Our Shared Sickness.

One day my friend got sick. He got sicker and sicker and didn't get better. His face grew gaunt and the bones in his wrists stuck out at sick angles. His lips, as chapped as the thirsty desert earth. Green is the colour of life, yes, but his disposable clothing hung off him like a coat on a hanger, and it was green like sickness. Green like the veins all showing up his pale inner arms. Arsenic and poison snakes. His sunken, red-rimmed eyes. His hair had fallen out, and his poor old skull looked small and sad, the last egg in a green cardboard egg box. I took his hand in mine. Once we put latex gloves on the skeleton in our science class room. It felt like that.

I asked him if he was going to die. He seemed surprised by the question; only for its simplicity. What's 1 + 1? How many sides does a square have? Are you going to die?

He smiled, sadly. "Aren't we all?" he said. "Aren't we all?"

Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

The snorkle stuck tight to my face leeching the blood from the skin around it; its pressure on my nose left it feeling as though I'd been in a bar fight, and the mouthpiece tore at the corners of my lips. But the water around me was cool, though its salt bit my tongue, and drew tears. And through the plastic goggles what I saw was nothing short of otherworldly.

The Mediterranean spread out before me, duck-egg pale waters stretching away into deep marine. A mere puddle on a world map but here, here it was infinite. I swam out leisurely, further into it, leaving the barnacled legs of the pier behind me until my toes no longer grazed the soft sand beneath me. Through the lens my limbs looked giantesque; they were bathed in rippling, dancing light. I could feel the water all over my skin; I could hear the ocean sounds, of nothing, and everything, all at once. My hair fanned out around me like fine seaweed, golden brown.

I was swimming out a little further, scanning the sea bed for anything of interest, though nothing in particular. Then I saw it, in the periphery. A dark shape on the pale sand, no more than several feet away.
A turtle.

It didn't move. It just looked up at me with one big black eye. It was large, and it looked old. Its shell was dotted with barnacles and its leathery face was scared. Perhaps the way its beak curved gave it a refined air, or perhaps the way its black gaze seemed to hold the world within it. It did not break its stare, nor did I mine though my eyes were growing red from the salt. It stayed still as a rock; I flailed a little in the gentle waves, as an anemone might. I wondered what it was thinking, this age old sage, as it gazed up at me, an enormous pink being, flailing against the ocean's warped glass ceiling, glowing white.

Suddenly something grabbed my ankle; I flipped and turned under water, sucking searing salt water into my mouth. I reached the surface, thrashing and spluttering, to the sound of laughter. My father, laughing, wet hair flat against his forehead. I wrenched out the mouth piece. "There's a turtle! I was watching a turtle!" But when I dived back beneath the water it was already swimming away, with surprising speed, into the distant blue.

I was angry with my father, but that encounter stayed in my mind for a long time afterwards. The serenity of it. The way time stood still. I have never known such peace in all my life, than those minutes spent looking into the great black eye of the infinite sea.

The Girl with Grass for Hair

There once was a girl who had grass for hair. It sprouted straight up from her scalp; she never had dandruff, only pollen, and grass seeds, and clods of dirt. She didn't need to wash it, but she would water it in the shower just to help it grow.

When she woke up in the morning, her pillow would be covered in dew. On winter mornings it would freeze and all the blades of grass would become rigid, crystallised in glistening frost. When she got caught in the snow it would just sit on her head for a while, and when it melted her hair would be flimsy and yellowish.

In the spring, clover and daisies and dandelions would grow, and bumblebees would buzz around her head. She didn't mind. She liked the butterflies, and the ladybirds. She let them sit on her finger like little drops of blood before they'd fly away.

In the summer, her head looked  like a meadow. Her classmates would sneeze from the pollen. When she shook her head, or in the breeze, dandelion seeds would fly away up into the air.

And when she had a haircut, she'd fill entire houses with the beautiful scent of cut grass.

I know.

When I talk to people in my dreams,
they only tell me things I already tell
myself. Mundane observations, or
things that hurt. Things that have
risen up from the dark. And
dream me just looks back
to the dream people,
and says, I know.
No more. Just,
I know.

The Dog With a Backpack

Today I saw a dog with a backpack. It was a Jack Russell and the backpack was blue gingham. I wonder what he had in it? Doggy treats? Plastic poop bags? His wallet? He didn't seem to mind having a backpack. He seemed pretty happy, actually. I think he quite liked it. He was doing a big doggy smile. It's funny how we attribute animals with human emotions. Dolphins are laughing, chimps are grinning, blobfish are morose and sharks are completely gormless. In reality, there is little correlation between the way their mouth looks and their emotions, unlike us humans. We do it with cars too. I do, anyway. Have you ever seen a Peugeot 107? Happy as Larry. And houses. Once I saw a house that looked so sad I nearly cried looking at it.

But in my head the dog liked his backpack. It was useful. I imagined him trotting into a pet shop, slipping off his backpack and nosing around in it, looking for spare change. Then bounding out with his purchases (a pig's ear and a string of squeaky plastic sausages).

Other dogs could have different bags. Greyhounds could have those sports bags made for running in, with those special water bottles with little tubes to drink from. Chihuahuas would have Louis Vutton rucksacks and St Bernards would swap their wooden barrels for big old hiking packs. Imagine how excellent a Weimaraner would look with a khaki army haversack! And a Scottie would look superb with a tiny leather satchel. They could carry all their toys and bones and a spare lead, a bottle of water and some dog food. Perhaps a doggy brush, or a coat in case it got cold. Maybe the owners could profit too; pop their shopping in it so their doggy friend could help them when things got a bit heavy. Or keep their valuables there for safe keeping. Has anyone ever tried to mug a dog? Probably not. Dogs probably don't get stopped and searched either, so you could stash your cocaine in your poodle's purse and no one would be the wiser. When the sniffer dogs went wild the policemen would just think your dog was on heat or something. "Nice backpack", they would say. "Maybe we should get one for Hans over here. Keep some doughnuts in it."

So really, if all dogs had backpacks, the world would be a better place. Let's start a doggy backpack revolution. Only, don't even attempt to put one on your cat. Unless you want the skin flayed from your forearms. Besides, they'd only use them to keep dead mice in.

Pantoum II

We have forgotten how to be alone.

We have always run in packs, yes;

But now we cannot run without them.

We live in perpetual fear of silence.

We have always run in packs, yes;

Though we were left alone, at times.

We live in perpetual fear of silence.

We keep our friends in our back pockets.

Though we were left alone, at times,

Wires began to ensnare us, slowly.

We keep our friends in our back pockets.

Our tongues are stilled by the tapping of thumbs.

Wires began to ensnare us, slowly,

Our eyes are glued to glowing screens.

Our tongues are stilled by the tapping of thumbs.

At night come whispers from beneath our pillows.

Our eyes are glued to glowing screens.

We depend on electronic extensions.

At night come whispers from beneath our pillows.

