a sixty fifth poem...'this morning'

I woke up this morning

With a bread-knife in my bed:

I had either

Fallen asleep during a suicide attempt,

Or bought a granary loaf from Little Waitrose

On the way home from the pub.

a sixty fourth poem...'getting on'

Elsie was getting on.

In fact, she was in a retirement home,

Rounding the last bend, etcetera.

But as to where she would go thereafter

She didn't know.

She couldn't see into the future,

Let alone past the bridge of her nose

Where her long since misplaced

Pair of horn-rimmed spectacles

Remained.

a sixty third poem...'daddy'

Philip and his wife

Ran a Bed and Breakfast.

One day

A Neo-nazi came to stay.

Philip showed him to his room.

Payment was always in cash.

The Neo-nazi had a photo of Hitler in his wallet.

'Is that your father?', asked Philip.

'No', said the Neo-nazi,

'It's Adolf Hitler'.

'Oh', said Philip,

'I thought he had a beard'.

a sixty second poem...'dungarees'

Walt bought a pair of blue dungarees,

Went home

Tried them on

They didn't fit,

Took them back to the department store.

'Why did you buy them in the first place?',

Asked Customer Service,

Walt said he didn't know.

'You were in a rush',

Said Customer Service,

'And lately you've eaten too much'.

a sixty first poem...'pony'

Jemima wished for a pony for Christmas

- She lived in a council flat,

Eleventh floor.

When the big day arrived

She woke at 5AM,

Trotted down to the lounge.

Her parents heard her,

Hoped she wasn't expecting 

to be allowed

To ride it around.

a sixtieth poem...'replacement buses'

Tony phoned South West Trains,

A computer answered.

'Hello', said Tony

And immediately felt stupid.

Then Tony was given three options:

Ticket purchases

Merchandise

Death By Roundabout.

I'll try Stagecoach instead

Tony thought to himself,

And no one else.

a fifty ninth poem...'room to live'

I wandered into the living room, the reading light burning low.  On the bookshelves for the first time I noticed Picasso's dove on a greetings card, tattooed in blue: a detail so small and apparently meaningless, but nevertheless there it was - Picasso's dove.  The living room smelled of pine, and the comforting odour of warm bodies, the tree had dropped very few needles; the living room smelled of brandy too, Picasso's dove, tattooed in blue; the living room smelled of wood, wax, the reading light burning low.  I felt a stirring in my veins, your invisible touch - ink on my fingers I poured another glass of port, perhaps too much, and sat through until morning.

a fifty eighth poem...'scrapbook'

Last week I bought a scrapbook

Scissors and some glue

Sat in the long stay car park

Collaging memories of you,

Walked along the old canal path

Picked a wildflower, or two

Back in the long stay car park

Collaging memories of you.

a fifty seventh poem...'services'

Ingesting fumes

At motorway station

Forecourt

Swamped with football fans

In new Man City tops

I bite my lip

Go back to eating

M&S fruit salad

Then dispose of plastic

Spit on hands

Put Mazda in reverse

And leave flashing blue lights

Behind

a fifty sixth poem...'fish and piss'

We would be ogling at the chocolate treats, my sister and I, or idly playing with the coin-op by the charity shop counter, and she would come in, smelling of piss and tobacco, unwashed woollens, the city filth woven into her the weave of her clothes, smelling of piss, smelling of piss and rotten fish, tobacco, musk, my sister and I would say she smelled like the decrepit public toilets ‘round the back of the shadowy church yard, the soiled concrete floor, soiled smashed lime-green tiles, she smelled like that, and of the roiling drunks Mum told us never to approach who fell asleep on the wooden benches underneath the Yews, flies undone, mouths slack and wide, piss down their trousers, smelling of fish, piss and tobacco, unwashed, drunk stupid, Mum said never, my sister and I, the old women with her rusty shopping trolley, unwashed woollens, her rusty shopping trolley full of plastic bags full of old china, grubby hands, clockwork hearts, a knackered street-pedlar smelling of rotten fish and filth, the waft of a Victorian sewer, we would stop our ogling, our mouths becoming dry, holding our breath, my sister and I, desperate for the fresh air of the street, and the clean press of Mum’s simple city dress against our cheeks.   

a fifty fifth poem...'book I read'

‘But anyway’, she says, tilting her head to one side, chin raised a fraction, dark eyes, and I think to myself how I am supposed to continue talking, about something or nothing, or whatever it was, a book I read? The one with the sellotaped spine, coffee stain on the opening page? A show we should go to someday, in the future?  ‘But anyway’, she says, and I try and pick up where it was I left off: the show? the book?, something, nothing. ‘What are you reading?’, I say, lost in between futures and pasts, thinking about the moment on the stair, where she wouldn’t share the same step, dark eyes, and why nothing adds up, but anyway…She’s reading Fitzgerald, and I recall it was I who passed on the recommendation, wrote out a long list on the front/back of a wedding invitation, sent it to her since she asked, loves, hates, passions just like mine - someday our eyes will shine like the sun, and our heads will be clear, and our hearts will be full, and we won’t have to do this, but anyway.  But anyway here she is, and here am I, on the edge, dark eyes, dark head of dark hair to one side, a half empty bottle of cheap red wine, on the edge of something beautiful, the book I read, with the sellotaped spine, coffee stain on the opening page, underneath the book title a pencil line, and someday, in the future, I suppose I’ll think back gladly on these times.  But anyway. 

a fifty fourth poem...'fire'

It’s only the wind, you think to yourself, as the fire dies, and shadows flicker and fall on the drawing room wall, snow on the window ledge, snow driven right up to the front door.  It’s only the wind whistling through the key hole, cold and fresh in the hallway, where your boots, your boots, frayed laces dusted with snow, and the wet trail of your warm, wet feet, in your warm, wet socks indoors, wet footprints across the flagstone floor.  Your hands in the firelight, cross-hatched, etched by lines of age, calluses – you’ll keep them, calluses, for there’s still life in your warm body, warm blood in your fingertips and toes, it’s only the wind.  The logs on the fire, you felled the tree, sharpened the flint, cut the logs for the fire, your grip on the axe handle strong as ever split the wood, and the white smoke from the chimney, there’s still life in this house. Yes, it’s only the wind, there’s still air in your lungs for the bellows, and the flame burns inside your warm body, and your chest lifts and falls, lifts and falls while the fire dances on the drawing room wall, and the flames reflect in your eyes as coals, and the fire hisses and crackles and spits. It’s only the wind, she’s gone, dust and ashes, and a wardrobe full of old clothes, it’s only the wind whistling through the key hole, the hallway draft, her creased leather boots next to yours, cold inside, laces tied fast, soles worn, your soles with mud and ice, frayed laces dusted with snow. Tonight, you’ll go to sleep beside the fire.               

a fifty third poem...'tree'

Clara said once I could never let her down, she said that, and she confused she meant it at the time, and at the time I thought time itself didn’t matter, we were going to be together, through the good times, the bad times, and all the other times when nothing much good or bad happens.  Clara, she said those words, those three pretty little words, and again I thought she meant it.  I love you, never let me down, I’m depending she said, you see that tree out there in the yard I said, yes she said, since there’s only one tree in the yard, that tree is a metaphor for me I said and I ain’t going anywhere, I am rooted like that old tree out there and you can rest in my boughs I said.  But now I remember Clara looked at me strange.  Strange looks, a man can tell when something ain’t right, and strange looks give it all away.  Some people forget a woman’s eyes are a window into their souls, and Clara, hers was right open there in front of mine, but at the time I thought time itself didn’t matter, as well as a whole lot of other things, and I see it now, but I was blinded then - the old sand timer on the sideboard in the kitchen was already tippin’, and soon the china would be rattlin’, tables and chairs movin’, the earth under our feet shakin’, the whole house reverberatin’ with the sound of us fightin’.  Clara said once I could never let her down, she said that, and she confused she meant it, she didn’t understand what it meant to put down roots, and that my love was a seed that only needed even just the thought of her to grow into a tree, like the one out there in the yard.      

a fifty second poem...'sea and sky'

