Thursday 24 July 2014

a second new story ... 'chickentown'

You say you don’t think much of pop music these days? Never have?  And classical, well, you’re too young?

Hip hop is too black.

House? You don’t do drugs.

You want to know if I like jazz?

Here’s an answer in the form of a short story, with, may I add, a preamble:

Picture a girl.  Perhaps late thirties.  Pretty.  Still young, fit.

She is called Leah.

Leah stands in the middle of the public square, jerks her head, waves her arms and squawks like a seal.  She is not, however, balancing a ball on the end of her nose for fun or spectacle. Passers by look only once.  And an old drunk watches woozily, slumped against a statue-cum-fountain, erected bizarrely in honour of Mary Queen of Scots. 

Presently, Leah stops her manoeuvres, picks up her shopping bags as if nothing has gone on, and walks in the direction of the supermarket car park and taxi rank.  The old drunk pulls his tattered baseball cap over his eyes and drifts back to Neverneverland where he daydreams of a beautiful female scarecrow performing semaphore in a field deep with red poppies.

Leah has one of the forty plus varieties of epilepsy, a simple focal tick caused by scar tissue on her brain.  Leah’s tick is triggered by sound.  Day to day she works in the charity store and looks after the hanging baskets of the George pub bordering the public square in the town of my birth. 

The George pub is next to a small, squat limestone building that once housed the filthy public toilets, now masquerades as a café.  The coffee does not taste funny, nor is each cup a cesspool, but for Leah, it is the cappuccino machine that is provocative – the whirring, frothing and grinding could have her performing like a demented circus acrobat as fast as you can say Bo Diddley!

Music alas for Leah is a conundrum.  She may stand next to the wheeze and trill of a bag-pipe all day and nothing, yet if a sudden gust of wind carried with it brass, she will start to jive on no accord.  Her seizures can last as long as the March for the Prince of Denmark.

Do you know it?

Nevermind …

As with every small town there are characters – people who for one reason and another stand out as a consequence of their looks, or behaviour.  As with the old drunk, resident at the statue-cum-fountain to Mary Queen of Scots, Leah is one of these people – so too the one Indian in the community who runs the post-office, so too the fifty-five year old transvestite who rides his bicycle about the place in a long, flowing, flower festooned dress.  Leah is, in essence, a local celebrity, and part of the municipal landscape as much as the church, library, George pub, the supermarket.

In a past existence, Leah was a hot-shot advertising executive in the city.  However, dumb luck served up an unpleasant surprise in the hulking form of a ten tonne truck which knocked her off her bicycle and into the central reservation travelling home one evening.  Leah survived, but when she came-to, after a week at London Metropolitan hospital in an induced coma, she discovered she had a new quirk.  The duty nurses’ mobile phone ringtone trumpeted the introduction to Louis Armstrong’s Lazy River.

… When I first met Leah I was sitting outside the George pub nursing a light ale on a warm summer’s day, pondering a famous saying which goes: ‘if this isn’t nice then what is’. 

You may know it, if you read American literature.

I was on the way to visit my parents, both of whom are retired in the neighbourhood after a lifetime of toil.  Leah was up a step-ladder, watering can in hand, quenching the thirst of the marigolds and violets in the various baskets over-hanging the pub fronting.  And then some unwitting soul in the café next door, seeking a little stimulation and refreshment, ordered a cappuccino.  I, of course, in my earthbound way, was entirely unaware of the significance of all this until Leah threw her watering can at my head, and began clicking her tongue, whirling her arms and whooping. 

Following this unusual introduction I found to my surprise I could not get the thought of Leah out of my head.  I would be idle at work and her face would appear in my mind, calm and placid, she is a beautiful woman; or I would be reading in bed at night and find myself touching my left temple where there was, for a week or two, a small scar caused by the aforementioned horticultural projectile.

Horticultural projectile? I refer to the watering can. 

So, on my next visit to see my parents, I made a point once again of stopping by the George pub to see Leah, or at least I hoped.  Sitting outside the pub, with another light ale, I began to take in the other clientele.  Strange to say it but they were mostly middle-aged men such as I, in varying states of health and dress – and then I noticed: perhaps three of four bore a scar or plaster on their left temple.

Coincidence!

When I was halfway through my second pint of light ale, Leah appeared in our midst, as ever with watering can in hand.  To me she looked more beautiful and radiant than I had even imagined, her skin shone in late summer sunshine and her eyes were as big as pretty blue marbles.  Almost at once, a man stood and offered to help her onto the step-ladder up which she would climb to begin watering the marigolds and violets, another two were poised but beaten to the moment.  Pleasantly, Leah obliged, and with a gay laugh took the man’s hand and stepped onto the first rung.

On this occasion the cappuccino machine next door stayed silent and the hanging baskets at the George were watered one by one in an atmosphere of relative peace, and with an enraptured audience. 

Then, a few days later, by chance I was doing some research into the life of Vladimir Mikhailovich Bekhterev.  Bekhterev was a Russian neurologist and the father of objective psychology. Today he is best known for noting the role of the hippocampus in memory, his study of reflexes, and Bekhterev's disease. 

