Oddly Hewn

Lost Inside

2011-03-18T12:40:00.005Z

My girlfriend has one of those bags.

She's sat on the edge of the bed right now, searching through it for her glasses.

A lot of girls have bags like that nowadays; it is nine feet wide, a hundred and twelve feet long, and sixty three thousand five hundred and seven feet deep. On the outside it looks like any other brown leather bag.

It’s the kind of bag that absorbs normal everyday items, the kind that makes you question your own sanity. It gets you looking in the back of the freezer or under the rug in the living room for a glasses case that otherwise might take a generation to find.

I lie there staring at her naked back with the morning sunlight glinting off her shoulder. She's making quiet exploration sounds. I think about offering her a compass, a stout pair of boots, a flask of coffee and sandwiches wrapped in paper so she can get to the search seriously.

She stands up looking like you wouldn't believe and gives a faintly exasperated, but quite delicious sound. She walks over to the bedroom door and wraps a robe around her cool white body. Without her glasses she looks like a librarian on her day off who intends to get drunk and sleep with strangers.

I hear her go into the bathroom and start looking for her glasses under the toilet seat.

Then I hear sounds downstairs and I know that she's looking for her glasses in the kitchen cupboards. Right now she's looking in the tin that holds the sugar from the top shelf of the cupboard by the refrigerator, like the glasses are a hidden treasure in a desert of white crystal sand.

I hear birds singing and my immediate reaction is to look down at the bag. There could be birds down there.

She comes into the bedroom carrying two cups of coffee and a pair of glasses on the bridge of her nose. I ask her where she found them and she tells me that these are her spare pair, and that the other pair must still be in her bag and will turn up sooner or later.

I swear, sometimes she opens that bag and the smell that comes out of it is like someone just lit a camp fire. I remember the day we bought it from a second-hand shop, and lie there wondering about all the people that might already be lost inside.

November Sunday

2010-12-02T22:27:00.004Z

1. Gentle

We sat
Watching the snow come down
On the roofs of the town

She ran her hands through my hair
And kissed my shoulders

I wondered if that
Was how the rooftops felt

2. Piss

I was enjoying
a nice
Sleepy
Sit-down-piss
With my girlfriend next to me
In the shower

She looked amazing there
Behind a curtain of tropical fish
Like an oyster diver
Drowning
In warm tropical waters

I thought of what I might look like
From the other side

3. Armageddon

The snow fell all morning
Then suddenly
(And so quietly)
It stopped

Everything was a smooth white colour
Like an art gallery
With nothing put up
On the walls

We didn’t want to ruin
The quiet smoothness outside
So we went back to bed
And ignored the messages from my mother
Telling me she was right
About Armageddon

And each of us had a place in that old yellow streetlamp light, and the days of aimless rain

2010-08-04T19:50:00.003+01:00

At dinner recently a man started talking about how he had lost his faith in God. He’d been quiet for the whole meal and started telling people about it right in the middle of desert.

We put our spoons down and listened to him. He had a strange way of talking like he was explaining the whole thing to himself. He looked down at his desert the whole time he spoke.

When he had done we picked up our spoons and finished desert in silence. No one said anything to the man about him losing his faith in God. It was a sad story and not one I really wanted to talk about more.

I wondered why the desert had made him decide to talk about it.

After dinner we said our goodbyes and I shook the man’s hand for a good while. Looking back it seems a pointless thing to have done but I couldn’t think of anything better at the time.

Outside the house it was dark and a fine rain was blowing aimlessly about the front yard. There was that old yellow streetlamp light.

As we walked away I looked at the cars parked on the driveway. The man had arrived last and his small car was squeezed in right at the end. I noticed on the back of his car the place where a chromed fish emblem had recently been. It’s the sort of thing you see everywhere.

The man had pried the fish away but the glue was stubborn and had set hard. I scratched at it with my fingernail to check; it was as much apart of the car as the paintwork.

We both stood there in the near rain and old yellow light looking down at the shadow of that fish on the man’s car. I imagined him uselessly scraping away at it and it seemed the saddest thing in the world right then. My wife squeezed my hand and said that maybe God wasn’t ready to let the man go quite yet.

The Somnambulist and the Song

2010-02-09T20:41:00.005Z

It starts with a man sitting up in bed. He’s dreaming but has done like this for a long time. The woman lying beside him used to wake up, years ago.

In the dream the man is looking out of the eyes of someone else. He can’t see himself in the dream, but he feels convincingly old. His breath is heavy and sounds like a far away carpenter’s workshop.

The old man in the dream is looking down at the tracks of a railway from the edge of the platform. He looks down for a good while, studying the lustrous surface of the steel. Eventually he looks up, turning his head in unison with the man in the bedroom and staring down the tunnel where the train will go. The old man considers its quiet, calm blackness.

Then there is the sound of a train coming from the opposite direction. Both men turn their head to look. The man sitting in bed feels his pulse begin to rise. On his left hand, his thumb starts to twitch. The men look down at it and frown. It’s got a lot worse recently and the old man knows what it means. He brings his hands to his open mouth to try to calm the tremor. All the man in the bedroom can think is that his hands feel so cold. Then the man in the bedroom starts to pull at something at the side of his finger. The old man is pulling his tatty fingerless gloves over his second knuckle. Both of them shiver.

The train comes into the platform and once again the man in the bedroom feels his pulse begin to race. He can feel his heart beat at the tips of his fingers. Just as the train is about to pass, both men can hear and see nothing else and the man in the bedroom feels the legs of the old man twitch. The man’s heart stops momentarily as he looks up to see the train pass. He feels the cold again, creeping through the old man’s anxious state.

The old man turns around and walks back to a blanket on the floor by the wall of the platform. He sits down like a rusty box of tools.

They both sit still for a while, catching their breath.