We live in perpetual fear of silence.

We depend on electronic extensions.

And now we cannot run without them.

We live in perpetual fear of silence.

We have forgotten how to be alone.

La Cascade de Luc

We parked the car in dappled sunlight and we stepped out into it. The sun was warm but winter air still floated down from the snow-capped mountains. We could hear the waterfall whispering to us through the trees. He lent me his jacket.

I followed him up the path into the forest, stepping uncertainly on stones slippery from leaves leftover from autumn. The buds above were yet to open; the sky was blue through the bare branches. To our left was a rocky stream over which water tumbled, fast and white. Around us trees and stones were covered in thick green moss. 

The crescendo of the falling water reached its zenith and there the waterfall was, looming vast before us. We scrambled up the mossy rocks to its plunge pool. We could barely hear our voices above the sound. Waves crashing, trees in a tempest, the telly on the blink that we couldn't turn off. Our faces were anointed with its fine mist, which settled on my camera lens like drops of dew. The cascade was infinite, a great white force to be reckoned with. White water fell from the heavens and smashed into wet black rocks. 

Across the pool there was an iron crucifix, minimal yet ornate. Two white letters adorned it, either side. M.B. It leant against a large rock. He told me that beneath it were the remains of a man who, whilst attempting to climb the cliff face, happened upon a loose boulder which fell and crushed him. I imagined his bones beneath it, shattered like dropped chalk. 

On the trees around us other initials were carved, some alone, some in couples encircled by jagged hearts. He picked up a rock and tried to scratch out our own but his patience was met by the tree's tough bark and found wanting. Instead I took some photos of us there. Our moment immortalised, in a different manner. I took one of his sunlit iris.

Back in the car we rose and fell on mountain passes, sunlight flashing through the dirty windows. I drank in the beauty of the mountains moving around us, of the trees flying past us. Back on the motorway I scrolled through the photos. Out of the screen he looked at me with his sunlit eye, larger than life. In the light his iris was moss green, and brown like the leaf covered ground. His lashes cast shadows like the branches of trees. It was like looking into a forest, so deep I could lose myself in it forever. 

The Egg Plant

One day, Emilio McKenzie came home from school with a question for his mother.
"What's an egg plant, mummy?"
His mother said, "Go and ask your father, sweetie, I'm busy making dinner."
Emilio went to his father's office and asked him the same question.
"Not now, Emilio, I'm busy. Go and ask your mother."

But Emilio had already asked his mother. He ran back out of the front door, question still on his mind.
He sat down on the grass outside his house and poked around in the mud with a twig. Suddenly the grass in front of him went dark. He looked up to see an old man he didn't know.

"Hello!" said the man.
"Hullo," sulked Emilio.
"Do you mind if I sit down?" the man asked.
Emilio knew about stranger danger. But the man had a nice face, and besides, he had already sat down before Emilio could respond. I wonder if he knows what an egg plant is, he thought.

"Do you know what an egg plant is, sir?"
The man smiled. "Of course I do. Don't you?"
"No." replied Emilio. "I asked my mum, and she was too busy to tell me. So I asked my dad, and he was too busy too. So can you tell me please?"
"Why, of course, young man! Are you sitting comfortably?"
Emilio nodded.
"Then I will begin. Once upon a time there was a hen.
"A hen?"
"Well where else would a story about an egg start? You don't think the egg came first do you?"
Emilio shook his head.
"Well, this particular hen was remarkably beautiful. She had lovely red feathers and bright sparkly eyes. All the roosters were very fond of her. They all wanted to be her mate. She chose the kindest, most handsome rooster, and very soon, she began to prepare her nest for their first eggs. Sadly, this made all the other hens very jealous. They would say nasty things about her, and eat all the corn before she could get any. Sometimes they would even peck at her as she went past.

When she finally laid her eggs, the hen was very proud. Thirteen lovely white eggs, nestled in a bed of soft hay. She sat on them, day and night. She would have protected them with her life, if she had needed to. But after a few days, she began to get very hungry. She waited until nightfall, when all the other hens had gone to roost, and then, quick as a flash, she scrambled over to the food trough to peck at the leftovers.

After a minute or two, she returned to her nest. But oh! What a sight she was to encounter there! All her eggs were gone. The other hens, in their envy, must have taken them away and smashed them all! How she wept; the farmer and his wife were awoken by the sounds of her sorrowful cries, which went on long into the night.

In the morning light, however, the hen saw that there were two eggs left, under the hay, that had not been taken. She was overjoyed, but feared that she would lose them, once again, to that cruel flock. She decided to bury them in the soft earth beside the pond. Carefully, she brought them there and began to dig. She'd buried the first egg when suddenly she heard the sound of angry squawking.

It was the others! They'd seen her trying to save her last egg. Immediately they were upon her in a fury of beaks and claws. The hen saw red. She fought them back with all her might; sadly, they overcame her. In the morning, the farmer found her body, surrounded by feathers and eggshell."

"I don't like this story, sir" interjected Emilio. "It's sad!"
"Well," said the stranger. "a few years later, the farmer's children noticed a strange plant growing beside the pond. They'd never seen it before. They showed their father and he said he'd never seen anything like it."
"What was it?"
"Do you remember the hen's last egg?" the stranger asked.
"The baddie hens broke it," said Emilio.
"No. There was still one egg left. The one she'd managed to bury."
Emilio's eyes grew wide. "So the plant...."
"Yes." He smiled. "A few weeks later, the plant started to grow fruit. White, oval shaped fruit. Can you guess what the fruit was?"
"Eggs?" suggested Emilio.
"That's right," said the stranger. "And if you go to that farm, you will find, by the pond, an egg plant."

So that's what it is! Thought Emilio. Then his mother called him in for dinner. He thanked the stranger, and ran up the garden path. He turned back, once he got to the door, to wave. But the man had gone.

Dinner was on the table. Emilio took his seat and poked at it with the tines of his fork.
"What's this gooey thing mummy?" asked Emilio.
"Eggplant," said his mother.
Emilio was slightly crestfallen.
"Oh." he said.

I am Robot.

When we make robots, they are only barely based on humans. Their bodies are typically rather dissimilar. Even the most disturbingly realistic robots, if you were to peel back their plasticky skin, would bear no resemblance at all to the grisly horror you would encounter were you to attempt the same with a human being. Wires and metal and circuit boards like tiny cities. No blood, or bones. No yellow fat or bright red muscle. No putrid organs, no capillaries entwined like clementine nets.

What if we could construct a body identical to our own, in plastic and metal? Immortal, invincible. Tiny capillaries and arteries and veins made from partially permeable membranes, intricately woven around fibreglass bones. A heart which whirs perfectly, rhythmically, always and forever. Skin made from Kevlar, nails made from tungsten. Tiny camera eyes, microphone ears, and, enclosed in a stainless steel skull, the living, thinking brain of the first human being to outlive millennia.

Conduction.