Hammering out the draft of my article for the British Medical Journal I found myself yet again thinking of Leah, and as I had frequently done in the intervening period, began reflecting on my most recent visit to the George pub.  Presently, I could think of no-one and nothing else.  What, I wondered, had happened to my hippocampi? Had I, and several other middle-aged drinkers at the George, in a strange twist of memory and context been hypnotised by Leah’s theatrics?

Hippocampi – you may need to look that one up …

Anyhow, over the course of the next month I made several excuses to visit my parents and town of birth, always stopping by the George for a light ale, and sure enough by perhaps my fifth or sixth visit, the number of middle-aged men drinking out the front of the pub had more than doubled – all for the main attraction and daily ritual of Leah watering the marigolds and violets in the pub’s hanging basket displays.

By the sixth (or seventh) visit, I had come up with a plan.  After Leah had finished watering, I followed her into the cool, low beamed, flag-stoned interior of the pub – I would pose as an internationally renowned hypnotherapist, possibly with a cure for her epilepsy, though I hadn’t the foggiest what this might be, if indeed there was one.

So, I followed her past the bar, empty for all the men outside, and through an opened door marked ‘staff only’, down a dim corridor.  And then I chose to introduce myself.

It was foolish of me not to have alerted Leah to my presence earlier, and she positively jumped when I said: ‘excuse me’, turned around wild-eyed, and poised, it seemed, to flee.

What happened instead was that all of a sudden her arms thrust wide …

…I’m nearly done …

Her back arched, neck jerked to one side. 

I froze, I knew this was a seizure, had seen it before, but was paralysed with helplessness as to how to react. 

And then she threw herself off the ground and into my arms, and although Leah is petite, I staggered heavily on receiving the full force of her weight and cracked my head on the door frame.

Next thing I knew I was coming-to in hospital.

The punch line: You asked me if I liked jazz?

I hope this passes as an answer.

Wednesday 23 July 2014

a second new reflection...'morrissey - true to you'

Somebody asked me recently if I had read Morrissey’s ‘Autobiography’.  I said I had, of course.  ‘Ugh, I hate Morrissey’, came the reply.  Naturally, and rolling my eyes, I asked why.  ‘Because he’s a twat’, I was told.  ‘Did you read Morrissey’s ‘Autobiography?’, I enquired.  The answer, perhaps inevitably: ‘No!’

For this ‘Morrissey-hater’ it is probably a good thing he (or she) did not pick up the chisel-jawed Manc’s Penguin Classic, and read all or any of the 490 something pages.  While brilliant at times, and frequently hilarious, vainglorious Morrissey also had some rather spiteful things to say about certain individuals.  Said ‘Morrissey-hater’ may have punched the wall, or gnawed off a finger.

Camp spite has been a trait of Mozza’s ever since he hip-swivelled into the public arena, NHS bespectacled, with a bunch of gladioli down his trousers back in 1983.  He bears a grudge, and, as he has often been keen to point out, has ‘views’ too!

The Chinese are a subspecies because of their treatment of animals; Norway’s 2011 terrorist attacks were a mere drop in ocean in the great and ongoing animal holocaust; eating animals amounts to paedophilia, and so on.

None of these are mentioned in ‘Autobiography’, but the above was and has already proved enough to get people’s heckles well and truly up

Oh, and then there has been Morrissey’s visceral opposition to the recent (and very popular) royal wedding!

As a consequence of Morrissey’s ‘views’ and his recent counter-cultural, or acculturated proclamations (depending on your pov), I have often found myself of late having to defend my identity as a Morrissey acolyte.  I might as well admit to being part of the Katy Price fan club, wear a Wayne Rooney tattoo on my tummy, and espouse the brilliance of Piers Morgan.  Then claim David Cameron as a personal friend.

It is worth considering that we live in a sanitised age, where political correctness has gone mad. Therefore, Morrissey’s strong and obdurate ‘views’ stand out more than they once might have done.  Or, so it goes … See, when Nick Griffin shares his ‘view’ that Pakistanis resident in the UK should be deported post-haste, political correctness has, in fact, changed our ‘sanitised’ age for the better, in that it helps expose negative language that would only add to the contingency of one less-than-savoury ‘view’ or another.

Still, mention should be made that Morrissey sees our animal kindred as brothers and sisters, who look to humans for protection.  Therefore, from his position, to kill and eat them is not only the ultimate violence, but also the ultimate betrayal.  And since most of Morrissey’s ‘views’ are on the theme of animal rights, albeit with a PETA hard-line, perhaps there is some kind of humane, even honourable context to be acknowledged in between the media headlines, whereas with Griffin there is not, never will be (probably best to stop this comparison here).

But, I fell in love with Mozza not because of his ‘views’.  While I share his dislike of our constitutional monarchy, and sympathise with animal welfare, the most powerful Morrissey messages are, and have always been, in his songs about love*, the lack of it, the yearning for it, and very, very occasionally the having it.

When Morrissey sings: ‘it takes strength to be gentle and kind’, or ‘love is natural and real’, it is hard not be deeply moved.  When Morrissey sings: ‘take me anywhere, I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t c-a-re’, you want to go with him.  When Morrissey sings of his ‘flower like life’, you want to indulge your feminine side, and this, as studying Carl Jung will tell you, from the perspective of the male, is a healthy thing to do (so long as there remains a sensible balance between anima and animus).