At this point, the man in the bedroom becomes aware of something in the old mans’ arms. He can’t see it because the old man has his own eyes closed. Instead the man in the bedroom just feels and hears the object. First the old man runs a fingertip along a wire. It gives a distant squeal. Then the old man runs his finger along a thin piece of something, counting small hard protrusions. Both men count nineteen and the man in the bedroom is suddenly aware of how warm the object feels in his arms. There is a pleasing wooden grain to its surface. Finally the old man looks down and it is a small guitar that the man in the bedroom does not know the name for.

Just before the old man starts to play, the man in the room notices how much calmer he feels. His breath is soft and relaxed. Then the old man starts to play and the quiet beauty of the song surprises him.

There is no one around of course; it is winter and late and there is never anyone here. Nobody walks past to hear the song. The only person who hears it is the man in the bedroom from somewhere inside, as it travels down and across his spine. A part of the song briefly makes him tingle as it becomes ever so slightly faster. Like the dream, the song is a minor lament and the sound of it is beautiful in their arms. The song is played so quietly by the old man it would be completely drowned out, were it not for the place being so utterly deserted.

After the song is finished they both look down and see an upside-down hat on the floor. It is as empty as ever. Both men reach out and pick it up, placing it carefully on their heads.

From somewhere far away, there is the sound of another train. The old man says, “I think this is mine.” He says it with a grainy lilt to his voice. The man in the bedroom speaks the words silently.

The old man stands up painfully; but both men expect this by now. The sound of the train comes in louder than the previous one, because of the quietness of the song.

Suddenly the old man breaks into an uneven run. This hurts both of them right down their spine and into their knees but by now it is too late and both men have smiles on their faces now. The train meets the men with its sudden light and noise and just as sudden blackness. The only thing the driver saw was a man in a dark coat, and the head of what looked like a guitar poking up over his shoulder.

The man in the bedroom wakes. He lets out a small shout.

The woman sits up and reaches around him. His body is cold and damp. She has seen this so many times before.

“Bad dream?” She says, softly into his ear.

“No.”

The Train

2010-01-27T17:59:00.010Z

I witnessed something recently on an overnight train; it was a small thing that happened quietly in the middle of the night whilst other people were somehow managing to sleep. It wasn’t a thing to wake the others for, just a moment of humanity to sit and watch from the silent darkness of my own bed.

I’d woken gradually to a full bladder and one of those slow-formed questions about holding out until morning. Realising that the answer was of course no, I sat up and looked around in the gloom of the carriage, at the dark-coloured limbs hanging over the edges of the other bunks. I wondered at their effortless sleep. Meanwhile my bladder truly needed emptying but the silence and unfamiliarity pinned me hard to the bed, and I could feel sleep-inertia wrapping itself warmly around my shoulders. So I ended up sitting there, dumb and foreign and inert and needing-to-piss, for quite some time.

Then from up at the end of the carriage I heard the cough of a child. I looked over. In the lighted section by the carriage doors, a man with a moustache was sat leaning against a partition wall. Next to him, curled into a ball comprised mostly of limbs, a young boy was trying to sleep on the metal floor of the train. He was restless and clearly unwell. His cough was frequent and the sound of it rattled through the body of the carriage and blended with a metallic noise that was the background to all other things. The man by the boy’s side looked down at him with love, occasionally running a hand across his back or through his hair. The man’s other arm was around the boy like the walls of a castle.

I don’t know how long I watched the two of them for, but at some point another man appeared from the doorway to the adjoining carriage. He was carrying a huge pile of cardboard and other things that I couldn’t make out. He stopped and looked down at the man and said something to him too quietly for me to hear. This new man had a moustache too. Eventually a bright smile came over the face of the seated man; he gathered the young boy in his arms and stood up, holding him closely. It was then that I realised what was happening. The other man laid down the material he had brought from the cargo carriage; plastic sheeting, bubble wrap, layers of cardboard, until he had a single plastic sheet in his hands. I wondered how long it had taken him to collect it, to carry it through the umpteen carriages of sleeping bodies, and to convince the man guarding the cargo to hand it all over. I wondered if the guard had taken any money.

The man laid his boy down gently, then took the final plastic sheet and laid it over his small frame. Slowly, slowly, the boy’s head disappeared under the cover as he curled himself away into a warm and comfortable place. Then the two men, they were strangers I believe, shook each other's hand for a very, very long time.

I finally came to my senses and wandered to the toilet, nodding to the men as I passed. I emptied my bladder whilst smiling to myself and wondering if things like that happened all the time when hardly anyone else was watching.

Sunday, Raining, Chinatown

2009-10-26T11:48:00.020Z

Sunday,
Raining,
Chinatown:
the lady in
Ho’s bakery
tells me
there are no
sweet melon cakes left
but she offers me
a beautiful smile instead
(the best of the day)
and three roast pork buns
the whole lot
for a celestial bargain
of a pound and
twenty-pence
so I take all four
and sit under some
pagoda arrangement
amongst the hurried
Chinese voices
and the sound of rain
on the red lacquered roof
and in the warmth there
I’m glad that
the thousand things you want
are not always
the things you really need
and it's all the same as it was before
(Sunday, Raining, Chinatown)
but for now
at least
it's a great deal better

[O: Go there]

Waterfall

2009-09-21T18:07:00.002+01:00

I came across
a waterfall
in a forest
that surprised me
because there
had only ever been
dry earth there,
but now it was a
long, flowing
waterfall
that ran in
gentle curves and
almost silence
down between the trees,
creating
little clear pools
that played
so fragilely
with the first
fallen leaves of autumn
that I wondered
whether they had
even the slightest
idea

The Interesting Death of Daniel Price (Pt. 1)

2009-09-14T23:13:00.014+01:00

It was the change of wind I noticed first, and then the old man walking down the beach toward me as if he was ordinary and had simply been brought here on a day trip. He was wearing the same dark grey coat as all the other times I’d seen him, and had that long crooked stick that he obviously didn’t need for walking. I’d never seen his face close up before. Somehow he had always kept just far enough away; stood at the back of a crowd or turning just as I’d realised he was there. I’d never even been brave enough to talk to him.

