Reader Meet Author

“Careless Talk Costs Lives” 02 June 2008

2008-06-15T20:43:00.001Z

They were both soldiers
in different wars
History is written by the victors
so theirs were a worthy cause
both lucky and unlucky
to have made it through alive
to have made their hearts immune
to the misery by their side

Reg, from 1898
lied about his age
life imitates Auden
the trenches were his stage
the helmet with a bullet dent
stood in the Garden Shed
it was not The Hun - but old age
that claimed him in a Eighties Bed

His dog, half-blind
loyally ran to strangers in the park
expecting bemused old men, half-losing their minds
to recognise an alien, friendly bark
I was only fourteen
I knew nothing of life
I dreamed of girls
When he was my age, he had the same dreams.

When he was in the mud, and the blood
And never knowing if the next minute was the last
I was up to no good
At the age his friends saw their last sunrise
I was living my life too fast

My other grandfather boiled
Directing traffic in the Sahara as Rommel’s Nemesis
He came back, perpetually cold
Sweating jumpers in August
The crosshairs twitched as he ignored the sand in his moustache
A fraction right or left, then load the barrel -
And the shell was dispatched
Loose lips sink ships
And careless talk costs lives
Were the lucky ones the ones who survived?

deleted post.

2008-03-17T23:03:00.004Z

deleted post

What Evil Begets

2008-03-17T10:16:00.003Z

This is a short biographical piece on Rastiel A'naro, an "evil" character for the Dungeons & Dragons Game. I thought the rest of you might like to have a read too...

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Rastiel never knew his parents, his true date of birth or even his true name. Found as a baby near the temple of Kemet in the temple city of Baqara, he was already disadvantaged in a land where social status and wealth meant the difference between life and death. The people who found him wanted to keep him but did not want to offend the Goddess Kemet and so took him into her temple. There the priests bid the people to lay the baby onto the altar and to leave; Kemet would judge on the child herself.

The High Priest of Kemet came out and asked for guidance from the Goddess herself as to the fate of the child; he would gladly offer him as a sacrifice if it meant his own daughter, who was ill with fever, would live. He gasped as he was granted a powerful prophecy that in time to come the boy child would ensure the High Priests own name was not forgotten. The High Priest, Kadas A’naro, was truly shocked. Losing his name would mean he would be damned in the afterlife and that such a powerful prophecy had been given made him realise that Kemet herself was watching over this child. And it was this that made him adopt the boy but from a distance. The child was not his but he would grant it life and make sure the child was raised to adulthood.

The first eight years of Rastiel’s life were the simple mundane years of any child, and to this day he has no recollection of anything of that time. All that changed on the year of his eighth birthday. The High Priest A’Naro, who had given Rastiel his family name and status, suddenly died of an inexplicable illness; when he was found his face was black and eyes were bulging, and a torturous look upon his face. But the greatest shock came when A’Naro’s own daughter, Efidiel, announced to the Prince and to the people of Baqara that this was a warning from Kemet herself, that her father had been found wanting by Kemet and his soul had been taken.

The Prince was shocked and a little terrified of the thought that Kemet, Goddess of the Night and of Death, was angry and asked Efidiel, against judgement from his viziers, what would appease Kemet. She replied that she herself should be made High Priestess of the Temple of Kemet, and that she would pray long and hard for the answer. The Prince was taken aback by this request but he did find her eyes pleasing and she had a way about her. After a brief communion together in private, he granted her request. Efidiel A’Naro was now the High Priestess of Kemet.

Things began to change within Baqara over the next five years but as time progressed, those changes went from slow to fast. Efidiel quickly assumed power and a number of deaths from the priests of the temple ensured that no one stood in her way of total control. Indeed, it appeared that Kemet was very angry with her chosen ones for a great many priests and priestesses died with the very same symptoms that had claimed her own father’s life.

Rastiel was quickly bundled out of sight of Efidiel, his step-sister, and the priest who did so told him to never use his family name again. Although he was an A’naro, his sister would view him as a threat and kill him. Shortly afterwards, that very same priest was found dead, drowned in an oasis that had turned blood red.

But that did not save Rastiel. Instead, he and the other orphans of the Temple of Kemet were rounded up and brought to Efidiel. Rastiel was too young to think of lust but he did know that his step-sister was indeed beautiful and that the men around her were loyal to her. But he did not like the way she shamed herself in public, and especially in Kemet’s own temple. Efidiel looked upon these waifs and smiled to herself. ‘Excellent’, she thought to herself, ‘these children would be very useful in the years to come.’ She was already smiling upon one of the orphans, a boy about to blossom into a man. Instead of taking action, she restrained herself and had them dismissed.

Over the coming years, the Temple of Kemet continued as it always had but there were strange rumours of rituals held in the bowels of the temple and odd sounds and smells emanating from therein. All these were dismissed by Efidiel who herself publicly denied any such events. Her comings and goings to the palace to advise the Prince were by now well documented, as was the rise of the worshippers of Kemet in social status.

As the years passed, Rastiel began to notice things about him. How the older boy children would not return from certain ceremonies, how the girl children were taken away from the temple to never return. How everyone bowed deeply to Efidiel, sometimes even in the presence of the statues of Kemet. It angered him especially that people were losing their faith to the Goddess herself, she who was the most generous of all the gods, by ensuring safe passage to the afterlife.

Five long years passed and in that time, the city of Baqara had changed beyond recognition. Gone were the dutiful worshippers who prayed nightly to Kemet, gone were the devout ceremonies that offered flowers, fruit and meat to Kemet, gone were the traditional rituals. Efidiel was now in almost total control of the city of Baqara.

Indeed, one such ceremony, the devouring and release of the Sun God Ra by Kemet, had been completely changed. Whilst before the ceremony required a token sacrifice of fruit, flasks of water, meat and a token man of Baqara, now Efidiel had ruled that the man was no longer token. Indeed, she had ruled, without objection, that she herself would spill the lifeblood of the man.

She would enter the hall whilst the man lay on his back on the altar and when she was at the pinnacle of the ritual, she would draw back her hand and stab downwards, slicing the man’s neck with her dagger, spilling his lifeblood upon the dusty floor. In this way, she proclaimed, Kemet would share her enjoyment and her heated desire to kill.

But things would go too far.

Rastiel was now nearing his thirteenth birthday and knew he was next for the ceremony of life and death. He had become aware that his friends had been taken away and had never returned and once he had even watched as his own step-sister had slit the throat of an arguing priest; All of this in the name of his beloved goddess, Kemet.

Efidiel had him brought to her in the days before his ritual sacrifice. She examined him, all over and smiled at his body. She had said only one word. “Good”. Then she had him dismissed and returned to her grape eating.

The night before his death, Rastiel prayed devoutly to his beloved goddess, Kemet. He did not want to die without pleasing her and he knew he was only going to die to please Efidiel, a snake of a woman even if she was his step-sister.

Rastiel dreamt that night about Kemet, and that she had come to him. In the dream, the door to his cell opened and a woman walked in. She had pure white alabaster skin and dressed in a purple silk dress. But he knew she was Kemet because she wore her ceremonial mask.

She came to him and told him she was displeased. Efidiel was no longer praying to her and she was murdering many of her loyal subjects. It was time for Efidiel to be stopped. Rastiel replied that he would always do whatever Her Majesty desired, even if it meant his own death. The Goddess Kemet, at least in his dream, was pleased with this reply and gave to him a ritual dagger. This dagger, she explained, would not be seen by anyone save him, and it was to be used when Efidiel raised her hand. He was then to strike her down. Rastiel awoke in a sweat but in his hand was grasped a ceremonial knife. He looked down upon the knife and swallowed as he realised Kemet was truly watching him.

They came for him in the morning, the young priestesses, joking and laughing about the day to come. To them, he was nothing more than a young calf to be slaughtered. But he was not surprised when they did not react to him holding a knife in his hands. The women bathed him and cleaned him, they oiled his hair, and they anointed him with fair-smelling scents. They made him eat and drink of the Lotus, but it had no effect on him, although to them it seemed it had.

And then they took him to his funeral room, the hall of Ra and Kemet.

There he was made to lie on the altar. He could twist his head left and right but he did neither, looking straight up at the ceiling of the temple at the face of his goddess Kemet. As the drums began and the darkness began to take hold of the room, he could hear footsteps. He knew it was his step-sister but he did not react. She loomed above him. The darkness was almost complete when the ceremony began, the drums in his ear. Then, he saw her hand rise, and in that moment he heard Kemet speak to him:

“Strike the serpent down in my name.”

Rastiel shot his hand holding the knife forward and shouted, “For Kemet!”. The knife sliced into the undulating flesh of his step-sister and she screamed. The blade had sliced through her belly and almost completely disembowelled her. Rastiel knew, as he jumped off the altar to run away that she was dead as she fell; of the dagger given to him by Kemet, he could see nothing.

As he ran off the plinth, he was grabbed by the temple guards, who pulled his head back and laid a sickle-sword against his neck. Rastiel closed his eyes and said a prayer to his beloved goddess.

“Hold!”

The voice reverberated throughout the chamber and everyone’s eyes turned to the altar. There stood Efidiel, her belly flapping open. But it was Kemet within her. Kemet, the goddess herself, had come to the temple in anger of the way her subjects had been murdered in her name, a blasphemy she would not tolerate. And hadn’t.

“Release my priest and bow to him.Do not take my name lightly again and suffer no would be idolaters.”

With that, the corpse collapsed.

Rastiel was released and judged a Priest by all those present, his status completely unchallenged. In time he would help return the people of Baqara to proper worship of Kemet and re-claim the name of A’naro and restore honour back to his family name.

Of the Prince, he was found dead in his locked chambers, his face black, his eyes bulging. In his hands was the Book of the Dead, his own name struck out.

Rastiel would later discover the secret rituals that Efidiel had never discovered and he would journey forth, to spread the word of Kemet amongst the unbelievers and do her bidding in unholy lands.

Life Through A Lens

2007-12-19T21:48:00.000Z

Lilly Allen’s pregnant
And Amy Winehouse’s a wreck
I’m in my basement
Surfing the internet
Pete Doherty’s in Hoxton
With dirty fingernails
I’m too tired to unleash the guns of Brixton
A goth, beyond the pale

I read Hello, I feel OK!
Take a break, and open The Daily Mail
Think of them all
People in crosshairs - sitting ducks
Walking targets
But I don’t give a fuck

Do they really think
If their paper didn’t have that shot
They wouldn’t sell a copy?
Do they really think
They need to crush at the doors
With their flash photography?

What about the real news?
What’s going on in this world?
Marvin Gaye knew
You can save the world if you’re the singer of U2
Upturn climate change
Whilst the papers tell you you’re gay

The life thru a lens
That doesn’t make sense
That sense of fame
Just for being alive
I’d rather be known
For stopping people die

For curing cancer
Or writing a great book
Giving something back to the world
Something more than creating the Zoolander Look
What’s your legacy?
What did you leave behind?
Apart from a trail of misey
When Diana died?

tracklist

2007-12-10T08:18:00.000Z

1. Santa Claus is Coming to Town - Joseph Spence
2. Sleigh Ride - The Ronettes
3. Alan Parsons in a Winter Wonderland - Grandaddy
4. Everything's Gonna Be Cool this Christmas - Eels
5. Twelve Days of Christmas - Peter Broggs
6. A Great Big Sled - The Killers
7. Little Drummer Boy - The Dandy Warhols
8. O Come, O Come Emmanuel - Belle & Sebastian
9. God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen - Bright Eyes
10. It Doesn't Often Snow at Christmas - Pet Shop Boys
11. Merry Christmas (I Don't Want to Fight) - The Ramones
12. Bizarre Christmas Incident - Ben Folds
13. Go Power At Christmas Time - James Brown
14. Did I Make You Cry on Christmas? (Good, You Deserved It) - Sufjan Stevens
15. Christmas Time (Don't Let the Bells End) - The Darkness
16. Christmas Everyday - Smokey Robinson
17. I Was Born On Christmas Day - St. Etienne
18. Spotlight on Christmas - Rufus Wainwright
19. Happy Christmas, War is Over - George and Antony
20. Feliz Navidad - El Vez
21. Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas - Coldplay
22. White Christmas (demo for Tom Waits) - The Flaming Lips

Aitight : A Work Of Fiction

2007-09-13T20:35:00.000Z

You’ve seen me.
Only parts of me.
An arm.
A blurred tattoo.
Maybe a knee.
But there’s one part of me you’ve seen a lot of.
People who see my face rarely get to see that part of me.
If you’ve seen my face, chances are you haven’t seen that part of me.
If you’ve seen that part of me, you probably haven’t seen my face.
It’s as if the two parts of me are divided invisibly.
I have two lives.
In one, I am someone I don’t want to be trapped by money in a life I don't want to live.
In the other, I am a spurting cock.
This is how I stay alive.
This is what I live for.
After she left, I realised the thing I always knew.
The things all of us know.
That we hide from each other.
That we lie to ourselves and say..
This time it’s going to be different.
This time I’m not going to lie.
This time she’s not going to cheat.
This time, my aim is true.
This time, I won’t come back from work and find she’s changed the locks.
Taken the kids and the pets and vanished like the Marie Celeste Of Romance.
This time, I won’t die alone and unloved with kids who won’t return my calls.
I’m wrong.
Everyone is wrong.
I realised that love made is merely temporary.
Even parenthood is only a finite bond.
Children grow up hating their absent parents.
Not knowing that maybe their absent parents are often absent without choice.
That the parent with custody has changed numbers, changed addresses, disappeared off the face of the earth.
These days, I look at the world differently.
These days, life is harder.
These days, I take weekends as opportunities to forget who I am.
Forget this world we live in.
Forget mortgages.
Forget debt.
Forget fluroxetine and amilsulpride.
Forget receptors and stubble.
Forget that my ex-wife wants all I own and gives me nothing in return.
Forget that my internal narrative is broken.
Forget everything I was taught growing up about happy endings and love and fidelity.
Forget the fact that life is, in essence, a lie.
Forget all but that moment.
The 6 seconds of an orgasm.
It’s a long haul for such a short pay off.
People go to such lengths to find that elusive escape.
People drive hundreds of miles at weekends just to have that escape.
Take time from work. Move continents.
That moment when everything else goes away.
The moment where we truly feel alive instead of merely living.
The moment when the life force flies out of my body at hundreds of miles an hour in a short explosion.
Where I can’t hear the clack of photographers lenses.
The whirr of hard drives. The sound of solid state handycams.
Where I can’t hear the voices of others.
Where all that exists is me and her and my moment of ectacsy.
Where the ten or twelve other men in this room don’t exist anymore.
Where her hand reaches up and touches the skin.
Where my semen sits on her body where it fell.
Where she looks at me in a faux impression of contentment and joy.
Where she greedily kisses my limping wet body.
Where the cameraman nudges my side to capture her looking up at the camera.
Where my failing manhood in frame is proof of the money shot.
Where this, this is real.
We’re all actors.
We’re all pretending to be something we’re not.
Wear a suit, smile when you want to fight.
Be civil to your ex-wife.
We’re all pretending.
It’s called civilisation.
I’m so much more than just a cock.
I am a mere fragment of man.
In the way that pornography reduces everyone to component parts, I am nameless, faceless.
I am nothing more than an isolated piece of functional genitalia.
Models are always female.
Models gets paid four times more than the cock.
If the cock gets paid.
Nobody interviews the cock.
Nobody cares about the cock.
All anyone wants from the cock is sperm.
And this is how I get my kicks.
And this is what keeps me alive in the hours of drudgery.
Life is never what it looks like.
Life only looks like what it looks like
Where my picture isn’t airbrushed out.
Where my face isn’t blurred and my tattoos aren’t pixellated.
Where she really actually likes me.
Where I’m something more than anonymous meat that allows her to live out her fantasy.
Where the woman I’ve just been inside actually knows my name.
Where the woman I’ve just been inside actually wants to be with me.
Where the woman I’ve just been inside doesn’t go home to another man.
The Other man, her husband, sits in the corner, enjoying his cuckold state.
The Other man, he sees her as a trophy other men desire.
The Other man, he masturbates at the sight of his wife being ravaged by men and used like a doll.
She sits there, her face sticky with semen, 10 or 12 men lined up around her.
A penis firing squad.
Her wedding ring glints in the camera lens.
For richer and poorer. In sickness, and in health.
Some men seek out this type of experience.
They enjoy the knowledge that they have possession, however temporary, of another man’s property.
That other men crave what he owns.
That other men want what they cannot have.
These other men, they too are airbrushed out.
On their ankles and wrists, rubber bands have condoms tucked inside them.
The passport to transcendence.
The passport to sleeping with more women in an hour than they have in a year.
I’ve still got it. Not every woman finds me repugnant.
On their wrists, they have a rubber band with a key on it.
That key opens a locker.
In that locker are their car keys, their clothes, their wallets.
They walk back once it is finished, once they have paid their £30 entrance fee, signed the release forms, once they are spent and once again reduced to flaccid, useless penii, they take their keys, their clothes, they drive away into the night.
The other mans woman poses as she glistens under photographers lights, doused in the semen of men she cannot name.
On the internet, this woman has another name.
Today we call her by Not Her Real Name.
Today she is Porscha. She is Helena. She is Elixir.
Today she is a name that no woman would actually have.
Today she is someone who has no other life, no other existence than as an object for desire. No other facet to her but this.
Forget the kids.
Forget the heartache.
Forget the dull sham of suburban marriage.
Today this woman is the personification of desire.
Wanted by many men.
Forget the collapsing ego reinforced only through anonymous, hollow sex.
Forget that the nearest thing to divine communication between two human beings has been reduced to sportfucking.
Forget that sex is free.
Forget that the poor probably fuck more than the rich.
And I am trying to forget everything in my life.
Forget that she hides her c-section scar under a thin layer of textile.
All that exists is her sex and his sex.
All that exists are her orifices and her skin and the male penis.
After a while, I realise that I am living my fantasy.
At home, I will download these pictures and they will become my memories.
The shapes and faces of the other men will disappear.
I will look at pictures and recognise my own penis, there. Just another soldier in the wars.
The thin line of white liquid between my head and her head, frozen forever in bytes.
A face like a plasterer’s radio, they say.
When I look back on my life as an old man, this may be a highlight.
When I look back on my life, I can say This Really Happened.
When I look back on my life, I can say I had my threesome. I had my orgy.
After a while, you see every woman as a sexual object.
Every woman I see, I wonder.
What does her vagina look like?
Every woman I see, I look down at her shoes.
I analyse her toe cleavage.
Every woman I see, I consider..
What would those toes look like covered in watery white liquid?
Every woman I see, I ask myself..
Have I seen you on Bukakepee.com?
Every woman I see, I envisage them.
Sitting on their knees, waiting for the gratification that comes from receiving my seed.
Every woman I see, I imagine their fingers wrapped around me.
Every woman I see, I ask myself…
Are you a breeder? Am I your bull?
Some people prefer unprotected sex. Bareback, they call it. The risk is exciting.
Some women fantasise about being made pregnant by men they are not in relationships with. These are breeders.
The male, the impregnating party. They are known as bulls.
The woman’s husband, who may raise another mans child as their own, they are cuckolds.
On video, these cuckolds kneel down and kiss their wives.
They taste, on their wives lips, the semen of other men.
Sometimes, the semen of many men.
Some women have breeding parties. Many bulls, one sow. The aim is to get pregnant.
So many men, that the women do not know who the true father of their child is.
Sometimes, the woman scoops out the semen from herself, and it drips into a shot glass.
Sometimes the cuckold drinks it, as they toast.
Some men, they can only get it up watching another man fuck their wife.
Some men, they can only come bareback.
Some men, they can only come when she says “Fill me with your babies”.
It’s a strange world.
Some women, they will only sleep with younger males. These woman are called cougars. Typically, in their forties, they will flirt with their son’s friends and induct them. College jocks. Geeky students. They will feed like vampires off the young.
Some women, they are only interested in men with big dicks. These are size queens.
Some women enjoy being triple penetrated. A man in their mouth. A man in their vagina. A man in their anus. Airtight, they call it.
Models, looking like a penis pin cushion.
Some women, they will only sleep with black men. In the olden days, these were called racists.
These days, it’s blackdickswhitedicks dot com.
These days, it’s a niche.
These days, it’s all factored in.
Some people they only sleep with people with HIV. They are called BugChasers.
There are HIV positive only dating agencies.
Some people believe that’s just the way they are born. The way God made them.
Some people, they scare me.
You can’t cure being gay.
You can’t cure a size queen.
You can’t cure the fact that people betray you.
Every woman I see, I wonder..
Has she been airtight?
I can’t help it. It’s the way society sexualises everything.
Every woman I see, I wonder..
What does she look like covered in semen?
Every woman I see, I imagine her on a billboard.
Every woman I see, I wonder.. is she the one?
Every woman I see could be the one who cures me of my loneliness.
Every woman I see, I wonder… how could I meet them?
These days, its not love.
It’s about survival.
It’s about not masturbating in the toilet of the train on the way home from work.
It’s about not standing at the kitchen sink, imaging the plughole is a teenage girls mouth.
It’s about not going home to an empty home.
It’s about the dream.
It’s about not being pixellated out of your memories to protect your anonymity.
It’s about happiness.
You’ve seen me.
Only parts of me.
I feel. I love. I hope.
One day, someone might love me back.
One day, I might not need to do this.
One day, when I am not lonely.
One day.
I have a dream.
You’ve got to have a dream to make a dream come true

soon i will speak my mind

2007-06-06T19:50:00.001Z

I work all day, and at night
I stare at screens
created needs try to enslave
and empty pockets taunt me

There's still time to fuck me
to take from the winner the spoils
there's no benefit in that but
but for the pleasure of denying me

my escape route
my path to a better life
I stay silent and seethe
powerless but I fight

I go to work and return
there's too much month left and
hell hath no fury like a dream spurned
a revealed lie now the slave understands

Once bills are paid and overdrafts sated
our tastes have remained frozen in the nineties
We're too old to get laid - and hairstyles dated
We exist in the hole of employed penury

and now we grow old
and the same old, same old
is just a blink in a planets eye
is my life

Evidence

2007-01-28T23:33:00.000Z

In a rucksack
between Oval and Stockwell
A man fingered a button
to deliver the infidels
to their heathen hells

next to packed gelignite
an object of such power
a black case of comedy dynamite
chosen to help him blend in
with his surroundings

what would make Middle Class Britain
feel as if he was integrated?
what item of mediocrity
would make him look as if he were no threat?
Just an muslim guy with a rucksack on the tube?

That analysts would reconstruct
as somehow significant
in the aftermath, the evidence collected
this would document the motive
to be analysed and dissected

He pressed the button under his clothes
after a moment of prayer
a spark connected
but did not detonate
and He Was Still There

with Ben Stillers worst film,
De Niros cultural apocalypse :
"Meet The Fockers" on DVD in his pocket
and a failed suicide bombing
to his name.

Growing Up On Vinyl

2007-01-10T00:32:00.000Z

My childhood
found in the grooves
when everyone else had left
died or forgotten to stay
I found solace in you
in the words and the guitar lines
of the songs that kept me alive
I learnt them, they became my life
and they will stay with me until I die

Growing up on vinyl
the songs helped me
when life was wrong
no one could love them the way I do
they’re more than just songs
it’s a way of life
making sense of love
making sense of being alive
the songs helped me survive

(more here).

thou shalt not kill

2006-12-05T16:40:00.000Z

all we have is this life
some curing cancer and healing the ill
try to make the best of it for mankind
some forgetting Thou Shalt Not Kill

time is short on this rock
time enough to make carbombs
to please your perverse idea of God
and to kill the unbelievers

you are so wrong
mankind could be making love
or painting great works of art
but you’d rather blow your fellow man apart

One day all of your lovers and your friends
will be a chimney’s ash
all the same in the end
on the floating ball of gas

and all of this will shrink
to a tiny dot floating in nothingness
stuck on a stick deep in space
bloodshed is not the best you can get

there’s so much more to life
and death
than killing other humans
with your final breath

Home

2006-11-03T00:15:00.000Z

Well, Reader Meet Author has only been going for the best part of a year, and with me listed as a contributor all that time - so it's about time I actually got round to posting a little something.

Be gentle...

* * * * *

The light switch clicks on.

At the far end of the room thick flowery curtains hang heavy to the floor, shutting out the night. A bowl of fruit – oranges, apples, pears – is positioned in the centre of the low coffee table. Against one wall a dark green sofa; against the other an antique cabinet, proudly polished to a dazzling gleam. Behind its glass-paned doors are stacked blue patterned plates, cups and saucers – the best china, reserved for visitors. On top, porcelain figurines and a pair of silver-framed photographs – a man in uniform; the same man in trunks, on a sandy beach, smiling at the camera, the sun catching his bare shoulders. A gilt carriage clock ticks in the silence. Ten to four.

She is on her way to the kitchen for a glass of water, but something has made her stop. She looks through the doorway again. Neat, tidy, just so. Everything in its right place. Familiar. Secure. Home.

And yet somehow not.

Not since that man had sat on the sofa, smoking that cigarette, tossing an orange from palm to palm. Not since that man had reached into the cabinet to finger the china, his breath misting the glass. Not since that man had pawed at the photographs. She can still see his fingerprints on their frames, even though she’s wiped and wiped and wiped to get them clean.

She shudders. The curtains hadn’t stopped what had been out there from getting in.

“What on earth do you think you’re doing?” she had shrieked, barely recognising her own voice, distorted as it was by panic, fear and anger. “GET OUT! GET OUT! GET OUT!”

The man had looked up, unconcerned, and walked over to face her. He had stared coolly, unblinkingly, contemptuously into her eyes. He had smirked. His thin lips had parted.

“Hello Mum,” he had said.

The empty glass tumbles to the carpet.

X and Y

2006-10-20T08:24:00.000Z

the women who
raised us from the womb
a generation ago
danced to music in rooms
laughed about The Beatles
and died of cancer

the women who
bored of being bored
by their men
men who tired of
the supremacy of sex
in pubs and foreign legions

there so much unsaid
too much it hurts to say
to vocalise makes it real
and may make it happen someday.

What If?

2006-09-06T20:17:00.000Z

What if there was no world
no life or death, nothing real
but all of this never was?

Only existed in your head
and I was merely an invention
an actor who shared your bed?

What would I say to you?
“your imagination disappoints me”
let me have the power to make a world –

no wars or suffering there
no work. no commuting.
Just jetpacks, and clean air.

OK GO II

2006-08-10T19:46:00.000Z

Maria stretched her hands and legs wide, feeling the rough cotton on her body. She had slept through the afternoon warmth and had woken just as twilight fell. The muzzy blue strip of sky between the curtains was slashed with the black of branches of the tree outside. She leaned up on her elbows and swigged from a bottle of water, then swung her legs over the edge of the bed and stroked the cellulite on her thighs thoughtfully. With her elbows on her knees, and her head in her hands, she wondered how much longer she could go on doing this.

She turned the radio on, it was playing a station of 80s pop which she turned right up while she stood in shower to rinse away the sleep. She lathered up the soap, its scent made her think of the baths of her childhood - innocence and hope. She heard and ignored the banging on her ceiling from the irritating bastard upstairs.As she looked at the little gold flag insignia on the soap, it made her laugh at a memory of her younger self. Back then, this represented luxury. She had kept the little gold foil insignias stuck to the pieces of soap and saved them, tucked in a scrappy musical ballerina jewellery box that had been her prize possession. She kept them there, dreaming of running away, as symbols of a better life, a down payment - metaphorical bait to somehow attract freedom.

She washed her hair and stepped out of the shower and began to do her makeup. She pressed and pulled her eyelids up, as she tweezed one hair at a time from her brows, working quickly to control the pain. As she brought her hands to her face to rub in moisturiser, her mind fled to him for one moment, and this was enough to throw her off, to disturb her calm. Her elbow knocked the perfume bottle into the sink, and the vial exploded. Partly by reflex, and also fascinated by the tiny storm of glass that blew up she reached her hand forward into the glittering fragments. Too late to save the perfume, her hands closed on an infinite number of tiny cuts, and as she undid her palm, the blood seeped forth from hundreds of vermillion nicks that looked like bright little smiles.

Maria dressed in jeans and a black low cut top that showed the white sunless streak between her breasts. She pulled on her old army boots with painted patterns on. Checkerboards and anarchy symbols, stylised snakes and grinning skulls weaved around her ankles. These old boots with their painted talismans gave her some strength, linked her to a time before, when she hadn't been softened by age or comfortable choices, a time when she needed to be able to run and was strong enough to.

She picked up her bag. Into it, she threw a bottle of brandy, a lighter, her camera and a small sharp knife. She pulled on a cheap plastic anorak with a hole in the elbow, lowered her black mirrored shades over her eyes, and descended the stairs to the street.

As she walked along, she drank slugs from the bottle, and remembered the night when her friend Mark had given her the knife; how he had showed her how to use it.
"I won't give it to you unless you promise me now that when it comes to it, you'll use it" he'd said. She had laughed at the time, giggled as he'd wrestled with her, earnestly being a prospective attacker, teaching her how to defend herself. Showing her on his own body where he was most vulnerable.
"Stick it right in, then up, UP, under the rib cage." She recalled his face, his seriousness, his eyebrows lowered in concentration.
As she left his flat that night, when she went to hug him goodbye he had squeezed the knife into her hand.
"Remember, M, up. In, and UP!"

She touched her stinging hand to the canvas case containing the knife and moved it to her inside jacket pocket, and ran. She boarded the departing bus, and sat down out of breath, and reading the signs in the condensation on the top deck windows, she headed into town.

OK GO

2006-08-06T20:55:00.000Z

Maria sat picking the at scarlet rims clinging to her cuticles, trying to remove the stubborn scraps of red with force. The words Ted was saying were washing over her, mingling with the sound of the jukebox, the high hats esses obscuring the sounds and rendering his mouth a silent pink circle, making secret smoke rings, shaping empty threats.

'I think we've come to the end of the road, I just can't get through to you anymore.' he blared as the song ended. Two men at the bar turned around to look, as their glassy eyes met they shared a second of resigned recognition.

Suddenly, they all became aware, for just a moment, of the huge, intractable play in which they were involved. They had all been Maria, all been Ted, all been the guys at the bar. The words, the song, the venue, all interchangeable; just another production, another director's interpretation of the same story of love, loss, anomie.