The first I heard of Morrissey was his spectral voice drifting into earshot on Strangeways Here We Come, the song: ‘A Rush and a Push and the Land is Ours’.  The line: ‘and people who are uglier than you and I, they take what they want from life’, resonated strongly in my adolescent being, which up to that point had either been served nearly everything on plate, or had failed to glean very much that was any good from life.  The song closes with Morrissey wailing, ‘Oooh I think I am in love’, and at the time, I was struck by the same!

Even if the Morrissey of the modern era has been rather more crass, less sly, fey, arch, and, in general, loveable, I will still be loyal to him in my own strange fashion for all the Smiths records, and I mean all (save Golden Lights), and at least half of his solo material for what it all says not only about my life, but the lives of others, about the state of being here on this big, blue marble, this wet and windy rock in the middle of nowhere.

Morrissey’s new record, his first for five years (since the one dimensional ‘Years of Refusal) is as good as it could be: for the first time in a while, Morrissey produces a few vocal performances and lyrics that match the emotional pathos of yesteryear.

Steven: ‘As long as there remains steel in my veins, they will not touch you’.


* Meat is Murder aside

Tuesday 22 July 2014

a new reflection...'emotional shutdown and boarding school'

When aged 8, I was sent away from a close and loving family home to boarding school.  The boarding school was not a million miles away from the family home – my mother, father, siblings, pets, toys, friends – only a half-hour drive, but the institution and social environment I was thrust into most certainly felt like it.

Now 30, I can still recall the early weeks at boarding school, cold, old, odd, stuffy and austere, and not with any joy.  I spent most of the time in tears, begging any members of staff who would listen, and my parents, to be allowed to leave. 

It can be an important lesson in life to persevere against one’s will, learn to overcome adversity on one’s own, to stick with an experience that can, at first, be uncomfortable, but I would question whether it is a lesson that an 8 year old child should necessarily be ‘taught’, or have to ‘go through’. 

My parents did not think like this, and I don’t blame them: there was and remains a prevailing attitude that boarding schools are the best way to give children a ‘good start in life’ (although what this really means should be given serious consideration, especially in the 21st century).

But while I grew used to life away from home as a child, then a teenager, when moved on to boarding school at secondary level, today, I sense this was more to do with developing what psychotherapists are increasingly coming to recognise as a ‘strategic survival personality’, rather than a feeling of being more ‘at one’ or 'content' with surrounds.

I remember the first few nights at boarding school, aged 8, standing naked (nakedness was normal in the family home), bawling my eyes out in the corner of my dormitory while other incumbents of the mixed ‘block’ (boys and girls in pyjamas) filed past tittering, to have their hands and teeth checked for cleanliness by the housemaster before ‘lights out’.  I wonder if those first few days and weeks had the effect of a subconscious emotional petrifaction that has been a factor in my life ever since?  Early trauma lived on, writ deep into the psyche ...

It perhaps sounds preposterous, disingenuous (given the financial sacrifices of my parents), self-absorbed and/or self-pitying to claim the relatively distant school past as a reason for one’s latter day malaise (there have been plenty of daft mistakes on my part along the way), but in spite of professional success as a young adult, and having acquired a large circle of friends (all good people), as well as having a still-together family, I have never felt anything other than an outsider during my time at boarding school and, most definitely, since.  I do not want to ‘go home’, by which I mean begin a journey toward the heart of my myriad and often confused, strait-jacketed emotions; I do not feel I can say anything meaningful to my parents, though often absent in a physical sense from my life for 22 years, about my true experience of life, or for that matter any of my friends - besides nearly all my friends are from the years after boarding school, they know only the (outwardly) confident me, who seems philosophical about most goings on, why change that perception?!

Indeed, the emotional cost of life growing up at boarding school is perhaps only now beginning to become evident to me.  And my experience was not hall-marked by an incident of sexual abuse, although there was bullying typical of any school, boarding or otherwise. 

As a child then, and as an adult now, I am certain I am not in any way unique in my experience and outlook. 

Indeed, when at boarding school, opportunities to go and spend time at home made me, and it seemed fellow incumbents, deliriously happy – my parents created an idyllic world for my siblings and I to grow up in, play and develop our imaginations – but before very long trunks and tuck boxes would be packed again, and institutionalised life would resume.  This constant upheaval is perhaps why I find no sense of permanence in life today, no place I can properly relax, no face where it is safe to gaze. 

While the boarding schools I attended had and still have (to my knowledge) a good record of pupil welfare with (to my knowledge) few, if any, instances of aforementioned sexual abuse, to re-iterate there was bullying, both physical and psychological that teachers were simply unable to, or not sufficiently interested in, preventing.  The survival mentality in me strengthened, my independence further increased, and yet at the same time I realise I was putting up wall after wall and hemming my Self in, shutting the Self away. 

Inter-dependence, reciprocity and sharing are essential parts of relationships in adult life.

At 30, I cannot bring myself to express, talk, or share my real emotions, they are locked away inside me, and it may be I am not sure where on earth I have put the keys to my heart.  The very few times I have been 'opened up' somewhat it has been like someone driving a wrench through my rib cage, followed by the acute pain of tight, tight screw-heads exhaustively being loosened.  Most of the time, ask me a question that might shed even the slightest light on my state of heart or mind, and I have noticed I will invariably reverse the question back on whoever is doing the asking in some form.