But here he was walking past me now, giving me a brief and empty glance that dried my throat up instantly. He carried on past and worked his way to the high tide line. He had arrived with the returning tide and the change of wind made the waves crash heavily on the sand. He stood appropriately silhouetted against the finest sunset of the year.

I knew I had to talk to him this time, but for a short while I let him be there by himself. There was no one left on the beach for him to bother anyway, except me. My breath became shallow and quick as I climbed down from my lookout chair. I took as deep a breath as possible and walked down to where he stood.

He didn’t notice me, or seemed not to, for quite a while. I turned to look at his face and saw for the first time the wrinkles and folds of his skin. He had a much kinder look about him than I had expected, and his eyes were lost behind bushy white eyebrows as he stared out at the sky painted sea. It was still a full minute before I could bring myself to speak.

“Excuse me,” I said, in a predictably dry voice. “Can I have a word please?”

He didn’t react. Could he even hear me?

A few seconds later however his posture grew slightly tense and he turned slowly to his side. His eyebrows rose up over his eyes and his mouth hung slightly ajar. He stared at me like a bewildering work of art.

“You can… see me?” he said, carefully surveying my face. He spoke very slowly.

“Yes.” I replied. “I can see you. And I know what you’re here for.”

His eyebrows descended in a concentrated frown. He dug a small notebook out of his coat pocket and flicked to a recent page. He seemed to read for a moment and then looked back into my eyes.

“Joanna… Cox,” he said, with the slightest of smiles. “Interesting.”

His manner, just as I had expected, was of complete calm. He seemed to consider carefully the words he spoke, and the sounds that came from his mouth were deep and smooth. He spoke impeccably like someone who had been doing a very formal job for many years.

“It is not yet your time,” he said, continuing his search through the pages of his notebook. Eventually, he gave up looking for clues. “This… has never happened before.” He put the notebook back in his pocket, sighed and looked back out over the sea. “I suppose you have questions for me? It seems that you should have them answered.”

I nodded.

“I shall give you six,” he said. “Six is a good number.”

“Who-“

“After,” he interrupted, holding up a bony hand, “you have answered one question for me.”

“Fine,” I said.

“How does Joanna Cox know who I am?”

He asked the question word by word, as if it contained many sentences. As he spoke wind became noticeably cooler. He waited, looking out at the sea with eyebrows raised, for a reply. I took a deep breath.

“I’ve seen you before,” I told him. “Several times. The first was the day my father died. I was nine. I remember being sent to my room while the family went crazy downstairs. Anyway, I saw you, from my bedroom window, leading him away down the street.

“I shouted down at him, but he… ignored me. My mum heard me shouting eventually and came into my room. She didn’t believe me of course. Eventually I didn’t believe me either.

The man stood silently for a while. The ocean churned in the strong wind. He nodded slightly. “And the rest?”

“I’m a lifeguard. I’ve seen you three times on this beach in five years. Last year-“

“Melissa… Cook,” the old man interrupted. He said her name slowly with his eyes closed.

“Melissa. Yeah. When I brought her body out of the water, there was a big crowd, and behind them, you were there, holding her hand. She was watching me.”

“Sometimes,” the old man said, “the young ones have to watch for a while. To understand.”

I took some time to calm the memories that had been brought back to the front of my mind. The man seemed satisfied with my answers and said no more. I watched some gulls for a while circling gracefully above the bay, and then remembered about the questions.

“So,” I said, taking another deep breath. “Who have you come for this time?”

“A boy,” the old man said. “He is called Daniel Price. He is twelve years old.”

I didn’t recognise the name. He would be one of the nameless thousands that visit this beach with their families every summer.

“Does he drown?” I almost didn’t need to ask.

“Yes,” the old man said. Just as he answered the wind picked up more strongly. The waves crashed a little louder.

“Is there anything I can do?” I asked.

“You should… console his parents.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“No,” he said. “It cannot be stopped.”

The sun was almost down and we watched it blend with the water for a while. It was a fine sunset.

“But, stopping people from drowning is what I do. I’m good at my job, you know.”

“Indeed,” the old man said. “That is… precisely why Daniel Price drowns.”

“I don’t understand.”

“It is best for you that it stays that way.”

The gulls decided to stop circling and headed back to the cliffs on the western side of the bay. They left their inane chorus trailing back toward us.

“Can you not take someone else?” I asked. “An old person?”

“No. It does not work that way. Tomorrow… here… is Daniel’s day.”

A family appeared on the beach further down from us. They had two dogs that ran in and out of the surf, barking loudly. The sight of a young boy with them made my stomach churn. Tomorrow?

“You said tomorrow? What are you doing here now if he dies tomorrow?”

The man pointed slowly out to the horizon. “The sunset.”

I gave an accidental laugh. This old man was really not what I had expected. “The sunset?” I asked. “What do you care about the sunset?”

The old man gave a small but kind smile. “Do you not think it is beautiful?”

“Of course I do. But…“ I really had no idea what to say.

“I have been doing this job for… a very long time, Joanna” the old man said, sounding slightly weary now. ”I have spent a great deal of time in the company of your kind. I have… learned to appreciate some things as you do.”

“So now you enjoy sunsets?”

“Amongst other things.” He gazed out at the sea again, which had become momentarily calm. There was only a small sliver of sun remaining over the ocean. He looked to be thinking about something.

“Joanna, I want you to know something. That is, I do not enjoy causing so much sadness. To begin with, the weight of the will of the universe felt good on my shoulders. But I am… tired of it now. Now that I understand you more completely.”

“Then choose,” I said. “Choose not to take Daniel Price tomorrow.”

