Roof Garden.

If I ever live in a city, I want to have a roof garden. Just a tiny terrace amongst the roof tops. I could grow herbs and some flowers, maybe even a few vegetables.

Actually, forget the plants. I'd just lay there on my back after a long day of work. Staring up at the sky. All the people, all the cars, all the noise of the city forgotten far below. I'd just lie there, staring up at the sky. Watching swallows cut up the sunset like tiny scythes.

Peeling Grapes

Ander was 12 years old the first time he ate a grape with the skin still on. His grandmother (whom he'd  only just met) sat him down in her living room (which he'd now seen for the very first time) and handed him a glass water and a bag of white grapes (which were green, not white). They were still wet from the quick rinse they'd been given, still attached to the slimy brown stalks that made him think of dirty, fallen branches. And they still had the skin on.

Ander wasn't hungry. Ander felt sick. He felt as though his insides had been replaced with the English Channel. Cold, grey-green, choppy and nauseous. His intestines swimming around like skinless sea snakes. But his new old grandmother was sitting opposite him on a new old armchair in the new old living room, watching him. And he didn't want her to talk to him because he didn't have anything to say to her, so he pulled a grape from its branched bunched brethren, and popped it into his mouth.

The skinny grape felt odd against his tongue. It pushed hard back as he rolled it around his mouth, like a green glass marble. He pushed his teeth into it and shuddered at the bitterness as its skin burst open. A taste he wasn't used to. Like sudden, unexpected sadness. The kind that came all at once like a summer storm, then lingered afterwards, in big sad puddles, lying there for days on end. Ander felt like a big sad puddle.

Grapes without skin aren't as hard to bite into. And they're not bitter. His mother used to peel his grapes for him, one by one, and serve them to him in a sky-blue bowl. He never asked her to. He didn't even realise grapes had skin, not until he was much older. Even then he wasn't sure whether the skin was to be eaten or not. His mother just peeled his grapes for him. It must have been because she loved him. But perhaps it had a little something to do with the fact that she was sick.

His new old grandma brought the white grapes in a bag to her hospital bed. And when his mother died, she brought them home again, and brought Ander with her. And she didn't peel them, or put them in a little sky-blue bowl. She just placed the dripping bag before him on the coffee table. He asked her why she hadn't peeled them. She sighed and said, "From now on, Ander, you'll have to peel your grapes yourself."

Ander decided he didn't want to eat grapes any more.

Reincarnation

I lay back on the warm grass, letting the sun paint my limbs gold. The clouds tinted green, the sky tinted impossibly turquoise by two rounds of horn-rimmed glass. I chewed a blade of grass. It tinted my tongue green, too. Miles above me swallows soared, wings eyelash-small, tiny blades spiralling, slicing through nothing. Framed too in the green glass of my spectacles were the tops of tall trees, evergreen evergreener.  I exhaled deeply, like a dying breath. I thought of reincarnation.

If I knew I would be reborn as a swallow, I wouldn't fear death, I thought. And the thought was more comforting than the thought of an afterlife, of infinite hours spent languishing amid do-gooders on impossibly solid clouds. It was more comforting than thoughts of reunited loved ones and looking down on the living milling about mortally like dull ants.

If I knew I would be reborn as a tree, I'd die with relief, not fear. Not sadness. I'd sigh my last and assume my role as a sapling, silent, unconscious, unfeeling, unthinking. Just living a leafy lifecycle, spring to summer, autumn to winter, over and over and over. Growing. Not worrying. Not knowing, nor caring.

And then I thought, what if we are all reincarnations, all reproductions repeating endlessly, recycled souls recycling and recycling. A ladybird that used to be a fireman, a priest that used to be a dog.

And what if we were all reincarnations of the same soul, time-travelling back and forth to live every life at once? If every human, every creature, every flower, every tree, was one soul, living each life through to its finish and starting again at the beginning of another? And I was just another reincarnation of my friends, and I was really just passing warm red wine in a green glass bottle to myself, in a way, and sitting there in the park looking at myself running past, lounging on the grass, play fighting with myself, kissing myself, chasing myself. And what if all the pigeons were myself, and all the ducks, and every blade of grass  I was lying on was myself? An old, weary soul, repeating over and over, unaware of any of it. Repeating and repeating ad infinitum, wheeling and soaring into endless green-blue.

What the hell are you looking at?

I was walking down the street with my dog, minding my own business, the sun warm on my face. Cars rushing, people brushing past. Birds in harmony with bike wheels, singing their summer cicada song. I didn't expect it. I had no expectations. I never have any expectations. They are not something often afforded to me. Not something I often afford myself.

So I wasn't expecting it. I wasn't expecting it. Just out of the blue. The voice of a person I hadn't seen. A voice that made me stop and turn.

"What the hell are you looking at?"

The man squared up to me. I could feel his presence bristling to start trouble, to kick off, to fight. What do you say to that? What the hell am I looking at? "You? I'm looking at you?" Only asking for more trouble. Does he want trouble? Is that what he wanted? Trouble?

What else could I say? The tension, in those seconds, mounted like gargantuan waves about to break. The calm before the tsunami. My dog whimpered and growled, quietly. I hadn't been looking at him. I could say, "nothing". I could say "nothing", and keep walking. No trouble. No nothing. Just silence, darkness, moving on.

Let me tell you now, I am not normally one to put people on the spot. I don't like to embarrass people. I don't like to make a scene. I just like to mind my own business. Walk down the street on a summer's day with the sun on my face. Looking at no-one.

But he said it again. "I said," he said, "What the hell are you looking at?" he said.
So I stopped. And I stared at him, blankly, dead in the face.
And I said, "I wasn't looking at you," I said.
He started to say something. I interrupted him.
"I'm blind", I said.

And I walked off into the darkness of my summer's day, leaving him in his colourful, broken silence.

Man and Machine.

John swore loudly and slammed his hands down on the steering wheel. The white Citroen 2CV, rusted at the edges and wearing a fine coat of reddish dust, shuddered its last breath. John turned the key in the ignition, over and over, but to no avail. The little car was kaput. No more trips to the shops, no more promenades through the countryside or journeys to the pier. He got out and sighed, slamming the door behind him. Opening the bonnet, he realised he knew precious little about cars and would be unable to help the situation by fiddling around. He gave the car up for dead.