Where the sea and horizon meet, as far as your eyes, where the sea touches the sky, and on the beach, where the waves roll in with the tide, and then out again, where the land connects with the sea, from our sandy seat, here among the sea grass and white sand, from our seat above the beach on the white sand dunes, our backs to the land, the fire-pit still glows, orange embers, black and orange nuggets of coal, charcoal and grey ash from the wood, the thrift store piano we found and broke up, burned to keep the night at bay, on the beach, and out to where the sea touches the sky, the endless shore, if there’s something else, if there’s something more, you have to tell me now, this handful of sand, it will slip away through my fingers and yours, you have to tell me now, for it may be later than we think, where the sea and the horizon meet, to the brink, as far as your eyes, our backs to the land. 

a fifty first poem...'the winter road'

The old low light, pale winter sun, the old low light, soft yellow flames, fallen leaves of red and brown, before the purple dusk, the winter road, hard and grey, the cold stones underneath your feet, hushed houses, silent suppers, quiet outside in the old low light, the open sky streaked with orange, a collared dove on a bare branch, in a garden where the weeds have died back, the winter road, your footsteps on the hard, grey stone, hushed houses, a whiff of wood burning, wood-smoke wafting from a red brick chimney, the low light on the terrace roofs, peeling paint on a blue front door, your old house, where there were dreams, the winter road, your first love, and your last, the only one who could ever tease you, a face framed in a single pane window, quiet outside, red and brown leaves crowding in the gutter, your footsteps muted, another Sunday slipping away before the purple dusk, hushed houses, curtains drawn, the winter road, your hands in your gloves in your pockets, a sweet wrapper, your first love, soft yellow flames, orange streaks in the open sky, the bare branches, twig fingers of a beech hedge, the hawthorns, haw-frost in the morning, the afternoon becoming evening, a couple in their coats pass by, your first love, and your last, the winter road silent but for retreating footsteps, on the cold stone, a broken branch from a young tree, the chill in the still air, your breath, condensation on the inside of a single pane window, hushed houses, silent suppers, logs for the fire, a garage door open in the gathering purple dusk, the old low light on the low edges, corners of buildings retiring, long thin shadows, the winter road, parked cars, ice on wind-shields, your hands in your gloves in your pockets, Sunday slowly Sunday, your first love, the blue front door, her head on the pillow, hair across her face, naked shoulders, the cold stones underneath your feet, the open sky, her dark eyes, where there were dreams, fallen leaves of red and brown, a newspaper trodden into the hard ground, yesterday’s news, today is Sunday slowly Sunday, the afternoon becoming evening, the purple dusk descending, and you still care, and people don’t understand, your first love, the winter road.

an eighty sixth story...'saturday'

The train pulled slowly into the station where Stephen was waiting on the elevated platform, pacing up and down, up and down in his grey trench coat.  A handful of people alighted, and presently the train pulled away again, trundling around the next bend, and out of sight to somewhere else.

From the elevated platform where Stephen paced up and down he could see the hotchpotch roofs of London suburbia: tiled and gently sloping, flat, asphalt, steel and glass, as well as the brick dome of the old theatre adjoined to the Bowls Club, a pub Stephen had once frequented.

In the third and fourth floor windows of the red brick 1930s apartment buildings opposite the station, people woke to another Saturday, fresh and flushed with expectation or groggy and disheveled from the night before. 

Stephen felt in his coat pockets for his tobacco, then in his front and back trouser pockets and found his tobacco was missing along with his cigarette lighter, and he began pacing a little faster, his grey trench coat wrapped around him, concealing his bloodied shirt, feet and toes numb in his red leather DMs.

In a fourth floor window of the red brick 1930s apartment buildings, a heavy set man appeared for a moment in a velvet dressing gown, tied loosely about his middle-aged girth.  With his big right hand he rubbed his chin and two day old stubble, and watched a young man in a grey trench coat pacing up and down, up and down the station platform.  Then he turned away from the window to his wife asleep, a plum-coloured bruise underneath her right eye.

The heavy set man looked at his thick fingers and bit his nails out of habit.  His wife would be fine, and she would say, as she always did to her friends, that it was an accident: ‘dyspraxia’ – the word she used.  ‘Your flat must be booby trapped’, one of her friends had said last time they fought, the heavy set man remembered with a smirk, and he rubbed his chin and two day old stubble again.

On the dressing table at the end of the bed were two half empty tumblers of gin, and an empty bottle of Bombay Sapphire, dried out limes on a white cardboard plate, a knife and a plastic bowl full of cocktail sticks and cigarette ash.  The dressing table mirror his wife had smeared lipstick all over, and this had started it.  The heavy set man told her not to cry, and she became more hysterical, her voice high, until he hit her square in the face, and she had shut up; still, he couldn’t sleep afterwards on a guilty conscience, spent much of the night awake until he heard her stir, and had apologised, and they had kissed.

Stephen paced up and down, up and down, anxious for a nicotine hit.

Alison missed Anthony a lot.  Drawing into another station on the over-ground on her way to meet her friend for morning coffee, she thought how she was already bored with her partner.  Anthony, while he was violent on several occasions, she knew, or at least suspected, had loved her once, and eighteen months after walking out on him, she regretted it; with her partner these days she never felt safe, or sexy, instead pawed over like a stuffed toy, thrills few and far between.

Alison had been in a vulnerable emotional state following her split from Anthony, who she since learned had re-married within nine weeks.   Her partner took advantage, or so Alison felt now, when she needed someone gentle and cuddly, which Anthony was never and would never become.  And yet waking up this Saturday, getting out of bed with the morning sun, and after making tea, looking at her partner slumbering like a pink, rotund post-adolescent baby made her shudder inside.  It seemed like time for a ride, to anywhere, and her friend, she had to admit, was nearly always there for her. 

She searched in her handbag for her cigarettes and discovered one left, paused for a moment as the train came to a stop at the station and then put the pack of cigarettes back into her handbag. 

Alison continued thinking about Anthony and her partner and her life as she was passed by a tall young man, wrapped in a grey trench coat, pacing along the platform.  For a second he swiveled his axe-shaped head toward her and his pale green eyes met hers, before he turned away and walked furtively further on up the platform, hands thrust deep in his trench coat pockets, toward the stair exit.  Alison thought little of it, reached back into her bag to smoke her last cigarette and the train engine shuddered into life, and soon she was looking at the yellows and greens of the young trees and the dead bracken and gorse sliding past the train window.

Back on the high street Stephen felt a hundred sets of eyes on him, and he put his head down and began walking fast.

Alun’s Highland Terrier was nosing around in the tangled and decaying vegetation between the footpath and the rusty iron railings beside the railway.  Alun could hear the whistle of an approaching train ringing in the railway sleepers, and soon the rattle of the carriages as the train drew near. He checked his wrist-watch, it was high time he be heading home, his seven year old was at swimming club, Saturday morning, and he needed to pick her up, his wife being out for coffee or shopping, or both.  The train rattled past where he stood, half concealed by the scrub where Alun’s Highland Terrier was busy exploring.  Alun unzipped his tartan lumber jacket and pulled out the lead.

‘Come on’, he called, and clicked his tongue loudly, and then again, but to no avail.  Perhaps he’s found a bone, Alun mused, and took a few big strides into the scrub to fetch his Highland Terrier, following the rustling sounds in a thicket to his right, where indeed he found his dog, sniffing at and digging up something with its front paws.  The morning had dawned fair, but as ever had grown rapidly overcast, the clouds three or four shades of grey, the darker clouds carrying rain.  ‘What have you found there?’, Alun said to his Highland Terrier, ‘A b-?‘.

Alison leaned over and spooned a little more sugar into her coffee, her friend pretended to look mock horrified, the coffee beans used in the small tea parlour where they were sat passing the morning were the expensive sort.  They had not got on to the subject of Alison’s partner just yet, or indeed Anthony; it had only been a few minutes since they sat down, and then Alison had got up to go next door to purchase more cigarettes while her friend ordered their drinks.

In a way Alison was perhaps unusual, she, unlike a number of females was not particularly forthright in sharing her innermost feelings or fancies, but her friend understood her as far as one can another person.