On days like today
my head burns hot.
I want to press it
against cool things.
Window panes, mirrors,
glasses of  water.
The palm of your
hand.

The glass is left with
a fine mist the pores
exhaled.
Your palm is left with
my heat.

When my hands are
hot I like to grasp
cool metal and press my
palms against stone walls
in the shade. When I
walk past fountains
I dip my fingers in.

My hands are left with
the tang of oxidation.
Drops of water fall
from my fingertips
and leave traces
in the dust.

One day, I think my
body will get too hot,
too tired. I will
lay down in the
cool earth and press
myself into its damp
darkness.

I will leave
nothing but my
cold white bones.
Like fingers,
mirrors, metal,
stones.
My heat will
dissipate
into
darkness.

Your palms will be left
without it.

Ampersand

When I was younger, I used to think the word 'ampersand' was actually 'hamper sand'.
Every time I saw a Marks & Spencer or H&M, or just heard someone say ampersand, I could only think of hamper sand. The image was so vivid, so detailed. I'd picture an old picnic hamper on the beach, wide open with all its plates and cups and knives and forks exposed to the sea breeze. I'd picture people taking things from it. Scotch eggs and sticks of celery and bread sticks and potato salad. Cloudy lemonade. I'd picture the hamper being loaded back into the car boot at the end of the day, and everyone hopping in, all tired and sandy. And then I'd picture the hamper being carried inside, and opened, and a mother's hands taking out all of the plates and cups and knives and forks and Tupperware. Then when the hamper was empty, she'd tip it up to empty out all the little white grains of sand. It would fall onto the kitchen table as though from an hourglass. Hamper sand. Ampersand. &.

The Reader

I put the ad up five days ago. Already, requests have been filling my mailbox.

PROFESSIONAL READER

said the title.

I will come and read for you. I will read anything. Books, magazines, newspapers, poetry. You name it. I will read for as long as you like, at home or maybe at the park, if it's a nice day. Can do a range of voices. Perfect for children, those with poor eyesight or simply those who miss being read to. Payment per hour or by the page, if you prefer. 

I wondered what kind of people would really respond. I was soon to find out.

The first was an elderly man named Ernest. His daughter had seen my announcement and told him about me. He was once a librarian, but he had since lost his eyesight and would never read again. I would go and read to him on Tuesday and Thursday mornings, for an hour at a time. The first thing he wanted me to read was On The Road. He wanted the escapism, I imagine. I looked forward to it.

A mother messaged me, too. A mother of three who worked night shifts, whose husband worked long hours during the day. He put the children to bed, but he was too tired to give them a bed time story. She was never there. I could tell that hurt her. She asked me if I could come a few nights a week and read to them. I asked her what she'd like me to read. Danny the Champion of the World, she said. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Matilda, The BFG. Charlotte's Web. The Faraway Tree. The Railway Children. I could tell she had loved to read as a child. I could see how it pained her that she couldn't read to her children. I would be more than happy to, I told her.

I received another message from a Geography student. He had really bad dyslexia, so acute that reading anything took him hours. He wanted me to read him his textbooks and journals so he could take better notes for essays. Three hours on a Monday, Wednesday and Thursday. I told him I'd give him a student discount; he said it was okay, his mother was rich and didn't want him so she smothered him with money instead of love. I told him she sounded like she needed to be read a mothering manual. 

The requests flooded in. Soon I could barely fit people in. I would read until my throat was raw. At children's parties and old age homes, to businessmen on their lunch break, to night watchmen in their little cabins, to middle aged women in their city gardens, to the blind, on park benches, whilst I caressed their dog's golden head. Zadie Smith and Salman Rushdie, Rudyard Kipling and Richard Dawkins, Plath and Hughes, Eliot and Pound, biographies, autobiographies, self-help manuals, The Times, The Economist, New Scientist. I read Lady Chatterly's Lover to a frail 90 year old. I blushed; she loved it.

My favourite client was an old Chinese lady who lived in a beautiful apartment near Richmond Park. I read to her once a week. She would ask me to read her poetry until she fell asleep. Wordsworth, mostly, and some Keats. She said her mother used to read it to her, as a child, long before she could understand English. She said she loved the way the words sounded, and she would make up her own stories about what they meant. Now that she understood, the images mixed in her mind. Young Wordsworth ran around the Sichuan countryside as she had as a child. As I read, she closed her eyes and smiled. I would read until she was fast asleep, then let myself out, leaving her to dream of daffodils pushing up through drenched paddy fields.

Trains.mp3

I was sitting on the tube one day, heading across the city. A girl sat down opposite me. She had headphones on, big old black Sony ones. She cradled her iPod in the palm of her hand. I wondered what she was listening to. She seemed lost in it, whatever it was.

The train stopped and some people got on. A guy sat next to the girl. He had headphones in too; the black wires were knotted a little. He nodded his head slightly to the beat.

A few seconds passed. Then something strange happened. He unplugged his headphones from his mp3 player. Then he reached across and unplugged the girl's headphones, too. Before she could react, he swapped them round; the cables crossed over, his headphones plugged into her iPod, hers into his.

The girl turned as if to say something, her mouth open a little. He was smiling. She smiled, too, slowly. Perhaps she liked his music enough not to complain. He seemed to like hers. He tapped his foot on the floor, out of synch with the ragged rhythm of the train as it hurtled through tunnels, swaying from side to side. They said nothing. She closed her eyes again, still smiling.

A few stops later, he unplugged her headphones and took his back again. They nodded at each other as he stood up. When the train doors opened, he left without a word.

I looked back at the girl. She hadn't plugged her headphones back in. But she was still nodding to the beat of the stranger's music, and smiling.

Chlorophyll

I remember when we first heard the news. We were children. Our teachers did a special science assembly on it, and there was a report on Newsround. We all imagined little green foetuses growing in test tubes, like  those gooey aliens that we used to play with until they got stuck to the ceiling, where they'd linger for hours then flop to the floor where they'd languish, covered in lint.

We didn't give it much thought. But 40 years later they walk among us, green babies grown into green adults. They are rare, of course. A flash of green skin on busy street; pale green face on a crowded train; emeralds in the dirt. Sometimes you see them in parks during sunny lunch breaks, lying prostrated on the grass, eyes closed, green skin bared, palms open.

I wonder what their lives are like. I imagine they face isolation, exclusion, persecution; the kind of things any other minority may have, in the past, fallen victim to. They did not choose this; no one does. But their physical advantages seemed to instil hatred in their disadvantaged peers. The strange beauty of their eyes, their skin; a green tinge that, depending on race, ranged from pale jade to wine-bottle. The silver spoon upbringing they were blessed with bred jealousy in those with bitter hearts, as did their emancipation from hunger, from the expenses of feeding oneself. But what a price they had to pay! How strange, how lonely, would it be to be parentless, to be raised by scientists, to have test after test carried out on you from birth. To be a walking experiment. To be unaware of how long you would live, what illnesses you could be susceptible to, if any. Indeed, current science journals postulate that this new strain of our species could outlive their counterparts by upwards of fifty years. The poor souls. I don't know if I could bare to see this century out.