He was about a 25 minute walk from the next village. He would push his car into the woods a little, and set off to find a telephone. The car slid (with a little difficulty), off the road, and he was on his way. He can't have walked more than 100 metres when the first of two things happened. The Citroen lost its grip on the soil (perhaps the handbrake gave way, perhaps the ground did) and rolled down the hill where, after gaining quite some speed, it collided with a birch tree and was brought to a halt, its bonnet wrapped round its trunk like a boxing glove holding a broomstick.

The second thing that happened was that John was hit by a Ford pick-up truck, pushing 80 down the country lane, and killed instantly. And the driver dragged John into the woods and drove off, even faster than before.

Some people who go missing get missed. Those people get searched for. Others don't. They don't. John was 67, retired, friendless, unmarried, a single child long orphaned. No one came for him. So there, in the woods, his flesh melted away in one thousand rainfalls, his bones picked white by the creatures of the forest floor.

Meanwhile, the Citroen, once lifeless, was now full of life. Green mosses grew up its sides like algae on a boat's hull. Ivy wound round its wheels and saplings pushed up through its leather seats. Mice nested in its glove compartments. And in spring, flowers pushed their bright faces through its windows.

The Man Who Couldn't Stop Eating

Once a man woke up hungry. Hungrier than he'd ever been in his life. How could he be so hungry? He wondered. He'd eaten dinner the night before. But now, his stomach felt like a bottomless pit of emptiness, a gaping void, a vacuum, black infinity imploding on itself. Hunger in its fiercest form. 

He got out of bed and flung open the fridge door. Its golden light blinded him briefly. Then he set upon its contents, ravenously. He pulled everything out and laid it on the table, a motley banquet of jars and Tupperware. He found some bread and piled on ham and cheese and mayonnaise and mustard and wilting lettuce, squashing it down into a sandwich. He ate it with the ferocity of a wild beast, a hyena scarfing a zebra carcass. It hurt his throat to swallow down the big, solid chunks he hadn't chewed. He washed it down with half a carton of milk. 

For a few brief minutes, he felt sated. Then the hunger came back, stronger then ever. He put the last two slices of bread into the toaster. That should do it. Whilst he was waiting for it, however, he opened a foil box to find leftover chicken madras from over three days ago. He ate it with his fingers. Then the toast popped. He spread on a thick layer of butter and another of raspberry jam. He ate it upside-down so he could taste the jam better. There. 

But then he saw a jar of gherkins, and fancied one. He savoured its sharp, salty taste, its fresh crunch. It cleansed his palate. He ate another. Then he finished the jar. Afterwards, he ate a few slices of cheddar to mellow out his mouth. Then he took a swig of orange juice to cut through the dairy-coating on his tongue. And then he opened a packet of kettle chips just because they were there.

Hours later he was lying on his sofa, still eating. He wasn't getting any fuller. Just sicker. But he just kept eating and eating, and when he'd eaten all the food in his house, he ordered in a pizza, with a side of garlic bread. And when he'd finished it, he stopped eating, not because he felt full, but because his jaw hurt, and his stomach hurt, and he was tired. 

The hunger was still there, though. The emptiness inside him, that cavernous void. And food hadn't managed to fill it, because food wasn't what was missing from it. But he would never see her again. He would never get her back. The hole in his heart, in his soul, would not be filled by salami or Ritz biscuits. It could only be filled by her. And that would never happen.

The next day he walked round cradling his emptiness like a newborn, craving everything but nothing in particular, tears falling not from his eyes but rising as saliva in the back of his throat. 

Sunlight Through Shutters

When we woke, it felt like we were waking from some strange, shared dream, stretched out to span six months and eclipsed by waking. Our bodies, sliced open by thin lines of sun, sluicing through the shutters. From our sun-cuts, we bled magnesium light. Our tessellations changed and shifted, kaleidoscopic forms in brown and gold, peach and white. Dark fever dreams dissolved like salt in the morning's purity. Our wholeness. The sound of our hearts like ticking clocks. The beauty of it pained me. Leaving the bed, my bones were heavy magnets pulling back. My stomach, an anchor sinking in a sad salt-water sea.

You drove me to a hilltop and we lay there like effigies, sun stricken, pale bodies burning in the bright, slow-burning flame of the moment.

You drove me to a lake and we jumped in and the cold was such a shock. Like waking from a dream. Like finding yourself suddenly alone. Our limbs yellow-green beneath the surface. Our faces above it, shocked and lost, water streaming down our cheeks. How could we bear such shock. Such loss.

The sun warmed and dried us. And it burnt us, too. Burnt you into me. Burnt you into the back of my eyes like a camera flash. Like sunlight through shutters. Never leave me. Never, ever leave me. 

But after a few minutes the flash will fade, and be gone.

Le Tour du Sud

My week was
Aixellent
Marseillous
Montpremier
Arlesome.
Avignonforgettable.

I'm sad it's Barcelover.

Day 7: Marseille and Avignon

In the morning, I was woken first by the tabby cat kneading its claws on my pillow with a rather smug look on its feline face. My next unwelcome wake-up call was the phone ringing obnoxiously. The third was the cat, back again for more pillow-clawing. But the fourth – ah, the fourth! The fourth was Nikolai opening the blinds to let in brilliant sunshine. Sunshine, after our week of miserable wet weather. We pulled ourselves out of bed to a breakfast of sugary coffee, pains-au-chocolat, nutella tartines and orange juice. The sugar did me good. Then we packed our bags, said au-revoir to the dogs and hopped in the car to the beach.

Nikolai and Julien bantered back and forth like a Siamese-twin stand-up act. They drove us through the winding city streets to the sea front. We danced in the sand and dipped our feet in the cold sea, sun finally kissing my cold English skin, white as whipped cream. It brought out our freckles (and our teeth, in broad white smiles).  We climbed the rocks and screamed as waves soaked us in their cold brine.

Then they took us to the church on the hill, Notre Dame de la Garde. It was magnificent. Outside it we looked out on the port and the vast, sun-soaked city. Inside, the walls were leaved with gold. Model boats hung, suspended on strings, bizarre and beautiful.

The boys dropped us off in a metro car park, where we thanked them for their warm welcome, said our goodbyes and met our carshare driver, Alain, a retired Frenchman in his 50s who liked sailing. Who spoke fluent English. Who only had 4 digits on his left hand. Who dropped us off in Avignon, just outside the city walls.