Alison stubbed out her cigarette, as if ready to speak.  Her friend looked over the rim of her coffee cup, and realising this was perhaps the moment, the reason for them coming together, placed her coffee cup back in the saucer.  Alison hesitated, her long, delicate fingers twisting the ends of her curls, the same way people twist the chord of a telephone, her friend leaned forward ready to listen, and then her mobile rang: ‘Ah’, she said, rolling her eyes, ‘it’s Alun!’, and she answered and Alison went on twisting her curls.

Stephen was remembering Billy's face, his swollen eyes, his battered face like a red blancmange, as if it was in front of him, Billy's swollen face and split gums, in front of his streaming eyes.

The rain was now falling in diagonal slants across the windscreen.  The heavy set man drummed his thick fingers on the steering wheel of his Mercedes as he waited at the traffic lights underneath the railway bridge out of the city.  With his big hands, broad forearms, shoulders and chest hunkered like a boxer, his square face and square neck, the heavy set man looked as if he could rip the steering wheel from the dashboard: a bruising portrait of potential energy.

A white van pulled up beside him with the words PETS painted in cartoon writing on the side.  The heavy set man smirked, recalling the fate of his brother’s dog, kicked to death; for the heavy set man a smirk was as good as a wince, and the lights turned from red to orange, and his foot came down hard on the accelerator, sprinting ahead of the rest of the traffic, until the next set of lights where the white van with the words PETS painted on the side would catch up with him again, and with the white van, his conscience.

Somehow Stephen sensed they were coming for him and he started to run.

She’ll be alright, the heavy set man was thinking, she’ll say she slipped on the floor or walked into a closing door, or something. She’ll be alright.  Her friends would believe her, they always did, she’d never.  She was fine. She’s a tough one, she wouldn’t stand up to it otherwise, and she knows how it is.  She was fine and she’d never, she’d…the wail of a police siren somewhere back in the traffic interrupted the heavy set man’s recurring train of thought. And as he was slowing to pull over he saw someone running fast along the adjacent pavement, grey trench coat flowing behind.

Stephen knew instinctively he was running for his freedom, and his life, slaloming in and out of the near static Saturday morning crowds that drifted along the pavement, the pavement he was now sprinting along, his red DMs hammering the concrete slabs left right left right left right.  But the sirens were getting louder and louder in his ears and he was only running on fear, in a blind white panic.  He could sense the traffic parting to make way for the police, and out of the corner of his eyes he could see cars all along the high road slowing and pulling over. 

Slowing down did not seem an option for Stephen: it seemed the only option left for him in his whole life was to keep on running. He could already feel his lungs burning, his throat tightening, his head throbbing, lungs burning with fire, throat as tight as a tourniquet, the veins in his head pulsing with hot blood, his eyes wide and streaming, the whites of his eyes wide and burning, his legs, and his arms, his legs and arms moving of a will of their own. His heart pounding, pounding and pounding, his legs, arms becoming pistons, steam driven pistons driving him on and on and on, his legs and arms together like the great wheels of a locomotive, steaming pistons propelling him inexorably forwards, forwards, forwards: there was no going back now, and no point in looking over his shoulder, or wishing time, and Stephen ran and ran and ran, ran his knees into the hard concrete, the rubber soles of his red DMs burning and wearing, burning and wearing, his legs and arms like steaming pistons, streaming whites of his eyes. His whole head split open on the hard concrete.

‘That’s him’, said the police officer, when they arrived out of breath at where Stephen had fallen a few moments earlier, head split apart. ‘What a mess’, said the other police officer, Stephen’s head open in half, spilling fresh red blood on the hard concrete, pooling on the pavement where he had been running and running.  ‘Do we call an ambulance?’, asked the other police officer, Stephen’s legs and arms, twitching, his feet, in his red DMs, splayed out underneath his twitching body. ‘That’s him alright’, said the police officer, ‘well I never’ - they had been looking for a week.  And Stephen had been running until Saturday.

The heavy set man passed the scene in his Mercedes, confused at the same time enthralled by what the commotion was about, passers by had formed a ring around Stephen's body, with all life shuddering from it, the two policemen trying to hold the gathering crowd of Saturday shoppers from encroaching further.  Back on the fourth floor of the 1930s red brick apartment buildings, the heavy set man's wife was crying hot tears in a cold shower; at the coffee shop Alison was hanging on in quiet desperation for her friend to return; and her friend was with her husband Alun at the local police station shocked and subdued, their seven year old daughter at swimming club once again kept behind, waiting.

a ninth reflection...'fans, identity and lower league away days: from southend to morecambe bay'

Southend is fifty-five minutes on the train from Liverpool Street station, three or more hours from Cheltenham.  What for me last weekend was an afternoon jaunt out of London accompanying a travelling band of Cheltenham Town away fans - two of them - was for the other seventy-five who went to watch their team against Southend United a whole day on the road to (and back from) Roots Hall, where Southend, managed by permatan Phil Brown, play their football.

Tickets for the game cost £21, and throw in an extra £5 for a Pukka Pie as hot as Hades, as well as a cup of lukewarm greased tea even five sugars could not improve (the other choices being a bottle of Fanta, or a cup of coffee, the granules made specially from Southend estuary silt), not to mention £XX for petrol, and it wasn’t a cheap day out for Town fans travelling from Cheltenham either.

Moreover, although Town put in a spirited performance, Saturday, they lack style, grace and composure, all composites of the beautiful game, whereas Southend, at least in central midfielder Michael Timlin, a product of Fulham’s youth academy, have a little class.

The depth of feeling for football in the UK is a source of mild astonishment to football fans beyond these shores, especially given the dim view of the standard of the lower leagues wrongly, but often rightly taken into account. 

And yet although the Cheltenham Town away support isn’t exactly an army, it too seems unfair to brand them barmy in what they do, and why they do it.

While it may seem strange to give up a whole day every week for half of the year, for the best part of a lifetime to actively be a Cheltenham Town away fan, or an away fan of any other of the teams doggedly battling through the very constant lows of life in Sky Bet Division Two, having endured 90 minutes of fairly uninspiring football against Southend, Town, a goal down, and seemingly sliding toward a seventh defeat of the season, won a penalty in extra time which Matt Richards scored to earn a draw. And then it dawned on me.

From kick off it became clear that of the seventy-five Cheltenham fans at Southend, several knew each other, presumably having shared the fairly routine drudgery of watching their side together for a number of seasons, and it was easy to detect the kind of camaraderie any of us in our daily lives would seek out, as well as no shortage of gallows humour.  This could of course be true of away fans of bigger teams.

Then, at the final whistle, shortly after Richards’ equalising spot-kick, the players, almost to a man, came right over to show their appreciation for the travelling support, hands above their heads in applause, one or two shaking hands with the fans and exchanging thanks.  And being one of just seventy-five, it was easy to see how - at the same time as appreciating the mutual respect between the players and their supporters - as an away Town fan, one could also be made to feel rather special.

There is quite a powerful identity in the guise of the lower league away fan.  Not only do you outwardly reflect a certain individuality of spirit, being one of very few whose allegiance lies somewhere other than Old Trafford Megastore, or the Chelsea FC hotel, as well as an appearance of integrity, being true to one’s hometown or roots, both, too, are easily internalised and readily understood.  This adds reassurance, key to a strong identity.

Furthermore, there are few things in life one can describe oneself as that have individualistic and collective components to a single identity, except of course belonging to a particular family.  And being a definitive part of a particular family, it seems, is how the lower league away fan feels, and with the feelings of belonging and identity that a particular family engenders, there also comes a pride that can be immensely satisfying.

The Town away fans at Southend must feel every Saturday afternoon, whether at Roots Hall, or the Globe Arena in Morecambe Bay, someone in their own right, someone part of something bigger than themselves, and yet that that something is very much of their own, yet again shared with the rest of the away family who follow Cheltenham through not very thick and really quite thin up and down the country.

My Beloved Family

Sampson wet the bed again last night. I went in to wake him at 7.15 and the rancid odour, exacerbated by that general teenage sweat smell, gathered in my nostrils. I put him in the shower tray, still in his pyjamas, and turned on the water. After piling the sheets in the hall for my wife to deal with, I looked around Sampson’s room. Everything had a road or bridge theme. There were dozens of road atlases on the bookshelf: Britain, France, the US, Canada all featured. He also had heavy coffee table tomes with titles like ‘Great Bridges of the World’. Big posters of open road scenes and famous suspension bridges obscured the woodchip walls. For most people, these images would be all about freedom. Sampson, however, was afraid of cars and road journeys. It had taken three weeks of attempts to get him into the taxi for his special school, and if the driver he tolerated took a holiday, he had to stay home.