An entirely defensive, fear-ridden, and counter-productive response.

There seems to have been a separation between the boarding school Self and the real Self somewhere along my path through life thus far.  Indeed, for much of my life as a young adult, I have felt a profound sense of failure in my attempts to form lasting, intimate relationships – unsurprising, I suppose, when one considers I simply cannot and will not open up, settle comfortably, or allow my guard down to reveal anything.  I do not really know how, or I am afraid. And it may be that I am paralysed or petrified in this sense.  

With a ‘strategic survival personality’ it does not compute, pay any mind to give pieces of yourself away.  You learn to hide in plain sight.  Hiding in plain sight, bearing up, and getting on with it is the boarding school way.  There was (and is) always work to be done, and no time to for engaging with or reflecting on the way one felt (feels), or how anyone else felt (feels) about people and things past, present, or indeed of the future.

Thursday 17 July 2014

A Factory

‘It’s just awful.’ Caitlin called right after it happened. She had heard from the neighbours, of course, rather than seeing for herself. Caitlin lived two cul-de-sacs across from Rae. Everyone lived in a cul-de-sac now, since it was well known that they experienced less crime.
‘I can’t say I’m surprised,’ replied Rae resignedly. ‘Besides, we were set to be separated either way.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘He was fixing to leave me anyhow.’
Caitlin gasped theatrically, revelled in it.
‘He told you this?’
‘No. But my husband is not an emotionally complex man. It was clear as a glass of water.’
‘You seem very … unfazed, dear.’
‘Oh, there’s no point in making a fuss. That’s why Mitch and I worked, I thought. He made the fuss, I didn’t.’
‘It’s just so sad.’ Caitlin said it long, eking out the drama.
‘I suppose. Anyway, must go, it’s nearly collecting time at my factory.’
‘Ok, bye Rae. Call if you need anything. I’ll see you soon.’
Rae put down the phone and set out to the factory, walking in the opposite direction to Caitlin’s place. They lived either side of a Hexagon edge, so they used different factories. They only knew one another from over-the-back-fence chats. It wasn’t done to step out of one’s Hexagon, even to an adjacent, tessellating one, so they’d never been in each other’s houses. Rae headed towards the centre of her Hexagon, going down one arm of the Y of her cul-de-sac then along the stem, which led, like the other six, to the factory. She fell into step with Rog, who was a neighbour and night shift manager at the factory.
‘So sorry, Rae, to see them come for Mitch like that.’
She sighed. ‘I warned him so many times. I can’t deny I enjoyed the results, but I told him they’d find the source in the end. Three years … it was a decent run.’
Rog looked over his shoulder and dropped his voice.
‘Those steaks, though … they were sensational. So juicy, tender, proper bite to them though, real blood oozing out … wow. And worth every cent. A thousand times better than this fungal stuff.’ Rog gestured ahead of them, in the direction of the factory.
‘He was talented,’ Rae admitted.
Rog looked behind him again. Other residents were on their way to the factory too. He lowered his voice even further.
‘How’d they get him?’
‘His guy at the Agricultural Institute blabbed in the end. Kept quiet for three years, then … I guess they leaned hard after Mitch’s big sale to the Senate restaurant.’
Rog was a good friend; he knew details like this already.
‘Ironic, isn’t it,’ she continued. ‘The same folk were probably eating them, enjoying them so much, just as they were plotting to find the source of their illicit dinner.’
‘I hope those steaks turn to ashes in their mouths,’ Rog muttered.
‘Careful,’ said Rae.
The pair came up to the factory now and joined the short line. They nodded afternoon to their Hexagon neighbours politely. People looked at Rae: some sympathetically, some disapprovingly, their faces squeezed.
At the counter, like a hole-in-the-wall takeout from the old days, hollowed out of the sheer, windowless southern wall of the factory, a young and cheerful lad was being trained. A narrow-faced, narrow-mouthed woman stood at his shoulder.
‘Good afternoon, citizen,’ he said to Rae as she stepped up to the counter. ‘Please may I have your ID card?’
Rae handed it over. The boy assiduously held it to the scanner and passed it back.
‘Thank you.’
The boy reached behind him and took a ration pack from the slow-moving conveyor. He held out the plastic box for Rae.
The narrow-faced lady coughed.
‘Oh yes,’ the boy said to himself. Then to Rae: ‘Don’t forget to return your receptacle!’
‘I never do,’ she said.
The boy looked at her blankly. Rog helped him out by stepping up to get his box.
This factory gave three-day ration packs, a standard combination of fungal mince, ‘cod’ fillets, algal pastes and bacteria shakes. Some factories produced two- or four-day packs; the Senate allowed the ration managers some, tokenistic, autonomy.
Six storeys up, two men were talking about Rae’s husband even as she collected her rations. They were snatching a cigarette break on the roof, which was against regulations of course, but they knew how to disable the alarm on the door out. They could see the endless Hexagons from there, stretching as far as the horizon in all directions, honeycombed across the flattened land from coast to coast.
‘I heard they knocked the door right off its hinges.’
‘Oh give over. They just knock, polite as you like, and when you see who it is, you just give in and go with them. That’s always the way it goes.’
‘Alright, well they did break his wrist putting him in cuffs.’
‘Maybe. Maybe not. Anyway, I feel sorry for the guy. Just showing a bit of entrepreneurial spirit!’
‘Did you ever … get to taste them?’
‘Ha. Oh no. Too rich for my blood. I’m only assistant duty officer. But my mate, who knows the chief warden’s secretary, said she had to bring them in for him. Put them in a ration pack, she did, under the plankton gel sachets. But she could smell them … good god, I’d love to … Never mind, not going to happen now.’
The other man spat.
‘This effluent-fed tobacco substitute, it’s so bitter! I still remember my last real cigarette, before they phased out the imports from Colozuela. Ah, that was the real deal, so, so tasty.’
‘Yeah, well, hold that memory, because it isn’t coming back. Colozuela’s transitioning to the Hexagon model now too. Last South American country standing up to progress.’ He said it without irony.
He flicked the last of his cigarette over the ledge.