Famished, we popped into Casino to purchase a picnic. We bought a baguette, camembert, ham, two bananas, two nectarines and a can of panaché each. We found the river, took the ferry across and made sandwiches in the sunshine, opposite le Pont d’Avignon. Half finished, a useless bridge. A bridge for lemmings. We lay out on the soft grass, heads on our backpacks. I made a bracelet out of white clover.

Hugo finished work at six thirty and we went to meet him. A nice boy of about our age, black hat balanced on his afro, a grey scarf around his neck. He chain smoked as he walked us to his fifth-floor apartment, white and open, drenched in sunlight. We chatted then headed out to see the town.

It was everything one could hope for in a French town. More, perhaps. It was beautiful. The southern wind blew through its narrow streets and cooled my sunburnt face. Then he took us to a tiny theatre where we watched On the Road, subtitled in French. It was well adapted from the book. The images almost perfect; the sense of movement that Kerouac intended all there, the rawness, the impulse. I thought back on our week spent in the backs of the cars of strangers, speeding across the French countryside. The film consolidated in me the desire to move, to travel. To see everything. To never stay in the same place.

And at the same time, the opposite. It brought back the longing to stay, to settle, to return home to normality. Home to Clermont. Home to England. Home to those I love. I am no Sal Paradise, no Dean Moriarty. Certainly not he. After the film we drank a beer, went back to the apartment to eat and then to sleep. One last sleep before our return. Our last night on the road.

The clover flowers dried and crumbled from my wrist in my sleep.

Day 6: Aix-en-Provence, Marseille

Megan and I sardined ourselves into Frankie's bed with her last night. I awoke, (after a three-in-a-bed sleep perturbed by a duvet whose edges I couldn't wrap my legs over) to the sound of rain. We were naive to think it was over. We went back to sleep hoping it would stop when we re-awoke, like a bad dream. Like the very worst of dreams, it continued.

Later we gave up all hope of fair weather and ventured out, flip-flopped feet freezing and covered in muddy puddle water (our real shoes were long deceased). Frankie lead us round Aix's beautiful cobbled streets, yellow walls so much brighter than Clermont's drab volcanic stone, even in the rain. There were fountains in abundance, on every street corner. The town was overflowing with them. Corroded cherubs faces, dribbling lions, bulbous, calcified shapes, moss-covered and steaming with strange spring water. The streets still shone with water. We slipped and slopped in our flip-flops, into the cathedral with its strange green light, ornate green organ and grinning stone dragon. My camera clicked in the heavy silence.

That afternoon, whilst peering into a patisserie window, Megan smacked her head against the glass. We laughed. Fifteen minutes later, freshly purchased cakes in hand, we returned home to Frankie's. Megan dropped the cakes. We laughed at her, again. She picked them up. Then she stepped in dog shit. We laughed and laughed and laughed. She rinsed her flip-flop in a puddle.

We took the bus to Marseille. We sat on separate sides, gazing out of separate windows, thinking about  our separate lives. Then we got off and became Siamese travellers once again. Two girls together, blonde and back-packed, small and tall. We sat on the steps of the station, gazing out at the pied grey skies, the mountains, street-lights the pale green of a shallow sea, and a church perched high on a rock. The city stretched before us, its beauty dampened into sublimity.

Nikolai and Julien picked us up from a metro station and drove us up to their house on the hill side, overlooking the sea. A tabby cat and two fat black dogs. We got on like a house on fire. Then the sun came out, and set the hillside aflame. The sea shone below the horizon like a strip of magnesium, burning white.

In the supermarket, the four of us larked about and picked out food to cook for dinner. Later we cooked Toad in the Hole for them and their friends. "Le Crapaud dans son Trou". With onion gravy, courgettes and green beans, and apple crumble for dessert. They loved it. Their friends had couchsurfers too, a German girl and a Swedish one. We spoke Franglais and laughter, a universal tongue, and went to bed happy and exhausted in a sofa bed covered in cat hair, to the sweet lullaby of a fat dog's snores.

Day 5: Montpellier, Arles, Aix-en-Provence

Today was permeated by rain. So were our shoes. They squelched through the streets of Montpellier, Megan's pumps by far the worst off. The city was beautiful but its beauty was drenched and we drudged through it, doing our best to absorb it all but feeling rather saturated. I put on novelty sun glasses to take the edge off, and we smiled through the damp, smiled through the cold fingers and drowning toes. Smiled at all the people we met and smiled for photos from a dangerously damp camera.

Montpellier was full of wet cobbles, wet fountains, grandiose wet arches, wet promenades and wet people. Wet southerners disgusted at their wetness, hungover from their victorious football victory, commiserating with our washed out holiday. It's not usually like this, they said. Sorry, said their eyes.

We took the tram out to a Odyssey themed shopping park (Circé parking, Rue d'Achilles) and were picked up by Teddy, a young vet student with a rabbit and a rat in the boot of his Peugeot 306. He left us in Arles, at the train station washed up on the banks of the swollen Rhone. We trickled sadly through the streets, gazing at the amphitheatre and other such Roman remnants. The rain washed out the colours. Van Gogh's paintings seemed rather estranged from the scenes they depicted, confetti-scattered round clusters of giftshops as postcards and magnets and tote bags and t-shirts. The colours too bright, too beautiful. The compositions devoid of English tourists in their drab anoraks.

Back at the station we spent half an hour trying to steal a broken French flag, rather unsubtly as it was far above our reach. Our next carshare driver came late and drove us through the rain determinedly. We talked about films and England and France.

Frankie met us in Aix (still raining, spitting persistently) and we headed to her apartment where we were only too glad to take off our soaking shoes and warm ourselves up. She fed us a banquet of pasta and home-made bread-garlic (words switched here for garlicky emphasis). We were left happy, grateful and ever so garlicky. We wandered to a bar for drinks and wandered back through slick shining dark streets, far from dry.

But the rain, it seemed, had finished.

Day 4: Barcelona & Montpellier

After we returned, parched and exhausted, from the Park Guell, we had a bit of a wash (but not much of one) and ventured, refreshed, back into the city to watch the football at Robbie's. A friend of Juliet's, his apartment looked out onto the wide Carrer de Saint Joan. For the second time, we ate spaghetti bolognaise  and slurped cheap wine and cheaper sangria as we cheered Chelsea onto victory. Glory for the glory supporters and ecstasy for Harriet, screaming like a maniac, arms punching the air, in a delicate green frock. The world's poshest football hooligan. We befriended Juliet's friends through the medium of alcohol and loud conversation, and were herded out into the streets by George, regimental in a way only the English are capable of, a cross between a commanding officer and a geography teacher on a field trip.