Having wiped down the rubber sheet over the mattress, I went back into the bathroom. Sampson had his head tipped back, eyes open, letting his mouth fill with the shower water until it overflowed and ran off each side of his jaw. I opened the glass door and knelt down to take him out of his pyjamas; water pooled on the tiles around my knees. Sampson bared his teeth, peeling back his slightly spiky top lip, as I shampooed his lank hair and soaped his skinny body.

My wife didn’t emerge, musty with sleep, until I’d towelled and dressed him and given him a bowl of porridge with glossy golden syrup. Sampson spat out his mouthful when she arrived at the kitchen door; he knelt next to her and wrapped his arms around her waist, grabbing onto the dressing gown cord. She patted him absently then brushed his arms off.

She sat down. She didn’t say anything to me and I didn’t say anything to her. I watched Sampson pressing over-full spoons of porridge into his mouth, laughing grimly inside, as I often did, at my wife’s choice of name for our only son. She’d said, a day after his birth, that she wanted to call him Sampson. I joked that he’d end up with very long hair, just in case; she stared at me, not getting it. I couldn’t be bothered to explain, so I let it go and the name remained.

His taxi hooted outside so I wiped Sampson’s face and took him onto the pavement, shoes velcroed on. The driver wound down his window.

‘Morning, good sir! How about a ride? We’ll listen to the railway tour audiobook, if you like.’

Sampson didn’t say anything, but he got gratefully into the back of the car.

‘Thanks, mate,’ I said to the driver, who smiled briefly and set off.

I went to work, but spent most of the day trolling cat videos on the internet. Pornographic sites were filtered, that’s why.

That evening, while Sampson and my wife watched a talent show on the TV, I put in my earphones and got my fix using the laptop. The double penetration was quite interesting, but I was bored after an hour or so. By then it was time to put Sampson to bed. I saw that the sheets were still in a pile outside the boy’s bedroom; my wife had forgotten to wash them. I prodded them tentatively; they felt pretty much dry so I just stretched the sheet back over Sampson’s rubber mattress protector and stuffed his duvet into the cover. It would be alright for another night. He’d probably just wet it again.

At that point, inspiration struck me. I went to the junk drawer in the kitchen, dug through the dud batteries and free casino matchbooks to find a rubber band.

I helped Sampson brush his teeth with the strawberry-flavoured toothpaste (his mouth clamped shut at even the aroma of ordinary mint toothpaste) and got him into his pyjamas. Once he’d climbed into bed with his bridges book I pulled back the duvet. He ignored me, captivated by images of the Bosphorus Bridge, as I dragged down his pyjama trousers. His penis flopped out (quite girthy, I couldn’t help noticing) and I wrapped the rubber band around it, doubling it over a few times so it was snug. Sampson didn’t seem bothered, so it can’t have been too tight.

I went to bed, leaving my wife watching a horror film in which the sheer power of some people’s meditative skill could explode the heads of others.

In the morning, I got up, only just realising that my wife hadn’t come to bed, and went in to wake Sampson, as usual. He was pale faced against the navy pillowcase. I hauled back the duvet to see if my ploy had worked. There wasn’t a urine patch, but a slightly bloody stain. I tugged down Sampson’s trousers and his dick tipped onto the sheet. He mewled pathetically. The stump seeped a grotesque mixture of urine and blood – even at a time like this, he couldn’t help wetting the bed. I turned to see that my wife was at the door: she saw the accident and slumped against the doorjamb as through she’d been sniped. I sighed, stepped over her body, went out of the front door, got in the car and started driving. 

Loose Corner

Kurt and I were in the bath together. His long fair hair was slicked down and the ends curled up on his slender shoulders. I made him take the tap end; sometimes, no matter how beautiful someone is, you have to put yourself in front of them. He sat slightly forward as a result, his feet nestling up near my armpits. Really, there wasn’t enough room for two grown men in that bath, but it was still something we liked to do together.

Kurt and I reached for our glasses of red wine and took a sip simultaneously; both giggling as though we both read into the synchronicity then dismissed our own silly conclusions. He looked so lovely then, lightly steaming up the inside of his wine glass as his sniggered through his nose. I thought: Kurt, I will love you forever. Let us grow old together. I gently niggled at his ribs with my big toes, making him squirm like a child dodging a hug.

‘Stop,’ he said, but cutely, like he didn’t mean it. I did stop anyway. Just in case.

‘I think we should buy some chickens. Keep them in the back garden,’ I said; just making conversation really. Kurt screwed up his face a little.

‘Ew. It would just keep reminding me that eating eggs is like eating a chicken period.’

‘Ok, how about a cat?’ I said, trying to make my eyes twinkle like Father Christmas. I’m not sure how a person can do that, maybe it’s involuntary, but I tried, for effect.

‘Hmm. You’d have to clean out the litter tray. I couldn’t do that.’

‘Sure, if we could have a cat. We’d call her Geraldine.’

‘Geraldine? Bit of a silly name.’

‘Kurt… that was my grandmother’s name.’

He eyed me, suspicious I was joking.

‘I told you that.’ I added, making sure I didn’t sound hurt. Hurt by Kurt – I didn’t think that would, or should, happen again. There was a time when it was almost a mantra: I said it to myself until it felt trivial; the phrase, I mean, and hopefully the hurt too.

‘I doubt we realistically could look after a cat.’ He closed down the exchange.

He pulled a towel from the hook on the wall beside the bath, rolled it up and wedged it between his back and the tap. I tried not to stare at the loose corner, which trailed in the displaced water. Kurt noticed my look.

‘Relax, Joshie, it’s just a towel. Don’t be such a paranoid Polly.’ He called me Joshie when he was ribbing me – knowing I didn’t like it. I didn’t mention that though, I said:

‘Where did that paranoid Polly thing come from? It sounds daft.’

‘My favourite teacher said it all the time.’ He paused, winced. ‘That’s not true. When I was a kid, I had to go to a psychiatrist for a while. She babied me a bit, saying things like paranoid Polly, worrying Wally.’

I tried my best to sound tender, understanding, not shocked. ‘I didn’t know that. Why?’

‘Why did I need a psychiatrist?’

‘Yes.’

‘I beat up another kid in school.’ Kurt looked mildly surprised at his own sudden sharing.

‘That… happens quite a lot in schools doesn’t it?’

‘It was serious. The boy went to hospital.’ Kurt’s face dimmed; his eyes narrowed as they did when he was remembering something. I didn’t say anything, and neither did he for a while. I sloshed a bit of water over the rim of the bathtub while adjusting my position.

Kurt said: ‘I don’t want to talk about that anymore,’ and reached for his wine.

I thought: I only know a tiny loose corner of this man. We’ve lived together for seven years but his history is opaque to me. He dangles a kernel of his inner life for me; my misconception is that it is more than just a seed, a seed that holds the full blossoming tree of his mind and story; for me, a seed that is dormant and mostly silent. 

an eighth reflection...'rooney: the best team player in the premier league?'

In early 2-3 months of the 2013/14 season, Wayne Rooney – the White Pele,  the charging Baby Elephant, or so it used to be– has for the most part been lauded by domestic pundits for his supposed ‘return to form’. 

BBC football journalist, Garth Crooks, recently joined their number, including Rooney in BBC Sport’s team of the week for several weeks running while Manchester United’s equally over-praised revival took something approaching-but-falling-short-of-shape. 

Crooks, at least on two occasions, described Rooney as ‘the best team player in the Premier League’, a claim that goes some way to showing statistics can lie, and motives can perhaps deceive.

For Rooney is the player, that in spite of having a strong assist record, not to mention six league goals this year, as well as an active heat map (pitch coverage) this term, is also the same player who spent the majority of 2012/13 sulking because Sir Alex Ferguson would not play him in his favoured position of centre forward - instead preferring him wide-left in a 4-3-3 cum 4-5-1, so as to give United a semblance of balance - or in the centre of midfield - an area where United have been sorely lacking since the demise of Darren Fletcher.