“I cannot.”

“You’re choosing to talk with me now. You’re choosing to watch the sunset. Choose.”

He sighed.

“You must remember that we are different, Joanna. For you, existence begets function, and therefore choice. For me, function begets existence. If I chose to ignore my responsibility tomorrow, my existence will cease. It may come as a surprise to you but I do not wish to die.”

“Neither does Daniel Price.” I felt guilty saying this, and then confused.

The man said nothing for a while. His breathing had become noticeably heavier and he held his walking stick tightly. His knuckles were white.

“The job would be completed by another,” he said, eventually.

“At least it wouldn’t be you.”

He paused momentarily. The final words he spoke that evening were, “You have already had seven questions, Joanna Cox.”

Mermahuataur

2009-08-27T00:55:00.009+01:00

The fisherman looked down at it, half wrapped in net on the deck of their boat, it flapped and slipped around uselessly. A tail and cloven hooves were never a winning combination on a wet wooden floor.

“What is it?” Said one of the men.

“It’s the devil,” said another. He took hold of his crucifix and pressed it to his sunburned mouth.

“Let’s put it back before something bad happens,” said a third.

The creature had given up trying to escape and was lying exasperated on the deck. It looked at the men through large, black, sad eyes. Its tail was a stunning iridescent green and made the men recall their time in beautiful, far away places. It was making a strange sound.

Just then the captain appeared amongst them and looked down at the sorry creature. He had no idea what it was, but part of being a captain is to say things like the following.

“Whoo! We’ll eat a good supper tonight, lads!”

Some of the men started to retch, but the captain was in mid-flow. “Don’t worry, we won’t go near it until it’s stopped mooing from its gills. Now, do you suppose it'd go better with mustard or lemon?”

The captain wandered off in search of just the right condiment.

Without a word the men rolled the creature back over the edge of the boat and into the sea. It looked immediately happy. They watched it enjoy the water, diving down and swimming past them far more gracefully than they had expected. Before it disappeared, it popped its head up out of the water and looked back at them contentedly. It was slowly chewing an enormous clump of seaweed.

Paradise City Prostitute

2009-08-20T18:57:00.010+01:00

The girl
stood
by the side
of the road
like a pure
vision
of 1986
she was
a music video
all by
herself
something about
heartbreak
and leaving home
wearing tight
jeans
and a leather jacket
with hair that
no wind
was a match for
her lips and
nails
were painted
bright red
and she
held a cigarette
nonchalantly
in her
hand
like a weapon
she was
staggering
and all three of us
fell in love with her
for the seconds
while we passed
and later we
joked
that her
calling card
would read
Take Me Down to Paradise City
or maybe
Slippery When Wet

Campsite

2009-08-17T15:02:00.005+01:00

I
woke
to a cloudless
evening sky
and swaying branches
of hazel
and birch
I was really
barely there
unable to move
or unwilling
it didn’t matter which
the insects
didn’t even notice me
and all around
were hushed
excited voices
of close friends
enjoying one another
and a constant drone
of grimy
happy children
their words a mix
of foreign tongues
and laughter
it was perfect
and just then
a wind came through
and played the trees
like an orchestra
of harps
and as much
as I wanted to stay
I was lulled
to sleep
again

Principle

2009-08-03T20:10:00.003+01:00

“It’s the principle of the matter,” she said, dragging the suitcase away. It was threadbare and broken from years of careless treatment. In its bottom corner was a hole, she had obviously forgotten, and things of no apparent consequence spilled out onto the street behind her. She was walking too heavily to hear. The old forgotten items lay there casting small shadows, enjoying sunlight and fresh breeze for the first time in years. I didn’t say anything. It was about the principle after all.

The Beer Festival

2009-07-26T20:22:00.045+01:00

The room is adorned with a brightly dressed array of bearded, bespectacled men like some national wizarding or gnome's convention. Instead of magical staffs or humorously oversized garden implements however, they hold in their hands something far more useful. It has been coursing through the digestive tract of our populace for thousands of years and has made us the bearded oafs we are. I refer of course to the soporific, mildly hallucinogenic, great social relaxant that is finely brewed ale. The men pound their glasses together and quaff. Some guzzle, belch loudly and laugh; some sip and intellectualise. All, however, smile. It is the night after Christmas and the elves are winding down to a wobbly walk home and a well-deserved night’s snooze.

Around the periphery of the room, tricked into coming by their wily wizarding fathers, are the disapproving children of drinking age. Some are here on the pretence of bonding with their father; others know it was never likely to happen anyway. They stare at the obscure scene playing out before them, occasionally catching the eye of their forebearer, and offering a raised eyebrow of condemnation whilst secretly filming him on their mobile telephone.

Inevitably, the most bearded, most bespecacled of the men, their leader perhaps, produces an unlikely looking instrument from a multicoloured, ethnic hand-made satchel. The men gather round and look over each other's shoulder to get a glimpse of the ukulele he holds in his wiry hands. He launches into a badly conceived tirade that can loosely be characterised as folk, although where exactly it derives from is unclear. It is a tune he learned at a commune in Belgium, if that is at all helpful. He is not the most talented of musicians, nor is he the most gifted of singers, but he’s the best they have and the men are going to make hay whilst the sun shines kind of. The men lean back, close their eyes and commence swaying. The part of their brain concerned with musical appreciation has apparently closed down for the night. None of them know the song, hardly any of them have been to Belgium, but they hum along with imaginative vigour anyway.

In amongst the aural assault one of the more inebriated wizards decides to go and bond with his son. He wobbles over to him with an abnormal grin on his face, immediately making him the least popular kid in wizarding pre-school. He winds a spindly arm around his shoulders.

“Howsigoin, son?” Says his father, who is at the stage where he no longer has need for spaces between words. The gravity-through-pause section of his brain has shut down for the night also.