We leapt metro barriers and piled on and off trains and filed down tall thin streets to find a tiny nightclub with golden crabs all over the walls and a drag-queen barmaid. So packed we couldn't move, but we danced with all our might before the heat and tiredness got all too much and we exploded out into the cool street. (The sea breeze wove around corners). Heading home on the metro, it seemed like the city didn't sleep. The streets were full of people, and men selling cans of beer and sandwiches. They knew their target market, and knew them well.

Between our station and the boy's flat, the sky burst open like train doors and the rain hit us like so many commuter's feet. We ran through the rainforest of fragrant trees and wrought iron balconies, until we reached the flat, hearts pounding, soaked with victory.


Today we woke with difficulty, after a deep sleep to a rainfall soundtrack. We left a thank you note to the four poker players, packed our bags and planned our carshares and couchsurfs. We were heading for Montpellier, but had no confirmation from our host. Our driver would be Eduaro, a Franco-Chilean who lived in Marseille. He picked us up outside the Sagrada Familia. I was glad to see it again before we left. I vowed I would come back when it was complete one day. Adios, Barcelona.

Eduardo drove a purple Ford Ka. He was middle-aged, but young minded, liked cannabis and Cuban music, and made his living as an iron-smith. Making balconies. As we left Spain the rain came back, falling mainly on the plain but also very much on the motorway, forceful like a waterfall, fierce vapour rising off the asphalt as we ploughed through it as though through thick cloud. The sound on the roof lulled me back to sleep. I opened my eyes later to see the sea, running alongside the autoroute past the freshly verdant landscape.

Hours later Eduardo dropped us off in Montpellier. We took a tram to the centre. It was full of people wearing football shirts - Montpellier were playing in the final. The tram itself was wearing a brightly coloured jacket, flowers in gaudy colours even Gaudi would have raised an eyebrow to. Having heard nothing from Philippe (the host who betrayed us), we cut our losses and paid €22 for a room at Le Strasbourg Hotel. A welcoming marine monstrosity, posters of whales in the foyer and stencilled sea life in the rooms. Curtains and bedspread like the Hawaiian shirt of a Miami pensioner.

Famished, we followed the tramlines to the city centre, where we bought ourselves delicious kebabs on freshly stone baked bread. The streets were swarming with people in orange and dark blue; the Place de la Comedie was a heaving mass of bodies, heads craning towards a big screen. We slipped through it and found a bar elsewhere. For those 90 minutes we became Montpellier supporters, as fierce as the rest. On screen the crowd threw toilet roll and tennis balls onto the pitch, and later a smoke grenade. The police lined the pitch like a navy picket fence. The tension was brittle. A goal shattered it. We jumped and screamed with the rest of the onlookers; our 24 hours as glory supporters had certainly been very glorious indeed.

We wandered home through the dark, riotous streets, dodging horn-blaring cars and revving scooters, laughing at revellers, marvelling at the mass of people who had swarmed up a fountain like a nest of termites. One held a red flare; the effect was that of a burning pyre of happy infidels. Il pleut, said a banner, les larmes des Parisiens. It's raining Parisian tears.

Better than real rain. Dry and happy, we trudged home and climbed into clean and hideous sheets.

Day 3: Barcelona

After beer and pizza and watermelon we left again, in search of the magic fountain we’d heard so much about. We wandered lost through a dark park until we eventually found it with the help of a nice ice-cream lady. It was worth the effort. The fountain was beautiful; it danced to a grandiose soundtrack in rainbow colours, sea-green foam melting into orange fire. We ate popcorn coated in the same rainbows, sticky and sweet.

Today we queued to see the Casa Batllo, the house that Gaudi built. The interior was indescribably beautiful, though our audio-guide telephones gave describing it their best shot. I came out feeling as though I’d been inside a four story sea-shell. Describing it in more detail would take many more words.

Lunch was tapas at the covered market, ordered in awful Spanish, followed by fresh fruit. We wandered round the gothic quarter, saw goldfish and the cathedral and musicians, then we took the metro to the Park Guell to see more Gaudi (we could never be saturated).

We hauled ourselves up the steps then, at the top, basked like lizards, backs pressed against sun-warmed, chameleon-coloured mosaics, and drank in the blue-horizoned view of the sprawling city.

We came down again, faces still hot from the sun, with dusty shoes and thirsty tongues. 

Day 2: Barcelona

Our host's apartment was in the Gracia district, a criss-crossed network of tree-lined streets full of bars and boutiques and pedestrian-dodging scooters. Last night we wove our way back to the Fontana metro station where we met Juliet and Harriet. We headed off to a bar, four girls of varying heights in varying shades of blonde, wielding varying levels of Spanish and varying volumes of laughter. We chatted over mojitos, white wine and daquiris. The bars were ambient, the drinks cheap and delicious. Later we sleep-walked home through the long dark streets, art-nouveau balconies and fragrant trees conspiring, jungle-like, to get us lost. We found our way home and collapsed, head-to-toe in a single bed.

We woke today from a strange sleep spent trying not to kick each other in the faces. Showered, dressed in ambitiously summery clothing, and ate sliced apples and ginger tea on the balcony.

Met Juliet and Harriet in a café for brunch, a baguette grazed with tomato and filled with Spanish omelette. Then Juliet, Megan and I left for the Sagrada Familia, whose spires had teased us the day before.

The building was cloaked in scaffolding, delicate at a distance, raw and ugly closer up. The cathedral itself was beautiful, the whimsical sandcastle of a juvenile giant. Gaudi's unfinished masterpiece. Eleven euro to see inside. We were undecided, stingy yet curious. We skirted the perimeter, looking for a way to sneak in. And we found it; through the gift shop, quick as a flash. Walking through the exit door. Salmon swimming upstream. And we were in.

The interior was like staring up at the sky and seeing the future. Like angel's bones. Like mechanical wings. Rainbows prismed in and glanced off pods of quartz, embedded high in ivory columns. All churches should look like this. Heaven should look like this. Nothing has worshipped the Almighty in this way, never before or since.