 

Moreover, Rooney’s reaction to the arrival of Robin Van Persie, who in his first fifteen months at the club has gone some way to rivalling the impact of Eric Cantona, did not speak of a player with a utilitarian consideration of his team.  Rooney was more concerned for himself, and his self-assumed role as Bertie Big Potato (with hair, or lack of it, to match), than the greater good.

For United fans this was even more galling since, again, Rooney was and remains in the minds of many a Red, the same player who was prepared, it seemed, to move to Manchester City for what he had decided was Manchester United’s lack of ambition in the transfer market only as far back as 2010.

Indeed, Rooney’s selfish past is now limiting David Moyes’ tactical options: after all it is clear to see United need Rooney to play wide left, or partner Jones in the middle in Carrick’s absence (and in the absence of any other plausible options) until the midfield is reinvigorated, except Moyes won’t use Rooney in anything other than his favourite position for risk of upsetting the player, even though this means sticking to a rigid, and largely ineffective 4-4-2. 

And yet, all of a sudden Rooney has apparently rejuvenated, and what a surprise in World Cup year!  Rooney is, it has to be acknowledged, a player whose heavy physique and lack of professionalism off the pitch - especially for a ‘team player’ on 200k+ a week - will more than likely limit the length of his career at the top level to perhaps two, or three more years; a player for whom Brazil represents a last chance for genuine personal glory. 

Meanwhile, Manchester United’s abject performance against Cardiff, a dogged, but ultimately mediocre side in first tier terms, on Sunday, provided further evidence that Rooney’s chances of more silverware with United to adorn his very own trophy cabinet will be few and far between before his time is up.

But if Rooney is after a move away, this perhaps another reason for his rediscovered application, which team worth their proverbial salt would risk spending big money (and United will demand nothing less) on a player who wantonly kicks out at an opponent five minutes in to an important away league fixture, and risk a sending off that could jeopardise his team? Or, more to the point, which player other than a hot-headed, self-absorbed, team liability?

On Twitter Rooney describes himself as a Nike Athlete rather than associate himself with the Manchester United team he is supposed to be such a keen part, telling for the want away, want all for himself mercenary he really is today.

an eighty fifth story...'the woodpile'

Lynette got to go in the boat instead of me because she’s bigger, and the life-jacket fit her.  And I went around the back of the farm house, through the field where the rye grass is up to my head, went and sulked behind the wood pile.  It was a hot, dry afternoon, and where there was dust everywhere else, dust and yellow rye grass, and brown scrub, it was damp by the woodpile – the logs had been sprayed with the hose to keep them from catching alight. 

Presently, mama comes along and finds me, sitting on my cotton pants, legs drawn to my chin, arms folded, chin resting on my folded arms, sulking.  ‘What are you doing down there?’ she says.  ‘Nothin’’, I say.  It’s hot, hot day, but it’s damp by the woodpile and I can feel the seat of my cotton pants are damp too.  ‘Nothin’?’, says mama, ‘nothin’’, I say again, I ain’t moving anywhere, any place, unless I get to go in the boat instead of Lynette.

Mama is wearing blue dungarees, the pair she always wears, with the patchwork pockets, and she has her arms on her hips, looking down at me.  Her brown hair is up in a bun, but she's tied it loose and there’s wisps of hair hanging down around her face.  ‘I was going to do some baking’, she says when she sees I’m not responding, my eyes studying the damp earth where I’m sitting, earth that would be dust if it wasn’t so hot and the woodpile hadn’t been watered some.

‘I want to go in the boat’, I say, making it quite clear I ain’t moving, or baking.  There’s a wood-louse crawling, or drowning, under my legs, by my gym shoes.  I’m tempted to pick him up, but I ain’t moving.  ‘You need a life-jacket to go in the boat’, mama says, hands on her hips, looking down, ‘and Pa said so now didn’t he?’.  ‘I ain’t baking with you’, I say, and the heat makes mama wipe her brow with the sleeve of her blouse, and she pushes a strand of her brown hair behind her ear. 

‘Why does Lynette get to go in the boat, and not me?’, I ask, now looking up at mama from my damp seat by the woodpile.  The wood-louse has curled itself right into a ball, so it can’t yet be dead, just protecting itself.  I’m probably scowling a bit, probably still cross.  Mama has her hands back on her hips: ‘Pa says you need a life-jacket that’s big enough’, she says.  But Lynette ain’t much bigger than me, even though she’s three years older, and just because Pa said so. 

‘I ain’t baking with you’, I say, and dig the heels of my gym shoes into the damp earth, which is damp because the wood pile gets watered when it’s as hot as this.          

a seventh reflection...'gods n' ghosts'

Bill worked for a bible publisher.

When out and about people would say to him in jest, ‘how’s God these days?’

‘Send Him my regards!’

To which Bill would reply, ‘sure, but you’ll have to pay for the postage’.

Heaven is a long way away (perhaps).

Meanwhile, other more earnest types would ask him, ‘so do you believe in God?’

To which Bill would rejoinder, ‘no, and I don’t believe in Ghosts either’.

This was one of Bill’s favourite retorts.

It never failed to amuse and bemuse, was often met with nervous laughter, after which whoever it was who asked the question would totter into the next room to recharge their glass.

And Bill would smile.

Bill understood God was a concept, alive and well somewhere in his head, just as any old Ghost, but that God was not flesh or blood, as more earnest types perhaps wanted to believe, or un-believe; a man with a pointy beard and the power to levitate you six feet off the ground, in the act attracting flocks of blinded admirers.

The latter was the God the new atheists loved to hate, and they had only scorn for anyone who purported to be something of a devotee.

And yet Bill also knew that if he was ever in mortal danger, he would more than likely pray to God (the concept), for human beings need something to fall back on: moments in life can be very, very lonely (tap the side of your head - the show is, let’s face it, in there).

Moreover, if there was the thought of a Ghost lurking at the end of a dark corridor, Bill accepted he would more than likely retreat into the sanctuary of his bedroom, however much he said he didn’t believe in ghoulish apparitions.

Because in the world of human beings ‘twas and is ever thus.

In the mind, the idea of God nourishes, and gives solace.  The personification of God remains abstract or irrelevant.  He, or rather, It, does not need a form, or for that matter, a house.

The concept of Ghosts haunts, and engenders fear.  Nevertheless, their personification too, is abstract and irrelevant.  Although they live in your loaf.

a fiftieth poem...'still nothing'

This is an interlude,

I remember thinking -

The beginning of love.

I’d stand at the kitchen window,

And watch, and wait.

A flock of birds would rise

From a nearby coppice,

The telephone would ring,

Or the kettle would sing,

And only then did I return

To the business of living,

Try again to ignore

The not-knowing.

‘Stop talking to yourself!’,

I would say,

‘She will be back..

..any day’,

But before long

It was summer’s end,

Siren songs,

The first chill winds

Of a new fall.

Dusk is now mid-afternoon,

Long. thin shadows

Up the garden wall,

Still nothing from you.

an eighty fourth story...'snakes'

The sound of children’s voices trilled up the valley.  Somewhere below the veranda where Josephine lay they were at play, splashing around in the old swimming pool, or charging in and out of the almond groves.  It was hard to tell, it didn’t matter.

Josephine readjusted her position on the recliner to avoid the direct glare of the late afternoon sun.  A lizard scurried over the hot paving stones and into a crack in the wall of the farmhouse behind.  Josephine could hear her husband tinkering on the upright piano through the open shutters in the living room.  The piano was out of tune, again it didn’t matter. 

‘Stop it!’, ‘Stop it!’ - the children once more.  And there followed a gush of giddy laughter.  Josephine smiled to herself, the sun nourishing the oils in her skin, and the weight of the last year beginning to lift from her slender shoulders.  Her husband was now playing ‘Chopsticks’ – badly – and Josephine began to laugh too, and presently her whole body was convulsing with unfettered joy, joy at being alive, joy at coming back to life.  It was working, this holiday, as her husband had promised, as the doctor had said.