His son starts to reply that he is OK but the man has already noticed something of even greater intrigue. In his son’s hands is a half-drunk, un-poured bottle of brightly coloured liquid. It looks like something from a nineteen-fifties B-movie, if nineteen-fifties B-movies had been in colour. An alien would have arrived sporting crates of the stuff saying:

‘ “Drink it, humans. It tastes sweet and it makes you live forever!”

‘ “Errr, it’s OK,” the suspicious humans would say, “We’re going to stick with what we’ve got. We like the way it makes us forget about our awful lives and gives us stupid children.”

‘ “Mmm,” the alien would say, slowly walking backwards into his spacecraft and flying away, never to be seen again.

“Sowassicalled?” the man asks his son. He’s been staring at the label intently for minutes but cannot read the name for it contains no vowels.

“Youneedvowls,” he tells his son, replying to a question in his own mind, “vowlsare… butter... innawordsandwich…” The man is talking incomprehensible bullshit now, and trails off in volume, incanting some obscure spell the son has never heard before. Heroic action is required to interrupt him before the spell is completed, possibly killing everyone in the room. In timely fashion he tells his father the name of the drink. It’s sexy and urban sounding and rolls nicely off the tongue. It makes you sound attractive when you say the name because you’re not using many consonants. The man laughs.

“Soundslikebollocks,” he says and lets out a self-satified laugh.

“Well what’s yours called?” The son says. The question surprises his father who spends a good amount of time with screwed up eyes, clawing through the thick alcoholic mist of his mind to ten minutes previously when he pointed at a random barrel and stared at a barmaid's cleavage.

“Badgers... Badgersssomethin…” he replies. “Sweaty Badger? No… Anyway, tryit!”

The boy was unconvinced to begin with, but now even more so as a glass of something called Sweaty Badger, the least sexy and urban sounding name in history, is thrust toward his young un-bearded face. He takes the obligatory sip and immediately feels the bitterness of the drink dry out the back of his throat, just as the brewer intended. He pulls a face like badgers are clawing at his internal organs, not quite as the brewer intended.

“Dad, that tastes terrible,” he says.

“I know,” says the man, “bu'tha’s the goodthing about gettinolder, youno, your tastebuds dry up aneverythin startstastin OK. Even yourmumscookin!” The man smiles and lets out another self-satisfied giggle. The boy tries to stifle the smile that’s beginning to build deep inside of him.

Probably with the help of some subtle dexterity spell cast underneath his breath, the wizardly man surprises his son by snatching the bottle of brightly coloured, youth-giving elixir from his hands. He takes what he thinks is a sip, emptying the remainder of the bottle into his beard-encompassed mouth. He spends a few moments pulling a good range of faces.

“Ashleythasnotbad, he says to his son who is not called Ashley. “It’s like pudding, yknow? A pudding?” He puts extra comic effort into saying pudding a second time and his son can take this silly man no more. He starts to laugh, succumbing to the humour spell his father cast five minutes ago. With a smile the man slaps his son’s arm with a gnarled hand as the other pre-wizards look on. They pull knowing faces at one another but are secretly jealous at the spectacle of love they have just witnessed.

Eventually the evening winds down to its sleepy conclusion. The gaps between the wizards have increased as the crowd has steadily thinned. There are now only a few men left in the room; some of them lean against the wall, some of them sit against whatever supporting surface was closest, all have nodded off. The ukulele man has fallen asleep in his chair thank God, and someone has put an elf hat on his head, or returned it to him perhaps.

The barman, secret head of the sleepwizards clan, rings a merry bell signifying the end of the evening’s affairs. It cuts through the stale and boozy air and makes a few of the recumbent wizards stir. One wakes up with his head on the shoulder of a sleeping friend and notices a great patch of his own drool there. He giggles slightly and rolls away to one side.

“Shall we go?” The son asks his father, whose eyes are beginning to roll backward.

“Webest'ad,” says the father.

They walk out of the room, weaving past groups of sleeping wizards, and turn toward home. The last thing the barman hears from them is Sweaty Badger! and fatherly laughter echoing back down the street.

Clouds

2009-07-19T21:54:00.006+01:00

He sat
smoking his pipe
quietly
in the forest.
From the branches
of trees,
birds watched
clouds
gather
peacefully
below them.

Daydream

2009-07-14T17:01:00.004+01:00

It’s hard to concentrate
in a warm office
in the summer
when all you want
is to be sat
by a lake
and have small birds
land
delicately
beside you
and fly away again
when you turn
to look at them.

Journey

2009-04-07T23:25:00.014+01:00

I drove a hundred and forty miles to see an old blind man spit into a bucket and do an impression of an armchair. He was sat in the corner of the room covered in fine dust, looking rickety and threadbare as I recounted the details of my journey.

“I drove a hundred and forty miles,” I said. “I got a flat tyre and the air conditioning stopped working on my car. It was unbearably hot.”

The old man was still doing a great armchair. Just as I was beginning to wonder if he had actually died, he started to draw a slow breath, the air entering his body through the hundreds of small holes left there by the woodworm. When he had finally filled his lungs he leant forward and said to me in a voice like kindling on a fire, “Next time, boy, use the god damn telephone.” Then he leant back into the corner and died.

The old man always was good at impressions.

Unforeseen

2009-03-28T20:43:00.001Z

A man made love
to a hole
in the wall.
He found it
strangely
one-dimensional.

Freckles

2009-02-23T16:14:00.008Z

Your face
in the
half
light
of my room
is a
sky
of faint stars
that guide me
to warm
and
quiet
places.

4 A.M.

2009-01-28T15:33:00.014Z

It’s four in the morning and once again I’m awake. Awake to a biting cold trapped somewhere deep inside my body. My eyes don’t work yet and the cold is the first thing I feel. In my mind I have an image of the mountains around me, and the cold deserted mines that perforate them. This is how I feel at four in the morning, like a hollow mountain filled with an unknown cold. I try to ignore it, to wrap up in a tight ball and hope it goes away, but the cold has already reached the roots of my teeth. I can’t feel the ends of my fingers any more.