Back out into the unexpected cool breeze. We wove our way to the port down wide boulevards lined with trees and found ourselves in a covered food market. Then we lost ourselves in it. Fruit and vegetables in kaleidoscopic abundance; charcuterie and seafood glistening under warm light or spread out on sparkling ice. We bought cherries and gave one to a still-alive crab to hold.

Later we found ourself at the sea-front, grey and cold-breezy, unwanted weather but beautiful, teal-grey water. We stayed till we got goosebumps then took the metro home, two weary kings bearing gifts of pizza, and beer, and watermelon.

Day 1: Barcelona

Before the strike of nine we're in a car park, vast and thursday-morning-empty, sweat already blossoming beneath our backpacks. A big black Volkswagen waves us over with its car door. Two strangers jump out to greet two more, us two girls, excitement dissolving the clouds of early morning drowsiness. Two engineers, German and Portuguese, well spoken in French and English. Friendly and Easygoing.

We picked up a third man, and they told me he was Swedish. I said he looked it. He said he was actually French. We laughed.

We wound through countryside we knew until it merged into that we didn't. We wound through gorges, past viaducs and wind turbines. We stopped for lunch at the Viaduc de Millau. Ham and goat's cheese on dark granary bread in front of immense white triangles slicing the sky, spread out across a long plane, traversing the river cut deep into a gorge. Cars skimming across like pond skaters. 

Six hours after our departure and we were approaching Barcelona, passing graffiti'd apartment blocks and flat-roofed houses favela-sprawled over leafy hillsides. They drove us into a car park ('parkhaus', said the German) deep in the city's belly and, backs packed like blonde-haired camels, we paid, said thanks and took the tram to find our hosts for the weekend. We caught glimpses of Gaudi gilded spires in brief flashes. Under construction. Gone until later.

The trains were big and hot and we were glad to be out of them. The air was cooler than we'd expected; it was what we'd needed. And our hosts were there to meet us. Two boys, short haired, one Scottish and one Irish. Professional poker players with a big spacious apartment, paid for by hard-earned poker money. The nicest guys you could meet. Scottish told us about how he'd won a tournament last night, and how he likes salt and black pepper on his porridge. He made us a cup of tea. Irish gave us juice and spaghetti bolognaise. They gave us keys and told us to make ourselves at home.

And then we headed out, overjoyed, into the city to meet Juliet.

The Feeder

He couldn't remember when it started. But the moment he realised that he couldn't remember was the moment he realised something was not right.

 He couldn't remember the last time he felt hungry.

He couldn't remember the last time he had cooked for himself. He couldn't remember the last time he'd left for work, his breakfast nothing more than an apple to eat on the way. No. Breakfast was something she'd wormed into his life, without notice. Without consent. Bacon butties, grease permeating brown paper, left beside his briefcase. Pancakes presented, piled on a plate, before his head had even left the pillow. Eggs Benedict placed stealthily over the sports pages of the morning paper. Porridge so thick the spoon could stand up in it. All of it served with twice as much toast as he could stomach, slathered in soft blankets of melting butter.

Lunch was worse. Sandwiches lovingly layered, meat on meat on cheese on mayonnaise on margerine, stacked in Tupperware, crusts cut off. Accompanied by cookies or sponge or brownies. Things she'd baked behind his back. Thrust into his backpack with love letters scrawled onto neatly folded napkins. Eat up, darling! Made with love! Sometimes she turned up at the office for lunch dates - his choice, her treat - or to drop off the lunch box he'd forgotten, delivered with a kiss. 

He couldn't remember when his jeans had started cutting into him at the waist, or when his top button began to choke him as the day wore on. He couldn't remember when he'd last weighed himself (where had their scales gone?) or the last time he'd been to the gym (where was his membership card?)

And dinner time was the worst of all. He'd return from work each night to find her in the kitchen, wide smile, expectant eyes, dishes laid out before him like a banquet, smells nauseating him with their deliciousness. Starter. Main Course. Dessert. Painstakingly prepared, cooked to perfection. Made with love! Eat up Darling! 

He couldn't remember the last time he'd eaten dinner without her watching him. 

He couldn't remember the last time he'd left food on his plate without crushing guilt.

He couldn't remember the last time he'd left the table without nausea sitting sickly in his stomach.

After dinner he'd collapse before the television, whilst she'd tidy, satisfied she'd done her wifely duty. Tonight he felt sick. Sick with realisation. Sick to think of the misogyny-by-proxy he'd unwittingly fallen guilty of. Sick to see the enjoyment it gave her. Sick to wonder why she does it. Sick to see his swelling body in the mirror.

He undresses in the dark.

And when he gets into the bedroom, she's asleep already after a long day working herself to the bone in the kitchen, feeding him like a prize pig. Feeding him with every last morsel of her energy. Feeding him, it seemed, with herself, for when he turns on the light, he can count her vertebrae. Her every rising, falling rib. His beautiful wife, feeding only on devotion. Loving him with nourishment. As though it were the only way she knew how. And it was leaving her starving. 

He couldn't remember the last time he'd felt hungry.

But nor could he remember the last time he'd felt this empty.

Tall Tree

You are a tall tree
and I grew up
beneath your
thinning canopy.
How, at times,
you broke your
boughs for me!
I've climbed them now,
and I look out upon
the world, so vast,
and mad.
I'm grateful for
your altitude.
Happy Birthday,
Dad.

When the Forks Forked Off (Part III)

The further she walked, the forks become fewer and further between. The light was fading; the blue night  falling like a soft cloak. Nora felt a little scared. She clutched the forks tighter to her chest., the metal cold against her skin. She tried to whistle, but only a hissing sound came out. Her father had tried to teach her, before he left. When she hissed he laughed and called her his little snake. Little snake with a forked tongue.

Forked tongue. Fork in the road. Fork of lightning. Torch and pitchfork.

Nora reached a fork in the road and bent down to pick it up. She lifted up to inspect it, and through its tines shone tiny lights. She let her arm drop to her side. There were tiny lights ahead of her, flickering in the ground. Not silver like the glint of the forks; not white like stars or lightning. Tiny fires, laid out in a line. Tiny torches to guide her way. Torches and pitchforks.

She approached, tentatively, and as she did so, she saw that the lights were candles, laid out either side of the path like a cinema aisle. And she walked down the aisle, clutching her bunch of forks in both hands, like a bouquet. A little bride, without her father by her side.

