeks
to his reveal.
As the first leaves fall
I prepare to throw
the curtains wide
and bid him welcome.
The equinox
is past and
now, at last,
The King cometh.
They said you would have been a king
With a decent, righteous, uncorrupted soul
That justice and peace, you, would bring.
But after that, your heart could never be whole.
You had looked at them with your solemn eyes
Knowing your fate was written on slated stone
That the limit for you won’t ever reach the skies
You were always tied down by your blood alone.
‘O, would be king’ you cursed that night
‘They’ll dangle me – only they’ll be king,
‘I’ll be a puppet, while they scheme out of sight,’
‘I’m bound to them, my life – their string.’
And so they did, again, as each story goes,
Corruption reigned, as it always had,
The tale every kingdom hates, but it knows,
Repeats to insanity – a pattern gone mad.
The king that would have been, could have been.
Was bound, hammered, shaped and moulded,
So he would be the way that history has always seen.
While, he himself, was led off a cliff blindfolded.
White wings once ruffling with promise, now tightly tethered
Their soul began to fall – dropped, trampled and erased
On the dusty bare road, the stones now weathered
A gift, shattered, never to be replaced.
There are reports that suggest that The Bastard King used to write poetry. An interesting proposition, certainly—when examining figures of history, it is often easy to reduce them simply to the most memorable among their achievements, failures and anything that falls therein. The Bastard King, for example: Killer of gods, master of the blade, he who slayed his own father in the Battle of the Fallen Sun. (note: Sebastian II bested both Torren, god of soil, and Ziamuth, divine caller of storms, in combat—eventuating their brief deaths. In spite of this [bordering inhumane] feat, he is referred to chiefly as The Bastard King. Is the matter of his birth truly more worthy of note than the fact that he destroyed not one, but two gods? Albeit for a short period? To research further.)
The following scrap of a poem's first draft is available for viewing in the Interdimensional Museum of Iconography (I am fairly sure that poetry is not iconography at all, though there is likely a reasonable explanation for its being displayed there... To research further.):
The lion cub hunts in meadows green,
And plays in waters blue,
His father watches from the hill (replace hill with something cooler, like mountain or i dont know like a cliff or something)
His gaze a vivid blue (you rhymed blue with blue you idiot) (also lions dont have blue eyes?????)
It is unclear who wrote the addenda, but many suspect them to be the work of Jethram, Sebastian II's... good friend? Or lover. It is unclear.
If this poem was indeed written by The Bastard King, it is illuminating. It tells us not only that he liked to write, but that even great heroes are capable of being entirely mediocre in various fields. A comforting thought, and a humanising one. Something else interesting of note is Sebastian II's love of caramel-dipped apples. It is said that he was never without a leather pouch of caramel, and was always buying and slicing apples with which to dip in it. (note: My research partner, Kerra, claims that carrying caramel in a leather pouch wherever you go, and dipping apple slices into it and proceeding to eat them, is strange. Her specific wording was "What? What the fuck? This Sebastian guy sounds like a freak, Elias." I don't see what is so freakish about it. He likely cleaned the pouch.)
Other than what I have shared, information regarding The Bastard King is unfortunately rather scarce. Much of it was destroyed in the Siege of the Bloody Sun (note: Noticing a pattern in naming conventions in this timeline. To research further.) or otherwise discarded. There was another poem found in his chambers, in a familiar handwriting. This is also suspected to be penned by Jethram:
The sun bleeds red, bleeds red, bleeds red
Hands of copper break the earth, dragging men to a hundred, hundred silent dooms
A flag once white is raised aloft
That sea of violence cannot grasp its meaning—
The symbol is drenched in crimson.
The death march trudges on.
This read is not as pleasant as that of the lion, it must be admitted. If Henry was here, I'm sure he would have something to say about how art survives, how tragedy forges works in fire and things to that effect. I don't agree. I don't think those swathes of dead soldiers particularly care that Jethram managed to get a grim poem out of the whole thing. Tragedy is just tragedy. There is plenty of art that exists without it. (note: Am I being overly cynical? Am I disregarding art that has emerged from tragedy and, by extension, those that have created it? Am I too detached? ... To research further.)
These notes are enough for today, especially considering the lack of surviving evidence. I suppose I could commission a temporal expedition to witness past events, but that will no doubt be rejected... Sentimental reasons are often dismissed for such resource-intensive excursions. No matter. Kerra is requesting my assistance with something, so I have demonstrably chosen an apt time to pause.
To whoever reads this: you can be largely forgotten by history and still create something worthwhile. And in that same vein... You can be truly wondrous, and produce technically weak art.
THESE NOTES ARE FOR INTERNAL USE ONLY — WORK OF ELIAS NARUTH
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