There’s a ringing in my ears like there were loud noises before but I can’t remember. Everything is too hazy. I crack open both eyes and realise I’m still drunk. I couldn’t have been in bed very long. I slide out of bed onto my knees and smile at the soft landing. I need clothing and scrabble around in the dark hearing myself mutter incomprehensible bullshit as I grab whatever textiles come to hand. With my numb fingers it takes me a few moments to wear them.

Suddenly somehow I’m in the living room and passing a table with an open packet of cigarettes. The cigarettes make me smile and I light one, writing unknown words in smoke across the empty space of the room. There’s a soft glow through the curtains that makes them almost intelligible. They hang in the air like velvet, just for a second. In the gloom I see a half-full glass of wine and I down it in one with the cigarette in the corner of my mouth. It’s quite a move considering my state and I feel awkward and sassy and right inside, and decide that I should probably go for a walk.

At the back door, all I’m able to handle are wellington boots but they’ll do fine and I like the sound they make as they go on. The pre-light of the morning is still too bright for me and I zigzag along the lane with my eyes nearly closed. The noise my feet make inside the boots makes me laugh. They’re far too big for me but I like them that way. Wellington boots should always be too big.

I don’t stop giggling until I reach the forest above the town. Sounds and images from the previous night begin to creep into my memory, amplified by the silence of the trees that have stopped their conversations to look down at me. Stumbling over roots I remember a girl, dancing. She had beautiful lips and a gap between her front teeth. There was something nice around her neck that kept getting flicked by her dark hair. I’m just getting to the part with the kiss and the words she said when I realise my arms and legs are being scratched by bushes on either side of the path. I look down and for the first time notice the outfit chosen by those numb hands in the darkness of my room. It's a yellow miniskirt from the night before and the enormous shawl my mother knitted for me that lives at the bottom of my bed. It’s perfect. I try to recall what I was thinking about but the images are lost. The only thing that remains is a memory of a good taste on my lips.

I come out on the fell side into the long grass and for the first time notice that there’s no wind, like the weather’s late or I’m perhaps a bit too early. The clouds are holding each other for warmth, and the lucky ones at the end of the valley are red-tinged and warming already. By the time I get to the top of the hill I’ve smoked three more cigarettes and burst into drunken laughter twice, and the sun has risen fully over the horizon. It’s larger than I expected, and a wonderful deep red like it’s just firing up. I sit and stare directly at it whilst I can, whilst it is entirely for me.

After a short while I realise that I’m squinting but I try not to look away. I want to see the warmth push the clouds away, but it’s too bright now even with my watery eyes closed, and the heat, that perfect golden heat is suddenly deep inside of me, lighting up everything. A warm wind picks up from somewhere and starts to mess with my hair, and I get to my feet and throw my shawl to the floor. I unzip and take off my skirt and kick the wellington boots away, hearing them land with a deflated SHLUMPH somewhere nearby. And before I know it I’m smiling and laughing and shaking my hair and all this time that crazy golden smile from a hundred million miles away beams down at me alone. My fifth cigarette drops from my mouth but I don’t care about anything any more, just this moment: me, naked and finally warm and smiling my own crazy golden smile, silhouetted from behind like a monument to the way things ought to be when you wake up cold and drunk at four in the morning.

The Last Mile of My Car

2009-01-15T12:40:00.011Z

We drove
down a
dusty
potholed track
toward the sea.
The sun was setting
and the
wind
smelt good
like the ocean.

(Actually)

We drove
down a
dark
wet road
into the town.
Red lights flickered
and the
wind
smelt bad
like petrol.

Class

2009-01-14T11:03:00.013Z

You
could be forgiven
for thinking
that
there is no
class
left
in the world.

But
it is there,
buried
in the ground
like
forgotten
jewellery.

Waiting.

A Christmas Story

2008-12-19T01:41:00.005Z

The first glimpse we catch of our hero comes as he leaves his house on a clear and frosty day. The house looks tired and the front lawn is not exactly what you would call crown green. The glass in the front door is cracked and has since been repaired with cardboard. There is no car on the drive. Our hero wears a long blue winter coat, large black gloves and a similarly oversized black woollen hat. As he turns from the door, we see that he wears glasses that almost entirely cover the visible part of his face. The rest is hidden behind the high collar of his coat. He pushes his glasses up his nose and sets off.

We move along quietly beside him, hearing only the clear and satisfying sound of his footsteps as they crunch their way along the pavement. His frozen breath spills out over the collar of his coat. As he passes in front of other houses on his street we learn that it is Christmas, or thereabouts. This is one of those streets that take decorating seriously. At one house there is a man on a ladder securing lights below his roof. At the final house, a woman is in the front garden wrestling with an inflatable snowman. She says something to our hero but her voice it is faint against the sounds of the steps. Our hero does not stop.

He reaches the end of the street and turns down a busier road. There is a long queue of people at a bus stop opposite a post office. Each person watches our hero as he passes. They use that look people save for when they know someone but don’t want to say hello. A group of children start to giggle and poke at each other’s ribs. As our hero walks away, we can see them over his shoulder. They are pointing and laughing, but all we hear is the steady sound of his feet on the frozen concrete.

Without warning our hero turns onto a white playing field. Below the field in the distance, there is a town. We gaze over the town for a moment as our hero disappears off to one side. Momentarily we hear a weary metallic sound, and after a short pause, a smooth sliding noise followed by a thump. Our hero reappears and sets off again across the field. He brushes snow from his rear end as he walks. Eventually he rounds the hill and we are left alone to gaze at the town once more.