‘Back to work,’ he sighed. He took a look over the rooftops of the mile-long cul-de-sacs, fanning out from the concrete cube-shaped factory to the edge of the Hexagon, to the fence that demarcated the borders of his world, and went back through the door into the factory.
The assistant duty officer, whose name was Reg, worked on the top floor. He said farewell to his smoking partner, who was a ration pack packer, the bottom of the food chain, so to speak. Unless you consider the technicians in sewage processing and biogas production in the basement, that is. The top floor was by far the most private area of the factory. It housed the control centre for the food production areas, which took up by far the majority of the building’s space, along with the offices controlling the education centre annex and the small clinic. The correctional facility, where Reg worked, was also on the top floor. The fact that it was there at all was only hazily recognised by the citizens of the Hexagon, since it was happily not too busy, and its movements were opaque.
Reg picked up some papers from his desk then let himself into his superior’s office, where the duty officer was still questioning Mitch, whose wrist was not broken.
Reg: ‘Agricultural Institute documentation for you.’
The duty officer licked his top lip and took the papers. He flicked through them irritatingly slowly, but Mitch looked at him levelly from his chair, unperturbed.
The duty officer spoke at last.
‘Seems your stem cell-growing friend really sold you up the rivah!’ His volume shot up at the end of his sentences, for effect.
‘This Hexagon, Mr Humility, works!
‘Funny, that you would get that surname, of all the virtues we are named for, since your actions show little humility! This Hexagon, I say again, works! Our birth to death ratio has been one-to-one for a decade! Our biogas production meets demand on three-hundred and fifty one days of the ye-ah! But you, Mr Humility, you would try to upset our … finely balanced community, wouldn’t yah!’
Reg looked at Mitch. He was as calm as the regional lake, which took up the footprint of one Hexagon, six to the south. The duty officer was red in the face, his top lip sweating. He continued:
‘Isn’t this factory food good enough for yah? Humility indeed! Or your stipend as …’ He turned to Reg. ‘What does he do?’
‘Algal quality assurance officer.’
‘Your stipend as an algal quality assurance officer not enough?’ He glared at Mitch.
Mitch said: ‘Put me in a room with my equipment, I can set some meat growing for you right now. You never know, you might enjoy it.’
Reg couldn’t help smiling at the man’s audacity, and while the duty officer shouted and sizzled with rage, Reg decided to help Mitch out a bit. So after work, he went to visit Rae.
Rae opened the door quite guardedly. She swallowed when she saw Reg, his bronze sleeve stripe indicating his position.
He started straight in: ‘Rae, I met your husband today. I’d like to help you.’ He blinked; he’d surprised himself with his directness, but he had been wrong-footed by her vague, diffident attractiveness, her long, light brown hair.
She paused, decided she may as well take his word for it, since he’d just come in anyway if she told him to go away.
Reg tried to relax.
‘I don’t think we’ve met before have we? I live in the cul-de-sac on the opposite side of the factory. My name’s Reg.’ He was more informal than Rae expected from someone in his position.
‘No, I don’t think so.’
‘Anyway, yes, I met Mitch today, and he seemed like a decent bloke. I admired his gall, although that’s my unofficial stance, of course.’
Rae eyed him like one eyed a drone overhead. No need to panic unless it dived down. She expected he was working her. Mitch, perhaps, hadn’t really said much and they needed to know … what? They knew his source; were they unsure who he sold the meat to?
As though he read her thoughts: ‘I’m not trying to get anything out of you. Honestly, I’m not. I can’t … you know, free him or anything. I’m only an assistant duty officer. But I could get you a visit.’
‘Why would you do that?’
Reg blew out his cheeks.
‘To be honest, I’m intrigued how he did it for three whole years. And I’m curious about … where did he keep the lab?’ It was a good question: the standard home layout had two up, two down, and little else. Not a lot of room for a secret lab.
He smiled, very sudden and disarming, at Rae.
‘Well, that was a stroke of luck for Mitch, really.’ Reg was so forward and honest-seeming; Rae just let the words come rolling out. ‘Our homeplot, it turns out, is right where some big fancy house must have been, you know, before the Hexagons were even built. Mitch was trying to fix some floor-ply in the corner of the kitchen one time, and managed to put his hand right through it, it was so rotten. He could see something gleaming down there, just catching the light. So he yanked up a bit more floor-ply, enough to drop himself down below. It was, whaddya call it, a car store place down there! Still with three cars! Of course, neither of us had seen one of those old-fashioned cars before, but they were in our lessons about pre-transition when we were kids.’
Rae paused and looked carefully at Reg. There was nothing calculating about him. She continued; it was a good story to tell, even to the authorities. Still, she hedged on the next point, for good measure.
‘I said we ought to report it to the factory. I’m sure they can use any old metal. My husband said no, though. I don’t know if he came up with the plan there and then or what. But soon he was getting his lab together. We covered the hole in the floor with our wash tub. Well, you’ll know he is … was … an engineer on the fermenters and propagation tanks and whatnot at the factory, at least at one time, before the new manager did his restructuring. Before long he started sneaking parts home.
‘They weren’t fit for his purpose, but Mitch is a clever man. He retooled, refitted, used bits of the old cars and all sorts. In the end, it was very impressive down there. All he needed was some stem cells to get it going – but your lot knew all about that.’
Rae stopped abruptly. Reg was looking at her strangely, rather like a rapt child.
He shook his head quickly.
‘Will you let me see it?’
‘No harm, I guess. They took lots of it away, not that I’d know what to do with it anyhow.’
And so Rae let Reg climb down to the large, dark space. Mitch had assembled a kind of makeshift stair from a couple of car seats. Rae lit a little biogas burner, showing a room extending wider than their homeplot footprint. It was twice the height of Reg. There were three cars, as promised, in the space, which had been hollowed out, leaving steel skeletons, as though metal insects had crept through and digested the innards. The in/out ramp started at one end, but led only to a plug of rubble and concrete. It was unthinkable to people like Rae and Reg that individuals used to own this much space and could fill it with such reckless property.