Out here among the olive and almond groves, the eucalyptus trees and Mediterranean pines, out here where the sky was big and blue, and the sun warm and high, out here where the only sounds were Josephine’s children at play, and her husband tunelessly unwinding, the crickets chirping, and the occasional drone of a light aircraft, there was a natural sense things would get better.  For too long Josephine had been wearing the inside out.

On the farm, surroundings were so vivid one could not fail to be absorbed.  The sun soothed, the scent of the flora and fauna delighted, the trill of her children laughing, and her husband’s piano playing charmed.  Josephine had felt peace slowly descend since their arrival a fortnight ago.  Everything was so inviting she found she was able to forget London: the cold steel and stone, the cold people, hurrying selfish, the cold winds blowing through the hard streets, tunneling down the underground, and the tube, claustrophobic and angry.  Not to mention the round, stern face of her unsmiling, uncompromising editor.

Josephine stopped laughing and sighed.  An enormous wave of relief washed over her at the knowledge she would never have to set on eyes on that man again, except maybe in the next world.  She had always held that it takes strength to be gentle and kind, and yet so many men and women of influence seemed to possess so very little of it.  She had learned life is full of people who try and bring one down, but also that she was born to walk upright, and Josephine promised herself then and there she would do so from now on, for her children, for her husband, for her health. You’re a fighter she told herself, and a champ, the late afternoon sun on her back.

It had been wonderful to be able to bring the dogs too, and both of them were stretched out, asleep, twitching with the chase in their dreams, loyal to a fault on the veranda with Josephine.  Looking down the valley, the Mediterranean gleamed in the distance some ten miles away, beyond the jumble of red roofs and white hotels congregating along the shore.  They had walked on the beach on their second evening, and her husband had held her hand and pressed tight, as if to say things are going to be alright.

‘The mind rules the body’, Josephine’s doctor had told her back in the immaculate little consultation room of his Harley street practice, in an effort to motivate her to think more positively.  Wear long sleeves and the bruises won’t show thought Josephine.  But life had continued to beat her, until at last her exasperated husband had decided to take her out of it all.

When Josephine was a child, the south of France had been her playground, holidays were there each summer.  It was the obvious place to retreat and alleviate the pressure of London living, a place she romanticised about, a place she felt was her spiritual home, where the ever so small voice of calm could be heard and heeded, a refuge where she could rediscover the child within – the tough, fun-loving, innocent creature, who still lurked inside her, albeit cowed by the brashness and cruelty of adult life.

Josephine’s husband in his own strange way had been true, and patient; her children, she decided it were best not to let know.  Life, she remembered, up to a certain age seemed endless, full of wonder and possibility – why introduce her little ones to the real world before time?  She knew her children would find out about the glass in the grass, the bad seed, sooner, or (she hoped) later, or indeed never.  For now, however, the farm was their Eden, and as yet there were no snakes in the scrub.

a forty ninth poem...'beginnings'

A poem with a word,

A painting with a brushstroke,

A dance with a step,

A kiss,

A tender, loving caress:

Everything begins with something small,

Sometimes even less.

a forty seventh poem...'writer's block'

This is a very short poem

Written out of sheer boredom.

And in the hope

An idea

Will come to me soon;

Or, after a beer,

I’ll be able to move on

To something else.

a forty sixth poem...'islands'

Returning to the mainland

After a tour of the islands -

Nothing unseen,

Untouched, unmoved.

It’s no surprise

I can’t stand

To set eyes on you,

And yet can't bring myself

 To look

The other way.

an eighty third story...'bath time'

The air is thick with steam, a film of condensation on the white-washed walls, the painted ceiling, on the slippery, wet linoleum floor.  The single-pane sash window is fogged with mist.  There’s a maroon coloured bath towel, and a bundle of saturated clothing discarded alongside the big, grey-green copper bath tub, supported by four great brass feet.  In the bathroom mirror someone has scrawled bath time in toothpaste using their fingers, the words bath time illuminated by the shaving light, casting a soft, subterranean glow through the cloud of vapours rising from the bath tub. 

On a thin glass shelf underneath the bathroom mirror there is an ashtray filled with moist ash and cigarette ends, and a half-finished tumbler of cheap red wine, fermenting in the damp.  The sink bowl has lime scale residue around the plug hole, there are scraps of left over blue tissue paper flecked with blood, and in the soap dish, a razor blade. 

Attached to the painted ceiling is a steel bath rail, and from it hangs a faded yellow bath curtain, shrouding one half of the bath tub.  Behind the shroud is his fleshy silhouette, lying with his bare back to you, and with both bare arms resting on the sides of the bath tub.  The taps have not been shut off, and there is a steady drip from the taps into the soap-sudded bath water. 

Time slows.  You catch your breath a moment. 

Drip, drip,
drip drip. 

You notice the slowly evaporating impression of his footprints on the slippery, wet linoleum floor. 

Drip, drip,
drip drip. 

You smell for the first time the sweetness of his tobacco smoke hanging suspended in the thick, steamy air. 

Drip, drip,
drip drip. 

You wonder why he always comes back to you, why he ever left you in the first place.  

Drip, drip
drip drip.

Then, as you reach to pull back the bath curtain, you wake in a patch of sweat, find your reading light still burning, and the early morning raindrops sliding like slow, silent tears down the bedroom skylight above the unmade bed, where you - wrapped in your stained bath robes - have been plumbing the depths of another uneasy sleep.    

an eighty second story...'in the future, when all's well'

Gadgets spawned by the technicum were everywhere, and their control was almost absolute, even over the earthlings that had created them in the first place, that had subjugated the entire animal kingdom before then.  Earthling adults had regressed back into childhood, button pressing and screen goggling, taking their ethics, and half-baked ideas about humanity with them.  The distinction between what was ‘good’ and what was ‘bad’ in latter day morals, had been lost.  Reality was dead.  And, for the most part, pulling the arms off a new born baby in the realm of cyberspace was thought of as nothing more, or less, than tearing the wings off a daddy-long-legs in the old world. 

There was no place for nostalgia, the perpetrators of hippy ideals were talked of in cyber-schools as quasi-sixteenth-century-religious heretics, their doctrine of free and universal love described as ‘unclean’ and ‘sordid’, or simply 'irrelevant'.  Recreating paradise lost on a hill in the forest had, in some hyper-spheres, become a running joke in that earthlings were convinced by their own conceit that they, thanks to their technological revolution, were in the process of creating their own paradise in the future (always in the future!).  A paradise you didn’t have to share with anyone else, all your hopes and dreams could be made hyper-reality – if you could, in fact, remember back far enough to hold onto any of these non-binary, non-linear phenomena.

After all, the memories of most earthlings were now inextricably linked up to Google Mind.  In its infancy Google Mind required the user to wear headgear similar in weight and size to a latter-day bicycle helmet, and needed Google Glasses to achieve synchronic function.  Google Glasses had developed to become ‘AI’ contact lenses, and Google Mind, a silicon mole about half a centimetre in diameter, fused to either the right or left temple (depending on whether your pre-cog tests came back as showing if you might be more inclined to think with the right or left side of your brain).  Google Mind essentially monitored your routine behaviours and put thoughts into your head based on what the technology thought you desired, thoughts you would then almost always act upon, thereby leaving behind a form of memory in the aftermath of your actions, which would then prescribe you future (Google driven) actions.

Meanwhile, conscience was also, for many earthlings, a derivative of Google Mind: mild to severe headaches could be introduced if you tried to go beyond the boundaries of where technology decided you might, or rather should, want to venture.  Conscience (as once conceived), it was repeated ad nauseam, had led to the destruction of the old world, for it had meant latter day earthlings acting together, often with purpose, sometimes against authority – and as every-single-body now knew, authority was there to facilitate happiness, and the move towards future paradise always (incidentally, the phrase at all times no longer had much relevance, time being an archaic vestige of the old world, and obsolete reality).

Nevertheless, there were a few earthlings who had clung to the old ways, but being outside of the technicum, they were paid virtually no mind at all, free to wander the British Isles, and love (naked sex!), live, take and give.  Google Mind referred to these earthlings simply as strays, not part of the system, too much of a minority to worry about.  Paradise would happen in the future without them, too bad.