The town is heaving with Christmas shoppers, and based on the number of children present it must be one of the days of the weekend. It used to be obvious when it was Saturday but not so much any more. Christmas music plays from one of the many market stalls lining the high street. On a corner, a lady dressed as a reindeer shakes a large yellow bucket. Our hero comes into view briefly. The reindeer lady shakes her bucket at him but he doesn’t slow down. If anything he speeds up.

We catch up with our hero outside a shop with all types of Christmas ephemera in the window. It is the kind of shop that sells Halloween costumes, then fireworks, and then Christmas decorations in that order. For nine months of the year it sells only air. It has an inconsequential name that begins with a ‘Z’. Our hero stands facing the store, staring at the brightly coloured items in the window as the rest of the town passes him by. Suddenly he rushes inside, and then just as suddenly he emerges again. He slams the door hard and the decorations in the window shake. He must have let in some of the cold air. Our hero walks away from the store not carrying anything. Perhaps he bought some air on sale from way back in the autumn.

We set off again behind our hero as he cuts through the dense crowd. A lady passes him with a festive but impractical hat. She looks cold. Above the crowd, we can see that the town’s Christmas lights have been turned on. It makes the place seem a lot darker than a moment ago. In the darkness we briefly lose our hero, then notice him heading inside a hardware store. This is one of those old fashioned places that sell everything: gravy granules, houseplants, welding equipment and fishing tackle. The name above the doorway sounds like someone who has an excellent moustache, and has been hand painted there by someone with talent. Our hero emerges with a large, unmarked white carrier bag. He sets off the way he came.

We see our hero walk past the shop that sells air. The ‘OPEN’ sign in the window has a festive motif and is being turned. We see him pass the empty corner where the lady reindeer used to be, and the high street where market stalls are being taken apart and put back into vans. Above the town we wait for him on the frosted playing field. The town below has a pleasing orange glow. By the time our hero appears it is completely dark. It must have been a long way after all. As he walks toward us, the sound of his footsteps on the frozen grass becomes clearer. His breath is nicely illuminated by the orange glow of the streetlamps.

He walks past us without slowing and we follow behind, past the bus stop and eventually round the corner leading on to his street. This street is anything but dark. On both sides, as far as the eye can see, the houses are lit up or flashing. There is not synchronisation. Our hero stops in the centre of the road, gazing down at the street. He and the carrier bag are silhouetted against it. He walks over to the house by the corner. Strips of light outline the windows and doors, and make it looks as though a child had drawn it in brightly coloured crayon. The inflatable snowman nearly fills the front garden, its arms waggling comically in the breeze. It has a wide and pleasant smile on its face.

Our hero sets off down the street, and eventually comes back to his house. There are no decorations of any sort. As he walks to the door, he looks to his left and notices something. We look to the side and see that the house next door is bare as well. The front window flickers with a faint light. Our hero continues to look that way.

We see him head next door and ring the doorbell. It takes a while, but eventually a light comes on in the porch and a small old lady stands in the doorway. After a brief moment they both go inside. We gaze at the outside of the old lady’s house for a while. With a sudden flicker, a small sign reading ‘MERRY CHRISTMAS’ lights up in the window. It doesn’t flash but the lights are bright red and green. Our hero emerges from the house and closes the door behind him. He takes a wreath out of the carrier bag and hooks it onto the old lady’s door.

The final glimpse we catch of our hero comes as he gazes up and down the street with a wide and pleasant smile on his face. His frosted breath rises in front of his glasses, obscuring the reflection of the brightest street in England.

Autumn

2008-10-20T22:54:00.039+01:00

The first day of autumn came like an old forgotten jigsaw of brown and orange. It was such a beautiful day that I decided to sit in the park and watch how things turned out. There was a lot of wind so I had taken my hat and placed it securely, or so I thought, on the top of my head.

The park was full of the little brown and orange jigsaw pieces. They drifted against the walls and blew like insects in the air. They made a good noise as they clattered against one another. By the bench where I sat, they were gathered in such number that it was like a carpet of noise under my feet.

There was a sudden change in the wind that surprised my hat and blew it to the ground. As I bent down to retrieve it, I remember there being a light rain in the air like dust. It was being blown in every direction. When I sat back up an old gentleman was beside me on the bench.

“Hello,” I said, “I didn’t notice you there before.”

“Hello,” he said, “I wasn’t until now.”

I liked his reply a great deal. It was exactly the reply I would like to have given in his place. I smiled and looked out over the park. The trees were dancing so vigorously that their tops were now entirely naked.

“It’s a beautiful day,” I remarked. It was a beautiful day.

“I'm glad you like it,” he replied, and leant back on the bench with his hands behind his head. He was breathing softly and a strange whistling sound came from his nose. I liked this reply too.

The man’s outfit was that of a traditional British outdoorsman. He wore leather boots, heavy woollen trousers and a filthy waxed coat. Filthy was perhaps not the right word. I have known people with filthy coats in the past, but this coat had an agricultural significance all of its own. You could have probably grown good potatoes in folds of its fabric. However, the most striking feature of this man was his magnificent hair. It was white and thick and grew in every direction imaginable. Within it, and please bear in mind I could only examine its periphery, was a good assortment of leaves, moss, twigs, and other things I could not name. He was perhaps one of the few men I have met who could truly say, “Hello, I need a hat.”

He caught me staring at him and offered the kind of smile one would give to a precocious child. “What can I do for you?” he said. He made a whistling noise without opening his mouth.

If I didn’t ask I knew that I would regret it later. “I was wondering why you are dressed as you are?” I said. “You seem prepared for the elements.”

“Indeed!” said the man. “I dress like this for my job.”

“And what would that be, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Not at all!” he said. “I do many things throughout the year, but right now I’m in charge of the autumn.”

Having already become somewhat used to unexpected replies, this seemed to go straight in without touching the sides. I found myself saying in all seriousness, “Oh! Well, it must be a very busy time for you.”