‘What a spot!’ exclaimed Reg.
Inside each car were various tanks of glass, a microscope or two, broken, and lots of small, flat-sided bottles. There were a few scraps of the growth support mesh Mitch had used lying on the floor.
‘So …’ Rae could feel his question coming.
‘What were they like?’
She sighed.
‘Just … wonderful. Like nothing you’ve ever eaten.’ She had that faraway, nostalgic look about her.
‘Boy, I wish…’ Reg stopped himself.
‘You’re not how I expected someone from the corrections unit, not like those two who arrested Mitch at all.’
‘Ha! You’re dead right I’m not like them! The arresters don’t even work in the factory. They come from outside. I don’t even know where it is. Probably near the Senate. The coast. I’m not the stickler those guys are. Besides, I’m getting on. No more promotions in store for me. I can do what I like, so long as it’s reasonable.’
‘No … neglecting to pump your effluent late at night then, after you’ve been, or other such crimes?’ Rae had a mischievous quality in her voice.
‘You’ve got it. Ok, so let’s get you in to see Mitch. I can take you tomorrow morning. I’ll just say it’s for questioning, if anyone asks. The boss won’t be bothered. He’ll probably think I’m showing great initiative or something.’
Rae was well aware that husband was impetuous, impulsive and somewhat narcissistic. She also knew he was going to quit her. Call it a wife’s sixth sense, call it common sense – somehow, to her, it was as clear as if he’d left a goodbye note. Nonetheless, she admired him, probably still loved him, after a fashion. It was not too much to see him again. After all, it would likely be the last time. So she said:
‘That’d be wonderful.’
Reg called by to collect her at eight-thirty the next morning, on foot of course. Only dignitaries were allowed the electric cars for transportation, similar to golf buggies – although the memory of those comical machines died with people’s grandfathers. There wasn’t room for golf courses now.
Inside the factory, Reg led Rae up in a lift and through his office. It was not the paragon of clinical efficiency she was expecting. There were piles of paper files all over the place, ticker tape machines slowing beating out production rates, a big scoreboard on the wall of births and deaths, whose numbers would need changing by swapping cards over by hand. The corrections facility took on other monitoring jobs, since there were so few crimes to deal with in the Hexagon.
Reg took Rae into the back squat room, where Mitch was sitting. He smiled that broad, rueful smile at her. He almost didn’t seem surprised to see her; perhaps he thought that visits were routine, rather than profoundly irregular.
‘Hello Mitch. Are you ok?’
‘Hi Rae. I’m alright, considering …’ He eyeballed Reg.
‘Reg here brought me into see you,’ Rae reassured her husband. ‘He’s secretly a fan of yours.’
Mitch considered him further.
‘Is that so?’ Any chance of busting me out then, Reg?’
Reg laughed. ‘Not likely, my friend. This visit is the best I can do.’
‘I don’t mean just out of the factory. I mean out of the Hexagon; exile, if you like,’ Mitch said.
Rae looked unnerved. ‘You want to leave the Hexagon?’
Mitch had the glassy look of the dreamer he was.
‘Yes, far away. That’s always been my goal. Not to another damn Hexagon. Freedom. A ship, hunting the ocean for marine life. They have those, you know. Effluent run-off is down ninety-two percent – the chances of finding something are getting better all the time. I could ride the waves. And that’d be the way to go. The ship brought down by a giant squid, strangled by an octopus, guzzled by a great white shark … not just in my bed, in the same old Hexagon.’
A chill whipped through Rae, with the realisation that her husband was stir crazy. The meat growing, she could write off as a childish phase, an almost cute foible, dangerous though it was. But here he was, making up animals and wishing for death by them.
Rae closed her eyes as her husband continued to pontificate on life at sea.
After a time, Reg stepped in, controlling the situation, impressive. ‘You’ve had too long, I’m afraid,’ he whispered. ‘Sorry, but you need to say goodbye.’
Mitch looked at his wife as though he’d just met her, and she’d done something odd like thumbed her nose at him.
‘Goodbye Mitch,’ said Rae, sadly. She hugged him briefly and kissed his cheek.
Mitch was still partly in his reverie.
‘Bye Rae. See you soon.’
Reg led her out and closed the door.
Rae puffed her cheeks and let the air out. ‘What will happen to him now?’
He studied her for a little then concluded, ‘I’ll show you.’ Reg was letting the chance to swagger seep through his sensitive man act.
In the lift, Reg unlocked a tiny door in the wall and pushed the button inside. They descended below the basement level and stepped out into a large space, dark other than the puddles of brightness from down-lights over work stations and the large glass tanks that were situated every five metres or so, in neat rows. Reg took her around. At each work station, diligent workers were doing unfathomable things with Petri dishes, cell culture bottles, pipettes, microtomes and centrifuges. The workers totally ignored Rae and Reg. In the tanks were steaks, chicken breasts, chicken feet, lamb chops, salmon and hake fillets growing; cells dividing to fill in the mesh-like constructs that outlined each piece of flesh. Rae gaped.
‘Only for the elite, of course,’ Reg said, himself with awe in his voice. ‘Not many factories have these. But it’s always where the illegal growers end up – we may as well use their expertise. There are lot more of them than you might think. Then again, the Senate has a lot of mouths to feed.’
‘Where … do they live?’ asked Rae. She didn’t know any of the faces of the workers; they must have come from other Hexagons.
‘Oh, they live and work down here. There are dorms that way.’ He pointed. ‘They don’t mind.’
‘Mitch would definitely mind!’ Rae gestured, a mite wildly.
‘Look.’ Reg indicated a small cannula inserted in the fleshy part under one worker’s left ear.
‘What is that?’
‘Well, it’s a weak cocktail of various opiates and a dose of chlorpromazine, just to keep them docile and focused.’
Rae arched her eyebrows but said nothing. She looked suddenly frazzled, resignation in her eyes.
‘Let’s go,’ said Reg, gingerly placing his hand in the small of Rae’s back to guide her to towards the lift.