Ted was patting his pockets. Searching for cigarettes, he was consumed with hatred. Every pore resented the pain, loathed the loss, wanted to smash the set of the pantomime up, cut the puppet strings, diminish the panic he felt at the imminent isolation.

He fantasised that he could take Maria and he to a place away from time, away from history, to a vacuum where he might be able to sense the spark beyond words and just transmit the significance of his feelings to her. He pictured them in the blackness of space, naked, surrounded by stars, foreheads pressed together.

Maria felt the wounds of this disaster shallowly, like an acid burn numbed with ice. The familiarity of the scenario detached her from the emotional sensations Ted was trying to provoke, and she watched alienated from the violent outpouring as if from above. Mentally she zoomed in on her lip gloss, she focused on the label, the large printed e, the net weight and touched the stickiness of the peeling edge of the holographic sticker, that seemed to her to represent glamour, impermanence, destruction, mortality.

'Don't waste my fucking time'.

Maria looked at Ted for the last time. She wanted to take in all the details of him, absorb his memory. Pale eyes, damp and defeated. Gold lashes. Cheeks red from the heat in the bar. Curly hair, golden curls, like a character in a fantasy film. She inhaled, smelling his breath. Beer and tooth decay.

She stood, and smoothed down her skirt. Still staring, she pulled open the heavy door of the pub and walked out into the rain.

The WInter Of You.

2006-08-03T21:36:00.000Z

I'm sitting in a low lit room
with a windup radio
listening to the emergency frequency
and waiting for this to pass

I've got a yellowing photograph of you
and a hazy grasp upon the truth
my periscope allows me to see through
the nuclear winter of you

living from canned tins and batteries
re-reading the same books endlessly
I've burnt through a million notepads
thinking of how great our future could have been

released fusion makes atoms explode
Scientists shake their hands and know
the power to destroy the world
is born from the womb of a girl

seven for a secret never to be told

2006-07-31T19:21:00.000Z

It was the magpies who noticed first. It’s always the magpies.

They didn’t try anything at first; what could they do until they were certain? They simply kept their distance and they watched and they waited. I didn’t think anything of it at first. No one thought anything of it. Why would they? So we saw them, and we pointed them out to her and we laughed. We saw the birds and we taught her the rhyme:

“One for sorrow,
Two for joy,
Three for a girl,
Four for a boy”

That’s the only part that most people can remember. After all, how often do you see more than a pair of magpies? But there’s another part to that rhyme:

“Five for silver,
Six for gold,
Seven for a secret
Never to be told.”

There’s another verse too, though you seldom hear it:

“One for sorrow
Two for mirth
Three for a funeral
Four for a birth
Five for heaven
Six for hell
Seven's the Devil his own sel'”

The first few years of that child’s life were accompanied by the words to that rhyme. It’s just a rhyme though, isn’t it? It’s just a harmless old rhyme. That child grew used to hearing it, and no one paid it - or the magpies - any mind at all.

The mobbings came later.

--0--

The circumstances of her arrival in the village had been unusual, but foundlings have been left on doorsteps before now, and questions could wait until the poor thing was fed and warmed. But the questions never really came. I took the child in, and before long life went back to normal and the girl became a part of the fabric of our daily lives.

Nobody noticed anything out of the ordinary. There was nothing out of the ordinary for anyone to see.

But the magpies saw it.

I don’t think they were certain until she was about twelve years old (we never knew her real age for certain). She looked like any other girl in the village to my eyes, but they saw the change and they began to gather. Ones became twos became threes became fours, and still they gathered. Where once they had been content to keep their distance and to watch, now they moved closer. They crowded her. Everywhere she went she was followed by the flap of black and white feathers and raucous warning calls.

She seemed not to notice, but people began to talk.

Five for heaven
Six for hell
Seven’s the Devil his own sel.

At first it was only talk, but soon people began to avoid her and her sinister flock of watchers. She wasn’t an outcast, not yet, but it was easier to look away and to seek comfort and conversation elsewhere.

And so no one saw the first attack.

Perhaps emboldened by their swelling numbers, the magpies must have moved closer and closer until they swarmed about her. We heard the scream when the first bird struck, but before we realised what was happening, the girl was surrounded by a blur of feathers and cruel beaks. We drove the birds back as best we could, but the damage had been done. The girl was bleeding from many wounds, and the birds watched us from a safe distance, waiting for their next chance.

We carried the girl inside my house and dressed her wounds, but we could all hear the tap, tap, tap of the birds beaks against the window pane; feel those beady black eyes looking past us to the girl.

The girl said nothing, but she never went outside in daylight again. After a few weeks, she was bold enough to go outside after dark. She would rise from her bed and go out into the dark forest. Where she went and what she did, I never knew, but she would always be back before the dawn and throughout the day we would hear the tap-tap-tap of the magpies at the window.

--0--

And so it went on.

Time passed, seasons changed and the girl grew older and paler. Her skin faded to such a translucent snowy white that she almost disappeared from sight. Often the only things to be seen of her were her amber eyes that would blink at me from within that darkened room, curtains drawn against both the magpies and the sun. I do not know how she survived: she refused any food during those long days, and must have fed on her mysterious night trips into the forest. On what, I know not. Sometimes I would hear blood-curdling shrieks from within the forest, and I would pray for the safe return of my strange girl.

One night, after the girl had left for the forest, there was a knock at the door. Standing outside was a man with his hood pulled so low that all I could see of his face were his shining eyes. He asked me for the girl. I feigned ignorance, but the same question came again. Where is the girl? Transfixed by those eyes, I could only gesture helplessly into the forest. The stranger turned on his heel and went into the forest.

I half-expected that the girl would not return to me that night, but she came back with the dawn. I asked her about the man, but she would not speak to me and went to her room without a word.

The next night she went out again, and the same stranger came to my house and asked for the girl. Three times he came in all, night after night, and each time he came I could only point him helplessly into the forest. Each time the man would leave without another word.

On the fourth night the man did not come and my girl did not return. There were no magpies at my window that day. Not one. Not for sorrow, not for joy. Not for a girl, not for a boy. Not for heaven, not for hell. Not for the devil his own sel.

Untitled

2006-07-29T20:43:00.000Z

Apologies for not being around as much as I once used to be, here's something as a peace offering...

I wrote this in the early months of this year, to get a friend back into roleplaying.

I have to admit that it was heavily influenced by "Unforgiven" but too much fantasy roleplaying is about running around killing dragons and not enough about... home life.

So here we are.

Very short, but something new...

****

The rainfall outside the village shack was reaching a torrential level though none of it was yet to seep through the ceiling, a testament to his building skills. Yet the cold of the morning had already penetrated the mediocre insulation that he had erected years ago and even now threatened to leave him with a chesty cold.

He stoked the fire some more, sending sparks hurtling up the chimney whilst wood crackled on the hearthstones. His eyes peered upwards to the mantelpiece, at the picture of his dearest departed wife; now dead for some four years. Sighing softly, he looked back into the room to where his son lay on the rug, playing with his toad - playing some imaginary game with monsters from some far off land.

Something caught his eye then. Hidden under his bed, wrapped in some bear skins, it glinted wickedly in the reflections of the fire. He shivered as something within him stirred. Something dark and malevolent uncoiled from its resting place, pausing to stretch in the warmth of the fire before turning its gaze around the room.

'How utterly pathetic you've become, Manling' it whispered to him. 'So much more fun to be had for us in the dark, in the wild, playing with knives. Why not leave the boy here and run with me into the darkness, eh?'

It was all he could to do close his mind to the beast within.

Untitled - chapter 7

2006-05-23T21:31:00.000Z

We're getting to some good stuff now, so in the continuing absence of anything new.... here's the next installment of nano...

-----

Previously in our exciting serialisation: Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4 , Chapter 5, Chapter 6

-----

“So why don’t you get in contact with one of your old friends from school? Why don’t you just see if you can pick up where you left off?” I think Catherine was getting frustrated with me moping about the house worrying about friendships from my past. Since I had received that email from Carl, I had noticeably stopped worrying about the ephemera of my life: the scratches on my glasses, whether or not I had remembered to put my hand brake on or to lock the front door. That was the good news. The bad news, at least as far as Catherine was concerned, was that the brain space that this freed up was being used almost exclusively to worry about whether or not I could still be considered friends with people I hadn’t seen in the last ten years.

“I’m not sure I want to. Perhaps I should just let things lie.” I’ve always maintained that I am still in touch with the vast majority of the people that I want to remain in touch with, and I was furiously resisting the notion that I should chase after a few people from my past. It wasn’t true, of course. I had lost contact with my friend Joe almost as soon as we had left university. But he had come back into my life suddenly when I received an email via Friends Reunited. In it, he told me that he was coming to his firm’s Nottingham offices, and would I care to meet up for a drink? I did, and shortly afterwards, he moved to the Nottingham office permanently and, bang, he was back in my life.

Of course, not everything that Friends Reunited sent my way had been as welcome as Joe. As well as being sent the occasional invite to reunions that I steadfastly ignored, I had also received a couple of emails from Ben Brundle. Ben appeared to have a slightly different memory of our friendship than I did. The first email had been brief:

Jim,
Long time no see, eh? I hear that you are in Nottingham these days. Drop me a line if you fancy meeting up for a drink one day. It would be great to see you mate. Loads to catch up on.

Ben

When I read that, I had laughed. What on earth gave this guy the idea that I would be really keen to catch up with him? What clues had I given him during our time together at school that would make him think that we were such great friends? What had happened to him in the last ten years that might lead him to suddenly decide that he wanted to see me again?

I didn’t bother to reply.

A few months later I received another email:

Jim,
I’m moving to Nottingham in a couple of months, and if you’re still around then give me a call on 07345-948538. It would be great to catch up with you again.
Ben

What was his problem?

I met Ben on my first day at Rugby School. The whole purpose of the Prep School system is to feed pupils into the great English tradition of the Public School, and so Charnborough packaged me up and sent me on to Rugby School. Rugby is one of the oldest Public Schools in the country. Far from being some kind of indicator of the quality of the education that pupils receive, it simply means that the fees are exorbitant and the buildings dilapidated. When I was there, the school had about eight hundred pupils divided into a number of Houses. For reasons unknown to me, I was to attend Cotton House. As had happened to me in 1981, one afternoon in the late summer, I was loaded into the car with a trunk full of clothes and packed off to attend a new school. This time I had something of a better idea of what to expect. This was partly because I was now thirteen years old and something of an old hand at this whole boarding school business, and partly because I had already spent a few days at Rugby when I was sitting the Scholarship exam in the late spring of that same year. Just as had happened on my first day at Charnborough some six years before, after a quick tour of the premises and assurances that I was going to be okay, my parents left me on my own and returned home.

I was quickly introduced to the rest of the year’s intake in my House. There were fourteen of us in all, and we were taken to tea and given a little talk by the Head of House, a weary looking eighteen year old called Robbo. Robbo was a member of the School First XV rugby team. At Rugby, the place where the sport was invented, this meant that you were practically royalty, and certainly meant that you were likely to have the necessary authority, if not the brains, to be put in charge of a house full of boys. I can’t remember what he actually said, but the gist of it was that he was in charge, and as long as we did what we were told, we would be fine. If I close my eyes, I can still see the faces of the thirteen fresh-faced thirteen year olds that I was about to spend most of my waking hours with for the next five years. Some of them, including Carl, I already knew from Charnborough, the others were strangers to me. Some of them always were. With my mind’s eye I can see how they changed over that time and how my friendships with all of them have changed with the passing of time. Ben actually changed very little physically during that time. He was already tall at thirteen - nearly as tall as I was. He had short but floppy hair, a sharp nose and ears that stuck out. I remember him being very quiet on that first day.

Like me, Ben had an elder brother already at the school. My brother was sixteen years old and starting out on his third year at Rugby. Ben’s brother was one year further on and was just starting in the sixth form. Having a brother who was already well known to everyone else in the house was both a blessing and a curse: on the one hand it meant that you were afforded some level of protection from some of the abuses that would be heaped on the others, but it also meant that everyone felt that they already knew you, and tried to impose your brother’s personality onto you. For my first two years at Rugby, a significant number of people called me “Dave” – my brother’s name. If we were both present, I was called “Little Dave”. I had little or no identity of my own.

I didn’t have any classes with Ben, but the fact that we were in the same house meant that we spent huge portions of time with each other every single day. Monday to Saturday each week the routine was always the same: Breakfast was at 07:30, Chapel was at 08:45 and lessons began at 9 and continued through to break at 11:15. Lunch (eaten back at the House) was at 12:45. On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays lessons began again at 16:15, but on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays there were no lessons in the afternoons and the time was taken up with sport. Tea was at 18:00. Prep began at 19:30 and finished at 21:00. Bed for the first years was at 21:30. It is a constant and unchanging routine, but that was okay. You more or less always knew where you stood with that routine. You knew the rules, and if you broke them, you usually did so knowingly and if you were caught, you knew that you would be punished.

Our first three years were probably the hardest as we fought to establish our places in the pecking order of the House and of the school, but it got easier as we became more senior. The fourteen of us formed a pretty tight knit bunch. Although we all had friends in the other houses, we tended to stick together and to spend most of our free time inside our own House. I got on with more or less everybody. I wouldn’t say that Ben and I were best friends, but I could quite happily spend time in his study listening to “Butterfly on a Wheel” by the Mission or the Doors. Things only really began to change between us when we reached the sixth form and the girls arrived. I think Rugby is now fully co-educational, but when I was there, girls were only allowed to attend the school in the sixth form. It was a peculiar system: just like the boys, the girls were divided up into Houses. There were four Houses for about two hundred girls. Unlike the boys though, the only meal that the girls ate in their houses was breakfast. For their other meals, they were assigned a boys house. This meant that the fourteen boys in my year were suddenly supplemented at mealtimes by the arrival of four girls. Having spent the last three years living inside each other’s pockets, it was amazing how much difference this made to our relationships with each other.

The year instantly fragmented into two halves: those who treated the girls like shit, and those who treated them as though they were an alien species. The first group was very much led by Ben, and consisted of those members of my year who considered themselves to be ‘cool’, the ones who used Polo aftershave in spite of the fact that they barely needed to shave, who lathered their hair in gel and who could hardly wait for the opportunity to take part in the old Public School tradition of treating women as objects, of only talking to the girls that they considered to be good-looking, and of either ignoring or scorning the rest. I was in the latter group of course. I was quite studious and my chance of every being considered ‘cool’ had disappeared on the day that I was awarded a scholarship. Academic achievement was something that was viewed with great suspicion at Rugby, and not just by the pupils. I had welcomed the arrival of the girls into our midst, and probably had some vague notion that this was where I was going to discover my up-until-now latent talent as a charmer. The sad truth of the matter was though that I was seventeen years old and I had no idea how to talk to a member of the opposite sex. I knew that treating them as potential sex-objects was wrong, but the only way I knew how to treat them differently was to put them onto some sort of a pedestal, which made normal, everyday conversation rather difficult.

I can only imagine how confusing this must have been for many of the girls. There were often long walks from the Houses to lessons, and it was a common sight to see girls being followed down the street by groups of fourteen year olds making retching noises. As if that wasn’t bad enough, it was also common enough to see them being followed by groups of boys from their own year making the same noises. How do you learn to cope with that? Why the hell should you have to learn to cope with that? This kind of misogyny was both commonplace and tolerated. I hated it. I’m sure it’s different now that Rugby is fully coeducational, but the way things were it was horrible. I may not have known how to talk to girls, but I certainly knew that they didn’t deserve to be treated like that. Ben Brundle thought differently. Ben changed dramatically from the age of about sixteen. From being a relatively quiet and bright lad who I liked spending time with, he began to turn into something else altogether. He started to cultivate an image of himself as the strong, mysterious type. He clearly wanted to be seen as ‘cool’ amongst his peers, and this meant that he began to shun or bully people that he considered to be ‘uncool’ and had to be seen to be as casually dismissive of women as he possibly could be. This tactic paid off spectacularly: Ben was welcomed into the highest caste of schoolboy society and held up as one of the leading lights in the school by his peers. As if that wasn’t enough, the fear with which he began to be held by the younger members of the House was misinterpreted as respect by our Housemaster, and Ben was soon appointed Head of House. Worst of all, it seemed that his hard man image was irresistible to many of the girls. Even girls who I thought were otherwise pretty sensible would be sucked in and could almost be seen forming an orderly queue outside his study to be used and then dropped. This in turn simply increased Ben’s standing in the eyes of many of the boys.

I stopped talking to him. For reasons that I never discovered, Carl hated him, and there was an almost open warfare in the House between them – a war that Carl was never going to win. I didn’t feel that strongly about him, I was just mystified about why he had decided to behave like this, and was baffled at how the girls seemed to fall for his particular brand of cruelty. For me his lowest point was when he strung some poor girl out for a couple of months until she was absolutely convinced that she loved him. Ben, of course, only had one thing in mind. As soon as he was successful, he totally lost interest and dropped her. Of course, he didn’t bother telling the girl about this, and she used to come round every day asking where he was, only to find that he wasn’t available. We were all fully up to speed with that was going on, and it was actually quite hard to watch the penny slowly beginning to drop over the course of a couple of weeks. What a way to lose your virginity. So much for it being a special moment.

In the years since leaving school, Ben had become in my head the epitome of everything that I disliked about Public School. When I received those emails asking me if I wanted to meet up, I wondered how he remembered me from school. We had barely spoken for the best part of two years, and I thought it was as plain as day what I thought of him. Apparently not. Perhaps he had been totally oblivious of my feelings, seen my name on Friends Reunited and decided that it would be nice to have a drink. Perhaps he’d just forgotten. Either way, it hardly seemed likely that I would be taking him up on his kind offer any time soon. Not whilst I still had breath in my body, anyway.

-----

Don't miss the next installment....

Untitled - chapter 6

2006-05-11T19:13:00.000Z

Hello.

I just wanted to pop up a note to say that this blog isn't dead..... it's just resting.

It might look as though it's nailed to its perch, but it will be back.

In lieu of anything newer, here's the next exciting installment of my nano novel. Well, it's better than silence (just about).

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Previously in our exciting serialisation: Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4 , Chapter 5

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Perhaps it’s all about context. Anyone could tell you that there are a myriad of reasons why people become friends, but perhaps the most important reason of all is the context in which your friendship is anchored. Maybe if that context changes, or even if it shifts a little bit, then you will find that the nature of your friendship has changed and may wither and die. Often this could be something as simple as geography. When I was growing up, I had a friend who lived just a couple of minutes up the road from my mum and dad’s house. Will was the same age as me and was in the same class as me at Primary school, and his mum worked in my dad’s surgery. Five year old Will must have been a little shy, as when he was introduced to the rest of One Red by Mrs. Thompson, he was trying to hide behind his mum. From the moment I was assigned the task of looking after him, we were firm friends. Our friendship lasted through much of the next fifteen years. For much of that time I was attending a boarding school, but the friendship survived over the course of those long summers we spent together playing “Bard’s Tale” on the Commodore 64 and playing cricket or tennis out in the garden. Our friendship only began to fragment when I went on to university and began to spend a lot more time away from home. Will remained based at his mum and dad’s house, and even when we were both in the same place at the same time, the things that we used to do to kill the time just wouldn’t cut the mustard anymore. As nineteen year olds, we were very unlikely to spend our time cycling around the streets or playing football until it got dark. We went to the pub a few times around New Year, but we were really only hanging onto the last traces of our relationship.

I sometimes still hear how he’s getting on, as my mum will bump into his mum whilst she is out shopping, but I basically haven’t seen him or exchanged a word with him in five years. I still remember his phone number off the top of my head too, so I could pick up the phone right now, ring up his mum, ask if he’s at home and if he can come round and play. I could, but I suspect that would be a little weird for everyone. It’s all about context then, and the context of my relationship with Will was one in which we both lived with our parents and had a desperate need to get though the long hours of the summer holidays. As we both began to spend less time at home, the relationship died.

I think that much the same is true of work. The fifty odd years of our working lives are dedicated almost exclusively to trying to make it from one end of the day to the other and from one end of the week to the other with the minimum amount of fuss. As far as I am concerned, work is something that I do so that I can earn some money to do the things I really want to do. That does not mean that I never have a good time at work, because sometimes I do. It’s just that I always try to remember where I am. Whenever I say that I find something interesting at work, I always try to remember that this is an extremely relative term: something that is ‘work day’ interesting is not necessarily something that I find interesting per se.

Can the same thing be said of the friends that we make when we are at work? Being friendly with some of your colleagues is an excellent strategy for getting through the working day sane. These are the people you can chew the cud with, people you can tell jokes to, chat about last night’s telly or tonight’s footie match. Is the relationship one that is based on mutual necessity though? You chat to the guy who sits next to you in the office because it helps the day to go quicker. Does that mean that you really like him? Would you spend much time with him outside the office? How do you find work dos? A little bit awkward? Do you often only go to them under duress and leave as soon as you can? Me too.

I started my first proper office job at the Head Office of some giant, faceless corporation in the autumn of 1997. On my first day, I was shown into the labyrinthine HQ building and informed that my boss would be on holiday for the next two weeks and that he had not managed to arrange for me to have a computer of my own. I was sat down in a cubicle and given a big file of documents to read. By the time my new boss returned, I must have read all of the documents in that bloody folder a thousand times. I had no idea who any of the people were, or any real concept of what they were talking about, but I could practically repeat every word of every document. I’m sure I would have gone completely mad if a colleague hadn’t decided to take me under her wing. Amy was a couple of years older than me and she clearly realised that I was finding the transition from student to tiny, insignificant cog in a vast, grey corporate machine a little bit overwhelming. Amy showed me the ropes and dedicated a fair chunk of her time to gamely attempting to explain the nonsensical organisational structure to me. More importantly, she took me to lunch every day and introduced me to some of her friends. It’s amazing how much difference a friendly face can make when you are trying to find your feet in a new job, and over the next few weeks, I began to look forward to these lunchtime sessions.

This carried on for a few months. One day we were at lunch as usual, when Amy’s friend Bee asked me if I was coming out on Friday night for a drink.
“We’re meeting up at the Coach & Horses on Upper Parliament Street at 8pm”. I didn’t know where that was, but I was quickly given very detailed instructions. The plan was that we would have a drink in the Coach & Horses and then move on to some of the newer bars, and perhaps finish up at the Lizard Lounge.
“So are you coming out then?” I must have looked doubtful. “It’ll be fun. Everyone will be there.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
I’ve often thought about what I said next, and I many is the time that I have wished that I could take it back. Every time I walk past that pub, I think about it.
“I’m going out with my real friends.”

There was something of a staggered silence for a couple of seconds as everyone around the table played back what I had just said in their minds to check that it was what I had actually said. They took it pretty well, all things considered, and made it into something of a joke. We agreed that if I were passing that end of town with my friends, we would pop in for a drink with them. I nodded, knowing as they did that this was never going to happen.

What I had said was completely true: some of my oldest friends were travelling up to Nottingham to spend the weekend with me. We didn’t really have a specific plan, meaning that we would wait until everyone had turned up, would go out to the pub and would get leathered, go home, talk nonsense and then fall asleep on the sofa. It’s what we always had done, and it’s what we still do today. The lack of a concrete plan meant that we could easily have made our merry way to the Coach & Horses in time for a quick drink at 8pm, but the thought never crossed my mind. I seemed to have committed some sort of terrible faux-pas for saying so, but Amy was not my friend, Bee wasn’t my friend. None of them were my friends. They were good company over lunch and they had been brilliant in helping me settle into my new job… but they weren’t my friends.

Is it possible to form proper friendships at work? I suppose it must be. I met Catherine at work, and we’ve been happily together now for nearly seven years, but that’s not quite the same thing at all, is it? I’m not sure that anyone I have ever worked with has become anything more than someone I’m friendly with at work, although perhaps some have come close.

There was one job I had for a couple of years where many of my colleagues were of a similar age to me. We all worked ridiculous hours, loved music and had bonded over whole weeks spent working away from home in the London Offices of our partners. Three of us in particular became close, almost inseparable. We had our own language and any one of us could have the other two in stitches with a well-timed look or oblique reference to a conversation we may have had the week before. It was a hoot. Charlie was a hotshot technical expert with a taste for deli sandwiches and surrealist humour and Siobhan was a forthright northerner with an opinion for every occasion. Both were only a couple of years younger than me, and both worked like demons, but it was a happy time. We would often head down to London together on a Monday afternoon; spend four days living out of a hotel and then head back up to Nottingham on the Friday. During the time we were down there, we would get into the offices in Victoria for about 9am and would often still be there well after 9pm, eating pizza over our laptops. Absurd hours, but we had so much in common that the time almost felt like fun… In fact, it was so much like fun that I almost lost sight of the golden rule of relativity, that no matter how much fun work is, it’s not what you would choose to do with your time.

The three of us socialised a little bit outside of the office, of course: we often went out drinking when we were together in London, even if it was only in the hotel bar or over dinner, but we were usually with some other colleagues, and the conversation was often about work or about other people we all worked with. I almost managed to convince myself that they were really, genuinely my friends. Almost.

Siobhan was the first to go, leaving Charlie and me behind. She was still working for the same company and was in regular contact with us, but she began to lose touch with our in-jokes and felt increasingly excluded. Charlie and I naturally found this hilarious, and whenever Siobhan popped round to visit, we would invent in-jokes on the spot to confuse her. Naturally, she began to pop round less and less. Then I changed jobs, and although we all kept threatening to meet up for lunch or for coffee, it just seemed to be too hard to get our diaries to match.

Even when we were at our closest, there seemed to be an unbridgeable divide between my real life and my working life. Siobhan and her boyfriend once joined Catherine and me at a pub quiz. Siobhan and I spent much of the night obliviously carrying on with our working relationship – exchanging in-jokes and laughing uproariously at things that our partners did not understand. At one point, Siobhan and I got a question right, and in celebration, I chopped my hands up and down on Siobhan’s thigh. It was a boisterous gesture, and one that somehow wasn’t really out of place in our relationship at work, where we sat back to back, and were often to be found draped over each other’s chairs pondering something on the screen. Out of work though, it looked desperately over-familiar, and I suddenly became aware that both of our partners were staring at us, so I backed away. There was nothing in the gesture: my relationship with Siobhan was entirely rooted in work, and yet I suddenly felt uncomfortable and a little bit awkward about the whole thing, so I began to back away. Perhaps I had been spending too much time at work and was losing sight of where I should really have been spending my time.

As soon as our jobs changed though, we stopped spending so much time together and our relationship changed. The casual familiarity quickly disappeared and within a couple of months we were more or less on nodding terms only. Our familiarity had been based mainly upon our work and the amount of time we were spending together in the office. I thought we had a lot in common – We do have a lot in common – but that on its own clearly wasn’t enough. Once the physical proximity changed, so did the friendship.

I mourn that job. I have a terrible suspicion that I will never have as much fun at work again, and I find that thought deeply depressing. I am apparently not due to retire until 2049. For that job to be as good as it gets is something that really does not bear thinking about.

What would you do?

2006-04-03T20:13:00.000Z

You’ve got to take off
Before you crash land
You’ve got to split up
Before they love your band
You can recover from heartbreak
Take it a day at a time
To make a great journey
You take one step at a time

And that’s the way we live.

In the heart of the storm
We chase the eye
We don’t think about tomorrow
Because we can sleep tonight
And when it hits
No faith can protect us from the rising tide
And if you could be God for a day
Would you beg for more time?

Would you appear over London
in a flash of light?
Would you take the president
And give him a piece of your mind?
What would you do?
Would you make her love you
Again and undo those broken years?
Would you end all wars
And give aethiests something to fear?

Would you make her love you again?
What would you do?

Day Sleeper

2006-04-01T21:15:00.000Z

I have spent my whole life asleep. Every night I go to bed and sink into dreamless oblivion, but I don’t wake up in the morning. I never wake up. I remain asleep as I drift obediently through my day. I get up and eat my healthy balanced breakfast, and then I go to work. At work I don’t make any ripples and I don’t make any decisions. I don’t cause any fuss. I go. Time passes. I leave. The same cycle has continued for 10 years with little change, and it will continue until I die. I am not afraid to die. Death may be eternal sleep, but it will also be a release from this nothing.

I’m a daysleeper.

Why is my life like this? I eat my 5-a-day. I take vitamin supplements. I take my government recommended amount of exercise. I Live Life To The Max. So why do I always feel so lethargic? I look after myself: I shop at the right shops and only wear the best labels. I cleanse, I moisturise, I exfoliate. Why am I alone? Even when I am with someone, why am I alone? Am I not Worth It?

I did everything that was expected of me. I did well at school; I went to University. I got a degree. I got a job. But then what? Then what? Not everyone can be a hotshot. Not everyone gets to run their own company; to make a million. I started with high hopes, but a decade later and they’ve been beaten out of me. I go to work. Time passes. I leave. My job isn’t interesting. My job isn’t important. It’s just a job. It’s just my job. As long as I turn up on time, work late with no overtime pay and record my hours every week, no one bothers me. There’s no dress code in my office. A few years ago it was announced that we should all wear “business casual”. What you wore to work now made no difference to your productivity and we all stopped wearing ties and started shopping at Gap. As far as I know, this new, relaxed dress code is still in place. Now we all wear ties. Nothing was said, but it didn’t have to be. We are docile. We all conform and in a thousand tiny ways our personalities are repressed and our dreams are crushed.

I had a dream last night. For the first time in a long time, I had a dream. I dreamt I was at work. I dreamt I was in a meeting. I dreamt that I finally woke up. I reached across the table and grabbed the person facing me and pulled their head down hard onto the table. A stunned silence filled the room, but no one moved. I beat this head against the table until it made softer noises. I pulled the head up by the hair and looked into the dulled, bloodied face. It was disgusting. I was disgusting. I looked around the room and saw the other faces around the table. They were stunned and shaking their heads in disbelief, their eyes wide with shock. I wanted to kill them all. I was filled with the urge to take them all and to cut them, to pull their viscera across the table, to nail their tongues to the table… Just Do It. Just Do it.

I woke up.

I’m waking up.

In the stacks

2006-03-07T22:19:00.000Z

I went to the library today. It was a compulsion that drove me there. A feeling. A need... I climbed the stairs, three flights, to the top floor. Its darker there, lonelier, moodier - like me. Its different. There’s no hum of computers. There are no teens doing research. No librarians shushing or printer squealing loudly as they spit out ream upon ream of useful information. Its warmer. More comforting. More alone.