Many say they are our only hope for the human race. If we are not to perish, we need to be able to produce enough food to feed the world's population. We need to be able to feed ourselves. The green people can. They can live off little more than water and sunlight for months at a time. They need to eat, of course, for proteins, for nutrients, but much more rarely than do we. They are our hope for the future. They are a cure for world hunger. In Africa, children will lie down in the desert and eat their fill of golden sunlight. This is what they say. They say these people are lucky, they are blessed, they are beautiful and perfect examples of what can be achieved by science. To develop human cells which produce chlorophyll! To have photosynthesis taking place in the human body! We never thought it possible. No greater miracle, they say, have we achieved than this.

It will be a long time, centuries, before this trait can truly integrated into the human race. We do not even know if it is viable, in the long run. The green ones could be stricken by disease. Their offspring could be defective. They could be our downfall. But they could also be our saving grace.

Once I turned a corner and found myself face to face with a green man. Our eyes met for milliseconds; it felt like millennia. Those eyes. Two toned like variegated ivy, deep green on green-white. Green like secret pools in the depths of a forest. We drifted past each other and I dare say he forgot me, seconds later. But the sadness of those eyes haunts me. The loneliness they exuded. They stand alone, these chlorophyll people. Tall trees, standing singular and stationary as all around them crumbles and deteriorates. Basking quietly in the sun's light.

Ode to the Shamrock

There once was a man named Hamrock

Who was mighty proud of the shamrock

"Put away that clover 

Or I'll feck ye over!

And put yer mudder in a headlock."

The 252

Dennis was an inner-city bus driver, and he was having a bad day. Dennis was 3 weeks away from retirement. He had seen a lot of bad days in his time, so a bad day by his standards was indeed a very bad one.

 Firstly, the weather was absolutely stifling. One of those sticky summer days where the British weather reaches unheard of heights, and the general public melt like March snowmen. He was also stuck in traffic. Dennis hated traffic. Being a bus driver, he often got to avoid it. Not today. Road works were blocking up the bus lane. Not great on a normal day, but in 38 degree heat, it was unbearable.

The passengers on the 252 all had somewhere to go. Babies were crying and their 15 year old mothers were mouthing off at yobby youfs on the back seats. Three old Asian ladies were tutting; two old Jamaican gentlemen were giggling; one shabbily dressed person of indeterminate gender was talking to him/herself. A young couple shared headphones which didn't quite keep the sound in, but luckily this was drowned out by the youfs' blaring drum and bass - drum and treble would perhaps have been a better term, for the sound quality from their tinny speakers was not quite up to scratch.

Dennis was going spare. Horns were hooting, yobs were yelling, babies were bawling.
"Oi! Dicked! Some of us have places to go yeah!"
"Yeah hurry up you prick!"
Everyone seemed to be shouting at him. He was hardly to blame! It was this darned traffic! This darned weather! Finally, Dennis snapped.

He flipped on the indicator and pulled out into a one-way street. Everybody cheered. But when Dennis began to veer further and further from the direction they should have been going in, people started getting rowdy again. Soon, they were on the motorway, and the passengers were going mental.
"Where you going you mental prick!??"
"Dis bumbaclaaart gwan de wraaang waaayy mon!"
"We're gonna report you innit!"

But Dennis didn't seem to care. He was laughing. He turned round and shouted, "We're going to the beach! And I don't give a damn if you lot report me, I'm retiring soon anyway!"

He was met with stunned silence.
"Don't tell me you lot got anything better to do!"

The passengers of the 252 looked at one another. The babies stopped crying. The youfs put their music on pause.
Then one of them broke the silence.
"Dis is gunna be SICK BLUD!"
He spoke, it seemed, for the masses. Everyone began to clap and cheer.
"Disss bwoy crazy but he sure dam smart!"

So Dennis drove the 252 to the beach, and parked in the coach bays at the car park. All the passengers got out and, in dribs and drabs, headed out towards the sea. The Asian ladies hitched up their saris and paddled in the waves; the Jamaican gentlemen sat on a bench, eating Mr Whippys and giggling. The genderless individual rocked back and forth whilst burying his feet in the sand. The teen mothers sunbathed and the youfs stole a ball from a 5 year old and started a kick-about. The young couple held hands and strolled along the shore.

Dennis smiled, and loosened the top buttons of his bus-driver uniform. He looked back to the car park, where the 252 was languishing idly, out of place yet somehow at home.

Dennis was an inner-city bus driver. He was having a very bad day.
Not any more, he thought, gazing out at the pier, a huge grin spread from cheek to cheek. Not any more.

Louis and Lola's Scwuplious Ceweal Expewamint

Louis and Lola were a little brother and a big sister whose Mummy went away for a weekend. Their Daddy was looking after them, which meant one thing. Sweeties. Mummy hid the sweetie jar, but Daddy knew where it was, AND he was tall enough to reach it. Daddy was the tallest man in the world. "As tall as a giwaffe!" said Lola. "A sweetie giwaffe!" said Louis.

On Saturday morning, Louis and Lola ran into Mummy and Daddy's room to jump on the bed. Mummy wasn't there, so there was much more jumping space. Louis jumped on Daddy's shins, even so. "BWEAKFAST TIME! BWEAKFAST TIME!" screeched Lola. "SWEETIE TIME! SWEETIE TIME!" squealed Louis. Daddy got up and put on his dressing gown and slippers, and followed the children downstairs. "There'll be no sweeties until you've eaten your cereal!" he bellowed after them. 

But when they opened the cupboard, they saw that ALL THE CEREAL WAS FINISHED! No Rice Krispies, no Cheerios, and CERTAINLY no Cocopops. Even Daddy's yucky muesli was aallllll gone. "SWEETIES!" cried Louis.

 "No!" said Daddy. 

"But what else can we eat for bweeeeckfist?" asked Lola. 

"Yeah! What can we eat instead of ceeweal, Daddy?" asked Louis. 

"Well," replied Daddy, "I suppose we'll have to experiment."

"Expewamint?"

"Experiment."

Lola nodded solemnly, though she had no idea what an experiment was.

"What's an expewamint Daddy?" asked Louis.

"Well, it's kind of like a test. We'll have to try lots of different things, you see, and see if we can eat them instead of cereal."

"So, we put different things in the milk and taste it?"

"Well, yes," said Daddy, slightly hesitantly, "I guess we could do it like that. In an experiment, you keep some things the same, and change the thing you're testing."

The two children looked at each other and nodded. 

"Ok" said Lola. "Let's do an expewamint."

"Let's do it properly," said Daddy, taking a few sheets of scrap paper from the recycling bin, and grabbing Lola's pencil case. "Lets write down everything we try, and then write down the results. Then we can decide what the best pretend cereal is. We should try and do a fair test though. We all have to taste everything and decide on a verdict. The best experiment is always a scrupulous one."

