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.