Behind her she heard rustling in the leaves, coming closer. Her heart thudded like heavy footsteps but she didn't look back. She couldn't. She just kept walking, hissing with her forked tongue, holding her forked flowers, brandished like tiny pitchforks, burning with orange light. And then, ahead, she saw a tall figure standing in the dark.

Nora froze. Then the figure stepped into the light. And she let the forks fall from her hands and their metallic fall rang out through the quiet wood, reverberating in the silence. Tuning forks. And she ran down the aisle of light into his arms, into her father's arms once more, her mother and Matteo following close behind her, sparks flying in her happy heart. Like forks of lightning, brightening the night sky.

When The Forks Forked Off (Part II)

Nora stared. Three forks, on the ground, in the shape of an arrow. Who had put them there? Matteo, she thought. He's always doing weird things, since Daddy's been away.
"MUUUUUUUUUM!!!!!" she called. "I've found the - " and then she stopped. Because she'd seen another arrow of forks, a few feet in front of her. She ran over to it, and in doing so, spotted another fork, and another. A series of forks, leading towards the bottom of the garden, and into the woods.

Here the forks became harder to find. They were nestled in the undergrowth, partly covered by fallen leaves. But Nora had eagle eyes, her father said. She found them all, and picked them up as she went. Soon she had a fist full of grubby forks. Further and further into the woods she went....


(to be continued)

When the Forks Forked Off

The forks were all gone. Every one noticed the slow onset of the shortage, but no one thought anything of it. No one said anything. They just trickled away, slowly, methodically. Metallically. Until one day, when Nora was setting the table, there was not one fork in the drawer. Nor in the dishwasher. Nor in the sink.

"Muuuum! Muuuuuuuuuum! There are noooo fooooooorrrrks!"
"Have you checked the dishwasher?"
"Yessssssssss-uh!" Mum came over to have a look.
"Oh. Well, where are they then?"
"I don't know," said Nora.
"Go and look in the living room."

Nora went to look in the living room. She couldn't see any forks. She even checked down the sides of the sofas. No forks.

She looked in the hallway. She looked on the shelves. She looked in the cupboard-under-the-stairs. She looked in the downstairs bathroom. In the upstairs bathroom. In Matteo's room.

"Matteo, have you seen the forks?"
"The what?"
"The forks! They're missing!"
"No. Get out of my room."
"But dinner's nearly ready and we've got NO FORKS!" squealed Nora, not sure if Matteo had grasped the gravity of the situation. He sighed.
"Have you looked in the garden?" he said.
"Why would they be in the GARRRRden?"
"Just go and look." said Matteo with a smirk. He just wanted her to get out of his room, she thought, and left in a huff.

On the way to the garden, she looked in the laundry basket, the dog basket, and the bread basket. No forks.

Once in the garden, Nora looked around her. What would forks be doing in the GARRRRden? She thought. And then she saw a flash of silver lying in the grass.

She ran over to where she'd seen it. She found three forks, arranged in an arrow shape...

To be continued...

Cray Cray

An Algerian man left my friend a Facebook comment, all in capitals.

I laughed.

I watched some kittens on webcam.

I laughed.

A socially awkward man had a lead role in a play.

I laughed.

A French Bulldog walked past me.

I laughed.

Four ducks waddled past me.

I laughed, and laughed, and laughed.

Fay called asparagus "Asperger's".

I laughed.

A mother had a purple skirt and a yellow top. Her son had a purple top and yellow shorts.

I laughed.

We had leftover fajitas.

I cried.

.

Le Site de Chastel

In the Auvergne mountains, on a small hillside next to an apple orchard, lies a cemetery. The stone wall around it, sun-bleached, bone yellow. The heat rests on gravestones. New ones shining, draped with dirty plastic flowers; old ones sunken. Rest in peace. Names and numbers worn away, leaving shallow furrows in their place. Like earthworm tunnels, brought to the surface.

In the middle is a chapel, hot ivory stones enclosing a cool breath of shade, locked away behind big wooden doors. A glance through the keyhole shows cold grey walls and Mary, stone robe falling quietly around her feet. An ossified shroud.

And in the middle of the graveyard lie strange craters cut into the rock. Partly covered by grass, as though swept under the rug, but once seen, impossible to ignore. Shallow graves. Carved into the lichen-covered rock and shaped as though tailored to fit human bodies. Head and shoulders outlined, tapering towards the feet. They lie tessellated like rice-paddies, feet all facing the same way. Eight hundred years of sunrise. Some are filled with water, rusty leaves and the sky.

And behind it is a squat, round building, with a pointed roof. And in it is darkness. A single window barred with cast iron teeth separates hot and cold. Through the bars, in the dark, here lies a pile of bones. Three hundred skulls and their respective skeletons. The skulls face down, cracked eggs. Dinosaur eggs. Broken, empty shells. So cold, so estranged from the living body, robbed of their morbidity, save in their number. Their enduring fragility.

Rest in peace.

The Believers

He believes in things I don't. He believes, for instance, that a bar of Savon de Marseille between the bed sheets prevents cramps. I told him he should try eating bananas, for the potassium. He gave me a queer look. As though my suggestion was somehow stranger than his was. When I asked him how the soap worked, he got cross.

He believes that some people have special hands that can cure a fever with a touch. He believes that brown birthmarks are caused by a mother's craving for chocolate. (The red ones mean she craved cherries, or strawberries). I asked him how it was possible. He got cross.

He believes in "Power Balance" bracelets because they wear them in extreme sports videos.
He doesn't believe that they're just a scam. I explained and argued until my face was blue. He swore blue was black.

He believes that having a Y chromosome means that you are naturally better at everything.
Tongue in cheek, I hope.

He believes that we have a soul.
I don't.

You don't believe in anything, he said.
I believe in people, I said. I believe in the things people tell me, even if they're lying. I believe in our strength and our weakness and our secrets and our sadness. I believe in life. I believe in you, and me, and us.

That's nothing to do with soap, he said.

my washing got wet.

The rain fell fast and hard and 

brief; leaving the sky 

behind it, lying in the 

streets.

When Kat's Away, Meiss Will Play

Alicia Meiss and Kat Patel were flatmates and best-of-friends. They cooked together and drank cups of tea together and hung out all the time like best-of-friend-flatmates tend to do. They even shared a bed (for convenience’s sake, but also for midnight-chats and morning-breath-natters).  