Lola scrambled up onto a chair and grabbed some felt-tips. At the top of the page, she made a series of unintelligible scribbles, in her neatest purple handwriting. 

"What does that say, Lola?" asked Louis.

"It says, 'Louis and Lola's Scwuplious Ceweal Expewamint'" she announced proudly.

"Wonderful," said Daddy. "Let's begin, shall we?"

First Daddy laid out a series of bowls on the table. Then he took the milk out of the fridge. 

"Okay, you two! What shall we try first?"

The two children scampered to the kitchen cupboard and began to point at things on high shelves, well above their reach.

"Custawd Cweeams! Kinder Eggs! Jaffa Cakes! Penguins!" yelled Lola excitedly.

"Pombears!" shouted Louis. Daddy began to object, but decided not to, in the name of science.

"Maltesers! Smarties! Buttons! Wervers Owiginals!" continued Lola, who knew the inventory of the sweetie tin off by heart.

"Cheestwings!" added Louis.

"Ummmmm. Skittles! Jelly Babies!" Lola was slowly losing momentum. Louis on the other hand, was quickly catching on. Or so he thought.

"Twiglets! Doweetos! LUNCHABLES!"

"Okay kids," interjected Daddy. "I think that's enough for now."

"HAPPY HIPPOS!" added Louis, and as this suggestion wasn't as stomach-churning as his previous ones had been, Daddy took his late entry into account.

So they put all of their different pretend cereals into different bowls, and the experiment began. They tasted meticulously and scwupliously, and made sure to taste everything twice, even if it wasn't quite the taste they were after. Then they made a table of results (written by Daddy, fortunately) which looked something like this:

Custard Creams - Quite crunchy. Nice and sweet. 7/10

Kinder Egg - Nice but not very crunchy. The toy got all wet. 5/10

Jaffa Cake - The base got soggy. Orange and milk don't go too well but the chocolate was nice. 5/10

Penguins - Louis left the wrapper on. We couldn't read the joke. 0/10

Pombears - They made the milk salty. They look friendly but Louis got sad because they were drowning. 2/10

Maltesers -  Very nice. They were crunchy and they floated (like when Louis did a poo in the bath.) 9/10

Smarties - Crunchy, made the milk go different colours but the orange is made of ladybirds' wee. 7/10

Chocolate Buttons - Nice and chocolaty but not crunchy enough. 6/10

Werther's Originals - Made Lola lose a tooth. Very happy because the tooth fairy's coming. 9/10

Cheestring - Looked like weird spaghetti. Made Daddy feel sick. 2/10

Skittles -  Made the milk like a rainbow but tasted too sour. Louis only likes the red ones. 4/10

Fizzy Vitamin C tablets - Yucky nasty vomit. 0/10

Jelly Babies - We liked the swimming babies and they were squishy but not crunchy. 5/10

Twiglets - Daddy likes Marmite but even he didn't like this. 1/10

Doritos - Made the milk go all orange but not in a good way. Smelt like Aaron Schmitt from class 3P. 0/10

Lunchables - The biscuits were okay but the ham and cheese were really not very good really. 1/10.

Happy Hippos - The hippos looked really happy in their milk, and tasted really happy too. 10/10

"What's the conclusion then, kids?" asked Daddy.

"Whats a concwushun?"

"Its when we say what we've decided from the experiment."

"Oh. I think Happy Hippos." said Lola.

"HAPPY HIPPOS!" agreed Louis.

"Well, that's settled!" said Daddy. "Happy Hippos for breakfast!"

But when they looked in the sweetie tin, the Happy Hippos were ALL GONE. So were all the Maltesers, the Kinder eggs, the Jaffa Cakes, the Custard Creams... they had eaten ALL THE SWEETIES IN THE HOUSE. 

"What shall we do, Daddy?" asked Lola.

Daddy thought for a moment. "Well," he said. "I suppose we could always have toast..."

Black Widows

A warm day in March and I
head to the park. The sun
stretches shadows, and,
cloaked in winter-dark I
stretch too, a black cat
elongated on sun-warmed
grass.

The sun makes its excuses,
and sluices its way through
the bare bone branches
to kiss my cheek politely.
My black-clothed body
grows hotter, though the
air is cool and crisp as an
apple.

I think of widows,
black shrouded in the
Mediterranean sunshine.
How do they bear it?
Sweat forms like beads of
glass.

But after so harsh a winter,
it does one good, this sun.
It radiates all the warmth
of a fireplace, or of two
bodies pressed together,
skin on skin.

 If I were a
widow, I'd  wear black
too, and sit in my garden
in the sun's embrace.
I'd close my eyes and
my heartache would
evaporate, like a bowl of
water.

An Inventory

The Things We Will Buy:

1 rug

1 Vase

1 coffee table

Fairy lights

2 clothes rails

Bowls

The Things We Will Be Given:

1 Fridge

1 Bed

1 Sofa

2 hotplates

1 kitchen counter

The Things We Will Bring:

1 large round plywood table

1 café table

2 white chairs

2 folding stools

1 futon

2 air mattresses 

1 lamp

Assorted cutlery and crockery

An eclectic collection of multi-purpose jars

A colourful variety of mugs

2 duvets

2 pillows

1 tablecloth

A cornucopia of cooking utensils

Some throws and blankets

FLORAL BUNTING

Cleaning products

1 ukulele

1 didgeridoo

1 shisha pipe

Books

Posters

Knick-Knacks

An impressive collection of clothing and jewellery

An equally impressive collection of spices

Love

Friendship

Parties

The smell of good food cooking

The sound of laughter.

This is the inventory of a new beginning.

The Goldfish and The Giant Squid.

Sometimes we walk through life seeing nothing, thinking only of ourselves, of our own problems, like fish in tanks with fake scenery sellotaped to the glass. The people we pass in the street are plastic divers and all the buildings are hollow castles. And then sometimes the glass shatters and we explode out into the air of our infinite existence, to flounder on the carpet, gasping with the sharp realisation of the truth.

Today I plaited my hair and piled it up on my head and lay in bed all day, like Frida Kahlo. I felt happy, for a few moments, at the comparison. Then I remembered she'd spent all day in bed because she broke her back in a tram accident, and spent endless hours lying in agony, where, nevertheless she painted canvas after beautiful canvas. I on the other hand, was lying, out of choice, in a matchbox bedroom under a duvet with dragons on, flipping aimlessly through a book on French Grammar whilst listening to Django Reinhardt. On my bedside table was a bowl rimmed with crusty oatmeal. How vile, how enclosed was my existance; how vain my thoughts, how void my actions.

I burst out onto the street and lock my glass door behind me. The springtime air is beautiful and fresh. I walk down streets I've never seen before and take in everything in one big wonderful panorama. The sky is splendid in colours I haven't seen for days, or weeks. Perhaps ever. In the cold I can feel all of my skin at once.

