31 January 08 - 10:42Skin Deep
Published 'Atsatrohn' 1993
Lisa tried ever so hard to keep the flat clean. She'd recently moved there, vowing to top and tail its residues every morning, but the road to Hell was surely paved with such intentions of Godliness. So, as the days ensued, small chores were gradually left undone, the devil's motes accumulated in the guise of common dust and grime grew unsightly as entropy encroached. Everything became a mildewy mountain that Lisa convinced herself was unscaleable.
Having barely quit the nest twig-twined by her mother, Lisa was hit hard: crockery with organic stains; bedroom ceiling crazing over with more and more cracks, whilst their patterns seemed unchanged from one day to the next; varieties of mould spanning the mineral, vegetable and animal surfaces of daily life - well, she even believed that her inability to cope would, sooner or later, cause the walls to collapse like a house ...
(more)
17 January 08 - 21:22Away From It All
...
(more)
11 January 08 - 15:34ABIDE WITH ME (three stories)
(1)
The words did not remind me of a funeral, funnily enough – they reminded me more of a wedding. I suppose the resonance of ‘bide’ with ‘bride’ helped.
A bride with me. A long-lasting commitment between two people to each other in the sight of God: intrinsic with ‘abide’: the real word that the famous hymn used. A hymn commonly sung at the F.A. Cup Final in an ancient Wembley, its towers symbolising patriotism as well as nostalgia.
But at a funeral there was only one commitment in the face of God. A commitment by the body in the coffin, its bones broken to fit. But that person, as symbolised by that body in the coffin, was already gone, its life spent, its commitment perhaps already made at the point of earlier death. These are thoughts about him that went through my mind when I re-heard the hymn. Thoughts about him when I only thought about the hymn to write this. ...
(more)
09 January 08 - 21:13The Pier
Arthur knew about seaside piers, but he had never seen one, not even in books or TV. He had read Rayner Heppenstall's novel entitled 'The Pier' – but it had lost its dust-wrapper before Arthur obtained it and the actual text, although picturing a seaside pleasure pier in its description, was not really sufficient for him to know a pier as Heppenstall had evidently known a pier, a real pier, a pier-in-itself.
Arthur dreamed of a pier – and it was unlike any pier he had earlier imagined in waking life. On huge oaken pedestals, stretching like a length of God's jewellery dropped into the sea, with a small choo-choo train that went up and down its length like a zip-fastener – and under the metal runners was a near carpet of wooden planks meshed into each other by the under-weather from the sea, so there were no gaps to fear by those suffering vertigo.
From the end of the pier, he saw a deceptively circular area of waves – alternate confluxes and influxes of sea-drift that formed a shape and ...
(more)
05 January 08 - 12:09Free & Easy
(unpublished)
The cameras rolled, and I was lucky enough to be in the live audience. Lucky, despite the cold opening. With the prospect, however, of warming up when...
The front man strode to the front. He was the 77 year old Piero Lopez – a touch of class, free and easy, still swinging it like a 21 year old with the whole of his life in front of him.
The crowd began eagerly clapping along with the music. Each piece contained the blowing of numbered cones, the flicking of projector propellers, the opening / shutting of lens filters, the slamming of fridge doors, the ratcheting of loft ladders, the clatter of manholes, the clamping of wheels, the wild alarums of fire and the clunking of ice-cold cocktails.
The music’s own in-built clapping grew louder then muted then even louder as it merged with the audience’s own applause proper and returned to the instinctive accompaniment of any music allowed to be heard between the slapping of bottoms and the cresting of ...
(more)
01 January 08 - 19:21Black Boots
They were kinky boots: shiny black boots with stiletto heels: and she teetered into view from behind the corner of my road – and into my life.
There are some people you meet whom, once met, you know it will be difficult to unmeet.
I'm sure there are several people I once met whom I've entirely lost a place for in my mind. But I'd never forget Claudette … or her boots.
So, yes, that day, in an early late Spring when I thought Summer should be here but it was still March, I met the Claudette I'd never forget.
Seasons are never seasonal. They take you by surprise. It's now late Summer, but looking at my watch I see it's still only June. We lost an hour I recall a few months ago to British Summer Time, and will not regain it, because I'm sure to die before October. How do I know? Claudette has me prisoner. She with the kinky black boots.
I'm a prisoner of love – from which death alone will release me.
This diary – journal – paper blog ...
(more)