The old stacks are stored there. Newspapers for generations that never made it to microfilm clutter shelves, gathering dust. Books, old books, older than me, some older than my parents, piled high upon shelves. Their bindings are fading, the spines are cracked. The pages are yellow with age, printed lightly with the oil of thousands of fingers that have caressed them over the years. It smells soft here. Like paper, of course. But of age. And time. And knowledge. It smells of memories.

I wander through the shelves, row upon row of them. I squint my eyes in the yellow light of overhead bulbs, shaded windows high near the ceiling and the seemingly endless towers of shelves full of the thoughts and researches of people long gone. I breathe deeply, pulling the smell into me, resting against them on occasion, hoping to pull it onto me somehow. My fingers trace lightly the covers. They run the ridges of uneven pages with my own special brand of love.

I look there, unsure, almost, what it is I am looking for. What it is that I am needing. I know I will find it when I am meant to, its how it always is with me and books. With me and memories. With me, and everything I touch. Wait. Hope. Everything comes in time. I am not drawn, as I normally am, to a corner this once. It is a shelf in the middle. High up. I must use a step stool to reach the book I am wanting.

It is pale blue, and large. Much larger than a normal book. It is heavy in my hands despite its age and its soft crumbling pages. It is bound tightly so that I hear a soft crackle as I open it. My hands flutter over the pages lightly. I do not look at the title. I do not look at the author. On occasion I will stop to read, though, soft words, almost soft enough to be smudged away with my hand were I to choose to do so.

As I turn the pages I see a woman in a picture. She is standing on the edge of a bluff, her hands at her side, her hair pulled away from her face. There is a building behind her. A tall one. And dark. The black and white of the photo seems to enhance her grace. It enhances what looks to be fading light. The trees in the back of it seem both comforting and intimidating in their strength at once. I begin to turn the page, but something makes me look closer.

She looks like me. So much like me it is frightening when you begin to press the resemblance. The hair. The eyes. The mouth. She even has that look I hear about myself so often, as though I am lost in a though or a memory of the past that only I know. I trace the outline of her face, lightly. I feel a stirring in my chest. I feel a tightness in the corner of my eyes. I feel like I am aching, burning. Like I should slam the book shut and run from this room and forget about this woman who is so like me and this book that has called me to it. Instead I cry. I shut my eyes and on the inside of my lids I feel the heat of tears slipping down my cheeks gently as I see for the first time what this woman does.

I can see mist rising in the distance, cool wind ruffling my hair. I feel the chill of the evening coming. The sun resting behind me on my shoulders. The grass is wet beneath my feet. I smell the rain. And I turn to the building, the tall dark house behind me and I feel more than I am prepared to.

She- I am walking back to it, heavy in my chest, my eyes swollen from tears. I approach a door, one that is old, wooden and nicked from the abuse of weather and time and children running through it without care. Crossing the threshold seems almost too much to bear, though, and I lean on the doorframe and try to breathe.

I collect myself and go up the stairs. Once, twice, a third flight of stairs again and I cross into a room with another heavy door, a cold stone floor and a bed made for lovers. There is a window, a great open window that looks out on the bluff I have left, the forest, the lake that shimmers beyond. I approach that window tentatively. I can feel the sobs rising again in my throat and m chest as I do.

I reach it, and as I do I fall. In my grief my legs can support me no more. I lay my head against the wall, dark stone, so cold it nearly feels wet. I weep. My fingers run over the wall lightly, tracing the pockmarks and lines. It feels grainy and wet against my cheeks. I hear myself moan lowly. I cry. As I do I close my eyes again and I see something. I see what she is missing. I see her pain, my pain. It is brief, all to brief.

Eyes. A smile. The whispered word love. A warm laugh.

I pull sharply away, gasping, and I can see myself again surrounded by the stacks. The books and newspapers surround me. My hands are wet from the tears, I’ve had my hands over my face. As I look down I see my tears have fallen to the page and the image of the woman is dimmed. She is a faint blur now, a house and the setting sun are all you can really see.

I close the book lightly. I walk to the shelf. Slowly, heavily. I feel as though I am grieving. I slide it back to its place, high up. Away from the ground. Away from the prying eyes of those who would not know to look for her. I walked slowly out to my car and sit there with the sun streaming in through my windows.

In my head I hear it, that word, love. I hear the laughter. I feel so cold. I finger the edge of my shirt. What did I see. Why did I see it? Why am I so very sad?

Untitled - chapter 5

2006-03-03T08:26:00.000Z

OK. I've started with this, so I think I may as well continue. Here's another chapter from my - still untitled - Nano novel.

Fresh original material to follow.

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Previously in our exciting serialisation: Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4

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Later on that evening, I find myself sitting at home in front of the telly idly browsing the internet on my laptop. I’ve managed to resist the temptation to visit Friends Reunited, but I find myself at “google” doing some ego-surfing – entering names in and seeing what comes up. Apparently I am a Scottish Painter, a Californian realtor or a baseball player, depending upon whether you consider me to be a James, a Jim or a Jimmy. Needless to say, I start to tap in the names that have been floating around my head since I left Charnborough earlier in the day. I start with Chris – if for no other reason than I got home and picked up that batman comic. I still have the same copy that we used to read together at school.

Chris didn’t start at Charnborough until we were both 10 or 11 years old. We weren’t initially in the same class, but we were sat together at mealtimes and quickly became firm friends. Perhaps we both liked rice pudding or something. Charnborough’s grounds are bounded by a wood on one side and a river on the other side. At some point in the past, the main river channel was diverted around the woods and the playing fields, leaving a boggy remnant river-channle running though the woods. Of course, for an eleven year old boy, this is absolute heaven. We had a long break in the afternoon, between lunch and any classes that we had in the afternoon. Almost every day without fail, Chris and I would pull on our boiler suits and Wellington Boots and head out to the woods, where we would play gangs. This game was large, timeless and mainly formless. If there were any rules, then nobody had troubled to write them down. It was a little bit like ‘Lord of the Flies’, I suppose. Packs of children formed into gangs and either formed uneasy alliances with rival groups, or fought bitter running battles with them using sticks and fir-cones as weaponry. Each gang had a base of operations. This wasn’t as elaborate as it sounds. It was just somewhere you could hide your sticks and where you would hang out. Some people used a circle of yew trees, some people used small clearings. Our base was great though. Down the bottom of the school grounds, out past the swimming pool and beyond the tennis courts, almost at the furthest point within the school grounds, there was a tree growing near to the small trickle of a stream. The stream itself was pretty good: it was just at the point where the little stream flowed into the big marshy expanse of the vestigial river. What made the location great though was that there was a big root from the tree stretching out from one side of the bank to the other. It was broad and flat and was a perfect bridge. You could almost see Robin Hood and Little John duelling on it. It was a point of great strategic importance, where the gangs running out of the woods would meet with the bog-waders, and it was our base camp. We spent hours there.

I would never say that I was a natural leader. I’m not even sure what it means or what it entails. What I do know though is that Chris and I were right at the forefront of the best gang in the woods. Everyone wanted to be in our gang, and the other gangs didn’t have a chance. No one could outsmart us, and no cache of sticks was hidden well enough to prevent a lightning infiltration. We were legends. There was a brief period where we were both more interested in roller-skating in the gymnasium, but we soon went back to the woods, hanging up our skates until the dark winter evenings drove us indoors after tea.

We were good friends, but we went to different Public Schools in the autumn of 1987 and we began to drift apart. Unlike many of my friends from Charnborough though, Chris lived quite close to me, and we stayed in touch for a few years and saw each other a couple of times. We were both bright and were awarded scholarships to our chosen schools, but Chris was always more interested in art. He was a talented painter, but his real interest lay in sculpture. Even as a twelve year old, when the rest of us were trying desperately draw something that looked even vaguely like the bowl of fruit in front of us, Chris was spending a lot of his spare time in the art room mucking about with clay, papier mache and chicken-wire. This was, of course, an interest that he shared with Carl. Carl was a good artist, certainly good enough to be awarded that art scholarship, but for him that was always the second-prize. He lacked a passion for the subject that Chris so obviously had, and he consequently lacked some of the inspiration. I can remember we had a class exhibition once. Carl had painted a Picasso-style cubist take on a fractured electric guitar. Very clever, and pretty sophisticated for a twelve year old – certainly better than my pathetic offering a set of drawings of a industrial sized spatula I had nicked from the kitchens - but I thought it was a little mechanical. By contrast, Chris has produced a series of drawings and paintings of something as simple as a pencil. At first glance you would think that Carl’s cleverness would win the day by miles, but actually it was the sheer inventiveness of Chris’s pencils that won the day. You would never think that you could look at a couple of HBs and feel inspired. I think it was because of this that although Carl and Chris were friends, there was always an edge of tension and rivalry. Perhaps there was a similar air of tension between Carl and me, only I totally failed to recognise it and to read the signs.

Carl gave up art as quickly as he could once we got to Public School, but Chris kept it up. I bumped into him one Christmas at the Central Milton Keynes shopping centre as he was coming out of WHSmiths. I’m pretty myopic, so I nearly didn’t notice him. We were both nineteen by this point, and Chris was wearing a large dog-tooth overcoat and was sporting a mop of black hair. He grabbed me:
“Hello Jim. How are you doing?” I probably looked confused. In situations like these, where I am taken unawares by someone that I know, I generally find conversation awkward. In this case though, I was really pleased to see him.
“Chris!” A slight pause, as I blink at him. “I’m good thanks mate. How are you? Your parents still round here then?” His dad was a stockbroker, I think, and they lived in a large house just the other side of the railway station.
“Yeah. Same old same old.”
“What are you up to?” This was a good question. I had last seen him when my school cricket team (don’t get excited, it was only the 3rd XI) played at his school, and I had bumped into him. Since then we had both left school, and it seemed a reasonable assumption that he had gone on to university.
“No. Art College” Ah, of course. That made a lot of sense. “You?”
“Art college? Bloody hell. I’m at Warwick. Modern European and Renaissance History.” I didn’t really want to talk about my degree, and now he’d revealed that he was at art college, I felt very conventional. Prep School, Public School, University… and probably on to civil service and then death, I should think. “How’s art college?”
“It’s fucking brilliant. I have to go to a few technical classes, but basically they leave me to my own devices and I’m able to generally muck about.” He started rummaging in his pockets. “I’ve got something here actually”. His hand came back out of his coat holding a small sketch pad. It would have been easy to assume that he was about to show me a drawing, but I was suddenly hit by the horrible stench of dirty ashtrays. I began to fear the worst.
“I’ve been working on this for a couple of weeks.” He began to open the sketch pad, with fingers that I couldn’t help but notice were stained yellow and had nails bitten down to the quick. In the middle section was a kind of collage (forgive me if that’s not the correct technical term). It was a kind of mosaic like design made entirely of used cigarette ends – the rollup kind. They were dirty, and they stank, but they looked amazing. “What do you think?”
I held my breath and looked a bit closer. His attention to detail was amazing. The pattern on the page was really quite inticate, and I think that the butt ends may have actually been smoked to a pre-determined length. It was the kind of art where you imagined that the artist had made a sketch before he began, and had been working to a plan.
“It’s bloody amazing”.
I wasn’t surprised to find out that Chris had taken up smoking. In fact, when I went round to his house a couple of years before, he had been surprisingly dependent upon his Embassy, and I had marvelled at quite how he hid his habit from his parents by burying the butts in the garden. Judging by the beautifully tended roses in the flowerbed, this struck me at the time as a remarkably short-sighted hiding place. Perhaps he hadn’t cared. He was certainly still smoking now.
“Yeah? It smells a bit” I was pleased he had noticed. I had a quick look at him, and in spite of the stench coming from his sketch book and his dirty-old man coat, he was pretty clean looking.
“Yes it does. Perhaps it should be exhibited behind glass?”
“Oh no. The smell is the reason I’m doing it.” This is why he was an artist, and I was studying history at University.

I think we went for a quick drink, but we were soon wishing each other a Happy Christmas and promising to stay in touch. The next time I saw him was a couple of years later on the telly. It was around Remembrance Sunday and it was one of those short five-minute talking head pieces that they sometimes insert into the evening schedule. It had already been on for a couple of minutes before I realised what I was watching. It was Chris, holding an old leather football, and talking straight into the camera. I think he was reading from someone’s diary, and it was the entry about the time during the First World War when there was a ceasefire at Christmas and some of the soldiers left the trenches to have a game of football with the Germans. He was very good. He looked much the same as he had when I last saw him, and as he spoke I could almost detect the ashtray smell of stale fag ends. That made me smile. I thought he was probably still at art college and but I had no way of contacting him, so I think I sent him a Christmas card to what I hoped was still his mum and dad’s address. I didn’t get a reply, and I quickly forgot all about it.

So I googled him. I popped his name into google and sifted through the results to see if I could find him. This often isn’t as straightforward a process as you might think, and it sometimes takes a good deal of persistence to find the results you are looking for. Not this time though. Either because of his slightly unusual surname, or because he had a good search engine strategy, Chris came up as the very first hit on google.

When I was about six, I wanted to be a motorcycle policeman. I was at that time very fond of a plastic police helmet and goggles set that someone had given me, and liked nothing better than to put them on and hare around the house on my bike pretending that I was involved in some terribly exciting high-speed chase. By the time I was a little older, this dream had fallen by the wayside, and I was now determined that I wanted to become a barrister. I have always been argumentative, and I think I liked the idea of standing up in a courtroom and taking part in the cut-and-thrust of the debate (for the same reason I also briefly thought it might be quite fun to become a Member of Parliament). I was dead set on studying law at University until I got speaking to a lawyer at a careers day at school. Apparently law degrees were extremely tedious, and I would be far better served by studying a subject I was really interested in instead. Wise words. I studied history at University and somehow my dream of becoming the next Rumpole of the Bailey quietly disappeared and I ended up working in IT. Does anybody really end up with their dream job, or do we all drift into something temporary and look up after twenty years and wonder what happened? By the looks of his website, it looked as though Chris was living his dream.

According to the little biography I found online, after studying for a BA in Fine Art, Chris had gone on to gain an MA in Computer Related Design from the Royal College of Art. That was all very well, but I was the proud owner of a Masters degree in Medieval History, and I wasn’t working as a historian, was I? Well, it turns out that Chris had chased his dream a little harder and was now working as “an artist and designer based in London” and “his work has been exhibited internationally”, including apparently the Grand Prize at some international art festival in Tokyo. I was very impressed. There was some other stuff on there too, things that he had been working on. His area of expertise was in man’s relationship with technology, and examples of his work included watches that didn’t tell the time, and mobile phones that couldn’t receive a phone call.

There was a “contact” section on the website, and before I had time to really think through whether or no this was a good idea, I hit the link and started to write an email:

I keep getting email from people who I have absolutely no desire to speak to or to see ever again. Preamble, of course, to me sending you an email out of the blue, when I don’t think I have seen you since er… 1990 or something when I bumped into you in WHSmiths in Milton Keynes and you should me your sketch book filled with roll-up butt ends. Enduring image, but I remember the smell most of all… anyway.

I have no idea what triggered me to do this, but I have just searched for you on Google. Pretty impressive. I come up as a Californian Estate Agent or something, but you come up as you. Shit. I must sound like a stalker. I have a lot to thank you for – you introduced me to “The Dark Knight Returns” and knew that diamond was the hardest substance known to man because Adamantium does not exist.

As you could probably have guessed, I ended up with an office job in Nottingham. Anyway. Just thought I would surf the moment and send you an email. If you are anything like me and my Friends Reunited emails, you’ll just ignore me, otherwise I guess you will say hi.

Jim.

It was a lot harder to write than I thought. What do you say to someone you haven’t seen for years? How much detail should you include when there is a very real chance that the person you are writing to has no interest in you or what became of you. The mention of diamond was a reference to the time that we had been opposing captains in the school General Knowledge quiz. It was a big thing, and was held on stage in front of the whole school. My team had got off to a terrible start, but I have always prided myself on the ability of my brain to hold onto all kinds of trivia, and we began to haul ourselves back into the competition. Time was beginning to run out and the scores were level, when the headmaster had asked the question “What is the hardest substance known to man?”. Easy. I got to the buzzer first and fired out the answer that was going to take us to victory. Adamantium. Easy.

Wrong.

Adamantium is the almost indestructible metallic substance that was used to give Wolverine his claws in the X-Men comic. As well as introducing me to The Dark Knight, Chris had shared his love of other comic book creations with me, including the X-Men. Sadly, like the X-Men themselves, Adamantium is completely made up. Chris, of course, knew the correct answer. Diamond.

We lost.

I was hoping that this event had been as memorable for Chris as it had clearly been for me. I supposed I would find out soon enough. I figured that the worst thing that could happen was that he would receive the email but wouldn’t bother to reply.

I sent the email at about 6pm, and by 7pm I had my reply:

Hi Jim

Haha the adamantium answer! Sad to say I still remember it quite clearly. You were quicker than me on the buzzer and my heart sank, only for you to make an uncharacteristic slip! It was Easter-time, as I recall, and we (the winners at least) were given Easter Eggs as our prizes. Do your parents still live around Milton Keynes? Mine do, so I get to visit the wonders of the shopping centre quite regularly. I have been keeping quite busy, as you may have seen from your google search. I have moved on a bit from roll-up butts and I am now making electronic bits and pieces. I studied for an MA in computer related design at the Royal College of Art, which I finished in 2000.

At the moment, I am working in northern Italy on a research project and then doing some teaching. Unfortunately, as it is the holidays for the students at the moment, the building is about to shut… What are you doing in your office job in Nottingham? The last I remember you were studying for an MA in Medieval History, but I could have imagined this…

Nice to hear from you.

Chris.

P.S. We both have Carl to thank for introducing us to the Dark Knight and comics in general…

How long do you think it takes for someone to become so embedded in your life that you can’t escape them? My relationship with Carl had lasted twenty-two years, and it seemed as though there was no memory of mine that didn’t include him.

I didn’t think that there was much point in harassing Chris any more. His email was friendly enough, but I didn’t think that trying to meet up with him would serve any purpose. We had been good friends when we were at school together, but the friendship hadn’t really survived after we had left Charnborough. We had some sort of residual connection based upon our shared experiences of five years spent together at school, but it didn’t seem enough for me to want to try and spark up a new connection with him. Besides, he was in Italy.

Was he still technically my friend? If I emailed him back and arranged to meet up with him for a drink sometime, would we still find that the spark of our friendship was still there? Or had we run our course? Neither of us had felt the need to send a formal notice of our intent to terminate our friendship, but it seemed that it was more or less dead anyway.

Hang A Shining Star - Chapter 3

2006-02-20T15:53:00.000Z

"Never worry about the size of your Christmas tree. In the eyes of children, they are all 30 feet tall." *Larry Wilde

Chapter 3

I can tell I am going to have to keep on top of things, or I will forget to keep the ball rolling. I run on a pretty tight schedule now, since it’s just me and Grandma. And she’s a little more detail oriented than I am.

I jump up from the couch, where I have been sitting next to Gail, and head to the back of the house. I can see her take in the whole thing as we trot through it, and I can see she likes it. Grandma’s house is beautiful. When her and Grandpa were finally able to have a house of their own, they took great care in making it perfect for them. You can see touches of them everywhere.

As we duck through the dining room, the giant oak table and its carved chairs peer back at us, reflections of my grandfather’s understated, but excellent taste. Passing in to the kitchen, my Grandmother’s country childhood is reflected in the rooster theme, which she has taken pleasure in decorating with. Glass roosters sit on the shelf that runs the top of the room, next to antique milk bottles and old cutting boards with funny sayings on them.

I barely have time to register Gail’s look, one somewhere between amazement and amusement, before we head through the mud room into the garage.

Flipping on the light and reaching up on to the wooden pegs that have hung there as long as I can remember, I grab two pairs of work gloves and toss her one.

She pulls them up over her sweatshirt sleeves as I cross to the far side of the room and tug on an old cord hanging from the ceiling.

I always, always forget to cover my eyes and nose, and I sneeze for the first time today as the shower of dust and plaster flakes flutter down in to my eyes and nose at the attic ladder drops down from the ceiling. I unfold it carefully, making sure to set in down to where the climb will be relatively even, and turn to signal to Gail its time to go upstairs.

"You’ll love the attic. We’ll come back some time when we have more time and spend an afternoon playing up here. This is a real attic, not the kind they build in those fancy houses now days."

"Okay, old woman," Gail jokes as she mounts the stairs behind me.

I somehow forget every year how much I love the climb in to the attic. Its smells of old clothes, Christmas trees and insulation. The plastic from three generations of women’s dolls permeates the atmosphere, and there is a strange lingering scent of perfume mingled with the dust. I breathe deeply, and enjoy the sound of the light bulb coming of when I yank on the pull cord over my head.

I survey the attic with a soft smile. I can remember years of pulling the Christmas tree down and scurrying down the stairs trying not to fall. I remember the sound of boxes sliding down the stairs and my Aunt Carmen telling my mom and Aunt Susanne to be careful or they would break every ornament and we wouldn’t have Christmas at all. Then she’s set them to making paper ornaments and how would they like that?

I remember laying in the floor of the attic, getting dusty and my mom yelling at me. I can still see Moriah dancing around, wrapped up in tinsel she had found laying about.
In the dim light of the attic, I can see myself as a child, full of wonder at the treasure trove of games, dolls and things to explore.

I am brought sharply to by the feeling of Gail’s head smacking into my rear end.

"Hey Why’d you stop?"

"Sorry," I feel a little sheepish. "I got lost in memories. I’ll keep going up."

"Sure," I can hear her grinning at me. "Why don’t you share with me while we wander around up here? Like why we have to come up here?"

"Sure." I forget how many people have real trees. I crouch over low, stepping over the toys and boxes as I move to the rear of the attic.

"Most people have real trees, but we got a fake one. There were a lot of good reasons for it. Grandma has a pine allergy. Its mild, but its better to have the fake tree, because she doesn’t sneeze as much, you know?

Gran also has a bit of a black thumb with Christmas trees, from what I hear. They had them when mom and all of the aunts were younger, but I guess she kept killing them. Grandpa had to sneak off a few years and get a new tree on Christmas Eve because they would find it half dead and wilting and brown.

Plus there’s the cat. One ear they had a real tree, and I guess their old cat ate some of the needles and got really sick. I don’t remember it, I was too young, but Grandpa used to go on and on about how nasty green cat vomit can be. When they got the new one they figured they had better not risk this one having the pine appetite as well. I don’t think it matter though.

This one likes to get up inside the tree. He usually leaves the ornaments alone, but he thinks he needs to lay up inside the branches. We have to work pretty hard to keep him out of the tree, and to keep him from knocking it over. A real one would be even more of a nightmare, I am sure.

I am sure you saw the fireplace. That was another one of Grandpa’s worries. All those dead trees were combustible. I always put it in the corner away from the fireplace anyway. But I guess Gran likes the look of the tree and the fire for a long time. I just don’t think its practical. Especially not with all of the kids running around. Recipe for disaster if you ask me.
Ah, here we are."

Back in the corner is where we always keep the box with the Christmas tree and all the ornament boxes. I don’t know what possesses us to put them in the back. I walk past some boxes every year, some that have never moved, but I think habit makes us put it where we always know we can find it.

I can see Gail surveying the boxes, taking stock of everything in the corner.

"Which ones do we need to get?" The wariness in her voice makes me sure she knows what my answer will be.

"All of them." I follow her eyes again, this times, letting my gaze linger over the large pile of plastic tubs stacked haphazardly around the corner, and I counted them, while she took stock of the size, and amount of them.

"There’s only six outside the tree box." I try to sound nonchalant.

"Six Six, Barb. Six. How many are ornaments?" Her incredulity is almost too much. I can feel my shoulders start to shake with laughter.

"Those are the ornaments. The decorations are over there." I point to the other corner, and I can see she is almost faint with the surprise.

"Wow. You said you take Christmas seriously, but…" She trails off and I burst out laughing.

"Come on, we’ll get everything inside so you can inspect it." I lift one edge of the tree box and tug it over to the stairs. She follows me, still looking a bit surprised.

"Now, all you have to do is lower it down to me as I walk down the stairs. We have to go slow, though, okay? Because I’m-"

"A total klutz. I remember." Her pointed teeth are flashing at me from over the box.
Slowly, we lower the tree down. I try hard to remember how my grandpa used to tell me how to get down the stairs backwards. Thinking of how far apart each step is, I wobble a little all the way to the bottom. I can feel that I’ve made it, and then suddenly, I realize I missed one.

Falling off the bottom step of the attic, I am discovering, is humiliating. Gail is at the top of the stairs, laughing her funny-I-can’t-quit-laughing laugh, which sounds like a cross between a ‘tee hee’ and a ‘har har harp.’ I can’t help but laugh little too, as I lay here on the floor with a 7 foot
Christmas tree on my chest.

The box is bobbing up and down and I am almost sure I can’t quit laughing right now.

"Come down here and get this thing off me," I call up to her. "And stop that laughing. You sound like a seal that’s eaten a parakeet."

"Harp har har," She answers as she shimmies down the stairs. She lifts the box off of me and we head back up the stairs for the rest of the stuff.

* * *
"This is a lot of decoration. Where does it all go?"

We stand in the middle of the living room, looking at all the boxes, now spread out in front of us, with paper strewn everywhere.

"That’s the fun part, putting it somewhere different each year. I used to go looking for my favorite decorations every year. Especially the ornaments. Because Grandma would theme the tree, and we would have to look for our old favorites among the new theme.

She did a lot of great themes. I liked the gingerbread theme the best. I have a few gingerbread people I look for each year. I try to remember which box we put them in, so I can lay them out. They go on last, so I can put them where I can seethem on the tree. I am sure you’ll find a favorite as well.

Here, take this end of the lights and put it in the socket, see if they work." I pass her a strand of lights, and turn to go back to the boxes, to hunt for more strands.

"Ahh " Gail’s exclamation takes me by surprise.

"Hey, what’s wrong?"

"Oh, the cat. I forgot about the cat. He just jumped out at me, and I wasn’t expecting it. Awww. He’s cute. Here, kitty, kitty."

"Be careful. He’s not that nice. I mean, fun to play with, but he doesn’t like to be pet."

"What’s his name? Aww, you’re a sweet thing aren’t you? Oww Little devil He bit me." I watch with my I-told-you-so look as she jerks her hand back, shaking off the bite.

"Aww. Did the widdle angel bite you?" I tease. "His name is Lucifer. Appropriate isn’t it. Grandma said he was too cute to be a sweet cat when we got him. She was right. He’s beautiful."
"But deadly, right?" Gail giggles at me.

"Well, he did bite you…" I trail off, reaching for another strand of lights. "I think we have enough if you want to start putting the lights on the tree.

* *
The Christmas ornaments are all very special to me. Seeing each one brings back special memories. Sometimes, as I unwrap them from their newspaper, or remove them from their boxes, I feel a pull at the corners of my eyes.

Some of the ornaments have been gifts to grandma over the years. Some of them have been souvenirs brought home from trips. Some are the remnants of themes grandma had chosen that managed to make the cut some garage sale season.

I recount the stories as I pull them out. It seems a lot like a museum in here during this time, with me thinking of the past. Gail sits in the floor, on occasion offering up a comment or a question about a particular ornament.

I can see she is living my Christmases with me as I tell her. I can see sadness in her eyes, reflecting my own, sometimes; mirroring my wish that there would be the happy times that we had when these ornaments were first placed on the tree.

"What about these?" She asks as she hangs a hippopotamus and monkey side by
side on the tree.

"Those went to a set of Noah’s Ark animals. When I was 8 or so, Gran decided to have a Bible story themed tree. We found this set, it had Noah on the little boat, and a whole menagerie of animals. Peacocks, giraffes, elephants, zebras…it was actually very cool. When that tree theme crashed and burned, we kept the Noah’s Ark because we liked the animals on it. "

"Oh, is the rest of the set in here somewhere? Should I separate these two?" She dug around in
the box she had been pulling the ornaments out of.

"Don’t bother. Lucifer has been eating the animals one by one for years. You should have seen the look on mom’s face when she found the boat with Noah’s head chewed off in the floor."

"Har, har, har." Gail laughed. "I bet that was hilarious. What did she do?"

"She called the cat the devil. It was fantastic. She was going on about the sacrilege and all that. Uncle Jeff stepping in and was like ‘He’s just a cat, Charlotte. He doesn’t know any better.’ She really went off then. Poor Jeff. You’ll like him. Anyway. I saved it, and thought I might put it in her stocking this year.

What do you think?"

"That’s great She’s going to make a scene, though." Gail looked worried.

"Don’t worry," I could feel the gloom creping over me. "She’ll make a scene long before we get to the stockings. This will be a little comic relief. I promise. We’ll need it by the end of the night. I have to tell you, things have been a bit depressing the last few years. Its not like it used to be."

"Its okay." Gail answers cheerfully. "We’ll make it better. It’s a good joke. How about this one?"
Gal passes me what looks like a little pair of gold knitting scissors on a red ribbon and smiles. I can tell she is trying to change the subject. I let her.

"These are from the lady across the street. Her name is Sunshine. She gave Gran these because they do needlework and all that together. I think she has a pair on her tree as well. Only hers are silver. I don’t like them, but Gran thinks they’re cute. But I appreciate what they mean to the both of them."

"Wait, wait. Her name is Sunshine? Really, her name is Sunshine." Gail goggled at the scissors, as if they were named Sunshine as well.

"Yes, her name was Sunshine. I heard all of her family names were funny. Gran says she had a sister names Rainbow. I dunno. Maybe their parents were hippies. But she is really nice. I likeher a lot. And she makes a mean gooseberry pie."

"Right." She draws out the word, as if she thinks I am pulling her leg. But when I don’t answer, she goes back to the box in front of her, sifting through the paper to find ornaments to hang.

"Have you spotted all Twelve Days of Christmas yet?" I ask.

"No, are they all here? No gease-a-layin’ been eaten yet?" She teases, scanning the tree for the ornaments I’ve just mentioned.

"No, apparently his ornament proclivity only stretches as far as biblical characters. Do you think it’s the name?"

"Nah."