This wasn’t to say they were two peas in a pod. Looks-wise, they differed to such an extent that any pod containing two such peas would be kept in a jar in some kind of museum of horticultural oddities. Their habits were a little at odds, too. Kat abstained from alcohol; Alicia drank into oblivion. Whilst Kat revelled in prayer and the infinite almighty, Alicia believed only in new-born lambs, funny shaped clouds, and humanity (sometimes). Kat was a beautiful human being who left a trail of tidiness and delicious meals in her wake. Alicia was a disastrous explosion of chocolate wrappers left in cups and clothes strewn all over the place like a tornado hit Topshop (or, perhaps, just Primark in its natural state). Kat’s clothes had never met a floorboard in their lives; they hung elegantly together in her closets, complementing each other, floating quietly.

Alicia tried desperately to keep her mess, her craziness under control. And for the most part, she did so. But when Kat announced she was going away for a week, a box of glitter hit the fan in Alicia’s head and shimmered down into her eyes. As soon as she heard the front door closed, the madness began.

On the first day, Alicia opened all the windows and danced naked around the apartment to Django Reinhardt and ‘Niggas in Paris’.

On the second day, Alicia, still naked, painted several large ‘murals’ onto the walls, taking inspiration more from Pollock than Van Gogh. When she got cold she put on some of Kat’s clothes and painted some more. No preventative measures were taken other than rolling up the sleeves.

On the third day, Alicia invited her friend Bernadette over to drink tea and eat chocolates and biscuits and sweeties. They cleared out the whole of Kat’s supply, and stuffed all the wrappers into teacups and glasses and then burped, really loudly. They had a burping contest. Bernadette won.

On the fourth day, she brought her bike up to the apartment and, naked once more, rode round in circles, crashing into everything and smashing Kat’s beautiful tagine set and hand-painted shisha pipe. She left the pieces in a teacup to deal with later.

On the fifth day, Alicia made a pig shaped piñata out of pink paper maché and strips of bacon. She filled it with salami and saucisson of all shapes and sizes, and, blindfolded with one of Kat’s scarves, beat it open with a huge frozen ham joint.

On the sixth day, Alicia made a lavish pavilion using the tables, chairs, curtains, throws and spare bed sheets (and some of Kat’s clothes) She lined it with the mattress and the cushions from the sofas and made a big nest in the middle with their duvets. Then she invited her boyfriend over to drink whisky and fornicate in the fornication fortress.

On the seventh day, she rested. Then she woke up and looked around her at the destruction she had caused, and it was good. But Kat would be back the next day, so she had a massive clean-up which involved repainting the walls, getting all of Kat’s clothes dry-cleaned, Hoovering and eating an awful lot of pork products.

When Kat got back she was impressed at how clean Alicia had been in her absence. It was as if she had never left! Then she saw the teacups filled with her broken shisha pipe and punched Alicia in the mouth and she bled and cried. Then they hugged and they were friends again.

Vulcan

Tonight Puy-de-Dome's silhouette was bold as ink against a cyan sky that tinged yellower as the sun set, like the pages of an old book. The peak was shrouded by a thin shred of cloud, billowing off like smoke from a factory chimney. Its edges burnt with the sun's red glow. The overall effect was beautiful, yet sublimely terrifying; it looked as if the volcano had woken from its slumber.

Imagine if it had! Seven thousand years dormant, sleeping through the millennia of humans climbing its vast back. Romans carving roads, and building temples; millions of shepherds herding billions of sheep; Scientists building antennae and hang-gliders gently hang-gliding off it. And now, all of a sudden, stirring from deep sleep, magma building in its deep belly like burning bile, an indigestion no Milk of Magnesia could quell.

Imagine if it erupted. Imagine if the lava rolled down the mountainside consuming everything in its path, engulfing houses and turning green pines into frizzled matchsticks. Imagine if the sky turned black and red and grey ash rained down on a grey city. If the lava flowed all the way down the valley to flow in Clermont's streets, to course over cobbles of volcanic rock and lap at basalt steps, lava on lava, hot on cold. People would run screaming for high ground, and hide from the lava in the lava cathedral, safe in its cool lava bowels.

In the streets, like those of Pompeii, would lie lava people. Stone dogs attached to stone punks. Stone beggars holding stone cups. Stone pigeons on my windowsill. Cold lava stone like the city's streets and steps and walls.

The Mighty Rubber Johnny Went To Rome To See The Pope

Rubber Johnny was a happy little latex condom who wore a shiny foil jacket. He looked very smart in it. He knew one day he'd have to take it off and do his rubbery duty, but for now he just hung out in a leather wallet looking dapper and alluring. He knew that some people weren't too partial for him and his kind. But for the most part he was proud of the job they were doing for the human race. He knew all about HIV and unwanted pregnancies so thus he saw his eventual destiny much as a soldier might see going for war - it was gruesome, yes, but it was all for a cause he believed in.

One day, however, he overheard an M&S receipt telling a Domino's voucher talking about him, and about some guy called The Pope. Apparently, this Pope guy didn't like him much. Wanted to abolish him, in fact. The horror! The repression! What about HIV and unwanted pregnancies? This man must be stopped, thought Rubber Johnny. And I'm the one to do it! For Humanity! For Condomkind!

So he whispered in the Lloyd's TSB credit card's ear, telling her to tempt their owner into buying tickets to Rome. Not hard, for her; their owner was very easily persuaded by her flat and shiny wiles (in fact, they called him 'The Spender'). Four weeks later the owner and his girlfriend headed off on a Rome-antic weekend that was totally The Spender's idea because he was so romantic.

Anyway, on the Sunday, as planned, Rubber Johnny peeped out of a trouser pocket to see he was in Vatican city, and that The Pope was giving his Sunday reading from a high window. Johnny asked a kindly Roman pigeon to give him a lift up there and, seconds later, he landed softly on The Pope's Bible.

"Oi!" said Johnny. "Why do you hate me?"
The Pope didn't react. He just calmly slipped him up his sleeve, and carried on with his reading. He barely batted an eyelid. Perhaps he didn't realise what I am, thought Rubber Johnny.

Oh but he did; for when the reading was finished, the Pope pulled out his fat Hermes wallet and slipped  Johnny into it with a chuckle. He was going to cry out in shock, but he was suddenly hushed by rustly voices around him. Voices that sounded like his own. He wasn't the only condom in this wallet.
When he thought about it, he wasn't entirely surprised.