“Exceedingly!” said the man. “There is an awful lot of wind to be made. Every year there are more people to blow about and then there are the leaves to be scattered. Of course, there are wind farms now as well. Wind farms are really very awkward.” He seemed set on considering wind farms for a while, so I gave him a moment. Eventually he let out a weary groan and leant back on the bench. He looked suddenly quite glum, and tremendously tired. He rubbed his eyes with large calloused hands and yawned.

I thought perhaps I should try to take his mind off wind farms and how awkward they were. “What’s your favourite part of the job?” I asked.

The man took his hand from his eyes and looked at me with sudden mischievous glee. He let out a small chuckle and leant over to me as if he were telling a secret. “Umbrellas!” he said, like he was at the circus. “Umbrellas are my most favourite things in all the world. That’s the good thing about living in the city. There are lots of umbrellas!”

“Umbrellas?” I asked.

I’ve never seen a man point with his eyebrows before, but this he did in a way that was far superior than using a finger. I followed the line from tangled white hair, over the playing field in front of us, to the path on the opposite side. There, a lady was walking a dog and holding an umbrella out in front of her like a medieval knight. It was one of those happy umbrellas that showed all the colours of the rainbow. Within an instant, the wind and leaves had swirled around behind her and with a pleasing WHOOMF, the umbrella was turned inside out. The dog became very excited and dragged the lady about the path. There was a great deal of yapping.

I chuckled into my hand and the man made a dry laugh as if he was filled with the leaves that sat all around us. “That’s quite a skill.” I said.

“Thank you,” said the man, drying his eyes with his hand. “It gets me though the day.” He looked quite a lot better.

There was a sudden break in the cloud and the wind changed again. I liked how the dried leaves piled up at the side of my feet, like they were trying to explore the lower regions of my trouser leg. I felt a sudden cold and looked to my side. The old man was gone. I stood up and looked around. On the other side of the park, the lady was wrestling with her ruined umbrella. It seemed to like its new look and was putting up a good fight. I looked behind me and saw the magnificent white hair of the man bobbing in the distance. The rest of him was perfectly camouflaged against the autumn that spun like brown and orange jigsaw pieces all around.

The Mill

2008-10-15T23:24:00.007+01:00

The walls of the mill are streaked black with time and neglect, and bowed out like something is rotten inside. Once these walls were red brick, straight and proud, but those days don’t even belong to memory now. The windows are done-with target practise for generations of children. Rocks, catapults, grubby old air rifles. Some of the small ones on the sixth floor held out until a few months ago. The lower ones are heavily boarded and covered in the graffiti of years.

The roof is losing its battle with the autumn wind. Already it’s half gone, a sagging broken smile offered to the gathering crowd in the hope that it will be returned. So far no one has smiled back. All around, brightly coloured men climb into machinery like houses or stand talking into radios. They all smoke and are the only noise.

The wind picks up dried leaves and dust from the floor; the men cover their eyes. The machines briefly halt their approach but don’t get any quieter. The crowd examine their feet. The cold wind carries across the yard and blows through the empty building with a deep, sad sound that's lost in the noise of machinery.

The smile in the roof is the first thing to drop. It opens wide and falls with a heavy sigh. Birds vacate through windows and come to rest in symphony on power cables nearby. They whistle a jumbled but affectionate farewell.

Like an end-of-show curtain the front wall drops, somehow leaving the rest of the building in tact. It takes everyone by surprise, even the man with the radio and name badge.

The late afternoon sun slants through the windows on the opposite side, cutting through the autumn shadow cast on the street below. For one brief moment before the collapse, everyone stops to stare at the lonely relic of white cotton on the second floor. It’s as pure and fragile as the day it was made, and waves like a perfect golden sail in the cold autumn wind. No one can make out what it’s attached to, and no one gets the photograph in time.

A Silver Bird

2008-07-06T22:14:00.021+01:00

I was walking in a field of long grass, inspecting the seeds and listening to the wind blow past when I felt something hard against my foot. I looked down and noticed a silver bird in the shape of a bracelet half buried in the earth. I picked it up and held it in my hands. It was silver like a reflection of the moon and felt good to touch. It was colder than I expected. I held the bird up close to my ear and it told me that it had become lost trying to find its way home. It had a nice sound to its voice.

I placed it carefully in my inside coat pocket and walked to the top of the nearest hill. Looking down into the next valley, I noticed a house nestling in some trees. The house was small and white, and had a gentle smoke pouring from the chimney that wandered toward the top of the valley.

I walked down to the house and saw a young woman kneeling down planting silver seeds in her garden. They glinted raw sunlight as she held them in her hand. All around, silver necklaces grew from the earth, coiling themselves around whatever was there. Bushes planted in neat rows flowered silver rings that shimmered playfully as the wind swirled through the garden. It was an incredible sight. When I looked back at the woman she had stood up and was facing me, wiping her hands on her apron. The wind blew brown hair across her face and she placed it carefully back behind her ear. She smiled and said hello.

I walked up to her and held out the silver bird. I kept my hands gently around it like I was riding a horse. She took the bird bracelet from me and held it for a time, perhaps appreciating its coolness as I had done earlier. She held it up to her ear and smiled in one corner of her mouth.

After a while she handed it back to me and pointed loosely to a small outbuilding with a tree growing against it. The branches of the tree were pinned to the wall. It was so laden with silver bird bracelets and earrings I doubted whether it could support its own weight. As I walked toward it, the other birds chirped excitedly. The bird said thank you as I held up my hands and it hopped onto a branch to join its friends.

As I passed the woman she smiled at me and told me thank you. She held out her hand and offered me a bird in shape of a ring. It was a very small bird and would only fit on my little finger, but it fitted there perfectly. I said thank you and set off through the long grass back over the hill, feeling the wind of the valley blow past me and listening to the song of the silver bird that was perched on my little finger.

[O: Here, I guess...]