"Anyway, Gran did the Twelve Days of Christmas thing really hot and heavy. See those pears over there? They go in the spaces in between the branches. Gran loved how they looked like they were frosted. Oh, and for the sake of continuity with the song, and someone making a remark about it, put the partridge next to one of the pears."

"Sure. What does a partridge look like anyway?"

"Um, it is a small bird with a long tail and a short beak. Its usually brown and white. I think Gran’s has a "pear tree’ bit in its mouth. "

"Got it. I will duly hang it up near a pear for you."

"Thanks for that," I mock. "The whole set is in there somewhere. Twelve drummers, eleven pipers, ten lords, all that jazz. Actually, the maids a milking are a little freaky. I don’t like them. I’ve tried to get rid of them a few times, feed them to Lucifer. No luck."

I reach behind me, to the coffee table and pull out a set of ornaments I had brought with me last night, and set them next to me. Pulling out another set from the pile, I smile as I begin to lay them out.

"Come over here, and look at these, Gail. You’ll like these a lot. We have picture frame ornaments with all of the family members in them. See the blonde with the poufy hair? That’s Aunt Carmen in the ‘80’s. We tease her about that picture every year. You have to put it on the front of the tree, right at eye level so everyone can get a good look at it, because she’ll
move it to the back of the tree before the end of the night. I swear, she only makes it worse for
herself."

I watch as Gail shifts through the ornaments, taking a minute to pause and examine each one. She flips them over, tongue between her teeth, looking as though she is guessing who each person is before she flips it over to look at where the name has been engraved on the back. I can feel the moment she reaches mine, because her pointed teeth begin to show a little more and her nose starts to wrinkle up the way it always does when she is laughing.

"This is you, isn’t it?" she giggles at me, holding up a pewter snowflake ornament.

"Yes, that’s me. Put it away. I know I look awful in that picture. They took it when I was in high school I was going trough my ‘I need to be gothic because no one understands my angst’ phase."
"Oh, I see. And you’ve left that phase now," she says with a very serious look on her face.

"Yes," I retort defensively. "I have as a matter of fact. Or at least I started bathing and washing my hair."

"Hygiene is a good thing, sis."

"So I’ve heard." I roll my eyes and turn back to the pile that is in front of me. "But, something is missing. I think you might like to look at these as well. I hand her the pile I had brought from the evening before.

"You didn’t." Her smile betrays her pleasure, before she even looks at the ornaments I hand her. She knows what they are, I can see it written all over her face. I flush, unaccustomed to these moments where I feel like the sweet one of the two of us. "Do you want to add yours to the tree, or would you like me to hang them up?"

She is turning each one of them over and over in her hand, as if she can’t quite believe that she has them.

"This makes us officially part of the family, you know." she smiles.

"I know," I answer back, rubbing my hand up and down the side of her arm in affection. "I wouldn’t have it any other way. You know, Nathan gave me an awfully funny look when I asked him for photos of you guys that he didn’t want back. But after I explained myself he didn’t mind nearly as much. Now, I did have to go to a little more effort to get a picture of him. You’ll see
that is his high school yearbook photo. I went to his old high school and got a copy made. I am sure he’ll love it."

"He’ll love it. Thanks, Barb. You really are very sweet when you want to be," I can see her
tearing up again. The feeling it gives me is one I haven’t had in a long time, like I belong, like I am special. Like love.

"Now, don’t go getting all misty and cute on me now. We’ve got work to do."

"Hateful bitch." She smiles.

"That’s better." I reply with a grin. Reaching down to the box in front of me, I get a hold of a small package wrapped in Christmas paper. I smile as I unroll it, revealing bit by bit the little ornaments inside. "Come here and look at these, they are my favorite ornaments."

I pass the ornaments to her after examining each one with pleasure. They are from when we had a gingerbread themed tree, and I think I am the only one who really liked that theme other than James. We had saved these little ornaments from the yearly garage sale purge for several years before everyone gave up and let usput them out without a fight. Every year I wrap
them in Christmas paper so I can find them easily.

The first one is a snowman, who is also an ice cream cone. The sides of him are dripping over the waffle cone edges and he has a bit of a lopsided look I find oddly endearing. He sparkles a little from the sprinkles that decorate him, and he is slightly cross eyes because the person who "hand painted" him got the letters on his candy eyes just a little off center.

The next is a little gingerbread girl. She has her little feet and face outlined by "frosting" and her dress is decorated by little chocolate candies with the word "Noel" spelled out on the bottom. Her little gingerbread arms are loaded down with heart-shaped cookies and long, thin
peppermint striped candies. You can barely see her eyes from the cover of her red licorice hair, which actually falloff the back of her gingerbread head, a little lopsided, but very cute.

Last, and best for me, is a little gingerbread Santa. He is pathetically over-decorated. Peppermint swirls line his little gingerbread suit in intervals far too frequent. He has a cookie that is shaped as a star in the middle, a little to far down to be called a belt buckle, and looking far more like a cookie codpiece. His frosted beard is cure, but the person who made him designed a little licorice tongue to stick out from it, as if he is making fun of all the naughty children in the world.

"They’re a little pathetic aren’t they Barb?" Gail turns them over, bit by bit and looks a little astonished that these might be my favorites. "These certainly weren’t what I was expecting for favorite Christmas ornaments. You’re a softy inside aren’t you? You wanted to save these sad little ornaments from the trash bin, huh?"

"Don’t let it get out, okay?" I joke with her, slightly uneasy that she noticed my love for these sad little ornaments, which drew me to them because of how awful they were. "Mom thinks I keep them because she hates them."

"Alright, then." She grabs another ornament as I hang the Santa on the tree, well out of Lucifer’s reach. "Hey Is this a hobbit? I think it is Who put this in here Tell me it was you. You’re a closet nerd too "

Gail lifts up a tiny Frodo figure with a look of ecstasy on her face. She turns him over and over, examining the hair on his tiny hobbit feet.

"I am, but that wasn’t me that put that one on there. Maria did that. She’s one of Catherine’s twin girls. She is obsessed with Lord of the Rings. She said we needed to paytribute to all the little people, not just the elves."

Gail’s eyes bugged out a little. "Are you serious? How very, erm, politically correct of her."

"Very." I answer. "Well, we’re almost done. Do you want to put the star on top of the tree this year? I mean, I get to every year…" I trail off, hoping she can tell this is a big moment for me, and I want to include her in it. It’s actually my favorite part of the Christmas tree decoration. I loved to watch as a child putting it on.

"Sure. I mean, thank you. I would love to."

As I watch her wobble up the ladder and reach for the top of the tree with a feeling in my chest
that reminds me a lot of the feelings I got as a child. Not quite the same, because along side the wonder of how big and beautiful the Christmas tree is, I also feel a bit of pride that we made something so beautiful together.

Gail startles me by wiping a tear from the side of my cheek; one I hadn’t even noticed was falling. I try desperately to pull myself together.

"Well, that’s done. So now all we have to do is load up the squirt gun, and we’ll be all set."

Gail looks puzzled.

""Squirt gun?"

"Yeah. It keeps the cat out of the tree. And its fun to shoot him with it."

She laughs.

"Alright sis. Lock and load."

An Extraordinary Life...

2006-02-17T23:17:00.000Z

Last years NaNoWriMo, Chapter One.

----------------------

"We have 50 per cent of the world's wealth, but 6.3 per cent of its population. In this situation, our real job in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships that allow us to maintain this disparity. To do so we have to dispense with all sentimentality, we should cease thinking about human rights, the raising of living standards, and democratisation" - George Kennan, US Cold War Planner, 1948

1 :

Before I start, before we start, before anything else, before birth even, remember, no one can conquer death. No one is special. No one is gifted. No one is a genius. One only occasionally sees flashes of genius, and translates them. I wasn't, nor could I ever be, what people thought I was. As a person, I wasn't special.

I did the same things everyone did. Ate food made in the same factories, used the same electricity, slept in the same beds, wore the same clothes, made in the same factories, massproduced individuality. I shaved like everyone else, washed my armpits like everyone else, combed my hair. Like everyone else, everything I did.

I wasn't special. I just had an extraordinary life. I don't have an extraordinary life anymore. Maybe ordinary, or in fact extra ordinary, but not extraordinary.

I remember Castello. By the time you read this I am probably dead. Dead, or disappeared. Found in an impossible, improbable suicide, a rare form of laboratory cancer, a obscure flu, hanged from a stairwell in my own house, a mysterious lack of fingerprints in the house, a single gunshot wound with a trajectory impossible for the weapon I was holding, a multiple cause of death, a drug overdose of 94 milligrams, an impotent overdose with mere traces of Tylenol, a previously secret drug addiction for a man in his thirties with a mysterious lack of a large number of cash withdrawls from my generic bank account. By the time this is published, I am either under surveillance, or deceased. Which one matters not. They know, and they will try to silence me.

I need to stay alive, to tell my story, to sell my story. I need to make money. Fundamentally, I am unemployable. A year - or two years - with a weapon on either arm, placed in high-risk combat situations in countries I can't remember the names of, or countries that don't exist anymore, makes it difficult to integrate. I can't go back to a life of the normal. The prison of the real. I can't live like that. A world of queues and of bills and bank statements. They sentenced me to forty years of boredom.

You train someone for a year, and you make him a killing machine for two years, and for those two years, that's what I do. I kill. I render. And then I'm dumped, like the war was a one night stand, some intense affair that's forgotten about, and I'm left at the corner as they speed off into the night, and I have to forget everything. I forget that if someone yelled at me because I was late for work, or because I wasn't smiling enough and pleasing customers, that in another country I would've been able to jab them with a machine gun until they were quiet. I forget that, weeks earlier, I would've been able to break their jaw with a rifle butt and nobody would've arrested me. Hell, they've made me a hero.

That's what they did. They made a Hero out of me. And they forgot the man. Superman is more than just Super, he was also a man.

I took an oath, under the penalty of death, that no matter what I saw or heard I would never divulge the information. Also, I signed a waiver that states I would willingly give up my life if I was found guilty of 'treason'. I am a traitor. I have commited treason. And the reason? I violated an agreement. I broke my word. I lied when I signed the document that stated an act of treason included disclosing : "ANYTHING that mentions the details of daily operations at this facility, when outside the confinement of this base."

Don't believe me. I am a liar. This is a fantasy. What I am about to tell you never happened. I am an outpatient in a facility. I am on a medication you may have heard of. In a world where our reality is defined purely by electronic signals firning between synapses, by perceptions of reality received inside my head, how can I tell what is real, what isn't real, and when that reality is received incorrectly, when there is a fault between the eyes and the ears and the brain, how am I know what is real and what isn't?

My name is unimportant. But the Official Secrets Act forbids me from telling you what my name is. I could be anyone. I could be living in the block of apartments next door to you. I could be sat next to you on the commuter train. Or behind you in the queue for groceries at the Supermarket. I could be standing next to you in the queue for the ATM. You'll never know, and I'll never want you to know who I used to be and where I used to go. What I used to do. That's a black book in it's own right.

It's not the black book made of former lovers - the details of them all, their names, their birthdates, their foibles, a map of their tattoos, the memory of the shape of their genitals, their backs arched on hotel beds and suburban bedrooms, their hair forgotten as their faces curl into something transcedent. Like drugs, but cheaper. It's not that black book made of 22 names and 17 tattoos and 39 cities and several fetishes and late night, fumbling, lusty phone calls and drunken confessions. It's not that one. That's the book inside of us, made of songs about girls cooking chicken soup and what she said.

That's everyone's story. Your shy glances across nightclubs, across bus stops, across internet chatrooms and flirting sites, across ineedlove dot com, across the cyberspace, the love made out of circumstance, out of financial necessity, out of a desire for a friend, out of a need not to be alone, out of a need not to keep secrets. Out of a need to make a narrative life out of the day to day situation we find ourselves in.

I want to blend in. I want to become no-one. I want to be back in a world and to unsee what I have seen. I want to undo what I have done. It's too late. The past is a country w ecan never revisit and a world we can never change.

I can't talk to my lover about this- if I have one. I can't tell anyone. I know it can't be a secret unless someone knows, but right now, I know, and the secret is like a branding iron, burning my skin. I need to tell someone, so maybe, sometime, someone, somewhere will see this, read this, understand my confession, see the facts and the truth and the whole messy business inbetween, and recognise that this, this thing we called life, is but merely a skin over the muscle, sinew, bone, the blood beneath the veins, the facts of the matter, and the reality lies somewhere between fact and truth, between perception and reality, between desire and orgasm and conversation afterwards.

The one who sees me at my most vulnerable, my gabbering, incoherent self in the moments as I wake or as I sleep, the moments when I come to in the middle of the night and say "Monkey stole my money", they don't know what I am going to tell you. If I die and tell no one, no one will ever know this, and a life will be lost with no story to tell. Even to her, I am actor in the play that is my life.

If there is a her. I miss the love I used to have. I miss what used to be. But the world has changed me. I am less lovable than I used to be. The innocence has been lived out of me.

We're all actors of course. Everytime we stay quiet instead of saying something, every time we profess a diplomatic response instead of uttering our thoughts, every time we wear a suit, or smile at someone who wins the Oscar instead of us, we're acting. We act all the time. The train conductor, the Sainsbury's Checkout Girl, the slut in the bedroom, the mother, we're all acting, fulfilling various roles in our lives, showcasing parts of my / our personality. Our everyday lives are facades, no more real than thinking a Hamburger isn't actually made out of Cow or Pig. And that the animal people make kebabs out of really does have a 3 foot thick leg with a square bone in the middle made out of steel.

Self-delusion is as important a part of reality and survival as realisation that we are all deluding ourselves. We know it's a lie, and we swallow it up, we suck it like a vacuum, and we know that the only way to enjoy this comfortable lie is not to admit that it is a lie. We all believe ourselves to be special, to be amazing, to be unique and beautiful snowflakes, and we're just a collection of cells made out of DNA and semen and ambiotic fluid, fuelled on carrion and water and bile.

We're just one of the millions. Of the 6,000 million on the planet, the telephone number, long hand-memory of Pi type figure, the 6, 243, 172, 098 people on the planet, I am just one. And whilst there may be more atoms in a glass of water than there are people in the world, how big is an Atom? Or more correctly, how small are we? How small am I? Just another parasite on the face of the world. If Earth is a body (of what? Water? Pollution? iPods?), then we are the cancer.

A virus with shoes. Killing the host. We multiply and multiply, and we think not of the consequences or the sustainability of all things. And one day we will be extinct. And we will deserve it. Man is a bad animal.

Sometimes I look at who I used to be in disgust. Sometimes with admiration. Sometimes I wonder why I didn't just take the money and run. Sometimes I think that maybe yes, there are higher powers than money in this world, and what I did, and what I do, is more honourable and more beautiful than just merely doing my job, I may very well have said at one point, to someone, about something, "Just doing my Job Madam", with the mock humility one always should have when they've averted disaster and saved the world from imminent destruction again, but to me, it was never just a job, but a way of life.

Where I live, nobody knows me. Nobody knows the real me. Even then, nobody knew me. I was a cipher, an interpretation, an icon, not a real human being, with real human feelings, and backaches, and stubborn ingrowing toenails. I'm just a man, like Flash Gordon was just a man. You can only do this so long. So far, so hard, before you stop, before you look at your life, and know that you can go no further. And now I am living a life I never thought I would, a quiet, anonymous life. I can mingle in crowds I never used to be able to.

When I first disappeared, it was a long time before I could venture outside. It had been so long as one person, I'd forgotten who I really was. Or more correctly, I'd become the part I was playing, and I had stopped being who I really was. John Doe, born 1973, had ceased to exist, and become a former life, like we become former lovers, like we become former friends, former children, now grown up to be men.

Trying to work myself back to the innocence, to who I used to be before this happened, before I became a Government hired killer, it's like trying to claw back your virginity, like trying to go back to a life without electricity, like trying to rewind the world to a way of life without atomic bombs. It was impossible, and bullshit to think that it could ever occur. The journey of life is always forward, never back.

For the first year or so, I decompressed. Like a deep sea diver with the bends, I spent an age in a cage, bored, reading, watching, waiting, being probed and treated, being analysed and taken apart and being put back together, like a jigsaw, like a Airfix model kit. Except I was a human being, and when you take human beings apart they dissolve, they die. Like an Alien on a Roswell Bench, as soon as you open the skin, remove the parts to see how they work, and then put them back together, they don't. Something changed. The one thing that makes them work, that makes a person live, once that dies you can't kickstart a heart like a bad rock song. It took a very long time before I was able to go back into the world, to stand in an aisle in jeans held up by a belt and wear three year old trainers with flat soles and the tread crushed out of them, clad in a generic t-shirt for a popculture icon, maybe something witty in khaki that mocked our established cultural heroes, a parody of David Hasselhoff that says "You are nothing without Your ROBOT car! NOTHING!!!", or maybe a plain white shirt that is as bland and featureless as the life I am trying to live now.

That's the wonderful thing about anonymity. You can be anyone - and no-one at the same time. Anyone can be a millionaire - but not everyone can. Not everyone could do what I did, but anyone could. It just happened to be me. I can't help that.

We have manifest destiny here in the US. The idea that whatever happens, whatever powers are gifted to us, whatever oil fields we rape and pillage, whoever we have to kill and enslave to get cheap Coke and plentiful cotton, however many Indians we have to ghettoise, abuse, and steal from in order for our 4 x 4's, our ranches, our bungalows, our SUV's, our 10MPG Hulks, our multiplexes, our skyscrapers, our tower blocks, our projects, all these things, they are our reward for being God's Chosen People. Being given this reward is our payment on Earth for what we cannot wait for in Heaven.

I had my Manifest Destiny too. The life I lived, the choices I made, the people I killed, the women (and men) I fucked, these were too, God's choices for me, I was His Will made flesh. If there was a God. I saw enough to know that if there is a God, he is a quiet God. And his long silence, the one that lasts our lifetime and speaks without words, that will keep us in communion, that is his way of talking to us. His way of saying I'm Not There.

Thes ethinsg I did were not my will, but his. If there is a God. Then I was absolved. My sins were washed clean.

After all, if Humans have Gods, surely then, so do animals. Or do they? Does the lack of a Dolphin Diety, a Great Dolphin called say Klof, who oversees the world of all dolphins, and sees their ascenion to heaven in the days before the destruction of The Earth, mean that dolphins are more - or less - evolved? Do Vogons have their messiah?

In these times, we built our strikeforce. We need our myths, our legends. A couple builds it's own mythology, it's own fairytales, it's moments of Great Import within their love, from the first moment they met in a club or a pub or a bar or a trainstation or a website or a supermarket, walking up and down the single meal aisles looking for similar victims or spinsters or bachelors or singletons who may also be looking for Mr Right Now or Miss Right, these all become moments of narrative importance. We can remember the music we heard, the sweep of grand Mobyesque chords on the Movie Soundtrack of our lives, the camera views the nudge of flesh across aisles dispassionately, a conversation that seemingly could be nothing or everything in the movie called our lives, a bit part actors becomes a minor character, becomes the love interest, becomes the woman or man who will define us, the Batman to my Robin, the Yin to my Yang, the Lennon to my McCartney, and all these things become our lives.

I know they're going to make a film out of this. I hope they cast Ewan McGregor if they make it in the next ten years. Drew Barrymore would do well as the love interest.

A man can dream. I dream of a mankind free from our tyranny, a human race that can be won.

In these times, we need our heroes. We need people who show that you can transcend this world, move beyond man and the mundane to become a Superman, an Uberworld, A life outside - extra - the ordinary. An extraordinary life. Popstars, rap stars, entepreneurs. We're all selling a brand.

That's all I was. The physical embodiment of a brand. The moment of an ideal made flesh. My brand? Freedom.

Hang A Shining Star, Chaper 2

2006-02-17T21:06:00.000Z

Chapter One is only two posts down. If you can't scoll down I can't be arsed to link to it. Got a compliment on the last one [thanks] so if you want me to put you out of your misery, better tell me :)

AG

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"There is no ideal Christmas; only the one Christmas you decide to make a reflection of your values, desires, affections, traditions." * Bill McKibben

Chapter 2

7:30 a.m.

The air is still quite chilly this morning, although the sun has already risen into the clear morning sky. I look up, and note that there are few clouds, which is a good thing considering all the time we are going to be spending outdoors today putting up the lights.

My cup of coffee is warm against my fingers as I watch out Grandma’s front bay window. There is a soft smell of Irish Cream tickling my nose as the steam swirls up from the mug, creating a warm mist that causes my nose to dew up just a bit with the warmth that contrasts with the cold of the window I have pressed my nose against.

Grandma is still asleep in her room for a change, and I told her to stay in bed for a while this
year. This year, I know I will have company putting up all the decorations. Any other year, I would mock myself for my blind faith. I would berate myself for being to hopeful. No one comes, not anymore. But I have a guarantee; my new step-sister Abigail.

My mother, if I can say anything for her, is a persistent woman. She stuck out five years of miserable marriage to my and Moriah’s father before leaving him. Her next three marriages were successively shorter, and the only benefit I can see coming from them is that she didn’t have any more kids to make miserable with crazy visitation schedules. Still, being a self-proclaimed woman of faith and, as I said, persistent; my mother saw no reason why her fifth marriage could not be a happy one.

Abigail is the oldest daughter of my mother’s fifth husband, Nathan. He had been previously married before, unlike the rest of my mother’s husbands, so maybe he knew what he was getting into. Maybe not. But he did have children by his previous wife, four of them, and hence I have Abigail and her other sisters to love as my own.

Nathan is also pretty close to my mother’s age and so I am fortunate enough to have a step-sister relatively close to my age. Gail and I bonded almost strait away, and she has become not just a sister to me, but a good friend as well.

I was not surprised when she volunteered to join me during my ritual Christmas preparations this year. Gail has a sweet disposition that always manages to stun me. It seems her patience never runs out, a product no doubt of helping to raise her younger sisters. Gail has a remarkable ability to read people, and always seems to know what I am thinking. Of course, she is no angel. She has a dry sense of humor and a biting bit of sarcasm when roused. This, I think, is a by product of treating her father more like a peer than a parent for most of her life.

She acts as if she is very eager to learn about the traditions I had as a child; and whether she does it because it is to humor me, or whether she is genuinely interested, I am going to be glad to have her. Years of doing this by myself, or with Grandma have started to wear on me a bit, and I will be happy for the company.

There is also a voice in the back of my mind that keeps hinting that this may be the time for me to bring back the old ways from my childhood. That maybe, just maybe, I will find a kindred spirit in Gail, and she will love the traditions the way I do, for their own sake. For the memories that can be made from the yearly habit of trying desperately to love everything about your family.

Whatever her motivations, I feel a small thrill run through my chest when I see her bouncy, royal blue Toyota pull up the drive. I can tell I am smiling, as I set my mug on the little table that sits just inside the front door, and reach for the knob.

The shuffle of her feet becomes louder as she skips up the driveway with her half hopping, half lazy gait. I give up all attempt at pretense and pull open the door, relishing the squelch and swoosh it makes against the cold air spilling into the house, and rush out the door.

Gail is smiling too, a crooked, sleepy smile that just barely exposes her slightly pointed teeth to the morning sun. I have a sneaking suspicion she saw me looking out the window.

"Good morning I am so glad you are here." I pull her into a hug, and she pokes me in the side.

"Cheerful this morning, aren’t we? Not our usual bundle of sarcasm and cynicism. I think I like the holidays. You’re friendlier." She wrinkles her nose as she laughs, and hugs me back.

"Oh, it’s early yet, dear. But I am excited."

"How did you get here so early? You look like you have been up for hours already."

"I have," I laugh, tugging her inside. "I always stay the night."

"But you live a block and a half away."

"I know. But I always stay the night. It’s tradition."

"Ahh, yes. The traditions," she teases, as she settles on to Grandma’s couch; crossing her legs. "Tell me about what I have gotten myself into."

"Well, we have a rather full day." I begin.

"I should think so, if I have to be here at 7:30 in the morning What time is the party?"

"7:30."

"Ah." She raises her eyebrows. "So, my family does not have any Christmas traditions. Since this is my first time at your family Christmas, I suppose you better bring me up to speed."
I take a moment to wonder if my excitement is palpable or not. I know it must be radiating off of
me. It seems so long since I had someone to plan my day with. Year in and year out, Grandma always knew what to do. I grin again.

"Well, first, we are going to get the Christmas tree set up, and then we will go outside and put up a light display that will rival the Plaza in New York. Then we will come inside, make Christmas dinner, change clothes and party the night away."

"Wow." Her eyes are wider than I thought a person’s could be. Oops. Maybe I shocked her a bit.

"I know," I giggle in a sarcastic way, "All that fun in just one day. Its almost too much.

Really, the family Christmas traditions have begun to wane. As you can see, no one in the family comes here to help out anymore. Used to, you could hardly move with all the aunts and uncles and children running about the place. No one seems to care anymore, though. No one misses they way it was. Except me, I suppose. I wish you would have had a chance to meet Grandpa. He was fantastic. And he kept the family in line, throughout the day. Oh, I forgot, you’ll get to meet everyone in the family for the first time since mom’s wedding too. That should be fun."

"Oodles, I am sure." Abby rolls her eyes.

"Speaking of family life, how are my mom and Nathan. Is she coming over today?"

"She and dad are doing fine. I think he is a little overwhelmed with her Christmas excitement, though. Did you know she puts a Christmas tree in every room of thehouse?"

"Sick, isn’t it?"

"Well, the girls love it. They keep telling her they want to go get more ornaments for their tree. She says they will later. They are supposed to be coming by later this afternoon to help with the cooking. Charlotte says that she has some ideas for the dinner for tonight."

"Oh, gosh We better get going if we want to get the turkey going on time "

Untitled - chapter 4

2006-02-15T08:24:00.000Z

Hello.

I'm working on something visceral and American Psycho-like, but as I compose that in my head and work out how you go about nailing someone's tongue to a table, here's the next chapter of my Nano novel.

Enjoy.

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Previously in our exciting serialisation: Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3

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Rob and I drove up to Charnborough in separate cars. He was heading straight back into Oxford after the open day, and I was heading back up to Nottingham. It was actually quite strange to be driving myself there after so many years of arguing with my brothers over who had the pleasure of sitting in the passenger seat next to my mum, and who had to sit in the back. I actually got lost at one point, but managed to find my way to the sloping drive down to the school, parked up in front of the croquet lawn and steeled myself for the hard part: meeting people.

The headmaster had changed since my time, and when I was approached by a small, weasley man with a pointed nose and a pronounced stoop, I guessed it was probably him.
“And you can only be one of the Archer clan!” Both of my brothers had also attended this school, and apparently although it had been more than a decade since any of us had last been taught here, our names were still remembered.
“Yes. Hello. James Archer”
“Andrew Meredith. Headmaster. Welcome, welcome. Drinks are on the main lawn” He was a bit of a sniffly little man, all things considered, and although he was being perfectly cordial, I couldn’t really warm to him. He didn’t recognise Rob, even though both he and his brother had also attended this school. Rob has always been fairly low-key and is generally happy to be anonymous. Maybe that was a good thing. Right now I certainly envied him anyway. We were ushered onto the lawn and helped to a glass of Pimms. It’s a funny drink really, and it’s not something I ever go out of my way to drink, but in the right place it can be just the thing. I had to remember that I had to drive home, but right now the alcohol seemed like a really good idea.

There weren’t actually all that many people there, and the ones who were there were all much older looking than I was anticipating. I suppose it’s easy to assume that a school only really exists when you are actually there, but Charnbourough had been churning out pupils to be devoured by the great English Public School system for the best part of a century. To see that some older alumni had turned up was actually quite comforting for me though, as it meant that I probably wasn’t really going to have to make small-talk about the good old days. There were a couple of familiar faces, but in the main I was able to keep them at a safe distance.

“James Archer” It was a statement, not a question. I turned around to find myself face-to-face with a small, dapper man. A little older than I remembered him, but it has been a while. My old housemaster.
“Mr. Dawson. How are you?”
“I’m well thank you very much. How are your parents? Your brothers?”
This is small talk, of course. I am capable of small talk, I really am. I don’t like it very much, but I am capable of it. This is not a difficult conversation to have. Mr. Dawson is a wonderful man. He seemed fearsome when I was seven years old, but he really grew on me. He was my housemaster, my maths teacher and my choirmaster. He used to smoke like a chimney, then he gave up, collected the money that he had saved and bought himself a car. He’s still teaching, albeit not at Charnborough. Blah blah blah. He’s a nice man, and I’m pleased to see him, but small talk is small talk and I wasn’t listening really, so I can’t expect to remember what he said. I had very similar conversations with my old science teacher, my old geography teacher and my old French teacher. Nice to see all of them. Not much to report. I’m getting itchy feet to have a wander around, and I can see that Charles Hodgkinson is edging ever closer. He was a contemporary of mine, and unless my hearing is deceiving me, he still makes that odd croaking noise which was the only thing that he was notable at school. I do hope he hasn’t waited since the 80s for this moment. That would be quite sad. Or maybe he’s just come to have a look around his old school and is pleased to see some faces from his past. That wouldn’t be sad at all. Isn’t that essentially why I’m here? I don’t make a croaking noise though, do I? I nearly ask Rob for some reassurance, but manage to restrain myself instead.

“Let’s go for a wander.” He’s sort of hovering at my shoulder, and I think he’s trying to make himself invisible. I reckon he’s happier at the idea of moving away from these people than I am.
“Ok”
We slink off into the main building and start to explore.

I don’t know what I was expecting, but it’s all still there and everything seems to still be in the same place. I wonder if they still have two shifts for dinner, one at five-thirty and one at six? I wonder if the custard still comes in a giant vat with a crust of skin about an inch thick on the top. I bet it isn’t as nice if it doesn’t. It’s in the dining room that I realise why the Archer name hasn’t been forgotten at Charnborough. There are honours boards lining the walls detailing things like Captain of School, Captain of Rugby, Scholars and that kind of thing. Over the whole time that I was there, I must have read some of those names hundreds of times, thousands of times. I used to wonder what kind of a person Stephen Capley must have been to have appeared on those boards so many times. I’d say he must have been an unbelievable geek, but that doesn’t tally with being captain of rugby. Would you really want to know him? I think I’d have hated him. A goody-two shoes at best, and a horrible, crawling worm at worst. Of course, by the time I had left, the name James Archer was on the boards six times – one more time than Stephen Capley. God I hate myself. Heaven knows what kind of reaction the simple mention of my name must provoke in hundreds of people who once ate in this dining room. If it’s anything like the way that I felt about Stephen Capley, then it’s probably better that I don’t get to meet many of them.