We should be less like goldfish in tanks. We should be like... Like giant squid in the depths of the ocean. Surrounded by miles and miles of everything at all sides, with big round eyes to take in all that deep blue beauty. Listening to all the sounds of the ocean at once, conscious of all the creatures in our proximity, in the distance, in existence. Letting our tentacles float out around us in the cold, feeling everything at once.

Destroying the Four Olds

Three large black and white photographs on a white wall. A triptych. In each stands the same man. Chinese, bearded, of medium height, though perhaps above average weight. His eyes are heavily pouched. His face is neutral.

In the first photo, he holds a clay vase. He holds it at an angle, away from his body, with just his fingertips. Simultaneously delicate and precarious. 

In the second, he has let it go. It floats in mid air, at his knees, suspended. His hands, open, fingers splayed, say 'So?'. His face betrays nothing.

In the third, the pot lies shattered at his feet. His hands remain open, relaxed. One palm upwards, lit white by the sky. The second, in dark shadow, faces the ground. On his face, a hint of a smile. 

And in tiny letters beside the triptych:

Ai WeiWei

Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn.

Boxes

One day his house will no longer have enough space for him to move about in, he thinks. Because there will be too many boxes. Already they sit piled in corners, and perch on the tops of wardrobes and skulk under tables. His feet kick into cardboard when he pulls his chair in closer to his desk. The attic is already full of them, piled like a bowl full of brown sugar cubes. Dust settled quietly, a blanket of delicate snow. He never opened them.

Inside were memories, in physical form. The things he couldn't bear to throw away, the things he couldn't bear to look at again.

In some boxes were letters. Ever letter he'd ever received, folded neatly and placed back into their envelopes. Organised by sender, by date. Telling stories and spilling secrets to no one, in silence.

In others were Christmas cards, wishing one another well, tucked into each other like flimsy, festive matrioshkas. Birthday cards counted his years in garish technicolor. Their words were fleetingly scribbled, though in categorisation they had been immortalised.

Boxes of bank statements marked his salaries, his savings, his expenditures. Boxes of receipts showed his every purchase. Bills and fines, perfectly preserved; his life as an archive, an exhibition, pictures painted by printer ink on headed paper.

One box held cassette tapes, from a time when answering machines weren't virtual and automated. Each tape was filled with voice messages, quick and stammering, lengthy and long-winded. Voices from friends and ex-lovers. Some he didn't speak to. Some who were gone.

When he was old, he told himself, he would open this box, amongst others. He would take the tapes, one by one, and listen to the messages left for him long ago. Listen to the lost voices, and smile whilst tears made shiny tracks down his wizened cheeks.

Carshare II

We took the tram to its terminus and stepped out into sunshine. Etienne pulled up in a black car with two bicycles tethered to the top. Introductions and small talk and we were on our way. A maths teacher from Picardie, returning from a holiday in the Auvergne; his voice was loud, but in a way that I liked. He strayed from the autoroutes and took us through villages, over bridges, past horses in sunlit fields. We chatted in French and English and Franglais, about the state of education, and France, and fruit. The warmth of the sun, refracted from the French countryside, spilled through the windshield and bathed my winter-tired face. We passed through long straight lines of tall plane trees, casting their dappled shade on car roofs. A murder of crows wove through the canopy, visiting neighbours' nests. And all the while I watched the shadow of two bicycles speed along the asphalt at our side, impossibly fast, flying past fields and forests. Le tour de France.

This is why I like Charity shops.

So I've got this bag, right. I needed a bag but didn't have much money so I did the usual and scoured some charity shops. So, I found this bag. It was kind of cumbersome, made of floral carpet, pretty ugly actually. But I like ugly things. Moustaches and pugs and burnt-down-buildings and old-men's-shoes and wallpaper from the sixties. So I bought it for a tenner and slung it over my shoulder and left, feeling chuffed.

On the way home I stopped at the market and bought tomatoes and courgettes and lettuce and bananas and oranges, and lychees for a special treat, because they had one of those special spiky neon signs with a cheap price on you always see at greengrocers. I love those little signs. I put them all into my new bag. Fruit and veg are heavy, especially when you carry them in those flimsy plastic bags that might as well be made out of spiders webs for all the use they are. The ones whose handles turn into some kind of dental floss and cut into your fingers like cheese wire. So I was glad to have a bag to put them in. They'd be heavy, but at least my fingers wouldn't go all stripy red-and-white and sore.

But they weren't heavy. It was like the bag was still empty. I had to look inside to make sure they hadn't fallen through a massive hold in the bottom that I'd somehow failed to notice in Oxfam. No; all my tasty fruits and veg were still there. Must be some kind of physics, I thought. Some kind of special bag that spreads the weight evenly (my science knowledge is clearly poor enough that I can fob myself off with such feeble explanations).

I wandered home, swinging my light-as-a-baby-hamster bag at my side. I was pretty happy. Not because of the bag, but because I was going to eat lychees with a cup of rooibos tea in front of Neighbours.

When I got down to the kitchen, I started to unpack my groceries. When I'd finished, I noticed there was still some stuff lying around at the bottom of the bag. A few pieces of chalk. A sticky spoon. Eurgh! An umbrella with a parrot's head handle. How did I not notice that? I kept rummaging, and found this weirdo letter from some kids named Jane and Michael Banks. Some cogs were slowly turning in my head. Then I pulled out a 5 foot long chimney brush and it all clicked. I knew whose bag this was.

Mary Poppins' actual carpet bag. I kid you not. You probably don't believe me but when was that ever the point of a story? Just stop giving me that cynical look, it makes your face ugly. I don't like all ugly things, you know.

So anyway, I was flipping out. I had Mary Poppin's bag. I started running round my house putting things inside it, just to test it out. Books and pans, a pot plant, the kettle. It was unbelievable. I didn't know what to do with myself, I was just too excited. Too excited to even eat my lychees. I could travel the world, I thought, with nothing but this bag. I could fit everything I owned inside it. I could empty my whole bookshelf into it, so that I'd never again be bored on a train. Every outfit, for every occasion. All my shoes. Reams of paper and pens and paint and ink; no landscape would go unpainted, should  I so desire. I'd always have my camera when I needed it. I could keep enough food in it to last me for years, and a little gas stove, and kitchen utensils. A tent, and a pillow and a duvet so that I could sleep anywhere. A fold-up bicycle for easy transport. A fold-up chair. A fold-up table. A boom-box! No, a Gramophone! A tent, a length of rope, a lantern. Fairy lights. Extension cables. A laptop. A projector! I could turn any wall into a cinema screen, anywhere in the world. I could charge people to watch films in caves and on cliff sides. I could charge people to watch my magic show, where I pulled live doves and bunches of flowers and Gramophones and bicycles from my little carpet bag.