Strays were, however, defined by Google Gospel (a version of the latter-day Google powered Wikipedia) as follows: ‘feral, or ex-domesticated earthlings, sub-AI, low IQ’.  If you were to pursue your search for more information on Google Gospel, Google Mind, of course would pre-sage you and deliver a splitting headache.  Some clever earthling had come up with a slogan for this eventuality that read as both a warning and an invitation: ‘Don’t stray from the path to the future’.

The genius of Google, and the three or four other organisations that had monopolised the technicum (the world), and thereby achieved an unprecedented grasp on the day to day existence of earthlings, was in understanding the propensity of latter day earthlings to live for tomorrow, for something better than they had had in the past, or in the now, as well as the unrivalled avarice and greed alive, or at worst dormant, in many of them.  A promise of a better future, with more for you was an easy sell, especially when it came with blue screens, flashy buttons and the apparent luxury of choice.

With regard to choice, again Google and co realised that earthlings only needed the promise of choice; in the eventuality (with perhaps the constituent ingredients of earthling lunches, dinners aside), Google and co knew earthlings preferred to have somebody else, or indeed something else do their own thinking, and lead their behaviours.  Arriving at the concept of Google Mind, was ironically, a no-brainer.

Heaven’s in here proclaimed an early advertisement for Google Mind, with an evidently (self)satisfied customer pointing to his new headgear.  The tag line ran You can choose!

But the irony was lost even then, and has all but been eradicated from life today.

a sixth reflection...'a lesson in birdsong'

Since I came out the other evening about my passion for birds, I have noticed people observing me in a different way, almost as if one-step (further?) removed, through binoculars.  They squint and peer, trying to detect what on earth is going on with me, and where on earth such a strange inclination could possibly have arisen from; oh if I could tell! 

..so I will.

You see when discussing my passion for birds, I must begin by saying I don’t mean the dolled-up, flightless variety you find fluttering loaded eyelashes across dance floors in empty city bars (though some of them can be very nice, thank you), I mean the swallow on the telegraph pole, the nuthatch in the May grass, the cuckoo somewhere at the bottom of a Spring garden.

Whereas I used to lie awake, Sunday morning, hearing nothing but my partner’s drunken snores, and dim echoes of the night before; now I delight in the dawn chorus - my heart leaps and my head clears (although my partner still snores through all of this).

I swear it is a religious experience, for the Jesus-people church bells on a wedding day must be the same as birdsong on a Sunday morning: brite, gay, heralding the start of new-life.

These delicate little creatures make such a joyous noise!  All except crows, of course, with their tedious rasping, but never mind, crows are at least quite something to behold. 

Have you ever been outside in open land on a heavy, humid day, when the sky is purple and thunder is in the air?  You can sense the electricity crackle in the brooding clouds above - look up and the crows will be circling, black as doom: you're in love.

Anyhow..

From my bedroom I am fortunate enough to have a view of the municipal park.  There are several tall plane trees bordering the road that runs around the park, and in summer the parakeets flock to them, sit chattering in the branches, and Saturdays, I like to listen - good thoughts come.

Indeed, the sum of my passion for birds is understanding the art of happily going nowhere fast in accepting the present, future and past.  In their movements birds are like humans: they sit and then flit, flit and then sit, however, when they sit, they seem to do so with a lightness of being far beyond many of us for the laws of physics, and the inexorable toll of gravity, do not apply, not to mention the man-made construct of time.

Lying in bed, listening to the birdsong, makes me wonder how we’ve conspired to make life so hard for ourselves, and how we can lift one another from our earthbound existence, pigs in swill.

Let's start by lending an ear, and being still.

an eighty first story...'with/without'

Vernon was a hot-shot in the office, driving his team on and on to more and yet more commercial success.  He’d get to work the same hour as the four Polish ladies who cleaned desks, vacuumed carpets at dawn each morning, and leave as Joel, a cheery, old, silver-winged West Indian arrived as night security.  If the employee of the month award was not a token motivational tool, Vernon would have won hands down every single time, and spent most of the year holidaying in Cancun, or any other number of exotic destinations.  Behind his desk, neatly arranged in relief, to draw the eye of perspective clientele, were several business accolades, a bronze statue here, a glass rosette there – all of course for the company; Vernon realised personal gratification held little sway, nor did he want to appear self-congratulatory.  Besides, there was always work to be done!

When, as a junior apprentice in retail, Vernon had been told by his supervisor that there was never anything that did not need seeing to, even if that something was as trivial as rearranging the stationery cupboard so employees in need of a biro would see a stationery cupboard refreshed, and feel slightly better-inclined toward their employer, the advice had stuck.  Busyness, from then on, pervaded Vernon’s work life, and his dedication and apparent attention to detail had not gone unnoticed.  Vernon had become, in essence, the archetypal Company Man, his name a by-word for the most valuable commodity of all: dependability! Ergo, he was a success.

But, when at last Vernon would leave past Joel - who was sat in the foyer each evening, defacing the Evening Standard crossword, smiling contentedly to himself – and exit through the swing doors, out of the office, and onto the street, Vernon had very little to depend on, and a duty to no-one, which is, of course, what he dearly longed for.  Vernon had work friends, and he would go out for drinks with them, talk business, and gyms, new diet regimes, cars, and so forth, but sooner or later the conversation would turn to family, and Vernon couldn’t bare the smugness of it all for very long.  Dear God, Please Help Me! he thought, but to no-one, or nothing in particular. 

On a rare evening away from the office when Vernon had some female company in Alana, his new secretary, she asked him who he considered his God to be.  Vernon replied without hesitation, ‘why, me!’ – not even a trace of smile.  Alana laughed, and Vernon then felt the desperate need to qualify his assertion, but all he could manage was some mumbo jumbo about his goal being to bridge the gap between the real and imaginary Self, which didn’t succeed in qualifying his assertion.  Alana laughed again, and tossing her blonde hair over her shoulder, announced rebelliously that she was an atheist anyway, which made Vernon feel confused, daft and conceited all at once.

So, unable to find something, or someone to believe in, in his private life, Vernon naturally compensated by extending the length of his professional life, putting in hour upon hour of over-time.  The office was his kingdom; his job title, his crown; his expensive suit, his royal robes; and his business accolades, his sceptre and wand; yet, in the realm beyond and outside - the world where Joel lived quietly and unassumingly (married, twice divorced), Alana, Vernon’s work friends, the Polish cleaning ladies, too – Vernon felt as naked as the Emperor in New Clothes, and as lonely as Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

Indeed, Vernon had been for some while in some part convinced that the world was weary, stale and flat, and unprofitable in the sense that all his attempts at out-of-office relationships ended in feelings of inadequacy.  Vernon was half a person, his right side, scrubbed up, professional and dapper; his left, in saggy jeans, and a baggy jumper.  Most often he left his right side at work.

Then one Friday it happened to be Comic Relief.  Whilst, for Vernon, this represented anything other than a relief, as well as a glut of bad television, in a weaker moment he had agreed to allow a dress-down day at work, in aid of charity.  Each employee could wear their casuals into the office, and in return drop £2 in a bucket marked ‘Barnardo's’.

On the Friday morning in question, Vernon awoke with trepidation, and over-looked breakfast in favour of rifling through his drawers in search of something remotely acceptable to wear to dress-down day - something other than his saggy jeans, and baggy jumpers.  Dress-down day really meaning dress-up day.  Having never really had a woman’s hand to guide him in matters of fashion, Vernon’s wardrobe resembled a charity shop rail even the verger’s wife might have been through and disregarded. ‘Oh it’s no use’, sighed Vernon, flopping on his bed, and for the five minutes he had before he needed to leave the flat for work, he actively considered pulling a sicky.

Nevertheless, Vernon had going for him two things: his aforementioned dependability, and to his credit, an occasional sense of humility.  In the end he reasoned if he was going to look like stupid, then at least he had the excuse of it being Comic Relief, when all including the presenters of Newsnight let down their hair, and revealed their true, and cringe-worthy selves; he too might even make a show of it..

..alas, fast-forward eleven hours, and there alone in the office we find Vernon, unsure whether to go sleep on his desk with a wallet file for a pillow and a fire-blanket for cover, or find his expensive suit and go out.  As goes the saying, it’s a man’s world, but it would be nothing without..