Perhaps Stephen Capley is here today. Perhaps we could share a moment.

Perhaps not.

Rob and I move on upstairs to the dormitories. Each dormitory has a name. In my time they were all named after great generals: Napoleon, Wellington, Haig (yeah, I know), Montgomery, Wolfe. Going to bed was like a little history lesson. As we walk down the corridors, I notice a new one. I think this used to be a laundry room. Now it’s a dormitory called “Lennon”. I think they must have had a change of naming policy.

You know what the really amazing thing is though? The place smells the same. I first noticed it in the dining room, but now I’m picking it up everywhere: the dormitories, the changing rooms, the boot room, the classrooms, the gym… and sadly the toilets, but I suspect that toilets smell the same almost everywhere. It’s probably no great revelation to you, but I’m knocked out by how evocative the smells are; they throw me right back to be ten years old. I can remember polishing my shoes at night, just before I head off to bed. I can remember pulling on my boiler suit and Wellington boots to head off to the woods during break time.

It seems we aren’t the only people to have wanted to escape the crowds and just wander. We are approached by a girl. Although it was technically a mixed school, there weren’t very many girls at Charnborough when I was there. In a school of several hundred boys, there were perhaps twenty girls. Oh yes, they focus on a rounded education here.

I recognise this girl before she gets close enough to speak. It’s Caroline Johnson. Caroline was head girl to my head boy (well, technically she was head girl to my head of school, but I wouldn’t want you to think that the exact nature of our hierarchical relationship was still important to me after eighteen years). Inasmuch as I knew about these things, I had never considered Caroline to be an especially pretty girl. She was a farmer’s daughter, and somehow just looked it, especially after she had somehow managed to knock out one of her front teeth. By the looks of things though, she has aged into her skin.

“Hello James”

She recognises me, in spite of the fact that at some point in the course of the last eighteen years I have grown a bit, and I’m balder than I was too (when I was a pupil here, we used to be in the habit of damping our hair down with a bit of cold water in the morning so that we could style it. Someone once told me that doing this would make me go bald in later life. I laughed this off, partly because it sounded like rubbish even then, but mainly because I knew that my dad had a full head of hair. “I’ll believe it when it happens to me”, I said, and there’s a part of me believes firmly that my subsequent hair loss can only be explained by this).

“Hello Caroline. How are you?”

I have two overriding memories of Caroline. The first was when we were both down by the swimming pool at the bottom of the grounds one summer evening. On nice days we were allowed to have a swim before we went up to bed. I can’t remember if I was actually swimming or not, but I do remember Caroline seeing a figure in a broad hat walking down towards the pool from the direction of the main school building, and she instantly set off. It was her elder brother returning from a year away in Australia. The thing that I specifically remember about this was the way that he swept his sister off her feet when she reached him, and gave her an enormous hug. The second memory I have is of the two of us sitting in the corner of the common room after games. I was feeling ill with what turned out to be a nasty bout of the measles, and Caroline was just sitting with me keeping me company. Isn’t it funny what sticks in your mind.

I think she recognises Rob, but I think I may have to do some introductions, as I don’t think that she can remember his name. Or is the cunning swine trying to disappear again to leave me with all of the small talk?
“I’m well. I never really expected to see you here”. Why the hell not? Why would I not be at this Open Day? Do you all laugh at me at the other reunions?
“Well, I was passing…” I shrug. It’s actually quite nice to see her.

It turns out that she has come along on her own, and asks us if we mind her tagging along with us whilst we wander around the grounds. Of course we don’t. We continue our stroll around the new classroom block (the science classroom smells just the same, although all of the furniture in the room looks strangely small to me). Whatever else has happened in our lives since we last spoke in 1987, we have a shared past and we can make small talk on the basis of that. I update Caroline on how I have followed the well-beaten path from prep school to public school to university to job. Amazingly she has done the same thing, only she studied at an agricultural college and is working as a farm manager. Sounds like a useful job to me, and her father (and brother) must be proud.

“I haven’t been back to Charnborough since the day I left, but when I got the invitation through the post, I thought it might be quite nice to have a look around the old place, so here I am.”
“Have you come on your own?” Rob is single, but I think he’s making conversation, rather than angling for an opening.
“Yes.” She’s not wearing a wedding ring, but one doesn’t like to make assumptions based upon one’s memories of a slightly awkward girl missing a front tooth. Well. All right. One does.
“I’ve left my husband at home with our daughter.” So much for my memory. I sneak a glance at Rob, and he seems to be taking the news well. We’re in danger of a silence.
“How old is your daughter?” I think the correct thing to do in these circumstances is to feign interest in the offspring.
“She’ll be five in March. She’s quite a handful. She starts at big school in a couple of years”. There is nothing more certain to make me feel the passage of time than the age of someone else’s kids. Five years old. At least she’s stopped counting in months. I hate that. Why say 36 months when you mean three years. I imagine there’s some guidebook that tells you at what age you have to stop doing that and start counting properly. I nearly ask Caroline, but restrain myself to asking about her brother.
“He’s a farmer, he’s taken on the farm from my dad”. Who’d have thought, eh?
I start to feel old and a little bit sad. I am thirty-one years old. I don’t have a daughter, I have a job but I don’t really feel like I have any grasp on my career. Caroline seems to be sorted on every count. She is happy and she looks it. How can this be so? She’s welcome to her happiness, but my name is on the honours board six times! Does that count for nothing?

I didn’t meet Carl on my first day at Charnborough. He wasn’t there. I didn’t meet him until I went up to the dormitory one night to discover that there was an extra person there. Term had started the week before, but here was Carl. In all the time I knew him, he never really explained this to me. I know that his father was a self-made man, and that before his couriering business really took off, he had done all sorts of things, including driving a taxi. I think that the reason for Carl’s late arrival was that his father got the necessary funds to pay the fees at the very last minute. Carl never liked to talk about money – because his father had lots and I think he was a little embarrassed by it. Naturally, at a fee-paying school like Charnborough, he was far from unique in having wealthy parents, but he always seemed to be acutely conscious of his father’s humble background.

I don’t think we were even really friends at the start, and we weren’t in many of the same classes. It wasn’t until I was moved up a class and into the year above that we began to spend a lot more time together. Because we were both a year ahead of our age group, we spent two years in the sixth-form together as the rest of our peers caught up. Instead of sitting the same classes for a second year, we were put into a scholarship stream and prepared for our Public School entrance exams. As if this wasn’t enough, our parents had put us both down for the same House in the same school, so we were likely to be spending a lot more time with each other over the next five years.

I got the scholarship. Carl did not.

Carl did get his name up onto the honours board once though: he didn’t get an academic scholarship, but he was awarded an art scholarship. He was – he is – a very talented artist, but I think he saw this as second-prize. Perhaps he had scholarship envy. Perhaps he had board envy.

Dammit. I’m talking about Carl again. Caroline hasn’t even asked me about him. She probably assumes that I haven’t seen much of him either. I don’t bother to bring him up. What could I say? We wander around the school for a little longer, posing for photos in a few places. I get Rob to take a picture of me hamming it up at the organ in the assembly room. Caroline asks if we would mind posting her copies of the pictures. Of course not. She hands me her address.

I lost it before I could remember to send her the prints.

As the afternoon begins to wind down, I begin to get a slightly uncomfortable feeling. It’s been pretty good to spend a couple of hours wandering around the place. There are ghosts from my past at almost every turn. There’s the step where Mark Jones came haring round a corner, tripped and nearly lost his eye. I can almost still see where the tell-tale drips of blood tracked his progress up to Matron and some stitches. I think he joined the RAF. I must look him up on that website to see what he’s been up to. There’s the radiator outside the dayroom that I used to sit on when it was cold, and where my friend Chris first introduced me to the “The Dark Knight” returns, a batman comic that I’m still reading eighteen years later. Much to Catherine’s bemusement. I think Chris is an artist now. All these people were an important part of my life, but they have now all but disappeared from view. How many of them do I still speak to? There’s Rob of course, but apart from him I don’t think there is anyone else now that I cannot count Carl. I am hit by a sudden wave of affection for Rob and a pervasive sadness that these people have dropped out of my life. Many of them I haven’t seen since the day I left the school. A few, like Rob and Carl, went on to attend the same public school and so we stayed in touch, the rest just faded from view. I never really thought about it before, but suddenly all I can think about is how they have been getting on, how they have been living their lives. I don’t know if this sudden wave of nostalgia is hitting me because of Carl, or simply because walking around the place has brought the memories flooding back. Perhaps it’s both. It’s a melancholy feeling, and I have the sudden urge to get home to Catherine and to seek some comfort.

Hang A Shining Star - Chapter One

2006-02-13T20:38:00.000Z

Right, In the grand tradition of Swiss Toni, I am going to start posting my NaNo novel. I need to finish it, and having feedback will help, I am sure. So, if its good, let me know. If its terrible, tell me to jump ship so I dont waste anymore time.

Oh - it is set at Christmas, so sorry about that...

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

"For Christmas time is tradition time - - Traditions that recall the precious memories down the
years, the sameness of them all." * Helen Lowrie Marshall

Chapter 1

Christmas is a time for tradition. There is a comforting, yet odd beauty in the rituals we set for
ourselves over the years. How we say to ourselves, ‘It isn’t Christmas unless I do this or that.’
There is a special feeling that comes from laying out each special ornament, hanging the star on
the tree, or breaking the wishbone with a loved one every year.

There is this feeling that tugs at your chest and pulls at the corner of your eyes. It makes you
breathe deeply and smile. You look out the window hoping to see snow. You wander through the house singing Christmas songs and doing little dances around the corners.

I love Christmas traditions. I love the feel that it is the same, yet different. I love adding
something special to each passing year. Somehow, the memories seem sweeter as each year
passes. And each memory feels more special to me, as I do over again every year.

Growing up, my family had a number of traditions. Christmas was an event we did together, on
one special day. I looked forward to it for weeks at a time, thinking of how I would see all of my
aunts, my cousins and my grandma and grandpa. I looked forward to the stories and the joking
and love.

We would get up early in the morning, and put up the Christmas tree together. Giggling, we
would take turn plugging in the lights, and laughing at the one strand that never stopped blinking. We would set aside our favorite ornaments to put on last, in a place of prominence. We would tease Grandma over the theme she had chosen for each year, and sing songs as we unwound the tinsel from its cardboard holder and wound it about the tree. I would stand close the tree and breathe in the smell of the ornaments, that musty, sweet aged smell that comes with age and love and being wrapped in newspaper year after year. I would rub my nose against the tinsel until I sneezed, and grin at my Aunt Catharine telling me I wouldn’t sneeze like that if I kept my face out of the tree, and how one day I was going to sneeze so hard I would knock the tree over.

We would finish with the tree and go outside to help Grandma put up the outdoor Christmas
lights. My sister Moriah and I would get in the way, dancing around the yard with the light-up
soldiers and angels. I can still hear my Grandpa yelling from the porch that we should stop all our silliness and come sit with him, he had cocoa on the porch. Cocoa with Grandpa was always
better than Aunt Susanne telling us about her days of dreaming she wanted to be a ballerina, and how if we kept eating cookies we would never be ballerinas. James always pointed out to her that the hippos in Fantasia were ballerinas. She would say "Hush, son." And he would scurry to the porch with us, where we basked in the warmth of Grandpa’s arms and cocoa and his love.

When we started to get older, Grandpa would let us come inside with him when we were finished and he would let us "help" him with dinner until the ladies ran us out. We would poke at the bag of giblets and put our fingers in the gravy. Sniffing in the back, we usually found cookies, pies and home made candy that we could sneak away, or slip to Grandpa when Grandma wasn’t
looking.

As I grew older, and I could decide whether or not I wanted to go to the Christmas preparations, I kept going. At first, it was a way to keep in touch with all of my aunt as I got older and we all
grew apart with school, jobs and families. When I was little I would see them all the time, and we joked and laughed about our everyday lives when we got together. When they began to be busy
with their own families, get married and have children of their own, I would ask them how my
new uncles were or when they would go ice skating with me like he used to. It seemed we
stopped seeing each other the way we used to, and I grew to miss those times throughout the
years.

When the family stopped coming, and it was just me, or me and a my mom and sister, I kept
coming to help Grandma and Grandpa with the decorating and cooking because I knew it was
important to them. My family as always been taught to love and respect traditions, and it made
my grandparents sad to see it slipping away. I wanted to show them that I remembered. That I knew how they felt, and I wanted to keep the traditions with them.

When grandpa got sick, and passed on, it seemed like no one wanted to be there at all, even my
mom, who always was there. I could see the heartbreak in my grandmother’s eyes the year I was the only one who came to help. We stuck it out though, and we loved to spend the time together every year. It reminded me of the times when I was little. As I put up the tree with her I would remember the sense of amazement I felt at how big and beautiful the tree was. It was amazing, exciting. I felt the love coming from my family with every bulb we hung, cookie we baked and light we strung.

This day depresses me now, just a little. The older I get, the more I wish I was a child again. The more I wish things would go back to the way they were. I see how Grandma still waits by the
door, thinking someone might show up late. I see how she sighs when we break the wishbone
together. It breaks me a little bit inside every year.

I come now from habit. I have my Grandfather’s spirit. I refuse to let the traditions die. I refuse to forget the memories we made when I was a child.

I want to make each Christmas better. I don’t know how. I don’t know which Christmas will be
the one. But one year, I will feel that special feeling I had as a child. I will be amazed at the love
of my family. I will feel warm with their laughter and smiles. I cling to that feeling. The one I hold inside from all those Christmases, the ones from what seems to be ages ago. I want to get it back. I will get it back. I have to.

Pioneers - Chapter One: Ascendency

2006-02-10T19:32:00.000Z

Hi all,

Sorry I've been away for awhile, it wasn't intended. But the good news is that I've finished Chapter One of Pioneers, a science fiction piece. It's told, in retrospect, by what will become the main protaganist in later chapters (I'm already planning chapter 2 right now).

Pioneers is based on the computer game Phantasy Star Online, which was a Massively Multiplayer Online game made for consoles back in 2002 - visually stunning and with a great sound track. As far as I know, no one really wrote up the story about it though.

Before I post it, I just wanted to add that I'm not very good with writing long pieces. As I posted in my blog, I excel in the sprint, not the long distance. I kind of like to tie things up very quickly, concentrating on quality descriptions and conversational narrative rather than a long drawn out story. So go easy on me please, I'm very uncomfortable trying this out...

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Imagine a spring day, where in the morning the sunlight has just that sort of radiance that makes you smile. A spring day where the smell of honeysuckle drifts through the air, a day where children laughingly play in the parks with dogs yapping at their heels. A time of freshness and rebirth, where you have a bounce in your step as you walk on your way to work. It was a day like that when the world abruptly came to an end; or thereabouts.

Throughout the parks, the ground shuddered, like a minor earthquake, and had it just been confined to one area, then it might have been dismissed for some such. But no, it had been felt across the continents, those in daylight and those shrouded in darkness. Viewing channels sprang to life as the media companies began to disseminate the very scary information that the quake had been felt across all landmasses at exactly the same time.

They say that there were those in the government who had known for decades about this eventuality and that this was nothing new. Certainly enough they released the knowledge incredibly quickly. Studies had been done, scientists had evaluated, and governments had kept secret.

The world was coming to an end.

Panic flared throughout the major cities, people fled to the countryside, to the remotest areas they could find. But of course, there was nowhere far enough to go, nowhere that would ensure their safety. The military were drafted into the major cities to keep the peace and even though several thousand people were killed in the ensuing riots, the vast majority of inhabitants returned to their abodes and wailed and gnashed their teeth in quiet fury of their eventual demise.

The details of the impending doom of the world were released to the public in a day-long news conference. Something about how the magnetic field of the planet had been breaking down over the past few centuries and how now it was going to finally collapse – something like that. Even though everyone was glued to his or her media channel, it was just too much to take in, in one sitting. People just couldn’t get their heads around what their government was saying.

Of course, now we know that this was something that had been coming a long time. Vast projects to mine minerals and materials from the planet had finally done to the world what we, its war-like inhabitants, could never have been able to do in a million years. Ironically, the Pioneer project was the final project to rape the planet of its mineral and material wealth. When the Pioneer star ships finally launched themselves into space, all that was left behind was the doomed voices of over several billion lost souls, deemed too useless to society, and the wasted, barren planet that we once called home.

Of course, I’m getting ahead of myself.

Once the world began to take stock of the consequences of their actions in the past and the inevitable destruction of our species and of our home, mineral and metal obsessed corporations and governments began to set aside their differences to fund practically any project that bore the ability to salvage our race from extinction.

Before the quakes, the Pioneer Project had been a scientist’s wet dream. It had had no funding and no backing of any real worth. But the scientists working on it spent their free time devoted to pursuing the intricacies of space travel and how it would all work. My grandfather, Leonid Malagance, who was in his thirties at the time, wasn’t a big wig. He was just a guy who did some number crunching and thought up fancy names for ideas. But that was before everything changed.

The Pioneer Project had been highlighted by one such corporation, and while before funding was pitiful, suddenly there was an abundance of resources and wealth. Suddenly, people were taking notice and action. Of course, it might have been a dead end but here we are. Pioneer would become a dream given form, a way of leaving behind our mundane worries and travelling to the stars, to explore the unknown possibilities of the universe.

It was 10 years later that they did it. I tell myself that it might have been my grandfather that finally resolved the complex mathematical and scientific equations that allowed them to do what they did. But of course although I have no idea what his standing was in the project, I still like to think he had something to do with it. During the course of some hypothetical computer simulations, one of the scientists noticed an infinitesimally small deviation from the expected results; something so small that it didn’t even bear investigating. But investigate it he did, and what he discovered was something that was so monumentally amazing, it had everyone at the Project excited.

What he discovered was that whilst trying to create a simulated Faster Than Light engine, a minscule portion of the output engine ionisation had disappeared. We’re talking about a few hundred particles here, something that could easily have been overlooked. Whilst most of the scientists carried on with the main research, a few splintered off to investigate this anomaly. Where did those particles go, they wondered?

About 2 years later, they had a very, very hypothetically rough idea of what had happened to those particles. When the simulated engine had been powered up, some of the particles had somehow been transported across space to another part of the solar system within the computer simulation. They had discovered this because extensive computer scans had finally demonstrated that there was a patch of minor radiation in our simulated solar system that wasn’t there before. This, then, was what had happened but we would never have found the information if we hadn’t been looking for it.

The particles had somehow jumped about 200,000 miles through space. What the scientists began to theorise was that when the simulated engine was fired up, space had somehow been “folded” to create a link between two points in space.

Here, I’ll try and explain a bit better. Take a piece of paper and fold it. Then take a pin and punch a hole through the paper. Remove the pin and unfold the paper. What you will find are two holes some distance apart, but which have been created by one pin. This is what the scientists decided had happened. Rather than creating a simulated Faster Than Light [FTL] engine, they had, in fact, created a hyperspace wormhole between two points. Obviously, the distance was very minor but the scientists believed that this was due to the duration of the engine burn.

At this decision point, the Project fell into debate and conflict. One group believed whole-heartedly that with the support of the entire world, a faster than light engine could be created. The other group, a very small percentage, believed that a hyperspace wormhole drive could be created and that it could be powered by a much smaller amount of energy than a conventional FTL engine.

Cue ensuing madness.

It was Administrator Lomar who calmed everything down and changed the directionless movement into something more positive.

“Calm yourselves, please. Now, listen to me carefully. These are both very good approaches to the same dilemma but we cannot place our faith in a singular project. Thus, I suggest this project diverges here. One group will evaluate and create this Faster Than Light engine whilst the other will begin work on this theoretical Hyperspace Wormhole drive.

“Now the Lantrian scientists have begun their final theoretical development on a hull for a ship. We have decided, since their ability to create orbital vehicles is far superior to ours, to allow them to design the final space ships we will use to leave this world behind for our new one. Finishing these ships will take many years so please, do not discount any possibilities for interstellar travel. Thank you.”

The proclamation that the Lantrian people, our immediate rivals, would have anything to do with our survival brought about an immediate outrage from our people. Our government responded with a statement that, in no uncertain terms, indicated that these projects were for the survival of the Humar race, and not just for countries or territories any more. Either we would all survive or our race would become extinct, and all our achievements – the rise of the Newmans, genetically engineered Humars with an unlocked gene that would enhance their Force ability, and the ascendancy of Robots that had come to co-exist with our people – would be lost forevermore.

Work began in the Pioneer project, in both camps, but it would be many years before any fruitful results were achieved. The first was a small probe that was launched 8 years later. For a few brief moments it sped through our atmosphere and into space before suddenly ‘jumping’ faster than light and disappearing from our scopes. Months later and we received telemetry from the probe indicating it was billions of miles away, near the edge of our solar system – the race to find a new home was on.

Meanwhile, the Wormhole scientists were having much less luck. The government hushed up their initial design when it successfully created a wormhole but then caused an explosion in deep space that resulted in the deaths of the astronauts of the space ship that had towed it there. Saddened and disheartened, they were ready to dismiss the whole idea but Administrator Lomar encouraged them to continue. He believed that there was something to be gained from the hyperspace wormhole idea, and even if the scientists did not create anything useful, they should take heart that they were working for the survival of our people, even though they were not directly working on the faster than light designs.

During all this time, the quakes began to increase slowly. At first, they were an annoyance but that soon changed when the quakes became unpredictable, striking both civilised areas and wastelands. Countries formerly at war with each other began to rely on international aid from their one time rivals. More and more countries began pouring in aid into the Pioneer project or with the Starfall codex, as the Lantrian project began to be called.

Both projects increased in speed and in numbers of scientists. Engineers were conscripted to help with the building of probes and test vehicles. The military began to draft members into the construction of small Prowler-class sub-light space vessels in an effort to create a small fleet of warships for the defense of the larger space vessels the rest of the population would be travelling on. Advances in Cryogenic suspension were made with the help of the Robots and Newmans, as well as other technological advances.

In time, the Starfall Codex began to be implemented. Over the course of 10 long years, a hull was designed and then constructed just out of orbit of our planet. It was a marvel to see as military vessels patrolled its borders, checking for, well, anything. As more and more modules were flown up, a small orbiting space platform began to grow into a mission headquarters. Heads of State were flown up for tours and media channels were allowed to film the construction of what the Lantrians called, in acknowledgement of our people’s achievements, ‘Pioneer One’ or P1.

P1 was designed with practically everything the Humar and Newman races needed to survive – life support, entertainment, foods, recyclable water supplies, absolutely everything a person could imagine. As the ship began to take shape, it became listed off-limits to all but security personnel and the people directly working on that module. These security precautions were beginning to be enforced due to the attempts of some doomsday madmen who believed that our race should die with our planet. Ultimately, their decisions to terrorise us would result in their wish of a doomsday coming to realisation when we would leave them on our world as it crumbled away.

During the course of construction Pioneer One, work began on a new hull shape. It quickly became apparent that Pioneer Two would be a much larger vessel for the majority of the population whilst Pioneer One would be a medium sized scout vessel. When our government asked theirs, the Lantrians responded by saying that it was their intention to allow Pioneer One to be the advanced scout vessel – a ship that would take engineers, architects and some scientists to the new home world. There, they would begin the majestic task of building and terraforming the new world into something our people would be able to live in.

After much discussion the leaders of both projects finally released the information we had all been waiting for – news of our new home world. The planet was called Ragol 4 and it orbited a star much like our own. Probes sent by faster than light engines had reached Ragol and their telemetry had informed us much about it. It had a similar gravity, a similar size, roughly 10% more water, slightly richer in oxygen and it was crawling with life. Not intelligent life, or at least if they were intelligent, they hadn’t yet begun the creation of a civilisation just yet but life none the less. But it was habitable and it would be somewhere where our people could walk in the fresh air and smell the scents of honeysuckle as they trod bare foot amongst green lush grass.

My grandfather didn’t have much time for either statements; he had been told that he unfortunately wouldn’t be able to journey to our new home. Most of the people on the two projects had been assured of a place on the ships but those with medical conditions were being screened out. My father told me that when he was sixteen, his father had been told that due to a malignant cancerous growth, he would not be able to come, although his son would.

My grandmother of course stayed with him. I always wonder what it would have been like to remain on our old home world as the cities crumbled away with the quakes, whilst the madmen gloriously revelled in the deaths of everyone around them; whilst you sat there with your loved one and had a last meal and drink before everything around you exploded into the void.

Whilst work on the FTL engines was finally nearing completion, the hyperspace drive work was just coming to fruition. After several dozen tests, the scientists finally managed to send a probe to Ragol – in far less time than a FTL probe would have taken. This represented a huge advancement and it was decided that Pioneer One would be equipped with the Hyperdrive engine whilst Pioneer Two would be equipped with the FTL drive so that Pioneer One would receive much more time to complete their work on constructing buildings on Ragol before Pioneer Two arrived.

This, of course, meant that the Hyperspace engine had to be completed as soon as possible. Work was immediately shifted over and old friends who had been separated on the Pioneer project were finally reunited, along with jokes and stories of “I told you we could do it!”. It was an amazing time and the Hyperspace Engine began to take shape.

Meanwhile, the quakes were getting much worse. Those able bodied people who were working on the projects were finally transported to orbital platforms that had been transformed into living quarters. Reconstruction on our cities was finally abandoned as the projects began to overtake everything else that mattered to our people.

Finally, the rivalry between our differing nations was put aside as the various heads met to discuss who would become the leaders of our new world. Eventually, our leaders emerged and announced that forever more we would be known as the Humar people, that no nation would claim sovereignty over another. Newmans and Robots were now considered free people and that ties of ownership were forevermore removed. The Lantrians and our nation no longer existed.

Pioneer One was finally fully constructed when I was 8. I had been born in space, aboard an orbiting platform, under simulated gravity with simulated light and recycled air. The space traveller generation had finally arrived and looked down to the world their grandparents had called home, wondering what it felt like to walk upon real green grass and to breath non-recycled air. But we weren’t allowed to travel down there for fear of contamination. Ironically, they had given up caring about the planet, they were more concerned with what we might pick up; that is, if they ever had really cared about the planet to begin with.

I saw my grandfather once, before we left. He was an old man with silver hair and an odd smell about him. He said he was very proud of his son and of me, Crucifer Malagant, his grand son, and gave me a pen telling me that it was this pen that had been used in the theorization about the anomalous readings that had led to the discovery of Hyperspace. I still have it somewhere.

The enormous task of choosing P1’s population began that year. Scientists, heads of state, military personnel, construction workers, and engineers – all sorts of people were being moved over. This, of course, meant more space for the rest of us so living space was expanded. But I wasn’t too happy when my parents were chosen to go with Pioneer One.

They sat me down and told me why they – they, in particular – had to go. My mother was a leading botanist and Ragol had plants that no one else had seen before. It would be an exacting task for our people to research them and for this arduous task they had chosen her. My father was going for a completely different reason. He had been asked to take over the responsibilities of his father, my grandfather, who had specifically chosen his son to replace him. It was a great honour and one that no one would have been able to turn down.

And so I watched, from the living space of my foster parents, as Pioneer One’s sub light engines powered up, leaving sparks trailing like behind it like a firework display. We all watched mesmerized as the powerful Hyperspace engines began to create the huge wormhole directly ahead of P1.

We all held our breath as Pioneer One moved in the direction, as its nose tipped downwards and then slipped into the wormhole before disappearing out of sight. A tear ran down my face, as the wormhole closed.

I would never see my parents alive again.

One foot in the grave - cont.

2006-02-09T03:53:00.000Z

This takes up directly from where the first part ends. It's heavy on the dialogue, so please tell me if it doesn't work or if it's still ok. Luv, Hen.

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“So, are you going to call him?” Matilda put Carla on the spot.
“No, I gave him my number.”
“Oh, girl! It’s the twenty first century! Men expect you to call them these days. It’s easier for them.”
“Easier or easy? No offence, Matilda, but if the man is interested, he will call. And I am not interested in a man who is not interested enough to make that call.” Matilda raised her pencil thin eyebrows at Carla’s seemingly old-fashioned ideal.
“You haven’t been reading that book have you? The Rules? You know those women are divorced now.”
“Matilda, don’t start on me” Carla made the move toward her desk “Oliver’s staring at us again. God he looks stern. I’m off.”
“You will tell me more.” Matilda ordered “Lunch!”