And that is what I did. I left, and now travel the world with my magic bag. I make enough money in one place, selling things from my bag, or performing, or playing films with my projector. Then I move on. Sitting on boats and trains and at the back of buses, bag at my feet, taking lychees from a brown paper packet and peeling them, carefully. Their tough red skin revealing hidden gems of translucence and light; their sweet juice dripping down my chin.

No Pistachio.

Once upon a summer, long ago, I was in a city I didn't know. The streets were cobbled and mazy, and wound around tall buildings of ramshackle stone and shuttered windows. Washing lines hung between them like children's cup-and-string telephones. Sun baked the red roofs and bathed narrow alleys in dark shade. Old woman watered geraniums on high windowsills; down below, children played in the brief splashes of earthy rain. Cats grazed along walls like shadows, or slept in the sun.

I'd spent the day wandering these winding streets, sitting in the sudden sunlit squares I happened upon, dipping my fingers in greenish fountains; peering into shop windows and seeing myself stare back. Stroking strange dogs and smiling at their owners. The afternoon drew on, and the heat lingered like sweet syrup resting at the bottom of a glass. I was weary, hot, and dusty. My thirst prickled. I was lost, though intentionally so. I had wandered the labyrinth with no yarn, and was glad of it.

It was at that moment that I found it. I doubt I could find it again, if I went back to that city one day.
A small shop, whose wooden shop front was perhaps once the blue-green of a duck's egg, but was now sun-faded to the hue of the sky, late on a winter's afternoon. The letters had long been bleached from the sign, though I could see the last flakes of gold paint left behind. The sun rained down on my shoulders, and heated my hair like wire filaments. I stepped into the cool shop and shrugged the heat off my back like a jacket.

The door rang a little bell and the shopkeeper looked up, smiling. An old man in a cream shirt and a red striped waistcoat. His mop of white hair stood out all over it like a dandelion. In front of him was a long glass counter. Displayed under it was ice-cream. Tub after tub, ice-cream in all colours, piled high in swirling peaks. I approached the glass and peered into it, hoping for pistachio. Or hazelnut, or perhaps a mango sorbet. But none of the ice-cream had labels, and from the colours, I couldn't quite tell.

The shopkeeper was grinning as he watched me. He asked me which flavour I would like, and I said, what have you got? And he grinned even wider. I think I know what you'd like, he said. And he took one of those little wooden ice-cream spoons and scooped a bit of ice-cream onto it. Here. The ice-cream on the spoon was a very pale green. Pistachio, perhaps? How did he know? But when I put it into my mouth, it was not the  flavour that I was expecting.

My whole mouth was filled with the taste of freshly cut grass. The taste of the smell, I should say. The smell of grass, just mown, damp from a sprinkler, now warming in the sun. I looked back at the shopkeeper and he was still grinning, expectantly. Yes, I said, I like that very much. What else do you have?

The next spoonful was white. It tasted ever so slightly salty. And of something sweet and perfumed. Suncream, and the ocean. Licking the salt water off suncreamy lips. Seeing my face light up, he handed me another spoon. It was orange. It filled my mouth with autumn. Wood smoke, the scent that rises from piles of fallen leaves, freshly opened conkers, cold pumpkin pulp.

After that I was hooked. He gave me spoons of cool, dark churches, of warm asphalt being kissed by rain. Hookah smoke and leather satchels, copper coins and the back of stamps. The smell of the cinema; popcorn, sticky puddles of spilt cola, dusty velvet seats. The smell of birthdays; cake, party poppers and wax candles. I tasted spoons of petrol fumes, marijuana, pine forests. Melting butter.The smell of babies heads and mothers' embraces. The smell of clean, white sheets.

Then, he said, he'd found my favourite. I paid him, and he piled a cone high with creamy white scoops.
I thanked him, promised to return, and left, carrying my cone out into the heat like an Olympic torch.

I walked down a couple of streets and sat down on a bench. The sun, though starting to lower in the sky, was still burning down heavily. I licked a drip of ice-cream that had trickled onto my hand. It tasted cool and slightly stale. The taste of a big old library. And it tasted of books. Old books, new books. The scent of their breath as their pages flip past your nose. Shelves and shelves full of them, sighing out their knowledge, quietly.

I savoured that ice-cream. I lost myself in it as one might into a novel. And when I'd finished it, I was filled with sadness. I felt so moved by it. I walked back to the shop, but when I reached it, it had closed. I endeavoured to go back the next day, but of course, I never found it.

The Spraypaint Somnambulist

It was a good few weeks after he'd moved in, when he noticed the first one. He looked up to his right as he turned the key in the front door and there it was. Scrawled on the side of a shop sign, right next door, were three black letters. And those letters just happened to be the initials of his name.

He stopped, hand suspending the key in mid-air, one foot in the open doorway. How strange, he thought. What are the chances that someone with those same three (slightly unusual) initials not only exists, but has tagged them right there, next to my apartment? He marveled at the improbability of it all. Perhaps it was someone he knew, he pondered. But he knew precious few people in this town, none of them vandals. He shrugged it off and entered the cool hallway, leaving the mystery behind him. (Though it lay in wait for him there, every time he left the building.)

A few weeks later, he was walking down an alley which flowed into his street. Something on a wall tugged at his vision until he turned his head to glance back. And there it was again. Those same three letters, those letters which, to him, had always been a kind of personal code, special to him alone. The idea that they were not only shared but being used, flaunted around by some petty vandal, unsettled him slightly. He had a bad taste in this mouth. Like fumes from an aerosol can.

After that, the artist grew more prolific. He noticed his initials at bus stops and scratched into tram windows. Rendered beautifully in spray paint on the sides of crumbling buildings. Thrown up onto closed shop fronts. Squiggled over bins. It wore him out, somehow. Every morning he awoke feeling weary, because he lay awake at night wondering how  to contact this mysterious artist, this letter-thief. He felt very confused as to why it bothered him so; but nevertheless it did. It troubled him, deeply.

He began to go mad, slowly. He dreamt, too, of wandering the streets at night, spraying letters onto walls and old vans. He would wake with tingling nostrils and strange stains on his hands, that wouldn't go away.

One night he dreamt that he was standing in the middle of a dark street with a can of spray paint in his hand. He'd just painted two letters, and half of a third. Then he woke up. He was cold. He was fully clothed. He was standing upright.

In front of him were two letters, and half of a third.

Mutilations

I

The pharmacy smells as pharmacies do; halfway between a health foods shop and a hospital, without the yoghurt raisins, Dettol and death. You're sitting on a stool, legs not even grazing the ground. Two dots are drawn on earlobes. A white gun is loaded with the chosen ammunition (gold studs with little white crystals) and the shots are fired. A sound not unlike a hole-punch, piercing flesh not paper. Feels like a bee-sting. A little white bottle is pressed into your hand - clean them with this, morning and night - and your ears burn red on exit. But it's okay, you can now wear the earrings your Grandma gave you, and you'll look beautiful.