As Reg walked Rae back home, she let him keep his hand there. At the door, she let him kiss her cheek. She went in and had a lie down. When she got up again, she’d accepted that it was time to move on. She pushed the memory of Mitch from her mind. It was easier to do than she would have guessed. She checked the directory and dialled slowly for Reg. What else was there to do? 

Monday 14 July 2014

a one hundred and forty fourth poem...'life/effort'

Life
is all about 
twice 
The effort for
Half
the reward;
And if you don’t
Understand this,
You aren’t trying
Hard enough
at it!

Wednesday 9 July 2014

a first new story...'alvin the fisher king'

Alvin watched a young couple meet at a bus stop across the rain washed street, embrace, kiss, and run for the subway.  He took one last swig of his beer, closed his eyes, pitched backwards into a laurel hedge and fell asleep.

When Alvin opened his eyes he was sitting in a lush, green meadow, the sky was wide, big and blue, and a gentle breeze moved over the grass, blew through his matted hair.  Alvin’s pink tongue roved between his toothy gums, he scratched his belly, blinked at the sun.

And he was bazookered back to 1985.

1985 began on a Tuesday: Alvin was twenty three months young at the time, and playing with his Brio train set in the front room of his parents rented flat off the Old Kent Road, London, England.  The Old Kent Road had yet to undergo any kind of regeneration.  But none of this mattered to young Alvin who was more interested in chewing assorted pieces of toy railway track – he was teething.  And then there were shouts from the kitchenette where his mother was just about to stab his father to death.

It’s amazing what people will and won’t do on a hangover.

But Alvin never forgot the screams of his father, often had disorienting nightmares that also featured giant diesel locomotives and disintegrating oral crockery for ever and on.

Anyhow, back in the lush, green meadow Alvin spied an aeroplane, sailing like a beautiful dream through the stratosphere, a high-flying bird of paradise, leaving behind a pretty, white vapour trail.  His thoughts returned momentarily to the young couple at the bus stop, and he wondered what all the excitement in life was about, and why everyone seemed to be in such a rush to get somewhere, go anywhere

Then he rolled over onto his side and into a red ant’s nest.

Red ant bites are not, of course, fatal, though they are a nuisance.  When Alvin was a small boy, perhaps five years old, he had stumbled into a red ant’s nest when playing with donated Tonka toys in the garden of the children’s home where he was sent following his father’s death, and his mother’s subsequent removal to a maximum security prison for the criminally insane.  Alvin had cried with surprise more than anything else – ever since January 1, 1985, he had been largely numb to pain of a physical kind.

Still those little red ant bites got to him!

And Alvin felt warm tears on his face.  Looking hazily heavenwards he saw street lights winking, and raindrops shuddering from the leaves and branches of the laurel hedge where he had passed out.  With a grimace he dragged his heavily drugged body back through the foliage and upright into a sitting position.  The dark, bruising clouds that had bought about the deluge of a few hours ago had lifted and been replaced by a clear night sky.  Alvin took a deep breath, filled his beery mouth and lungs with cool air.