The foot in the shoe was all over the media. Thankfully the police hadn’t released her name and Carla was managing to maintain some semblance of normality within her life. At lunch with Matilda in the buildings sidewalk café they dissected Carla's lunch date with Marcus. Despite Matilda insisting otherwise, Carla had not called the police officer. He’d given her his card, but so had Detective Davenport and she wasn’t about to call her, so why should she call Marcus?
“Because you like him, ninny!” Matilda scolded.
“Mat, I hardly know him to know if I like him. Like is such an objective word. I am attracted to him, but I am also attracted to the manager of my gym and I’m not about to ask him out.”
“Why not?” Matilda shot back.
“Really, Mati, you’re impossible!”
“No, why not ask him out?” Matilda insisted.
“Because you don’t ask every single person out that you’re attracted to. Life would get too…complicated.”
“Is that what you think my life is?” Matilda feigned hurt.
“Frankly, Mati, yes!” The two women laughed.
“And anyway, he’s gay.” Carla added, sipping on her ice water.
“Who’s gay? Marcus?” Matilda was confused.
“No, the manager of my gym.”
“Oh. That’s a shame.”
“His boyfriend doesn’t think so.” Carla smiled. Matilda nibbled on a carrot stick.
“So, what happens now?”
“What happens with what?” Carla asked.
“What happens with the shoe thing?”
“Well, nothing I guess. I suppose they investigate, find the rest of the man who the foot belongs to and work it out from there. Frankly I don’t care.”
“But you’ve got to admit it’s interesting.”
“For you maybe Mati, but for me, not so.”
“But what if it is the Mafia?” Matilda persisted. Carla shot her a look of despair.
“It’s not the Mafia. And besides, even if it was the Mafia, as you so insist on calling them, I don’t see how it affects me.” Carla took a bite out of her sandwich. Matilda looked worried.
“It would affect you because they will think you know more than you do. They will come and find you and then they will send you the way of the foot. I can’t believe you’re not worried.”
“And I can’t believe you are. Look Matilda, let’s just pretend it didn’t happen and talk about something else.” Carla was about to take another bite from her sandwich when her mobile phone rang. It was a local number she didn’t recognise. She let it go to message bank.
“I don’t know how you can do that.” Matilda looked almost hungry to take Carla’s call.
“It’s easy. You just ignore it.”
“But someone wants to talk to you! Don’t you like talking to people?”
“Well, quite frankly, no.” Carla laughed. She really didn’t care for the phone, or for needless talking. She made exception for Matilda. For all that Matilda drove her insane, she was a good friend and had Carla’s best interest at heart. Carla’s phone beeped, notifying her that the caller had left a voice message.
“Are you going to listen to that?” Matilda was insistent.
“Will it make you happy if I do?”
“Yes.” Matilda said as Carla dialled her voice mailbox. She leant back in the metal café chair and kept a poker face as the voice of investigating Officer Marcus Levy asked her voice mail if she was free that night. At the end of the message, after Levy had left two numbers for Carla to call him back on, Carla flipped her phone shut. Matilda waited expectantly.
“Well?”
“It was officer Levy. He’s like to see me tonight.” Carla couldn’t help but to smile. Matilda shrieked.
“Calm down!” Carla insisted, but was laughing all the same at her friends’ enthusiasm.
“Ohhh! Are you going to call him back?!”
“Not straight away, no.”
“Ohhh! Call him! Call him! I thought you said this wasn’t a game. Call him!”
“Matilda, I will call him. But not straight away. And if I was playing a game I would not make myself available tonight.”
“Does that mean you will?” Matilda asked. Carla thought about that for a moment. It was all happening a little too fast and was more than unexpected. She wasn’t really sure that she was ready for a man like Levy. She wasn’t sure if she was ever going to be ready.
“I really don’t know.” Carla conceded. The disappointment in Matilda’s face was obvious and she was about to protest, but Carla got in first.
“You know why. Don’t give me a hard time about this.”
“But he’s not Byron. And that was six months ago at least now, Carla.” Matilda argued for the absent beau. A pained expression clouded Carla’s eyes.
“Six months not long enough. It…” Carla paused “it hurt, Mati. You of all people should know that.” Matilda put a hand over her friends on the café table. Carla smiled.
“You know I only want you to have some fun, be happy, right?” Matilda asked.
“I am happy. And I have fun every day. With you. That’s enough fun for me.” Carla teased.
“Ha ha. No, really, you need to move on from that jerk.”
“I will. Just give me some time. And I might see Officer Levy tonight yet” Carla offered.

Voyeur

2006-02-07T19:59:00.000Z

I've finally got some creative writing to share with you (although do be sure to go and check out "It will never go away" by Jenni and "One foot in the grave" by Di)

This was originally written as my debut piece for Alecya's other blog -- "The Secret Room". If you are a fan of erotic fiction, then I heartily recommend that you get over there and have a look, as the girl can really write.

Anyway.

This is something of a departure for me, but I decided that I wanted to have a go. Let me know what you think.

----

I wonder if she knows that I’m watching. But how could she know? My eyes are hidden behind mirrored sunglasses and I’m lying so still I could be asleep. I’m watching her so intently I’m barely breathing. She is lounging by the pool, soaking up the late afternoon sun. I don’t think she has even noticed that I’m here. What am I to her? I am nothing. I am less than nothing. I am an ant. I am invisible. And so I watch.

She shifts slightly and my heart skips a beat. She is beautiful. She is incandescent. She stretches her long legs on the lounger and arches her back, but only for a moment before settling back down. It is all I can do to stop myself from reflexively sitting up to get a closer look. I resist. I lie still. I remain anonymous and unseen a while longer.

Her blonde hair is pulled back off her head into a loose ponytail. She has been sweating in the heat, and her hair is slightly damp and a little darker than normal. I close my eyes and I can almost smell it. My eyes shift down and flick again across the length of her long, lean body. She is tall, her long legs stretching to the end of her lounger, one knee slightly bent, her toes hooked over the edge. She parts her lips, opening her mouth slightly to allow her tongue to slide out and flick slowly from left to right, moistening her lips. I am transfixed.

It is a hot day. Her body is glossy with a slight sheen of sweat, a few beads forming around her navel and between her breasts. Her breathing is shallow in the heat and I can see her chest rise and fall. With every breath that she takes, the curve of her belly rises up above the waistline of her bikini bottoms, stretching the fabric for a tantalising moment before she breathes out and the moment passes.

A breath of wind passes and sends gentle ripples across the glassy surface of the pool. She stirs again, and I can see the goose bumps rising on her skin, as though under a lover’s touch.

Suddenly she turns over, rolling onto her stomach so that her back is exposed to the sun. The lounger has made marks across her back; red welts running in parallel lines down her back and across the backs of her legs. She flicks out a hand, reaches around and casually extends a finger inside her bikini bottoms to flick them out around the curve of her buttocks. It’s a small gesture and lasts perhaps five seconds before her hand returns to her side, but to me every move she makes is poetry. She sighs, and her breathing begins to deepen. With every intake of breath, her ribs press against her skin, casting a new set of shadows on her flank. A fly lands on her thigh, and she first twitches and then that hand reaches back again and lazily swats it away.

I want to touch her but I glance at my watch and the sands of time have slipped away and I have to leave. The spell is broken and the moment is gone. I stand to leave, pausing for a moment to see if she will hear me go. Her breathing remains deep and regular, and I slip away unnoticed. When she wakes she won’t even remember that I was there.

Perhaps I never was.

It will never go away

2006-02-07T18:22:00.000Z

So...I joined this blog, and then have been too busy with starting school again to properly contribute. I'm still busy, but I did find time to recycle this post from the second day of my personal blog...no where near as long or as fiction-y as our other contributors, but at least it's something to get me started!

This used to be my childhood dream. Madonna's greatest hits blares. Sweaty bodies in tie-dyed t-shirts leftover from that afternoon's Homecoming parade bumped against each other. This used to be the place I ran to...Beer flows from kegs into plastic cups. And from plastic cups onto the hardwood floor. And why do they always say...don't look back. A friend whispered in my ear. I felt her grab my hand and drag me into the crowded room. Shoes stick. Because life is short. Across the room, a flash of blue. Blue shirt. Blue eyes. Eyes lock. And before you know you’re feeling old. A shove from someone behind or beside. A smile. A winding path through a sea of bodies. A word...or two. And then, in the midst of unromantic chaos, I fell in love. And your heart is breaking...

Don’t hold on to the past
Well that’s too much to ask...

A new day. Silence pours in. A bus stands in the background, blurry through the tears. Someone whispers in my ear. I feel them grab my hand, but this time I'm left alone. A smile through a tinted window. A hand presses against the glass. Slowly pulling further away. Further away.

And that little fire
Is still alive in me
It will never go away.

One foot in the grave

2006-02-07T09:08:00.000Z

Hello all, Suburbanhen here. Have some fiction!
------------------------------------------------
How Carla had managed to be right there at the very moment the shoe had come hurtling down from the cloudless blue sky she did not know. Perhaps she would find out the Why’s of the matter later. But for now, the reality of the situation was that she was there, right there, when the shoe had fallen from the sky. Of course it hadn’t just fallen from the sky impromptu. It had in fact come from the concrete pedestrian overpass that Carla was jogging under at the very same time, making its graceless entrance into Carla’s life.
It had startled her, landing in the path of her early morning jog. It would have startled anyone, really. And it had landed on the grey cement just a few paces ahead of her, so it was impossible to miss and most awkward to avoid stepping on, though Carla did manage to avoid it, but only just. In coming to a halt mid stride and being able to look back and clearly see the shoe, Carla became wide eyed and very thankful that the shoe had not fallen a moment later and perhaps landed on her, or had caused her to trip over it.
The shoe itself was a well-worn mens dark brown leather deck shoe, with matching leather cord laces. And it would have hurt had it landed on her. But it really wasn’t the shoe that held Carla’s steadfast gaze. It was the bloodied foot still inside it.

“Did you see who threw the shoe?” Detective Nicole Davenport was sitting across from Carla, an unremarkable beige government-issue laminate desk between them.
“Well, no. We know I didn’t see who threw the shoe, because I wrote that in my statement and I’ve told three other officers that I did not see who threw the shoe” Carla said through a slightly clenched jaw. She was becoming irritated by the circular nature of the questioning and it was beginning to show. It had become like some tawdry version of an American cop show. Only it wasn’t. It was her very real Sunday morning gone swimmingly bad.
“I understand your frustration here, Miss Hunter”
“Carla, please”
“Carla. I understand your frustration, but we’re just following procedure. And we have a…” Detective Davenport referred to a photo in front of her “…we have a left foot without a body. You can maybe understand that we need to cover all bases?”
Carla smiled thinly at the detective.
“Of course.”
The detective continued with the repeated line of questioning that Carla had already endured for three hours since having had the misfortune of a foot laden deck shoe landing in front of her on her morning run. By lunchtime the police decided that Carla was indeed just an innocent bystander and had let her go. The midday sun was bright as she left the foyer of the police headquarters. Carla didn’t have her sunglasses. In fact, she was still in her t-shirt and shorts from her run and she was several more kilometres from home than intended, without a mobile phone to call a cab. Spinning on her sneakered heel, she made to go back into the station in the hope of finding a phone. As the automatic glass doors opened Carla found herself facing the officer who had been first on the scene after her triple 0 call from a roadside phone booth that morning. Officer Marcus Levy was so good looking Carla had instantly begun planning how she might find reason to take lunch at the nearby cafes during the week in the hope of bumping into Levy again. By the end of the morning, however, Carla just wanted them all to catch some form or laryngitis so that they all might never be able to speak with her again, Levy included. She didn’t care how chiselled his jaw or chocolate brown his eyes.
“Miss Hunter, I was hoping to catch you”.
Carla inwardly groaned. They’d let her go. She wanted nothing more to do with these people or their stupid body-less foot. She smiled at Officer Levy.
“Yes officer?”
“Just wanted to see if you needed a lift somewhere?”
Taken aback, Carla let a more genuine smile through to her lips and considered the man in front of her. Maybe she could keep the company of his chiselled jaw a little longer, if just to get home.

The air-conditioning of the police sedan blew its cool breath across Carla’s overly warm skin. Officer Levy turned down the police band radio so that it was just a low murmur in the background. Carla sank into the passenger seat of the police car and let out a low sigh.
“It’s been a big day” Levy offered.
“Hmm?” Carla’s mind had wandered and the sound of Levy’s voice brought her back.
“You’ve had a big morning. Or is finding feet on the footpath just a regular Sunday for you Miss Hunter?” Levy let a smile into his voice.
“Sorry. I was just…” she liked the way he said Miss Hunter.
“Don’t be sorry.” Levy looked to Carla for a second “You’ve been great today. Really helpful.”
“Oh” Carla was unsure of what to say next “Um, that’s ok. Any time.” She cringed at herself “I don’t mean that. Any time, I mean. I mean, I don’t want to find feet every day…” she trailed off, blushing. Marcus gave a little laugh.
“I think I understand. Say, are you hungry?” Marcus asked. Carla was hungry. Even though a part of her was disgusted that she could think about food after having dealt with the gore of the foot, her hollow stomach was making her quite aware that she hadn’t eaten since dinner the night before.
“Let’s grab something.” Marcus was already turning the police car into Milton Road.
“I’m not really dressed for lunch” Carla objected. Marcus nodded toward his uniform.
“Neither am I. But how about we do it anyway?”
There it was. That smile that Carla was beginning to realise might signal the end of her self-induced man drought. She wasn’t ready, but it was happening anyway.
“Sure. Why not?” Carla let caution to the wind.

“You what?!” squawked Matilda, the receptionist of the law firm that Carla was temping for. It was in response to Carla explaining her… activities from the day before. It was Monday morning and Carla was practically walking on air.
“I found a foot and went to lunch with the investigating officer” Carla repeated herself more simply “And keep your voice down. Oliver’s looking.” The managing director, Oliver Hardy, was making coffee in the open plan kitchenette, plainly visible from reception.
“I heard you the first time, you ninny! I’m just a little surprised.” Matilda hissed.
“You’re surprised. How about you go finding a foot and see how surprised you are then?”
“I can imagine. No. I can’t imagine.” Matilda took a perfectly manicured talon to the air between her and Carla.
“You need to be careful.” Matilda stabbed her red nail accusingly at Carla. “I bet it’s the Mafia”
“Matilda, we don’t have the Mafia here in Australia.”
“Oh! Yes we do, little miss. We certainly do.” Matilda said with an air of authority. Matilda’s last name was Costa. Her parents were Italian immigrants and had named their first Australian baby Matilda to try and assimilate. It hadn’t worked, Matilda instead opting to use her confirmation name of Maria throughout he school years. It wasn’t until she’d left school that she had become more comfortable with the name. Matilda’s family had remained steeped in their heritage and culture even after moving from Italy and had made the Brisbane Italian community their home. If anyone thought they knew something about the Australian Mafia, it would be Matilda.

Untitled - chapter 3

2006-02-06T20:00:00.000Z

Hello. I still haven't got anything new to say to you really, although I am going to spend some of this evening writing something up which I may cross-post over here in the interests of sharing.

Thanks to [ahem] overwhelming popular demand, here's the next installment of my as-yet still untitled novel from last November's NanoWriMo.

Maybe I should offer up a prize for the person who suggests the best title. To be honest with you, "Narcissist" is looking good at the moment.... I really need to get over myself!

Anyway. Here it is.

Enjoy.

---

Previously in our exciting serialisation: Chapter 1, Chapter 2

---

“I can’t take this any more. Will you stop bloody going on about your bloody friends?” It seems that I have finally discovered the limit to Catherine’s patience. I decide to opt for a tone of slightly wounded innocence.
“What do you mean?”
“You have done nothing this week but harp on about your friends. I’m sorry that Carl has ditched you, and I can see that it has upset you, but you have started to fret about whether any of your friends actually like you, and it’s beginning to drive me mad. If you’re worried, why don’t you just ring some of them and have a chat? Whatever you do, please don’t just stand there talking at me whilst I’m loading the dishwasher, hanging out the washing or carrying out all the bloody chores like I’m some sort of skivvy. You could at least help me.”

She has a point, of course, but I take it with all my normal poor grace and manage to help hang out some wet shirts from the machine whilst also stomping about the kitchen with a face like thunder. I’m not sure that this really helps.

In the weeks since I received that email from Carl, I’m afraid to say that I have wallowed in it a little bit. I have allowed myself to be far more upset about this than I should have done. It’s not even that I have been limiting myself to the end of my friendship with Carl – sad though that is. I have widened the scope of my worry and seem to be wondering if anybody really likes me at all. A few years back, I loaded my details onto Friends Reunited. There’s a certain amount of weird pleasure to be drawn from looking up people from your past and seeing whether they went to University, and reading between the lines of their empty little profiles.

“Married. Mortgaged. Cat. Dog. That’s as exciting as it gets.

It seems to me like there’s a lot of pain in that little message. It’s a cry for help. It’s only a short step from there to something like:

“Hi there. After school I spent a long time running a bookshop, but then my wife left me, my business collapsed and I’m a border-line alcoholic. I’d love to hear from any of the old gang if they fancy a drink.”

Needless to say, the note against my own entry is a strictly functional one.

“Working as an IT Consultant”

There’s not too much tragedy that you can read into that, I didn’t think.

I very rarely go there, but since the email from Carl, I have logged on a couple of times and found myself gazing at the names from my past. Some have notes, some do not, but almost all of the names there are incredibly evocative. Sarah. She was the girl who left suddenly in the sixth form and I never knew why. She was lovely – no notes left here though. Alex. Ah. He was the hopeless fat guy. Working for Deloitte in London. Hugh. Oh he was an idiot. It’s fascinating. They have some functionality on there that lets you send a little note to someone to ask how they are and what they are up to. I’ve never done it. It’s not that I haven’t been tempted, because I have. It’s just, well… I left that world behind me. In the main I am still friends with the people from that time that I want to still be in touch with. The others were mainly idiots who I have little or nothing in common with and little desire to ever see again. But I’m not still friends with everyone I want to still be friends with any more, am I?

Maybe I can’t afford to be so sniffy any more.

A few people from school have sent me notes through this website actually. There’s one guy who keeps trying to get me to come along to some reunions. I left school in 1992. That was more than a decade ago, so I suppose it’s not totally ridiculous to be holding “Class of 1992” type reunions. It’s just that I don’t want to see any of these people any more. Or at least I don’t think that I do.

I think my resolve is weakening.

In the end, I am spared from having to making a decision about this by a phone call from another old schoolfriend of mine, one who I am still in touch with.

“Jim. It’s Rob. How are you mate?”
Oh hello Rob. I’m doing alright thanks. You remember Carl? Of course you remember Carl. You’ve know him since you were ten. Well Carl has dumped me. He doesn’t want to be my friend any more. Has he spoken to you about it? Has he dropped you, or are you still in with the in-crowd? How is he? Is he alright? Has he gone off the rails and fallen in with a bad crowd who are holding him hostage and are siphoning his bank account whilst forcing him to cut the ties of friendship with anybody who might come and rescue him, to unchain him from the radiator.
“I alright thanks mate, how are you?”
“I’m good. Look, John told me about Carl. Sorry to hear about that.” Ah yes. I’d mentioned it to John.
“Thanks mate.”
“Did you get that letter from Charnborough?” Charnborough was the little preparatory school that Rob and I both attended. It is also where I met Carl. They don’t send me post very often, as I haven’t really been in much of a hurry to give them my address, and as a result they tend to correspond with my mum and dad. This one I have seen though.
“The Open Day and reunion?”
“Yeah. What do you think? Might be fun. You could come down and stay with us in Oxford on Saturday, and then we could head over there on Sunday afternoon and have a look around the place.”
Part of me thinks that this would be an excellent idea. Who wouldn’t be interested in poking around their old school? I could have a look at the old classrooms, the dormitories, go out into the woods in the school grounds where I spent hours and hours fighting other people with sticks. On the other hand, I would be in serious danger of running into people that I actually went to school with. I wouldn’t say that I was especially shy, it’s just that I don’t actively seek out this kind of situation. I’m the guy at the party standing in the corner looking at the books on the bookshelves and making instant value judgements of someone I don’t know based entirely upon their record collection.
“I dunno”
“Well, look. You’re down that weekend anyway..”
Oh, what the hell.
“Go on then.”
“You have to fill in and send them back the form they sent you to let them know that you are coming”
“I’m going off the idea already”.
“And you might want to bring something a bit smarter to wear. Not a suit or anything, but perhaps a shirt.”
“Stop talking”
“Ok, Speak to you later mate.
“Yup, bye”.

And that was that. A date in my diary to go back to the place where as a child at the tender age of seven I was first left by my parents to fend for myself as a weekly boarder. It was also the place where I first met Carl.

I wonder what your mental image of an English boarding school is. Perhaps it’s of an old English manor house made of a crumbly, orangey-coloured stone, set slightly back from a small village in the rolling countryside. It’s likely to have its own grounds, complete with playing fields, croquet lawn, tennis courts and an outdoor swimming pool. I’m also willing to bet that you mind’s eye also has it fringed by a small wood. Is that Jennings and Derbyshire I can see scampering away in the fringes of your imagination? Am I far wrong? Give or take a couple of more modern classroom buildings off to one side and whacking great fire-escape, then that’s more or less what Charnborough looks like. In the early blush of an English summer, you might just be able to get away with using the word “idyllic”, and you definitely can if they are playing cricket, and you can hear the distant ripple of applause echoing off the old pavilion. Well, anyway. I don’t know if Charnborough is a typical English Private School, but it is certainly the English Private School that I attended from 1981 to 1987.

For some reason, I remember the summer of 1981 really clearly. The weather was gorgeous, and I spent an awful lot of time out in the garden playing soldiers or cowboys and Indians with my brothers or with my best friend. I was seven years old, and I didn’t have a care in the world, except on that sad day when the peace of my bedroom was terminally disturbed when my three year old younger brother learnt how to reach the door handle by standing on a chair. According to my memory, I was dressed up in a grey suit with a bright yellow tie and loaded into the car with my elder brother and with two trunks. It was a glorious day in late-September, and my life was about to change forever as I was driven away from the house and driven to a new life as a weekly boarder at a new school. My memory must be playing tricks on me. I may not have understood the significance of the moment, but there is no way that I cannot have known where we were going. I must have spent a lot of time that summer being taken around various shops picking up all of those little bits and pieces that are necessary: a suit, school uniform, a trunk, a tuckbox, sports kit, shoes, Wellington boots, gym shoes, rugby boots, slippers, dressing-gown, a boiler suit, a duvet, duvet covers… and so on. It cannot have been a surprise to me that I was dressed up in my new suit, my new shirt, my new tie, my new shoes and no doubt my new pants and socks, or that I was put into the car with my new trunk filled with my other new clothes. That’s how I remember it. The journey took about an hour, and then there we were. I was shown around, introduced to the housemaster and to the matron, and then my parents had to leave me. I was seven years old and quite small for my age. I cannot for the life of me think if there can have been any occasion prior to this where I had spent the night away from my parents before. It’s only now that I think about this that I begin to realise how hard this must have been for my mother.

But I adjusted. Other children got terribly homesick and cried their little hearts out for hours every night, but I never did. I once felt that perhaps I ought to feel something, so I tried it on for a while, but it didn’t work for me, and I soon abandoned it. I just adapted to my new environment, learnt the rules and made some new friends. Within a couple of weeks it must have been second nature to me. After the emotion of waving goodbye to our parents, we were quickly introduced to the routine of bedtime: get changed into pyjamas, dressing-gown and slippers. Wash face and clean teeth. Off to see matron to have our fingernails checked for cleanliness and then off to the dormitory for lights out. All tucked up and in bed by 8pm. I remember that first night clearly: there were about fourteen of us packed into the one dormitory, Ten iron-framed hospital beds with squeaky springs, a two bunk beds. Thirteen seven or eight year old boys and a twelve-year-old Prefect assigned to look after us. I lay awake for what felt like an age but was probably only ten minutes. Everyone else was awake too, but we had been told that there was no talking after lights out, and we hadn’t yet had the opportunity to test the rules out.

Actually, the whole thing sounds a lot more daunting to me now than it ever felt to me as a seven year old. I was at Charnborough for six years in all, and my memories of it are mainly happy ones. Although I really didn’t’ have much of a pressing desire to meet any of my old school-mates again, it would actually be quite nice to have a look around the old place again to see how different it looked, nearly twenty years on from when I was last there.

Untitled - chapter 2

2006-01-26T07:58:00.000Z

I wish I had something new to put up here, but I have more or less completely failed to sit down and get anything written. In lieu of something fresh though, I thought I'd take the opportunity to share with you some more of my NaNo novel.

Here's Chapter 2 (you can find chapter 1 here). If you look really closely, you might spot some autobiographical details.

ahem.

---

My name is James Archer. I am 31 years old. I live in Nottingham in a nice house that I share with my girlfriend of 6 years. I have a small and deeply unfulfilling job as an IT Consultant for one of the largest corporations in the world. I am quite tall, but I’m otherwise pretty ordinary looking. I am ordinary. I am ordinary. I don’t really have any big problems, except that I seem to have an uncanny knack for testing my girlfriend’s patience. I don’t really know how I do it. I’m not a tidy person, although I would deny that I am an untidy person. I can see how someone might think that of me though, as I have a tendency to put things down. I put them down all over the place. As soon as I have put an object down – a CD, a piece of paper, a lighter, my car keys… whatever… that thing becomes completely invisible to me. Until I need that object again, my brain is able to totally ignore it, even if it happens to be lying on the middle of the floor of our living room. When I need it again, when I want to listen to that CD, find that bank statement or go out in my car, I know instinctively where to find it. If it’s not there, then I can become agitated:
“Have you seen my car keys?”
“No.”
“They were right here, and now they’ve gone”
“Where?”
“There”
“In the middle of the floor?”
“Right there.”
“They were in the way. I kept tripping over them, so I picked them up and popped them on the table”
“But I left them on the floor…”
and so on….

Part of me can completely understand why Catherine might want to pick my car keys up and pop them onto the table. Who leaves keys on the floor where you can trip over them and kick them around? Sadly, part of me will never understand: I put my keys down and I knew where they were. When I discover that they have been moved, I find that a little distressing. No matter how logical the place where they were put, they were put down somewhere different to the place that I put them down.

I suppose I can’t help the way that my brain works, and sometimes I really wish that I could. I have no big problems in my life, but as I get older, I seem to be finding it harder and harder to let the little things go. It starts with the car. I walk away from the car, and I’ve not gone twenty meters when a thought creeps into my head: did you lock the door? As soon as the thought arrives, I know that I have to go back and check. I will jog back to the car, and when I am a few meters away, I will click the button on the car key, and the lights will blink at me to indicate that the car is now locked. I never go and see if the doors were actually unlocked before I hit the button. I don’t need to know. All I need to know is that the car is locked now. Sometimes this happens when I’m inside the house, or when I’m in the office. Wherever it happens, I find it extremely hard to think of something else. Once the thought has crossed my mind, I find it impossible to let it go and to think of something else. It sits in my mind. It taunts me. I have to check. The handbrake is even worse. To check that the handbrake is on, you actually have to walk right up to the car and look inside. You can’t protect your dignity and your sanity from a small distance and the press of a button. You have to walk right on up to the car, look inside and see for yourself that of course the handbrake is on.

Locking the car. Putting the handbrake on. These are both things that everybody does without thinking about them To suddenly start worrying about them seems, well, mad. Sure, occasionally you go back and you find that in fact you did leave the handbrake off, but the car didn’t run away – at least not far. Of course, discovering that I did, in fact, leave the handbrake off only reinforces the compulsion to check it. Or to find something else to worry about.

Ah, finding something else to worry about. This is a speciality of mine. I wear glasses. I have worn glasses since I was five years old. I can’t say that I am totally at one with the idea that I wear glasses, but it has never really bothered me. But suddenly it began to. My glasses started to weigh heavily upon me. I couldn’t get comfortable. They were too tight. They hurt my nose. They rode up over my ears. They weren’t straight. The lenses were scratched. Ah. Scratched lenses. If I could only have back the time I have spent peering at scratching on my lenses that I cannot actually see when the glasses are on my face. The lenses are plastic. They will scratch. I cannot see the scratches, and if I could, they aren’t really all that expensive to replace. Surely it would be easier not to worry about them, to just shrug and get on with my life? Why do I find myself compelled to look at them, to examine them? To search for imperfections? To obsessively polish them with a lens-cleaning cloth, in an attempt to keep them clean that ultimately only serves to increase the probability of scratching?

I’m not stupid. I know when I’m starting to do it. I’m wise to my brain and the tricks it tries to play on me. Does that mean I can do a damn thing about it? Not most of the time.

You’re probably amazed that I can function in society at all. Sometimes I am. You’re probably amazed that I have a girlfriend. I definitely am. I guess I have a mildly obsessive-compulsive streak. It’s funny though. What makes someone mad? Madness is a relative term and is a product of the society in which we live in and what that society deems as “normal”. I sometimes wonder how fine the line is between my mildly obsessive behaviour and being genuinely mentally ill. Not big enough to be comfortable I should think, and yet I can and do function in society. Well. Perhaps not at parties, but that’s another story.

So I was dumped by one of my oldest friends. Would you be surprised to hear that this played on my mind?

I had no right of reply. I could not stand up and defend myself against the charges. As far as Carl was concerned, that email was the final chapter in our friendship. He was putting our twenty years of friendship behind him and he was moving on to his other friends. The ones he felt more comfortable with, the ones he looked forward to seeing again. I’m sorry. Am I sounding bitter? I’m afraid I can’t help it. I just don’t understand.

“Why would you dump a friend” I asked Catherine.
“I don’t know”
“I know he’s getting married, but Juliette always seemed so nice. Not friendly exactly… but perfectly welcoming. It couldn’t be because of her, could it?”
“I don’t know”
“But it’s not fair. Who goes out of their way to end a friendship? Why couldn’t he have just been like a normal person and let it wither?”
“Look. I don’t know. How long have you known him?”
“We met in 1981”
“So more than twenty years?”
“yeah”
“Well it does seem odd, but perhaps he felt that he needed to move on.
“I just don’t understand”

It’s true. I don’t understand, and I don’t think I ever will. He’s always been a bit, well, odd…. But maybe it’s me. Perhaps this is the effect that I have on people. Maybe my other friends can’t wait to be shot of me as well and are only waiting for the right moment.

“Well why don’t you ask some of them?”. Catherine was looking up from her newspaper. This was familiar territory. I had clearly been rambling on about this for long enough, and loudly enough to distract her from the crossword. “Why don’t you ring some of them up and ask them?”
“What do you mean”, I said, knowing full well what she meant. She meant that I should stop moaning, pick up the phone and chat to my mates. Seek reassurance from the people I was closest to.

I don’t think she really understands the relationship I have with my oldest friends. Like most men, I can have a telephone conversation with my mates that sounds to the casual observer a little something like this:
“………”
“Yup”
“……………..”
“Yeah?”
“….. ……”
“Me too.”
“……….”
“Yesterday”
and so on for about 5 minutes, and apparently sometimes consisting entirely of grunts. When I hang up, a by-now-very curious Catherine looks up at me.
“What was that all about?”
“I’m meeting John in half and hour at the cinema. We’re going to see the new Kevin Smith film at about 9pm, then we’re going to head over to the ‘City Duck’ for a pint and perhaps on to a pizza.”
“You arranged all of that just now? On the phone?”
“Yup”
“But I only heard grunts. How?”
“Dunno. We also talked about getting all the lads together for a weekend at the Test Match next year.”
“…”

I don’t really have phone conversations with my mates to seek reassurance or to discuss my feelings. I have phone conversations with them to make concrete plans to do something. That something usually involves meeting up to watch sport or to go to a gig, and it certainly involves beer. Why would I want to talk to these people about the way I’m feeling? They’re my friends. Why would they want to know about that.