II

The shop is full of tattoo art and illustrative rubber genitals studded with piercings. You're lead upstairs to lie down on a black leather bed. Dot drawn on the nose, rubbed off, replaced. No guns here. A needle is extracted from its hygienic packaging. Your heart beats a ragged rhythm over the nasal melody of the tattoo gun. The needle is coming, the pain is coming. It comes. The sharpest of pains. Snorting wasabi, tearing out nostril hairs. The stud is put in and the pain deadens but never goes, not for weeks. You spend the next few days cleaning away the encrusted blood with cotton buds and wincing every time you flare your nostrils (more often than you ever knew.) Beautiful.

III

First they take your bottom teeth. After that, the worst is over, the women say. You run your tongue over the awful, agonising spaces left behind, but you don't quite believe them. Then your mother takes your bottom lip and slices it open and the agony multiplies intensely, and the wooden plug pushed into the wound ramifies it into infinity. For weeks you mope and heal under the hot sun, pain only mildly assuaged by the jealous glances of younger girls. The insertion of bigger plugs is the worst. They splinter. You fashion your first plate from clay, and decorate it with care, and finally, finally, that long ached-for day arises and you are ecstatic with agony as it's pushed in, your clay plate, and finally, you are beautiful.

IV

This will be the worst day of your life. You knew it was coming; but they'll grab you from nowhere, these women veiled in black, and they'll drag you to a strange room and tie you to a table. And spread your legs apart. And you'll be powerless to stop them, these perpetrators of humiliation and agony. These broken women who do as they were done by. Aunts, sisters. Your own mother. The knife will cut in clumsily and the pain will explode into darkness and you'll pass out. When you wake you'll have been darned like a torn garment and the agony will burn on for months. This will never heal. You will be broken forever. The injustice and inhumanity of it will be unfathomable. This mutilation, whose idea was it? Not yours. You were beautiful.

Fishing.

I waded into the lake until the water lapped at the top of my boots. I could touch the edge of the ice, softened by springtime. Before me it stretched, barren and desolate beneath a white sky. The boys launched rocks and branches to break it; but toward the centre it was impermeable. Their projectiles fell from the air and bounced on the surface; the ice jolted with the impact. The shock waves came rippling outwards to the shore. When a stone finally shattered through, bubbles formed under the surface, which floated towards me and gurgled out from under the ice. Mermaid's breath.

The worm writhed in his muddy fingers. He pierced its skin with a dark little hook; a needle into a satin pincushion. Ver de terre. Into the icy water it was plunged, and, seconds later, the line was tugged on. He reeled out a bright wriggle of silver. A small fish, mouth gasping, eyes round and golden with the shock of the burning air, with the dirty, dry warmth of our fingers. Blood trickled down its mouth. I was startled by the colour of it. Red, like my own. We laid him on the grass whilst we found a bottle to keep him in. His mouth gaped, open and shut. I'm still alive, he was screaming. But in the air, his voice didn't carry. 

In the bottle he thrashed, but not for long. Soon he floated belly-up. His time had come. I accepted his death, for his blood was on my hands. Then a white van came and a man stepped out and asked for our fishing licence, and of course we had none. We shooed him with apologies, and he left us, and our little fish. Put it back, he'd said. And we did. We poured him into the cold lake like liquid silver and life snatched him right back into its depths. Then he was gone, that brief transcender of two worlds, separated by ice.

I bent and rinsed his blood from my fingertips.

Sexism under the Sea

Stanley the seahorse was on the verge of breakdown, and he wasn't alone. All the male seahorses at the coral reef had had enough. This sexism had gone too far. It was time for a revolution.
Centuries of oppression had come to their zenith. Female seahorses were tyrannical; they allowed the males no rights, no liberties. They had no vote, no right to work. No voice. They were second-class citizens, who inherited nothing, owned nothing, controlled nothing. The society was matriarchal to the extreme. Sexual harassment was rife.

It was time to make a stand. They formed a union. They had protests. They created petitions and wrote letters to  M.P.s. They threw themselves in front of race seahorses. But none of it seemed to work. Whilst the women were in power, nothing would change. Things would remain the way they had been for thousands of years. What could be done?

Then Stanley had an idea.
They could refuse to reproduce.
Who would carry the forward the race if they weren't producing progeny?

It was genius. All of the male seahorses were on board. No sex until they had equal rights. No pregnancy until they ceased to be seen as second-class citizens. No babies until they had the vote.

The females took a while to cotton on. After all, the males were never that keen on all that malarky anyway. Always 'too tired', never 'in the mood'. But slowly, surely, they began to realise something was up. And that was when the seaweed hit the propeller.

Suddenly, the males had a voice. The females could no longer oppress or ignore them. Husbands turned their backs on wives, boyfriends on girlfriends, brothels were shut down. The road was long and rocky; rapes were not unheard of, though the men still lacked the power to prosecute the perpetrators. But finally, after weeks of uproar, the Seahorse President announced that the constitution had been amended. Men were equal citizens. They could vote, work, divorce, inherit. And finally, the men relinquished, and the women rejoiced. It took a long time before true equality was found, but eventually, an end was put to sexism under the sea.

Ladybird's Bad Day

It was an unseasonably warm day, though the trees had not yet blossomed. I landed on a blade of grass. In the sunshine it glinted. It bowed down slightly under my weight.

Suddenly a human hand descended from the sky and blocked my way; I turned to run but found myself running up onto the warm pink skin of a finger. It lifted me into the air and brought me up to its horrible face. It roared from its gaping maw, and its words made me tremble with fear.

Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home,
Your house is on fire, your children are gone.


For a second, I was paralysed. The shock left me in cold disbelief. It couldn't be; no, God, let it not be so. Then adrenaline kicked in; I opened out my wings and flew away, faster than I have ever flown before.

When I reached home, the scene was devastating. My beautiful house was razed to the ground, and oh, my children, where were they? Gone, all gone. My beautiful larvae, all gone.

Then I heard a faint scratching from under a frying pan. I scurried over and lifted it up; it was Anne, the smallest one, feelers slightly singed, but alive. I clutched her to my breast and together we wept, quietly, in the burnt shell of our old home.

Death in the Kitchen.

My hand trembles as I hold you
down onto the table. Your golden
skin gives way to my pressure.
You feel my ill intent, but as I lift the
knife, I am without remorse.
Why is it I, then, whose eyes
sting with tears as the blade
bites into your flesh?

You remain silent. Your
eyes, unseen, see nothing.
 The silver blade breaks
you into slivers, like
new moons. You are
soundless; it is I who
weeps.

The tears sear down
my cheeks and leave me
blind; I have to stop and
wipe them with my
hands. And you,
you're devastated;
nothing left.

You have no bones.

I wash my hands of you.
The blood's not yours, but
mine. A tiny lick the knife
gave to its master. It's
just your scent that
lingers. It will never
leave.

With drying eyes I
scrape up your
scattered remnants,
and pour you,
poor onion,
to scald in the
pan.