Emptying

At the moment I keep thinking of when my brother used to run into my room when I was half asleep and yank my duvet away from me and I'd pull it back with all my might but my fingers were sleep-weak and I'd always relinquish, and lie there, defeated.

I'm also thinking about finishing drinks. Those last few seconds when the straw makes that sound as you savour every last drop. Or when you scrape the very last of the ice-cream from the bottom of the bowl. That feeling, of approaching the end of something you don't want to be over. The slurps and scrapes of sadness.

What about when pens run out of ink, or when phones run out of battery. What about stretching putty as far as you can, what about blowing bubblegum up to as big as it will go, until it bursts, and it's gone. What about letting sand fall between your fingers. Hourglasses. Impending sunset. Sunrise. Alarm clocks. Those last few seconds of sleep before you know you have to get up. You'll reach the bottom of your bowl of sleep and your spoon will just scrape you awake. And what about those dreams you want not to end, and those you try to remember but you can't quite, not ever, not really. No, not quite.

These are the things I'm thinking about. This is how my heart feels. I can feel you draining through my ventricles like sand from an hourglass, slipping from my fingers like a duvet. I am savouring you.
But every spoonful tastes of sadness.

If heartbreak had a sound, it would be partly like tearing dates from a calendar, and partly like the sound of air sucked through an almost empty straw. But most of all, it would be like the cold, quiet, metallic sound of a finished-with spoon, placed down gently beside an empty bowl.

Gold Heart Cash

They say I have a Heart of Gold.

I do. It's

Heavy. And cold.

So take your Heart of Meat,

and throw it

for the wolves to eat.

Take your Heart of Glass,

and shove it up your

transparent condescension. 

Take your Heart attack,

your cardiac arrest,

Take your quintuple bypass,

And I'll take my

Cash4Gold.

Footsteps

I called round to Christina's house as usual; we were planning an evening of light eating and light drinking (light meaning heavy). I pressed her buzzer, she yelled 'GIVE ME TWO MINUTES' and I waited for her to come down. Her front door opened, two minutes later, but rather than being greeted by a pint-sized, smiling Irish girl, as per my expectations, an elderly Frenchman came out, towing an even more elderly poodle in his wake, muttering a little too loudly. I stifled my surprise and let it out seconds later when the real Christina emerged. 'He dyes his hair', she said (it was rather obvious, he looked like a withered Danny from Grease), 'And every time he walks up the stairs past my apartment, he makes weird grunting sounds'. We giggled, high on each other's company after long days spent doing nothing  in our apartments, and headed off to Carrefour to stock up on light food and light beverages (lardons and Desperados).

Back at her apartment, we waited in hushed suspense to hear the old man's footsteps on the stairwell. We laughed as we heard him grunting and muttering his way up to the third floor. He never spoke to her; he just made grunting sounds, muttering madly. 

A few hours later, I left to seek out further light beverages (Martini Rosso) from my tepid freezer. As I descended, I heard footsteps and grunting coming from the stairs below me.

It was the old man (no surprises there). What surprised me, however, was that he wasn't dragging the dog up behind him. He was cradling it in his arms, like mother would her child. 'Bonsoir', I said. 'Est-ce qu'il est fatigué?'. Is he tired? No, he responded, gravely. He's had a stroke.

I wished him good evening and listened to him climbing up the stairs behind me, grunting with the effort of carrying his beloved companion, muttering reassuringly in its ear. I walked out onto the street, a sick-sad feeling in my stomach, eyes glossing over. Laughter silenced.

Our Pages are Numbered

The first one to go was a school edition of Hamlet, dog-eared before its time, well-thumbed but not well-read, annotated sporadically with DEV 4 TANYA and Tippex phalluses. It slipped out of a battered school rucksack (also plastered with aforementioned phalluses) as a moth might from a chrysalis, spread its mass-produced duplex cover, and took weary flight, stretching its scorned spine and shaking Dorito crumbs out of its leaves as it rose past Geography windows and cafeteria roof tiles. It was tired of being under-appreciated, tired of incessant, melodramatic 'To Be or Not To Be's. It chose To Flee.

The Larkin Anthologies took note and followed suit, tired of students flicking straight to 'This Be the Verse'. They tumbled off the shelves in the English department and flew out of high windows, past the sun-comprehending glass and beyond, into the deep blue air that shows nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.

The school books were always going to be the pioneers; their years of derision and ill-treatment left them little reason to stay. They cared little for Edexcel or AQA. They didn't mind if Jenny Richards got into Cambridge or not. They began to fly out of satchels and off library shelves like great flocks of tattered pigeons, chased by incredulous, mirthful children and bemused, incensed head teachers.

Soon the other books began to go. Big black tomes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica heaved their heavy bodies into the air like a murder of crows or vultures, bloated on the festering carrion of outmoded information. Once the staple go-to of the curious intellectual, with the advent of the internet they were no longer needed, and spent the rest of their days looking rather stately but gathering rather a lot of dust. Upper-middle-class neighbourhoods were plagued with the shadows of their dark wings. India to Ireland. Garrison to Haddock.

Waterstones began to empty like a vast aviary of exotic birds burst open; neat bright colours and sharp white edges whirled around puzzled shoppers. They were angry about Kindles and other such technologies and the hardbacks hurled themselves at the glass cases to smash their electronic rivals. The sound of their frenzied flight was unforgettable. The shuffling of a trillion cards at once. A hurricane in a paper press. People shielded their faces from paper-cuts.

The air was filled with the smell of books, new in the bookshops, old and musty in the libraries. Pseudo-intellectuals chased their faux-read copies of War and Peace out of coffee shop doors. Old biddies in Scope and Save the Children tried to catch errant Mills and Boon novels in casserole dishes. But there was little to be done. The books had had enough of being replaced with flat little screens and audio-books and film adaptions (many tried to rip off their own movie-poster covers in disgust). They'd had enough of not being properly cherished, as they once were. They all took flight, and the skies were filled with their beautiful bodies, pages fluttering like butterflies or crisply cutting through the air like swallows.

We don't know where they went. Some surmise they donated themselves to village schools across Asia and Africa. I suppose that makes sense. A book is worthless, if it is not read, and appreciated. But a part of me likes to picture Collins Pocket Dictionaries perched in rainforest canopies, and Puffin Classics making nests in barren coastal cliffs.