Of course, being dumped by Carl was something that didn’t just affect me, it was also going to have repercussions amongst our circle of friends. Everyone has a circle of friends don’t they? You meet someone and become friendly with them, and over time you get to know the other people they hang about with – their partner, their mates, and their house-mate. Sometimes you become friendly with them and they become more than just friends-of-friends and become mates in their own right. Carl and I have known each other for more than twenty years from the day we first met at school. We had school friends in common. I knew some of his friends from university, and some of his friends from his life in London. Many of these I would be able to drop without a second thought (especially that guy I have met about once, but he somehow wangled his way into our Fantasy Football League and proceeded to win it every year). But others…. Others are a part of the fabric of my life, and I can’t let them go so easily. Some of them I have known for nearly as long as I have known Carl. We went to the same schools. We hung out together. They are my mates, and they are Carl’s mates. I have been dumped and they have not been dumped. How are they supposed to react to this news? When a couple of your acquaintance splits up, although there is often much noble talk about remaining friendly with both halves, in reality this is an extremely difficult trick to carry off, and you always end up choosing. Is this the same scenario? Are our friends going to have to sit down and decide between us? Is this an exercise that they can go through by themselves, or are they able to have some kind of conference to discuss it, to list out the pros and cons.

Maybe I should call them. I think I might need to state my case.

---

I'm away next week, but maybe I'll get something written the week after, eh?

Some Dance To Forget

2006-01-19T00:42:00.000Z

Posted per the request of my favorite author...

********

Give me something. Anything. There seem to be moments when I am so empty, like there is nothing there but hollow, wandering thoughts and a non-stop parade of memories I would rather not relive. My life, it hasn’t been all bad, but then, there’s not been that much good has there, or I wouldn’t be laying here in this bathtub wishing for nothing more than the courage it takes to scream aloud every frustration I have. And I have them, to be sure, plenty of them. Who doesn’t anymore?

That’s the thing, though. No one seems to care about anything anymore. We’ve all got our own problems and our own worries. Who has time to check on their friends or their family when they can barely see above the rising tide of all the things they have to take care of, all the things they have to worry about, and then some that maybe they don’t need to worry about, but do anyway. I know I don’t. Have time, I mean. I don’t have the time to think of all the people who might be worried about whether or not I am doing well my first time out on my own. Likely there aren’t many.

Certainly not my mother. My selfish, annoying mother, who would forsake her own children for the love of a crack dealer who has no intention of taking care of her or thinking about her future. Only thinking of spiriting her away from her miserable marriage with promises of change, Tantra and other things I can’t bear to dream of. No, somewhere, she is in a cramped apartment, living with him and believing she can be happy if she just tells herself she is, the same way she always has, the same way she always will. God will make it all better eventually, she’ll tell herself. God will reward her for her patience...God my ass. If there is such a thing, it’s a huge cosmic joke and the laugh isn’t on God. I’ll tell you that. Imagine for a moment, if you can, that you are all powerful. You are all knowing. You are all seeing. And you can do anything you like. You created the world, everything in it. Do you really think that you would take time to check in on each of the workers in you cosmic ant farm? Because I know I wouldn’t. I can barely be assed to keep up with people I like, let alone all the people I have ever met. No sir, if I had created the universe I’d be in Tahiti with a lovely woman on my arm, and handsome fellow feeding me fresh fruit and marveling at all the lovely things I can get people to do, all because I am God.

I pick up the soap and have a little laugh to myself, for a moment, seeing that God [if there is such a thing] and my mom have just a little in common, too much to do for themselves to check in on their own creation. She’s like that, my mother, being compared to God. But not a Goddess, mind you, that’s heresy.The soap feels strangely cool tonight as I wash myself. That may be that the water is a lot hotter than I normally run it. Its steaming tonight, nearly boiling, and my neurotic masochism has turned my skin a bright pink already. But I don’t mind it so much as it feels different, and as lonely as I am, and bored, different is alright. Either way, the soap is delightfully cold. I am using a bar tonight. Not one of those fluffy things that I get in gift sets every year from people who have no idea what I like or who I am, nor one of those gels that you can buy even at the local grocery store now. No, tonight I have a plain, boring bar of washing soap. And it smells clean. And refreshing. And different.

I am afraid I haven’t really got the energy to do what I have to do tonight. I don’t feel like going out, being pretty, being charming, getting people to want to be around me or be with me. No, I don’t feel like that in the least. But old habits die hard, and I will go, same as I have, night after night for nearly a year now, and I will laugh. I will talk and I will dance. It will be alright, once I make it to the dance floor. I always manage to forget how terrible things are when I am dancing. I feel better, freer. Happy, almost. You know that song by the Eagles where they say some dance to forget? That’s me they were talking about.

So to forget, to be beautiful the way only I know how to be, I have to be here, in this too hot bath, listening to the echos of the people in my apartment, chattering and flirting and laughing below while I get ready. I suppose I ought to hurry, someone might have to pee. But you know, I can’t be troubled by it. Its my place, right?

So I pick up the razor and I move my candles a little closer and I lather the soap much thicker than I have been. My legs are long, I know this, and I am blessed with a nice complexion, but it still means that shaving is both necessary and a nuisance. I was never much of a shaver, blame that on my mother as well, not letting me start until I could nearly drive a car. So I have to take my time, running the razor over my leg gently, in slow strokes I make as steady as I can.

Its about the only thing I make steady in myself. Sometimes it seems to me like my spirit is slamming up against the inside of my body, trying desperately to find a weakness in the fortress. One day I fear it will, and I will finally go flying out of my body and away from everything around me at last. It won’t come soon enough, if you ask me.There was once I felt it, when I was still in high school.

There was a guy who worked with me at my after school job, and he was a witch. Or a male witch. A mystic or a warlock. Whatever you wanted to call him, he was a lot like me, and he knew things he shouldn’t and he sensed things before others could think or say them. I felt him, a presence, long before I ever met him, and once I did I took to spending a lot of time with him. I would bring him home with me after work, and we would sit in my room, all candles and heavy scents, and we would talk about things I thought were deep or spiritual.Once, at his apartment, [he was much older than I was] we sat, and he lit a stick of incense and brought me in front of him and took my hands and with his soft calm voice he put me in the deepest meditation that I have ever been in. And softly, slowly, I made my way out of my body and walked about without it. I could see him there beside me, feeling the things I did and seeing the things I did, even though we were far from where our bodies are resting and where we should have been. When we finally came crashing down into our bodies again I was exhausted. I slept there all night, before going home the next morning I told him I enjoyed myself, and maybe we could do it again sometime. We never did, but I have been looking for a voice or a way out ever since then, and I can feel it in myself on nights like this.

Unfortunately, its not all I feel. All of my daydreaming has caused my attention to wander and I’ve managed to nick myself on the top of my thigh. I press my hand there to stop the bleeding and look up to the top of the cabinet, crawling out of the bathtub and reaching for a band aid, cutting of the sticky part to cover the cut. See, this is where I get, when I dream. A cut on the leg, another inconvenience and a stinging reminder that I can’t go back and I can’t quite make things the way I’d like them to be. So I am here, sitting on my floor, the cold of the tile against me, and I am empty, hurting and frustrated.

Fill me up. Give me something, anything, to distract me from all of this. To distract me from what my life has become. To distract me from the things I wish weren’t real, and the memories I can’t seem to escape. Distract me from myself. And give me something new.

Untitled - a nano novel

2006-01-17T20:14:00.000Z

I think this probably counts as cheating, but whilst I brew up something newer about a guy who doesn't dream, I thought I'd share with you the first chapter of my recent NaNoWriMo novel.

Be warned though, if you show any interest, I might post the rest of it, chapter by chapter.

I'm looking for a title too, so suggestions welcomed.

(oh, and I haven't really read back through it yet, so please try and ignore all glaring errors).

----

Chapter 1

Can you remember the first time that you were dumped? The first time that someone decided to cut their relationship with you short; to tell you that you aren’t wanted and to sever all ties and to walk off into the distance? I think it is supposed to happen to you when you are a kid. Perhaps it happened to you when you were ten and it was your first girlfriend. Perhaps you thought you’d never recover from the pain and shame of it all, but before the end of the week you were snogging Melanie Johnson in the bus-stop as though nothing had happened. Does that count? Perhaps it doesn’t, and you haven’t really experienced a dumping until you are ditched by your first serious girlfriend, where your relationship has gone a little further than those first kisses. Maybe even that doesn’t count as a proper dumping; maybe you can only consider yourself to have been truly ditched when someone you love unconditionally casts you aside and leaves you gaping like a fish and wailing at the injustice of it all.

In this world, you are either a dumper or dumped. It’s a dog-eat-dog world and the only way to protect yourself is to get them before they get you.

I can’t say that I agree with that point of view, although on the bare statistics of my life might lead you to think that I do: of the three serious girlfriends I have had, I dumped two of them. The first was easy. We’d been going out for about three months when we both graduated from University. She lived in one part of the country and I lived in another. There didn’t seem to be any point pretending that this could turn out to be the great love affair of my life, so I told her that it was over. I don’t flatter myself that she was especially surprised or upset by this news, but as I basically told her on the last night of term, I didn’t really get to see close up if this was the case. The second time was harder, and it took me a full year to pluck up the courage to do it. The relationship had lasted for three years and we were living together. The news came as a brutal shock, and I felt like a total shit. I still do. I had been thinking about it for months, but for her it was news totally out of the blue. To make matters worse, we continued to live together for another month before I was able to move out. Throughout the whole sorry business, I was sustained by one thing: the sure and certain knowledge that I was doing the right thing for both of us in the long run. Apart from a couple of brief visits in the first few months after the break-up, I haven’t seen her since. My parents still exchange Christmas Cards with her.

Are there guidelines for dumping someone? Is there a resource that outlines what is, and what is not, acceptable behaviour? Should you give someone notice? I, the undersigned, hereby notify you that I wish to terminate our relationship in one month’s time. That kind of thing. Would making the whole process more businesslike make it any less painful or difficult? Would there be the right of appeal? Relationship tribunals? Claims for unfair or constructive dismissal?

Can you dump someone nicely, or is it such a fundamentally distasteful task for everyone concerned that you are better off just spitting it out and being done with it? You could be about to shatter someone else’s world, does it make any difference how you do it? It’s not as though being nice about it ultimately softens the blow, is it? What purpose does it really serve, except perhaps to make you feel a little better about yourself, to maintain that illusion you have of yourself as being a decent person. It was a tough job, but you did it as nicely as you could to spare her feelings. Bully for you.

Actually, I don’t believe that, although I suppose that all these things are relative. I don’t know whether being as nice as I could about the whole thing softened the blow at all for my last girlfriend, or if ultimately the Stalinism of time has re-written what happened in her own head with a view that better suits the purposes of her own ego and her own self-esteem. Why not? That’s what I’ve done in my head. Dammit, it was tough at the time and the poor girl took it hard, but I’m pretty sure it was for the best in the long run and she’s probably happier now, eh?

I got dumped for the first time when I was 31 years old. It came completely out of the blue and has left me shaken. I am finding myself running over and over in my head the sequence of events that has led us here. Could I have done anything different that could have avoided this? Of course I could. Could I do anything now that might alter this? I don’t know. I just don’t know.

I shouldn’t really be surprised that I got away with it for so long. I can’t imagine that there are many more certain ways of avoiding being dumped than the one I have steadfastly adopted over the years; be spectacularly unsuccessful with women. It’s the best way. It’s far more reliable than the “dump lest ye be dumped” school of thought, even if it’s not a course to be taken lightly. In fact, I’d go further. Not only should you be spectacularly unsuccessful with women, but you shouldn’t even run the risk. You shouldn’t try, lest you succeed. Ah, way to go to find someone to share your life, James, way to go. Moron.

Anyway. So I was dumped. I have been dumped. I am dumped.

I don’t like it.

I have no right of reply.

What’s worse is that I was dumped by email. I heard that Phil Collins once informed his wife that it was over by fax, and I thought that would be pretty hard to beat, but email isn’t really any better. It’s a disposable form of communication. It says it all for me that you can’t be prosecuted for libel for something you have written down in an email, only for slander. It’s a strangely permanent impermanence, and it’s a terrible way to find out that you have been dropped. I think what is worse it that I was at work when the message arrived. Usually a non-work message is something to be treasured, something to be read immediately, and I instantly dropped whatever pointless task it was that I was doing to read the new message.

Dumped.

“Okay, here’s the thing. Now I was going to send this months ago but I guess I was avoiding it, thinking I wouldn’t have to and now I do.

“I just don’t see the point in us being friends any more. And far from being a weird and immature decision, I think it’s a very adult one. The last year or so that we’ve met up, things have been very strained between us. Neither of us seems that happy to see the other. Neither of us really asks or seems to care how the other one really is. Bitterness and envy – I don’t know why – seems to hang in the air, coming from both of us. The atmosphere is very odd. And there is bickering and bad looks and bad moods. And both of us are guilty of this. Just the whole experience isn’t great. It’s not all the time. Meeting up with you there are doubtless a few moments over the weekend/whatever but there’s also lots of other things going on and I don’t know why. It’s almost as though neither of us really wants to hang out together but we feel we have to. We’re clinging to years of history together. And it doesn’t have to be like that.

“I guess another problem is that I never feel this way with any other friends of mine. I always feel like they want to see me and that we have a laugh. And that when I leave them I want to see them again and there aren’t any problems. But it’s not like that when I’ve seen you. I always feel that either you or I are pissed off. They’re pained experiences. And so I’ve just been wondering why we still do it, why we still meet up. I don’t really think you are bothered. I’ve had one email from you in months. No phone calls. All other emails have been jokes or group get togethers. Nothing personal at all – no how are yous, where are you, what’s wrong. Nothing. I just don’t think we want to hang around together any more.

“BUT I don’t think the blame lies at any one person’s door. I’m not finger pointing and I don’t want any bitter slanging matches. I think for whatever reason we’ve grown apart and we’re different people now and we should just move on. We’ve had some good times and let’s just leave it at that.”

Yeah, that’s right. I wasn’t dumped by a girlfriend, or anything as prosaic as that. No. I was dumped from a far greater height than that. I was dropped by one of my oldest friends. A guy that I have known for more than twenty years. A guy who I first met when I was 7 years old. Dumped. Dropped. No right of reply. As far as he was concerned, that email was it. I was dead to him.

Funeral Poinsettias

2006-01-11T16:24:00.000Z

This is part of my favorite chapter from my NaNo novel. Also the hardest to write. Enjoy.

***

"The message of Christmas is that the visible material world is bound to the invisible spiritual
world." * Author Unknown
Chapter 11

I can see the snowflakes catching in Gail’s hair, glinting as the light from my Aunt Susanne’s
sleek black Mustang pulls in the drive. Our breath, rising in a steady mist, is the only thing to
give away our presence.

If it were anyone else, I would worry. But it is only Aunt Susanne. Gail gives me a puzzled look,
as I put my finger to my lips, indicating we should be quiet.

We both watch her over the hoods of the other cars filling the driveway. The light from the inside of her Mustang shows her re-applying a lip gloss and powdering her nose.

"Is that the one that got so drunk at dad and Charlotte’s wedding?" Gail murmurs to me, barely a whisper of a whisper.

Before I have time to confirm that, yes, she was the one who was drunk at the wedding; she
manages to confirm it for me. We are momentarily blinded by a flash of silver glinting in the
sparse light of the car.

"A flask? Did she just drink from a flask?"

I nod, and put my finger to my lips again. I glance down for a moment, tugging at my socks and
making sure my outfit is not getting wet. Gail’s legs are wobbling a little, and I put my hand on
the small of her back to steady her.

Susanne dabs her eyes with a tissue and opens the car door. In the quiet of the snow and the
outdoors, we hear her sniffling.

"Huh-huh-huhp." She visibly gulps as she reaches in to the back seat and pulls out three rather
large bags of presents. She sits them on the hood of her car, and reaches back down inside the
vehicle. She sits on the hood two boxes, which looks as if they have spigots on the ends of them.
I preempt Gail’s question.

"Wine."

She nods, and we turn our heads back to the scene before us.

She has somehow managed to get the bags and the wine all in one trip. She moves up the drive
with the slow shuffle, shuffle, drag –step of the half-drunk, half-reluctant at heart. She passes
close by, and I suck in my breath.

"Huh-huh-huhp. Mmmm." Her sniffles grow a little louder as she makes her way up the drive.
She leans against the door frame, resting her head there for a moment. Her chest rises and falls,
indicating a sigh. Possibly the resolution to go in and face the family. Possibly one last fresh
breath of air before the stifling warmth of the living room. Whatever it is, she is ready. She leans
against the doorbell with her elbow. A little longer than necessary, because even at my car I truck hear the Ding-ing-ing of the bell.

The outside is flooded with light and I see my uncle Jeff in the door frame.

"Hi there, Susanne. Its so good to see you. How are you?" He glances out into the snow, sees us,
and puts his arm around Susanne to lead her away from the door.

Before it closes we can hear her start crying in earnest.

"Oh Oh Oh How sweet of you. How sweet. Not well…"

The light closes behind her and we immediately stand up to stretch our legs.

"What is going on? " Gail exclaims in a stage whisper. "She could have used the help "

"Gail, I am not ready, just yet, to deal with her. It’s too much. It hurts so much still. And she
doesn’t make it any better."

"I don’t get it."

"James, Gail. She still isn’t over it. Most of us aren’t. But she lost it. She can’t keep a grip on
reality much anymore."

I can feel my own chest tightening as I think of it. It squeezes and pulls. I feel like I am running
out of air. My eyes prick up, like I’ve eaten something really sour.

"What about him, Barb?"

"He’s dead. He died two Christmases ago. He was her son."

Oh, God. I hate that word. Dead. Dead. Never going to come back. The memory is all that’s left.
I don’t want to cry. I don’t. I need to smile.

"We all loved him so much. All the best Christmas stories have James. He was so funny. Full of
–of-" Life. Say it, Barbara. Full of life that he no longer has. Its why you cry and your aunt drinks
herself into insanity.

"Shhh." Gail puts her arms around me and lets me lay my head on her shoulder. My cheeks feel
wet.
* *

I was icing cookies on a pop up table in the corner of the dining room when he
came dashing in. His heavy black hair was falling in his face. His white shirt
was pulled out of his slacks and bunched up around the edge of his Christmas
sweater vest. He has pulled his tie loose and the knees of his slacks were
dirty.

I looked at him, indignant. At 8 years old, I was trying to develop in to a
little lady. I delicately lay down the icing tool and looked up at him, trying
my best to look severe.

"What is it James? Grandpa is letting me ice the cookies. See?" I held up a
Christmas tree with sprinkles.

He was bounding from foot to foot on the balls of his feet. I could see he was
excited about something.

"I found something,. It was an accident. But I found something." His black
eyes were sparkling with merriment. He knew it was big.
I started to feel curious and a little excited myself.

"Well?"

"Come see. And don’t tell Moriah. She’ll let the secret out." He tugged on the
puffed sleeve of my Christmas party dress. "Come on "

I jumped up and followed him through the mud room. He ducked our aunts and
Grandma and Grandpa in the kitchen. He put his finger to his lips, telling me
to keep quiet. I crouched down behind the open pantry door, and waited.
He cracked open the door to the garage, careful not to make any noise. He
beckoned me to follow him.

I slipped out into the garage and had to stifle a squeal.

Three beautiful bikes were lined up next to each other, with bows tied to the
handlebars. He walked up to a royal blue one, streaked with red. This one was
clearly his. He ran his fingers over the handles and down to the seat. He
examined the reflectors at the top and back of the bike, and the horn in the
middle.

Next to it was my bike. I was sure of it. It was a beautiful jeweled green. It
has streamers from the handlebars. They were yellow and green and white. The
leather seat was white and looked quilted.

I was almost afraid to touch it. Even in the dim garage light I could see how
it sparkled, how pretty the paint was. It had that lovely new bike smell, of
leather and grease and the chains and the rubber of the new tires.
And Moriah’s bike was a vision of girlishness. I new she would love it. It was
pink, as pink as it could possibly be, with little purple and white flowers
all over it. There was a wicker basket attached to the front, and sitting
inside it was a beautiful doll for her to mother. Even her seat was a pale
pink.

I sighed at the loveliness of the three of the bikes lined up next to each
other. I looked over at James. He had a sly look on his face, one I had seen
many times when we played together.

"I want to ride mine."

"No James " I protested. "We are going to get caught. Grandpa is going to be
mad that I don’t have the cookies done yet."

"Oh, just a minute " He pleaded.

"You do it," I suggested breathlessly.

"I will." I backed up and watched him as he hitched up his little clacks and
went to get on the bike.

"Wheel these out of the way." He pointed to the other two bikes. I scurried
over and pushed them closer to the garage door, just a little.
I watched as he slowly pulled back, and made slow circles in the garage.

"Is it nice" I asked.
"It’s so much fun. Aw, come on Barb. You should do it too. You’re already out
here, huh?"

I glanced at the door. Unsure. It couldn’t hurt, could it? I dashed over to my
bike and hitched my skirt up as I put my feet on the pedals.

"You better watch out. I am the best bike rider in this family" I claimed.

"We’ll see about that." He laughed at me.

We chased each other in dizzying circles. I felt the tickle of the steamers
against my hands. I started to laugh. James laughed too, wriggling his handle
bars quickly, as if he could not keep control.

Then he honked his horn. I stopped. He froze too. We knew we would be caught
now. Quickly, we jumped off the bikes and pushed them back to where they were.

"Do you think they heard?" I asked him.

"I don’t know," he looked up. And froze.

Grandpa was standing in the doorway.

"What do you two think you are doing?" he asked. We were in big trouble. I
could feel it.

"Um, well," I began.

"Its all my fault," James interjected. I brought Barb out here. I saw them and
I wanted her to see. "I guess I got carried away."

Grandpa smiled.

"I did too, when I brought them in. I honked the horn too. Well, don’t tell.
Not Moriah and especially not your Gran. Pretend to be surprised, and I won’t
get you in any trouble, okay?" We sighed. We were safe.

"Okay, Grandpa," we chorused, angels again.

"Good. Now, Barb, I think you have some cookies to finish. James, come with me
and we’ll fix your tie, or your mother will no we’ve been up to no good."

"Yes, Grandpa."

I went back to my cookies. James got his tie straitened. And we pretended to
be surprised. But, I remember, from that Christmas on, Grandpa never let them
hide anything in the garage.
* *
When I see poinsettias I always think of James. They were everywhere at the
funeral. Everywhere. I always thought it was a cruel thing to do, to include
the flowers so associated with Christmas in his funeral flowers. Every
Christmas now, I see them everywhere and I think of him.

It had been a rough winter. It had snowed heavily, a lot more than it usually
did. We had all been staying at home, wanting to be careful. But the snow
turned to ice, melting during the day and freezing once the sun set. It would
snow again, and again.

We had a white Christmas that year. It was amazing. Mounds of snow in the
yards. The Christmas lights twinkled like stars through the blanket of snow.
James and I had brought our sleds to the Christmas party, and pulled the
children through the snow. Later, while they were playing with their new toys,
we went outside and played ourselves, tossing snowballs back and forth,
running around like we did when we were kids. When we had exhausted ourselves,
we pulled out our old blankets and set on the porch, drinking wassail,
smoking, and remembering old times.

It happened Christmas morning. He was driving home from seeing Aunt Susanne.
His car full of presents, he was surely going to go take his traditional
Christmas nap. I knew he would be over to see me that evening. We always got
together on Christmas Day to watch movies and bake cookies together. It was
one of my favorite parts of the day. It was always refreshing to have him and
his humor after mom and Moriah.

I remember that I was angry with him. When he didn’t show on time, I was mad
that he was late. He was never late, and he always called. I had the dough in
the freezer already. The kettle was boiling. And he wasn’t there.
When the phone rang two hours after he was supposed to arrive, I picked it up
with a fire in my chest.

"This had better be good." I had said into the phone. It had better be good.
But it wasn’t James. It was Gran. James had been in an accident. No, he wasn’t
okay. He was dead. No, he hadn’t suffered. It was quick. A patch of black ice
and a tree. His neck and back broken. The seatbelt couldn’t save him. That was
all there was.

I hung up the phone and ran directly to the bathroom and threw up. I lay
there, sobbing, in the floor. It felt like hours.

This was my fault. He was coming to see me. And I was angry with him. I was
angry with him. I had been working up my speech about responsibility all
afternoon. And he was dead. I had been mad at him while he was in his car,
dying.

I was so angry. At myself. At the weather. At everything. How? How could he
die like that? He was so young, so full of life. He had so much left to do.
And I had been angry with him over a few hours. God, what I would do for those
two extra hours. What I would tell him. More than the ‘see you tomorrow’ or a
joke about his cooking skills. I would tell him so much more than that.
He had looked so beautiful, the day of the funeral. His thick black hair still
springing from his face, as if alive all on its own. His best black suit, a
red tie – his favorite color. His long lashes were rested on his cheeks. His
hands were folded neatly. He had that look on his face I knew so well. The
look of innocence that I saw when we were younger and he was about to get us
into trouble. It was my favorite look.

I had this sick desire to reach in a try to see his eyes - his beautiful green
eyes that I loved so much. I could always tell what he was thinking by the
look in those eyes. I wanted to shake him and tell him that he needed to wake
up. I wanted to beg him not to go. I wanted to offer to swap him places.
I fought the urge to straiten his lapel for him, and stroke his tie. I wanted
to hold his hand and whisper all the things I meant to tell him. I had all
these things I needed to tell him. I wanted to tell him I missed him already,
and that I had so many things to tell him before he went away.

I wanted to tell him I was sorry I was mad at him. I didn’t mean it. I wanted
to tell him that I loved him. He was my best friend. I wouldn’t know what to
do without him. I wanted to bend down and kiss and kiss and kiss his forehead.
But I didn’t. I just stood there, looking at him. I looked at him for such a
long time. I didn’t want to leave him alone. They pulled me away, eventually.
They set me down in the front row. I could still see from there. I couldn’t
pull my eyes off of him. I felt like my heart was being torn out through my
throat. The tears were streaking down my face, I stayed quiet. But I was
shaking, and I cried until there were no more tears left. And then I kept
crying, even though I had nothing left.

When we went outside, to see him buried, I stood and watched with a terrible
feeling in my gut.

They had asked me to say something. I was his best friend, his cousin, I knew
him best. When I got up, I looked at everyone there, everyone who had eve
loved him. My throat dried up. I wanted to do him proud.

"James," I began, "was a truly unique man. He had an energy that was
contagious. He had a laugh that filled a room. He had the youthful wonder of a
child. He had the strength of emotion of a man.

Those who knew him best would say he was an enigma. He loved without reserve,
he gave without complaint and he lived without regret. His capacity for
kindness was astounding, his faith in the good of people unwavering.
I was fortunate to know James all of my life. He was the best of friends. He
was the loyalist of family. I have had the pleasure of seeing each step, each
moment, each year that he has grown. I was also lucky enough to have that rare
brand of friendship he offered, full of unconditional love and undying
strength.

When our Grandfather died, it was James who held me. It was James who gave me
comfort. It was James who gave me hope.

He told me to remember that death was not the end. That the ones we love never
really leave. He told me to instead of weep, laugh. To celebrate the wonderful
things that I had done with him. To honor him with the sound he loved most,
the sound of a happy grandchild.

Today, I will try to honor James with laughter at the memories we shared. I
encourage you to do the same. Remember the friend he was, the son, the family
member who was always there. Remember the mischief he got you into. Remember
the things he loved.

I would be remiss, however, if I did not cry a little. If I did not tell him
how much he was loved. How well. And how much my heart aches to see him again.
Today, honor James, with both laughter, and tears and remember what he said.
In time, we will see him again."

I stood there, watching my Aunt Susanne cry with grief. See her sobs, which
wracked her whole body, so that when she went to lay a lily on his casket, it
took three people to get her there.

I watched the snow fall, lightly, mocking the thing it had done. It danced in
the air and lay on the poinsettias and lilies that filled the wreaths and
flowers that were set about the area. They would melt, it was warm, and they
dripped down the huge petals of the flowers like giant tears. I watched the
wind shake the bright centers, each little piece quivering like the bits in my
chest, and fall, softly into the dying grass with all the swiftness of the
tears I was crying again.

My face hurt, I could feel the wind on it, burning it. But I didn’t want to
leave. As they set him in the ground I felt pieces f my chest leave, like they
were going in with him and I would never get them back.

I stayed late. Later than even Susanne, who had to be taken to the hospital
for her hysterics. I sat there, next to him, wondering what I was going to do.
Who I would talk to. Who I would tell my secrets to. I grieved for him, and as
I left I left him a gift. Something only he and I would miss. A tiny
gingerbread Mrs. Santa, who went with my favorite Mr. Santa. I had slipped
over to Gran’s and stolen it before the funeral. He would have her to keep him
company. He would remember.

And so would I. Every Christmas I would remember the missing, when I put my
little Santa on the tree. And I would remember our Christmases together.

"I’ll miss you." I told him.

I’ll miss you.
* *

Father and Son

2006-01-09T23:25:00.000Z

It's about time I had a go at this, isn't it?

This is an idea that has been floating around my head for a few months now. It's inspired by a guy who I play football with on a Thursday night. For the last few years now, when we are short of numbers, this guy brings his son along to join our game. Initially he was only making up the numbers, but as time has gone on, this lad has got better and better, to the point where he is now just on the edge of overtaking his dad (of course, this is as much to do with his dad getting older as it is about the lad improving). They have an interesting father and son relationship, and I think that Rich usually finds his dad something of an embarrassment (what 15 year old doesn't?). I began to wonder how Rich would look back on these games when he gets older...

----

I used to be quite sporty when I was a lad. Looking at me now, you probably find that a little hard to believe, but it’s true. Perhaps I wasn’t the most gifted athlete in the world, and I was never quite good enough to get into the school team, but I was a trier. God, I used to run my little socks off. It didn’t matter what game it was, I always wanted to play. Cricket, hockey, basketball, table tennis, British Bulldog… anything. But football was my absolute favourite. I loved to play football. At school I was often one of the last players picked and I spent a lot of time in goal – not because I was any good, but because I was happy to be playing at all. And I was. I really was.

My dad loved football too. Like a lot of teenage boys, I didn’t spend a great deal of time talking to my dad. Well. I suppose didn’t really spend any time talking to my dad. Dad was just my dad. I could talk to dad anytime, and as a result I barely spoke to him at all. But he liked football.