A Necessary Holiday

Last autumn I took a holiday to Scotland. Going further west than Loch Lomond, where most tourists will sojourn, I visited Faslane and stayed on the shores of Gare Loch. I wasn’t there for mountaineering or whiskey touring or even playing on the countless golf courses around there; the trip was a pilgrimage to the Royal Naval Armaments Depot and the launching site of the Vanguard class of submarines, those monoliths of the sea that carry the Trident nuclear missiles. I could look on the Faslane base for a few minutes from behind the razor wire before being shooed off. From the shores of the loch, I could see the hillside under which some 200 nuclear warheads are stored. Settled behind giant steel doors, concrete and earth, I could feel their hulking power stretching across the water of Loch Long to where I stood in my anorak. Coulport is the name of the place where they are stored, just a couple of miles from the Faslane base and less than thirty miles from Glasgow.

Loch Long and Gare Loch are simply branches of the same inlet of the sea, piercing the map of the Scottish west coast with two prongs of blue. As a site for launching submarines, Gare Loch is sublimely suited: it is deep, isolated and narrow-mouthed. Since mid-1968, there has not been a moment when UK submarines armed with nuclear weapons have not been at sea, cruising in secret preparation to unleash forces more than a thousand times greater than those that levelled Hiroshima. These days, the Vanguard submarines are armed with the Trident missiles, built in the US. I was unreasonably troubled by the fact that our nuclear deterrent is American. The silent musing of the loch gave way to paranoid fears that the White House maintained control over the firing of these fearsome armaments.

The energy released by a nuclear bomb detonation is split roughly equally between a blast output, which tears landscapes, buildings and human bodies to shreds, and the heat energy output, which is sufficient to vaporise flesh. Considering facts such as these brought me some comfort and perspective; at least, I hoped they did.

I shared my fresh and detailed appreciation of the UK’s nuclear deterrent over a drink with the proprietor of my B&B. He trained a grey and inscrutable gaze at me for a while after I stopped speaking.

‘You have a wedding ring on,’ he said.

I fiddled with it nervously. ‘Yes. I can’t seem to get it off yet. Not literally, I don’t mean my fingers are too wide. But it’s there. Probably shouldn’t be anymore.’

‘I take it she didn’t die in a nuclear holocaust.’ This was rather sarcastic, I thought, given that I was a customer.

‘She’s not dead.’

He had nothing to say to that. So he swigged his bourbon (a deliberately obtuse choice, I thought) and spoke about other things.

‘You know, it isn’t usual to have holiday-makers stay here. We’re for the workers at the base. Men come up from Barrow; stay for a bit while working on the boats.’

‘Submarines.’

‘They call them boats. There was one chap staying a while back, he was in charge of periscopes. Just think, all day he just fooled around with periscopes. Moved them up and down, checked the camera worked…’

‘It’s a living,’ I said circumspectly.

‘It gets me though. These boats are carrying some of the world’s most powerful weapons, but they still need to poke a little tube up out of the water to see what’s what.’

It struck me then that my host wasn’t really all there. Or perhaps just a blethering drunk.

The next morning, I went back down to the shore. I was very keen to see a submarine either arrive or leave the base. Visions of a tremendous surge of water and the surfacing of an unspeakable creature chopped through my mind. I waited all day, but there was no movement out on the loch. It wasn’t like tide times: there wasn’t a publicly published schedule of the dispatch and return of the most valuable assets of the MOD.

‘What, would I be calling the Kremlin if there was?’ I said aloud to the sea and the wind.

Then I said: ‘Damn, my references are a little dated.’

Appalled with cold as night fell, I went back to the B&B. The owner was more obviously drunk tonight, yet less prolix.

I helped myself to a whiskey this time, as he started to tip forward on the banquette, chin to chest. I drank my scotch and looked out of the window, listening to the gathering gale. My reflections before bed were fallacious in their reading between unlinked lines of my life. I thought: just like the mind of my wife, it turns out the weapon depot and submarine base are closed to me. I thought: the nuclear warheads are a symbol of my wife’s terrible power – she rarely detonated, but the threat of detonation was what split us.

Shaking my head at my own tipsy allegories, I tugged off my wedding ring and deposited it in the proprietor’s glass of bourbon before heading to bed.

an eightieth story...'another story about shoes'

Norma awoke at 6AM to the pointless inevitability of another day.  How long will it last?! She yawned and rubbed the sleep from her eyes, turned over on her side and shut off the pathetic electronic bleating of her Shaun the Sheep alarm clock.  Too often these days she wore the wrong trousers to work, and worse it seemed, the wrong shoes - for how can one accept oneself if wearing the wrong shoes?

Style, alas for Norma, had always eluded her, or at least she felt over-looked by the vanities of fashion.  Nothing fitted her curious body shape: she was no pear, rather, as she hastily spread-thin her morning toast, a damp loaf.  Cardigans were too long, dresses too loose in areas where the vogue was for them to cling, and her shoes..well!

On the daily commute into the city for work, she never ceased to notice the immaculately dressed.  And to Norma it appeared even the female guard, in her strict, boyish uniform, had on a more preferable outfit.  But, at least winter had now arrived, Norma sighed, since her duffle-coat concealed all.

..all, of course, except her shoes.

If the train journey into town from the home-counties was bad enough, the short, connecting tube ride to the office presented all sorts of opportunity for flagrant humiliation: from the city boys in their pin-stripes, to the well-fed, big-haired, rosy-cheeked London secretariat.  Being in close proximity with these other-worldly creatures made Norma blush and go hot under the collar of her blouse.  As usual, most of her highly-sexed fellow passengers gazed at the floor, or at their manicured reflections in their shiny, expensive shoes.

Norma’s desk was situated towards the back of a large, air-conditioned, open plan office on the sixth floor of an impressive glass monstrosity in an area where every other eye-sore belonged to a law firm, or an investment bank.  Norma worked for a building firm.  The man at her neighbouring desk was simply called John, he was Norma’s team leader, and among many of his curiosities, he had no legs.  While this represented a profound inconvenience to John, to Norma it bought a little light relief.

No shoes, no blues.

Nasty, pointy, itchy, scratchy, annoying little shoes!

Standing around the kitchen area during one of many tea and/or coffee breaks, Norma’s eyes were particularly horrified this day, by the scarlet-red, buckle-strap slippers her co-worker Eloise had chosen to wear.  They really were outlandish, sexy at the same time; no carpet would be too good for them worried Norma, whereas any old shag-pile might disappear as fast as it could crawl at the sight of her footgear.  Witches shoes!

Then over lunch at the office canteen, came the news that Rhian, another of Norma’s co-workers had become engaged to be married at the weekend.  Rhian, who had the physical carriage of a pregnant rhinoceros, said she was: ‘happy all over’ (which must have been very happy indeed), as well as ‘thrilled from tip to toe’.  At this Norma shot a swift glance under the table, even Rhian’s shoes seemed as if they belonged on her fat pads, moreover, someone else evidently thought so too.  Norma spent the remainder of Friday afternoon mooning like Cinderella’s step-sister.

At 5pm every Friday, the management, in their good grace, would arrange after work drinks at a trendy cocktail bar nearby.  It was always loud, always crowded, full of legs, feet, and shoes.  The jukebox played hits from the 1980s to everyone’s unapparent discomfort, including Wham and Careless Whisper.  Unsurprisingly, the line ‘guilty feet have got to no rhythm’, positively shrieked out to Norma, and made Eloise’ scarlet-red slippers sparkle even more brightly. 

The evening dragged on, in an orgy of excitable patter about the future, to Norma, a big black-hole.   Holidays, engagements, weddings, baby-showers, all floated in and out of the conversation, but the more Norma’s head swam with jubilee punch, the more talk of these things sunk her gin-soaked spirits, and when the time came for her to leave, it was raining outside.

On the walk home from the station to the sanctuary of her bedroom, in a rare fit of peak, Norma took off her shoes, and deposited them in a rubbish receptacle. Gone, forever.  The uneven surface of the wet pavement hurt her feet at first, but by the time she reached her front door, she felt nourished by rebellion, and cleansed; she had at last had forced herself to walk on (metaphorical) hot coals, ready to turn a corner.