That first beer – oddly, Alvin could recall it well.  He had been on a cricket trip to Guernsey and he had spilled it all over the team minibus.  Someone had shaken it up, given it to him: all part of the ritual humiliation of adolescence.  But the beer, for it had been in a chill-box, was cold and refreshing, and helped the blush drain from Alvin’s face before a warm, fuzzy feeling took over his body and mind.

Warm and fuzzy, as well as – now – a little itchy was how Alvin felt sitting under eight eighths blue in the meadow.  He had wandered further on up the hill and away from the red ant’s nest to find another seat.  From his new seat, the wind had risen slightly, and if Alvin had cupped his hands to his ears he would have heard the sound of the sea, barrel waves breaking on an endless shore, salt and sand, sand and salt, right out to a stretch of beach the tide could never reach. 

Alvin rubbed his eyes with his dirty thumbs and tried standing up, there on the sidewalk.  A black taxi went by and Alvin watched it drift over the pelican crossing and be swallowed in the light/dark of the underpass.  Like a scared cow Alvin was at leisure to wander wherever he wanted, free will was his to explore; he promptly sat down on the edge of the kerb and waited.

Sitting inside on a freezing January evening in his partner’s snug suburban apartment, Alvin realised he had spent his life in awe of women - from his murderous mother, the stern, spinsterly woman who ran the children’s home where he lived between the ages of two and fifteen, to his partner, beautiful and successful by almost any measure.  He longed for a woman’s attention, appreciation, affection, simultaneously fearing rebuke at any second.  Then his partner came in, as his brain was beginning to whir, and told him to pack his bags and clear off.  Alvin stared blankly at her for a full minute, before receiving a stiletto in the head. He did as he was told.

Wandering down the middle of the dual carriage way Alvin saw a tunnel ahead.  The tunnel was in fact a continuation of the freeway underneath Blackfriars on the north bank of the brown and dirty river Thames.  Nevertheless, to Alvin it seemed altogether more intriguing and inviting, and he staggered on as if approaching Area 51, with it’s chevroned tarmac and soft-lit orange, refrigerator glow pulling him forwards. 

In the lush meadow Alvin presently became aware of a persistent growling sound, growing ever more audible.  At first he ignored it, assuming it be to be an aircraft of some sort, but soon he sensed the hairs on the nape of his neck raise, and a cold sweat issue from his pits, and he felt compelled to brush the mangy hair from his eyes - the growl had become a petrol engine howl: to his shock and surprise there were two big yellow suns right in front of him - and then nothing.

Tuesday 8 July 2014

a one hundred and forty third poem...'if we were simple'

If we were
Simple,
You and I,
Life would
Stretch in front of
Us and
Not behind.

a one hundred and forty second poem...'i must be nuts'

I love you
Still, after
All these years:
Heart in hand and
Head on plate, with
Awkward guts -
True enough,
I must be nuts!

Friday 4 July 2014

a one hundred and forty first poem...'dress code for public bar'

No summer wear, no flip-flops
No cricket pads, no tank tops;
No gun holsters, no sheaths*,
No balding men, no bee hive hair dos ...
No brown shirts, no Nazi regalia
No Woodstock inspired paraphernalia;
No jolly grapes, no common folk,
No smiling, and absolutely no jokes ...
No punk rock, no safety pins,
No ankles, cankles, no shins;
No roll-up trousers, facial hair,
No woolen swimsuits, NO SUMMER WEAR!!

* condoms available to purchase in restrooms

a one hundred and fortieth poem...'obstinatelad'

A man and a woman
Are in a pub.
Woman says:
‘Willy can you go to
The bar for me?’
Willy says: ‘No …
‘I have a sore throat’.
#nagged
#obstinatelad

Thursday 3 July 2014

a one hundred and thirty ninth poem...'hearse'

Today I am going
To see and be
With the
Most important person
In my universe,
But in my head
I feel blacker than a
Funeral cortege, my
Body carrying my head
Like a hearse. 

a one hundred and thirty eighth poem...'shipping forecast'

Black depressions
Expected low
At O seven Zero;
Shaking hands,
Wastelands -
Rain at times with
Office blues, mind
Indifferent;
Visibility, typically
Poor; doors closing
Left, right;
Sea state becoming
Rough at night;
Wide awake, six
through gale eight;
Foggy head,
Living too late.

Wednesday 2 July 2014

a one hundred and thirty seventh poem...'state of mind'

When the letter arrived
And Harriet opened it,
Began reading the first
Line, her pathological
Schizophrenia kicked in:
She took his Polaroid
From her purse, ripped
And threw it in the bin –
From where, hours later,
She would rescue it
For the umpteenth time
And sellotape it
Back together, as she
Returned to her other
State of mind.

Tuesday 1 July 2014

a one hundred and thirty sixth poem...'sweet, sweet love'

Falling in love?
Hmm …
That is a
Tough one!
Same as breaking
Your front
Teeth on
A Toblerone
Bar, or suffering the
Pain of
Someone’s name
Tattooed through you,
Like a
Stick of rock.

a one hundred and thirty fifth poem...'big chief and the concubine'

You!
Yes you,
Standing there
Shy and lithe,
You with the
Full moon
In your eyes,
You are the
One I want
To sleep
Beside.