From time to time dad would take me to a game. I think it was probably his way of trying to bring us closer together, to spend some ‘quality time’ together. It didn’t really work. I loved playing football, and I quite liked watching the big games on the telly, but somehow watching a struggling lower division side with my dad wasn’t much fun. It was almost always cold, it was frequently raining, and there were big long silences between us as our side shipped goals and I lost all sensation in my feet.

I think my dad first asked me to play for his 5-a-side team one week when they were short of numbers. He’d been playing for almost as long as I could remember. Every Thursday without fail he would get home from work early, grab a quick bite to eat and then head out to meet up with the lads for a five-thirty kick-off. He was always back by half-seven. Sometimes he would try to talk to me about his game, usually the goals he had scored, but I would generally just scowl at him, make some remark about my homework and stomp up to my room.

And then he asked me to play.

I was tempted to say no, for no real reason other than the fact that I was fourteen years old and he was my dad. In the end though, I just couldn’t pass up the opportunity of a game. I was quite excited at the breakfast table that morning, but naturally I kept up a look of what I hoped was supreme indifference; at least until dad went to work. Judging by the twinkle in his eye as he told me to make sure I got home quickly after school, I’m not sure that he was entirely taken in.

“You wouldn’t want to miss the big game tonight, would you son?”
I scowled, but only got a big smile and a wink for my efforts as dad practically danced his way out of the kitchen and out the door to the office.

He was right though, I was excited. The rest of the day crawled malevolently by until finally – finally – I was walking out onto the pitch with ten or eleven of my dad’s mates, ready for the game to begin. They were a motley bunch, but the first thing that I noticed was that dad was by far the oldest player on the pitch. I don’t think dad was particularly old at that point, but what son really knows the age of their own father? He’s just your dad, isn’t he? He was probably in his late forties at that point, but most of the other players were lads in their thirties. They weren’t all fine physical specimens, and several of them were beginning to look a little comfortable around the middle, but they were all, without fail, taller and slimmer than my dad. For the first time in my life I became aware that my dad wasn’t going to be around forever.

For the next hour, dad ran and jumped and shouted as vigorously as anyone else on the pitch. I don’t really remember the details of the game; what the scores were, if my dad got any goals or if my side won or lost the game. What has stayed with me though is the sheer vitality of my dad. He was constantly talking. Almost every time there was a shot on goal, we would hear these little exclamations: “Oooof!”, “It’s in!”, “Pick that out!”. It didn’t seem to matter if the ball had ended up in the net or not. We were actually playing on opposite sides that night, but that didn’t stop dad from offering me his own unique combination of coaching and taunting. Although the other lads cut me a lot of slack, I just physically wasn’t able to compete with them. They were all faster and stronger than me, and far more confident on the ball. The others may have made allowances for me, but dad made none, or at least none that I could see. He was uncompromising in his tackles, at one point bundling me over onto the hard Astroturf.

Did I get any sympathy? Did I hell. “You should have passed the ball sooner son. Play the simple ball”. I only had about two shots on goal in the whole game, both pathetic, but dad was quick to laugh “HAHA!” and then run up to me, ruffle my hair and offer me some quick advice about keeping my head over the ball. It was a really remarkable performance. I’m not sure that any of dad’s mates really knew what to make of it, and I think that they were mildly concerned that my dad would knock the confidence out of me.

As we were driving home after the game, dad asked me if I had enjoyed myself. Without looking over at him I simply grunted that it had been “Alright”, and that had been the end of the conversation. When we got home, I jumped straight out of the car and disappeared up to my room. I had loved it though, I had loved every minute of it, and I couldn’t wait to be asked again.

I played several times over the course of the next few years. At the time I thought that I was getting better and better, which was true, but I was gauging my performances against my dad, and he was getting older. The pinnacle of my footballing career had to be the night that I nutmegged my dad on the way to scoring a fantastic goal. He might have looked mortified to the casual observer, and all his mates ran up to him to tell him it that it was surely time for grandad to be hanging up his boots, but I saw the look he gave me. It didn't last for long, and I almost missed it, but it was a look of pure, unmistakeable pride.

I think that was the last night that I played with them. I’m not really sure why I stopped, although probably it was something to do with girls. Somehow football started to take a backseat to hanging around bus shelters chewing gum. Looking back though, those are the moments that I cherish, the moments when I felt that I was closest to my dad. Those are the moments that you miss, and when I think of them now, I miss him terribly.

My Secret Life

2006-01-07T19:24:00.000Z

I'm not sure what I think of this. What do you reckon? I never got any further, I think I reshaped the general idea into my NaNoWriMo.

My name is John. John Doe.

That isn’t really my name. John Doe is the name assigned to any unidentifiable corpse in the possession of the authorities. John Doe will do fine.

My real name is one you can find on every street, in every bar. As usual, as normal, as mundane as anyone.

Well, my Earth Name is.

And my story is ordinary. Well, ordinary for me. I’ve never known quite what it’s like to be anything other than what I am. I can only imagine what other people’s lives must be like. To me, this odd strain of events is simply my ordinary life. I’m aware most people’s lives aren’t like this. Maybe one in a thousand, one in ten thousand, one in a million, perhaps.

No one knows the exact figures. But we will see.

I haven’t told you my real name because I don’t want to be found. I don’t want people to know who I am, what I am.

If I told you, you wouldn’t believe me. You’d curl your lip and think bullshit and try and edge away from me on the train. If I felt like talking to you.

I don’t much feel like talking to anyone anymore, for any reason. Don’t take it personally. I just don’t. I don’t trust people. I don’t trust anyone. Or anything.

You have no reason to trust me either. Everything I could tell you could be a lie. The deathbed confessional of a man, sealed in state until I die and to be read and analysed and mocked by my children.

Some of them could say I wish I had known him better. Some of them will say Dad was a fruitloop. He spent too much time at unexplainedmysteries.com.

This is what they will say. And is no more true or untrue that this confessional. I don’t expect you to believe me. I expect you to ask me pertinent questions, some of which I won’t be able to answer, when I least expect them.

You know how to drive a car. You just can’t explain the internal combustion engine, or electricity. Unless you’re a specialist.

I am not a specialist. I am a foot soldier. A grunt. One of the many.

I am in hiding. Not just from this world ; from myself. Who I really am. Sorry, who I really was.

I’m trying to fool myself. The past is past. The past is no longer. There will be no more of these moments. No more lies. No more hiding from myself. I will be able to stand up, and say I am. One day I will not be living in fear of being exposed. One day I will not deny the facts when people ask me, who I am, what do I do?

My name is John Doe. I work a low-level office clerk job. I don’t necessarily want to be noticed. I just want to be paid. I want to go home at the end of the day to my flat, switch on the TV, fire up the Internet, eat my pre-processed food, and forget why I am here, and what I am meant to do when I get this far.

When I watch TV, I’m hiding. When I’m on the Internet, I’m hiding. When I’m not staring at the mirror, looking deep into my diluted eyes, whispering to myself My name is John and I am an undercover agent, canvassing a war I am in hiding. I am lying to myself.

We all lie to ourselves. Some lies are bigger than others. We tell ourselves that we are happy. That we are living in the best of all possible world. That we like this life.

We lie because if the truth is an ugly fact.

I like this life. It’s not bad. A life of relative material comfort and an absence of excessive labour. It’s better than what I left behind.

It’s a frequent problem. The agent goes undercover for so long he forgets who he really is. Why he’s really here.

This is my secret.

My presence is no mystery. No secret. They know who I am. Why I am here. What they know, and I do not, is how much longer I have left. All I have to do is fool them a little while longer. That I am still embedded deep inside enemy lines. That I am still undercover.

Sure, I could tell you why I am here.

I could tell you that not even my parents know who I really am, or what really happened to them one night thirty seven years and eight months ago. They’re still happily married.

Me? One starter marriage, failed, and no children. A modern outcast. But a perfect candidate.

Sure, I could tell you, but what would be the point of reading on after that?

This isn’t for you anyway. This is for me. This is my way of trying to make sense of my life. This is me trying to work out the whys and wherefores of all these things. I’m trying to make sense of my life.

I don’t know if I can make sense of it anymore. I don’t know if I’m just unable to make sense of it, or if there isn’t anything much to make sense of. I don’t know even if Einstein could make sense of this. Maybe there is no reason to find.

I would hope that I am wrong. That somewhere, somehow, I got it wrong. Wouldn’t be the first time.

And I wonder, does everyone feel like this, does everyone else feel this way? A bystander in a life, a stranger in a world, a square peg in a round hole, not quite fitting in, but faking it through, day by day, is that how everyone else feels? I don’t quite know, to be honest. Nobody does. Nobody really knows anyone else that well.

Nobody can really know me. I don’t know myself. And I don’t always want to. What I remember of my past life – that is, too much – I don’t want to remember.

I know this. I volunteered for this. I had a choice, and this was the choice I made.

Everybody makes mistakes.

Pink Dress

2006-01-06T20:09:00.000Z

Alright, this rough, so don't laugh. Any advice at my terrible ability to write third person would be very much appreciated...And I was thinking, about the whole colalborative novel thing, ST. Are we giving that a whirl?

****

"My bed feels like it is floating." Elizabeth said, turning on her side to look across the room to Carrie, sitting on the edge of her vanity stool, watching in interest as her friend lay there in a towel shifting from side to side.

"How? Like it wobbles? The floor is uneven or something?" Carrie leans over, as if to inspect the quality of the furniture.

"No, its different from that." Her eyes flutter open and closed as she tries to think of another way to describe the feeling she has at that particular moment. To her, it seemed the wind had swept in her window and cradled her mattress, swinging it gently to the cadence of an unsung lullaby. "Its almost like flying...or being pulled to the side in a windstorm."

Swinging her legs over the side of her bed, shamelessly letting the towel fall, she dangles her feet over the edge, her toes lightly kissing the carpet as she swings them back and forth. She breathes deeply as her toes kiss the carpet, bit by bit lowering her feet to the floor.

"Do you ever feel beautiful for no reason, other than knowing you are?"

Carrie, a sweet but down to earth girl, shakes her head with confusion written upon her face. "I don’t think I have. I mean, you know, men have told me I am beautiful. But I think it is different to know. Why? You really like this fellow, don’t you?"

"Its not that. I like him, but," she answers, standing up and stretching. "Did you ever get tickled as a child?"

"Yeah, quite a bit actually. My granddad, he would chase me through his house and tickle me. I would laugh really hard. You know, giggle loudly and shriek the way kids always do when they are tickled. I loved it. But what does that have to do with being beautiful? This guy, Jayke, he tickles you? That’s why you feel happy?"

"No. My dad used to tickle me. He would do what your granddad did, only he would scoop me up in his arms and tickle me after tossing me onto the living room sofa, and all I could do was gasp for him to stop and laugh until I cried. He would laugh too, and kiss me on my forehead before letting me get a head start on him trying to catch me again. That’s how I feel tonight. Like I am being chased down my hallway with tickles a moment behind me."

She crossed the room and began to shift through the closet. Sighing, she turned to Carrie again. "No, I don’t think there’s a man out there that just wants to tickle me now."

"Too right," Carrie replies ruefully. "And if they do...well, what kind of man is that?"

Elizabeth reaches into the closet again, pulling out a lipstick pink dress, tied with a bow in the back. Crossing the room, she stands before the mirror, and holds it in front of herself, tossing her long blonde locks over the side of the dress, peering this way and that.

"You know," she says thoughtfully, "It wasn’t supposed to turn out like this."

"What wasn’t? The dress?" Carrie stands, looking into the mirror and smiling. "I like it."

"No, I mean men. Love. Life. None of this was supposed to be like it is. Remember growing up? Everything was going to be different than it turned out to be. Especially men, though. Especially them."

Reaching over, she flipped on her radio, letting the sounds of the music fill up the room as she rolled on her nylons. Picking up the beat of the song, she sways her hips this way and that, dancing about the room, searching for her bra. Dancing to and fro, she lets the music slide through her ears, down through her fingertips and toes as she searches, humming the tune as she slips it over her breasts.

"Do you remember when Madonna came out with this song, ‘Material Girl’? I loved that song. And I bought the record, and would play it in my room. I had a pink comforter and I would wrap it around me and turn up the stereo and sing into my hairbrush. I had a pet poodle, and he was my audience. I would imagine him and handing me diamond bracelets and all sorts of fancy things."

"Yeah," replies Carrie, dodging her gleefully dancing friend as she moves about the room. "I remember. It wasn’t fair. I thought every man would be bringing me flowers and candy and dresses."

"Yes! Pretty dresses, that was the most important, wasn’t it?" interrupts Elizabeth, laughing lightly as she digs through the closet, tossing out shoes this way and that. "Every man is born to worship you. That’s what my Daddy always told me."

"Right. Turns out he was wrong. I remember, because I wanted to be just like her back then. One day, I was dancing around my room, singing at the top of my lungs, living in my own little world. I was smiling a dazzling smile, I was so cool, and then my older brother came in. He told me I was being silly, and switched off my radio. I remember him storming out of the room and slamming the door. It caused a scratch on the record." Closing her eyes Carrie lets herself drift back to that day in her mind, remembering how shattered she felt. Sighing, she looks up at Elizabeth, seeing her pull on the pink dress, and smooth it about her waist. "Its been the same since that day, though, reality always seems a bit like my brother, eager to point out my faults, shoot down my dream of finding the perfect man and slamming the proverbial door."

"Well, then this dress is a little symbolic for both of us," chirps Elizabeth from in front of the mirror, adding jewelry to her ensemble delightedly. "Tonight I am beautiful because I say so, and when we go out, you and I, with our fellows, we’ll be stars. We’ll be the women we always wanted to be. I’m tired of feeling disappointed because men aren’t falling all over me. I am tired of men not doing the things my Daddy said they would. Tonight, I am going to believe I am gorgeous without someone’s encouragement. I am going to ride out this beautiful, giddy feeling and see if that works any better." Turning back to the mirror, she paints a trail of lip gloss over her bow shaped lips, smiling back at herself with glee.

"You’re crazy." she replies, shaking her head and straitening her short dark hair in the mirror.

"No, I am in love with myself tonight. Look at me. My senses are in overdrive right now. Everything tingles, every breath is almost overwhelming. I am kissing myself from the inside out tonight. And you are lovely. You should feel this way too. Every man we see tonight is going to wonder how the men we’re with got so lucky to have us. Watch and see. You’re beautiful. You’re classic. And so am I."

Crossing the room, she pulls Carrie in front of her, placing her hands on her hips and giving her friend’s neck a tiny kiss of affection.

"Imagine your favorite screen stars. James Dean, Fred Astaire, Bing Crosby. Think of all those classic, beautiful men holding you like you are Vera Ellen or Marilyn Monroe. Imagine yourself on their arms tonight, and think of how lucky they are to have you."

"Lizzie, you’re crazy."

"No, I’m not. Blow a kiss to yourself, go on- do it." she urges from behind her, shaking her hips a bit.

Reluctantly, Carrie looks into the mirror and blows a kiss.

"No! Smile, and do it like you mean it." she demands, pulling a face.

Again, she looks to the mirror, smiling a sly smile, and blushing a bit, Carrie blows a saucy kiss to herself, and stifles a giggle by turning to her friend.

"Happy?"

"Extremely. Now, I think I smell cologne outside the door. I think Jayke is here. Want to check?"

"No, go on, I am behind you..." she answers, casting one last doubtful look into the mirror, with the vague hope of seeing a stunning beauty there. When she sees herself grimacing back she turns to the doorway in time to see the fabled Jayke sweeping Elizabeth into his arms and tilting her back in to a silver screen worthy kiss. His brilliant white teeth and chocolate brown eyes flash as he kisses her, and Elizabeth giggles delightedly at his attentions. The room seems to sharpen around the two of them for just a moment.

Shifting uncomfortably, Carrie catches Jayke’s attention in the doorway. Righting himself and Elizabeth, he strides over with confidence and grasps her hand with a firm yet delicate touch. Raising it to his lips, he kisses it gently, and intones with a voice rich in timbre and emotion,

"Elizabeth said you were lovely, but I can see I was hardly able to give your date an accurate description. I didn’t realize how stunning you’d be." His smile settled on her like a cape or a long skirt might, loose about the edges, but clinging in the right spots. Turning to her friend, he places her arm in the crook of his elbow. "Shall we go, princess?"

Turning back to her friend and mouthing ‘what did I tell you?’ she nods delightedly and allows him to escort her down the stairs. Carrie, with nothing to lose, follows, quietly reflecting on his words and wondering exactly what he meant by the word ‘stunning.’

Worrying About Acceptance

2006-01-06T11:44:00.000Z

Ok, I wrote this right after I wrote "Ravenous". It's an attempt to capture some of my nerves of publishing a story online in front of an audience that I don't really know.

I don't know how accurate my comments are about other people's blogs but, I do know that everyone I checked posted every day. Unlike me. Bum.

Oh and apologies for not mentioning everyone in the story. I haven't got around to reading everyone's blogs quite yet :S

***

He glanced down at the short story he had just written and wondered if he should really post it onto the site. "Ravenous" it was entitled. He had called it "Sick" and then "Wrong" but even though it seemed completely sick and wrong, neither of the titles really seemed apt. Ravenous, on the other hand, could be applied to the guy, to the raven or to the maggots. Or, he thought to himself, to the horribly insensitive and greedy doctors who had prescribed him his medicine rather than actually investigating his psychosis. Of course, that was 'insider' information that only the author would know, but still, that was what doctors did. Curing the illness whilst ignoring the patient.

So. Should he post it? Swiss Toni had said in his introduction email that any genre was welcome. Did he really mean any genre or was he just being polite? 'Christ', he thought, 'Stop over analysing and just post the damn thing. What's the worst they could say?'

He glanced at the mirror on his desk, at his reflection. 'Plenty', it replied. 'They could think you're a deviant with a twisted and warped imagination. At best, they could think you're a crap writer. Remember what you got in G.C.S.E English Language? B! What kind of writer gets a B in English Language?

'I need a coffee', he thought to himself and got up, ignoring his reflection's comments. In the bright glare of the kitchen, he mused upon the other authors that had joined the collaborative site, Reader-Meet-Author. He didn't know much about any of them, only gleaning items from their respective blog posts. The only ones he did know of and had read before were Swiss Toni (of whom he had had limited contact with already) and Aravis.

Aravis was a photographer/writer/artist, by the looks of things. Hell, she was a complete package of a creative person. He had skimmed her blogs one day and had been totally and utterly lost in the sea of creativity, like a shipwrecked sailor holding onto a log for dear life. Unlike him, she posted every single day and every single one was interesting and worth the read. His own blog, by comparison, read like a Christian Aid pamphlet shoved through a letter box and then dumped in the bin.

The kettle finally boiled and, as he made himself a Nescafe instant coffee, he wondered what his fellow authors were like. Did they post every day? Was he the only one who wasn't really committed to writing in his blog? The only one who wrote about such inconsistant trivialities that it made for a boring read? He sighed and walked back to the computer room, and to his reflection, his own personal tormentor.

He opened up the blog, checked the list of collaborative authors and decided to check out Spinsterwitch. 'Oh shit', he realised as he read her posts, 'it IS just me that doesn't post every day. FUCK!" He sat there stunned and raised his eyes up to the ceiling in a silent prayer, grimacing at himself. He continued to read through Spinsterwitch's post and sighed with worry at the part where she wrote "Why do we create horror?".

He clicked back on "Ravenous" and considered seriously pressing the delete button with the entire thing selected, contemplating Swiss Toni on the one hand stating that all genres were welcome and on the other, all those people who would read "Ravenous" and think "what a load of bollocks".

His finger rested on the enter button and slowly, ever so stomach-churning slowly, he pushed down. Post 100% Complete, the screen depicted. He stood up and got ready for work, trying not to think about the inevitable flurry of comments that would trash his story.

Ravenous

2006-01-06T08:51:00.000Z

Erm.

This started out as a piece of fantasy fiction.

Honest.

***

He watched as the raven pecked hard at something with its long sharp beak. Wondering if that was where the word ravenous originated, he walked over to the blackbird, waving his arms like a bird taking flight and shouting loudly. The raven gave him barely a glance and puffed its feathers up, hopping for a moment before finally taking to the air and fleeing the scene. There, on the ground where the raven had pecked voraciously, lay a dead bird. A sparrow, horribly mutilated and gouged.

Crouching, he stared at the dead bird and glanced around before finally giving in to his morbid compulsion and fingered the cadaver. It felt soft and under his probing finger things began to writhe in its corpulent belly. His finger pushed harder and the sack of flesh slowly crumpled, its stomach issuing forth its hideous cargo of maggots.

For a moment he was still, his eyes watching the white larvae as they crawled hither and thither. And then, it came to his face, that most innocent of acts. A childish smile.

His mouth made a sound without his mind directing it. It sounded like a snigger. He looked around, scrutinizing his surroundings but there was no one about.

He was alone.

For a moment, he considered what he should do but finally thought better of scooping up the dead creature and stuffing it into his mouth. Especially in public where anyone could see.

Swallowing hard, he buried his head in his hands. Closing his eyes, he began to wish those thoughts away. They were wrong and he knew it; he made himself believe it, at least. Silhouetted on his eyelids was a picture of the bird, the specks of whiteness creeping across in all directions were the maggots, he realised.

Slowly standing up, he reached into his pockets and withdrew the pack of tablets they had given him. He swallowed again, opened his eyes and popped two of the red and white capsules in his mouth. But then spat them out onto the ground as he felt them writhe in his mouth. Looking down he saw them surrounded by the maggots.

His stomach finally began to heave with the utter sickness of it all and he turned and ran.

Where Did You Come From, Where Did You Go?

2006-01-05T20:00:00.000Z

Hello, this is the starting chapter of the other idea I had for NaNo that didn't get a "vote" while I posed it to my friends. I am tackling it now because I need practice in third person. I would be thrilled to hear if anyone is interested in a second chapter.

* * *
The county fair is a fading tradition. In an age of industry, commerce, high rise buildings and strip malls, it is one few people experience now, and the ones who do are never appreciative of the things they are seeing. They’ve always seen it, they have known it since they were children. To them, it is a wholly unremarkable thing to attend a county fair. It always has been, it always will be.

It is not the fault of the folk who have never seen such a thing that they do not understand it. How can a person who lives in the city understand the miracle of a cow giving birth, when they have never seen one? How can they who have access to giant amusement parks and themed malls understand the excitement one feels at having the opportunity to ride a shoddily assembled novelty or purchase home made jams? One who lives in a loft apartment full of potpourri and scented candles will shirk at the thought of the stench of animals, hay, gasoline and fried onions- possibly one of the most beautiful smell combinations in the entire planet. None of these things will inspire a city dweller to make the trek to the country to experience them.

Nevertheless, a county fair is a wholly remarkable thing. It is a living breathing entity that balloons to life in the space of only a few days; and in the course of its short, riotous existence, effects the thousands of people who are lucky enough to experience its life cycle in profound and amazing ways. Beyond the wares, the excitement, the food and the scents, there is a particularly special way a fair may effect the person who attends it, if only they are able to see it.
A county fair, you see, can teach you everything you ever need to know about life. That is not to say that the secret to world peace is at the fair. You will not find the answer to your seven year old’s algebraic problems there. Nor will you discover a way to make more money for your company nor a reason to convince your wife not to purchase that ghastly Persian Rug she has been eyeing at Macy’s for the last month or so. However, there are still pertinent, life enriching lessons to be learned, and it is the firm opinion of this author that they are the most important lessons you will learn.

* * *
It is important to see this journey through the eyes of someone whom you can learn from. Someone special to this author, but, like you sir or madam, most likely, a wholly unremarkable person. A person of average intelligence and looks, one who has not had more or less education than you doctor, or you mother.

Imagine, if you can then, this unremarkable girl we are about to follow. If you look, in your minds eye, you can see her, in the house across the street from mine. In the second story of her little split level house, pulling on a pair of boots beneath her rather plain ensemble of jeans and a black tee-shirt. Her hair, you can see, is pulled back into a pony tail, and she is devoid of make-up. As she grabs the keys to her boring, mid-size car and dashes out the door you can see that she is much like you.

However, before we approach the destination she is driving to, it is important that in even seeing Jennifer (which is the name of this unremarkable girl) you can tell she has, in part, already learned the first lesson to be learned at the county fair.

LESSON ONE: FASHION - Always Dress for the Occasion

Jennifer arrives at her destination completely ready to head to the fair. Of course, one does not attend the fair alone. It is an experience to be shared, which is why she is picking up her good friend Molly, who possibly like you, has never in her life attended a fair. It is Molly’s apartment complex that Jennifer is now parking her car in, and Molly’s stairs she is skipping up quickly, taking them two at a time in her excitement.

"Come in! Its unlocked." Molly yells from the inside of her house, as Jennifer lowers her hands from her sharp knock at the door. "I am almost ready."

Stepping into the apartment with the familiarity of one who has visited often, Jennifer calls back to her loudly.

"You ought to be glad it’s me. What if it wasn’t?"

"Well, at least I would look nice, wouldn’t I?" this reply, coming from the general direction of the bathroom in the hall is punctuated with the appearance of Molly, who, as it has been mentioned before, and is telling in her dress, has never attended a fair of any kind.

Molly is the type of woman this author would expect to have never attended a fair. She is a lovely creature, with soft curling hair, and heart shaped face and a proclivity for perfumes and lotions that borders on some sort of psychological disorder. She bathes with something slightly more than regularity and slightly less than obsession. She does not cook for herself and has no ambition to do anything that will require her to return to her manicurist in less than the time is required for her to go back to have her nails refilled.

For this particular occasion she has dressed, in her mind, as her friend Jennifer has instructed her. She is wearing a short, rather revealing skirt with several layers of ruffles and a shirt that fits tightly and scoops low in the neck. In lieu of dressy shoes, she has opted for thick soled flip flop sandals and has scaled back her jewelry to one bracelet, and anklet, two rings and her standard earrings.

"I thought I told you to dress comfortably," objects Jennifer who eyes her friend with a wariness that implies she thinks her friend has forgotten exactly where they are going. Unfortunately, for both Jennifer and Molly, their ideas of comfortable are vastly different.

"I did." Molly replies, glancing down at her outfit critically. "Is it too dressy?"

"A bit," replies Jennifer with a standard bit of sarcasm, a tone this reader, like Molly, will learn to both expect and appreciate in time.

"Well, what do you suggest?"

"What am I wearing, you dope?"

"I don’t know, I thought you were dressing before you came."

"I did."

"I see." the distaste in Molly’s voice is indicative of her feeling for jeans, tee-shirts and Jennifer’s taste in clothing in general. "I should dress like I am going to get dirty then?"

"Yes, because you will."

"What?!?"

At this time it is important that the reader, and Molly, be informed of the following pieces of information:

There is a large amount of dirt at the fair. Unlike amusement parks, where pimpled teenagers are underpaid to sweep sidewalks and change trash, fairs have large barrels that look as if they should hold crude oil or toxic waste which you will dump your trash into. They are changed once a day if it is a particularly nice fair, and as you might suspect, there are people who are less than eager to use these, and will toss the remains of their cigarettes, corn dogs and candies directly on the ground, where they will likely remain until they are picked up by a kind sole, or else stepped on or thrown out of the way.

There are also a large amount of animals at the fair. These animals will be housed in a particular area, however, being shown in various places on the grounds, they will likely track their feet, hay and other less than pleasant bits of muck around the grounds. These will also not be cleaned up unless very large.

In addition to the animals, there will be people, of all different persuasions, wandering about. Some will be less tactful than others. This means there is a risk of having food, ash, soda or other things dumped, spilled or otherwise involuntarily placed on your person. When you ride the amusement rides, there is no one to protect your dignity other than yourself, so if you wear less than practical clothing you are also likely to be gawked at in the least, and made fun of, hit on, or otherwise violated at worst.

There are no trams at the fair. No men in golf carts willing to transport you from one place to the other. There are no trains to give you a tour before you decide where to go. The fair will encompass no less than 20 acres. The fair always takes place in the summer, generally in what becomes the hottest week of the year, since Mother Nature herself isn’t one to mess with tradition. You will, as a result, spend a large portion of your time walking long distances, standing in lines and eating in sweltering heat with no instant relief from any of the conditions you have exposed yourself to.

As a result you can see why it is far more practical to dress as Jennifer has, in a pair of old jeans, sturdy shoes and a shirt she is not particularly attached to. Molly’s dress, while lovely and appropriate for say, a date to the movies, or a walk in a park with paved trails and a lot of shade, is not entirely practical. And, as comfortable as she may feel at the moment, Jennifer is quite right in suspecting that later in the evening her friend might be less than pleased with her should she not object to her dress at this time.

Since we have a moment, as Molly dashes back to her extensive wardrobe and picks out a far more practical selection, I would suggest, my dear reader, that you also pull on your most comfortable boots or running shoes, and a shirt you like but are not too fond of, and we will follow our two new friends to their next destination.

I'm not shy, but I know someone who is...

2006-01-05T10:18:00.000Z

In person I can be an utter wreck, but here, with words, I am someone different. Today though we shall just be viewing direct cut and paste from where I normally hang out. I'll try harder next time, I promise.

I lit a match and held it to the stick of incense, sending up a little prayer as I did so. The incense ignited for a moment and then settled to smolder, filling the room with the musky scent of Nag Champa.
Back in bed, I flipped the pillow to the cool side and settled to watch the glowing orange ember in the darkness. After a moment I said quietly, skyward "Please let it be alright".
Closing my eyes I repeated the mantra in my mind until sleep took the worry away.

It was a dark and stormy night....

2006-01-04T13:57:00.000Z

“If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth”

Welcome to Reader Meet Author.

Writing is both one of the easiest things in the world and one of the hardest, but it’s something I want to do a lot more of. Perhaps one day I will sit down and write a novel. Rather than simply waiting for that day, I am going to start writing now. I am going to write whatever comes to mind and post it up here, just for the sheer joy of it.

It might be long. It might be short. It might be fiction. It might be autobiographical. It doesn’t matter. The idea is simply to get writing.

But this isn’t just about me. I can’t be the only person who feels that there is more to life; there must be other people who feel that there has to be a way of expressing themselves beyond the day-to-day grind of work; other people who feel that they should be writing…

If you are one of those people, then Reader Meet Author needs you as a contributor. Contact me by commenting below or by emailing me at the address in my profile and I will add you as an editor.