19 December 06 - 21:19Only in the past do the dead talk
“I would simply call you brilliant,” said Diane, sounding as if she really meant those few words about me. Of course, I only heard it spoken in reported speech. And true meaning can be lost in transit.
“Well, thank you for telling me what she said and the way she said it, Densil, but do you think you’ll be able to contrive a meeting. No doubt she’ll be on tenterhooks as to my appearance. From what you have said about the beauty of her large innocent eyes, she’ll be a treat for my large guilty ones.”
Densil continued to pretend he was Diane talking directly to me:
“No, I don’t want to meet you. I’d rather have my own image of you from your stories, Mr Lewis. People in real life have a tendency to come apart at the seams.”
Densil’s imitation of Diane’s voice was almost laughable, but I was certain of the subtext: although she considered me brilliant, it was only the stories I wrote that were brilliant, not me in person and, even without ...
(more)
10 December 06 - 19:12Dark Footnotes
(A collaboration with Craig Sernotti)
PUBLISHED 'DREAD' 1999
"I didn't catch your name earlier," I said.
"Old Robert E. Lee was a merry old soul...."
"What?"
"Robert E. Lee."
We were swaddled in strips of waxy material intended to protect us from coal mites—wound tight enough to tone up the muscles, without constricting movement. Even our faces had the stuff smeared on, leaving pathetic gaps for the eyes and only perforations for the mouth. However, I could see that Lee's hair was 'brylcreemed' in the old fashion and glistened ... while my storm-lamp created shafting beams around the surrounding craggy blackness. We painstakingly progressed among the flash-camera ghosts: ...
(more)
06 December 06 - 20:28Even Dogs Could Talk
A Collaboration with David Price
(Published 'Roadworks' 2000)
=================================
I could remember more readily the books I once read as a child better than those I read only last week. Not that I read much these days. Characters don’t seem able to live any more, somehow. In those early days, even dogs could talk.
A case in point is the book I have in my hand. Talk about resonances. I can really believe it’s all happening, even now, as I hold its shuddering shape. Yes, happening between the covers, like moving from page to page as bookworms would.
It takes a lot of reading. You see, when I was a child, I found Rupert annuals difficult, especially those blocks of text at the foot of the strip which most other kids (or even nostalgic grown-ups) cannot be bothered to read through. The pictures, in primary colours (except for the tints of sky melting into each other), were enough for most of us, I guess. ...
(more)
03 December 06 - 20:19A LIVE SHOW
A maroon-party is a picnic over several days, rather than the more usual single occasion spanning, say, a single afternoon.
Old Dick had arranged this particular shindig for no obvious purpose: with several stellified ladies, buckets of sloshing trash-ice, slubberdegullions of the village performing pirouettes in pierrot costume, nigh birthless kids with their vanishing-fractions and shilling-dreadfuls, old men with fatty livers or waxy kidneys, geldable steeds, boning-sticks, cantilena-boxes, night-fossickers, lopping-shears, caged horny-winks, whirring orreries, two-seeded slowbacks, makeshift horse-hitching hooks and simple tablecloths. Of course, unlike an ordinary picnic, a maroon-party needed a focussed purpose. And settled weather. Old Dick had been watching the skies for several days now and, also, scrying a deer's grallock and testing the warmth of tree-coffins near the village. ...
(more)
