Simeon's Food Diary

Simeon the Seagull was a bit on the lardy side. He was getting a bit out of breath after taking off, and he thought he caught his girlfriend looking at him with disgust one time, when she thought he couldn't see her. He wasn't sure though; her eyes were always like that because she was a seagull.

Simeon went to see a dietician. The dietician asked him to compile a list of everything he eats on a typical day, so she could get some idea of where he was going wrong. Like a food diary, she said. 

Simeon came back the next day with his list. This is what it said:

Breakfast:

Half digested kebab from a puddle of sick

2 cold McNuggets

Half a dead jellyfish (shared with Gary)

Elevenses:

1 soggy BLT sandwich, found in a bin

Lunch:

Leftover fish and chips (with ketchup), found under a bench

Half a burger (stole it from Brett) 

1 doughnut (snatched from a girl's hand)

1 dropped icecream

Afternoon Snack:

A cocktail sausage from a nice old lady's picnic

Dinner:

Cold pizza cheese from the inside of a box

A few strips of donner

Another dropped icecream

Fish guts on the beach

Half a dead pigeon (fought over it with Mitch and Nige)

Midnight Feast:

Cheesy chips

Kebab

Pizza

More sick

More Kebab

Few more chips.

Well, said the dietician.

Well? said Simeon.

Well, she said, there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with your diet, anyway. Maybe try some more exercise?

Twenty-ninth of the Sixth

Today was my twenty-first birthday. I wore a long black dress and a denim jacket that was my mother's from the Eighties, and a silver and moonstone ring my father bought me. We went to Brighton and sat on the smooth pebbles in the warm-cold sea-breeze, eating ice-creams in the watery sunlight. For lunch we'd had sushi and plum wine. We got soaked by choppy waves, and wasted 2p coins in the arcade, and gazed at jewellery in shop windows and later a seagull snatched a doughnut from me, in the split second pause between hand and mouth. I felt its wing brush my cheek. Later we lay on the damp grass by the pavillion, and the sky was forget-me-not blue. For dinner we ate cheese, salami and bread and kettle chips, and the salty wind blew my hair into my mouth, and whipped bruisy clouds about over the grey-green sea. In the car I slept and dreamt. Back home we had champagne, strawberries, and chocolate cake.

It was my mother's birthday too. Thirty-four years ago, on her twenty-first birthday, she wore a pink mohair cardigan and a yellow skirt. Her parents bought her a bicycle. Her beau took her to dinner and then to the pub, where she drank four Irish coffees and felt 'sick as a dog'. Then they went to the carnival. She didn't give her parents much of a thought, she admitted.

I wonder if she thought about me, back then. A future daughter conjured from nothing more than herself and some person she hadn't even met yet, who thirteen years later would be born on the very same day. Of course she didn't. But for the last twenty-one years she's thought of me every single day. I couldn't ask for more than that. I am sorry, of course, that she had to give half her birthday away to me, every year. She deserves a whole birthday. Or two like the Queen. Or three hundred and sixty five. But I must say I am grateful, and glad, to have shared twenty-one birthdays with someone who I love above all else.

Ink (part 2)

Marla was let down by the tips of her fingers.

This was because her pen began to leak.

When Marla started drawing, she was submerged in a deep trance, a dream-like, automated state in which she focussed so much on what she was doing that she had little awareness of the world around her. By the time she noticed that her pen was leaking, she already had black ink all over the fingertips on her left hand. It had run down her index finger almost to the second knuckle. The blackness was startling. She was surprised she hadn't noticed before, and relieved it hadn't ruined her drawing which, almost halfway through, was still as pristine as she'd set out for it to be.

She scrubbed her hand in the sink. She scrubbed it in the shower. She scrubbed it with nail polish remover, with tooth paste, with bleach. It wouldn't come off. It only faded a little. She gave up.

When she turned up at work the next morning, her manager noticed it immediately. What the hell is that, he asked her. Ink, she told him. Why haven't you washed it off, he asked her. I tried, she told him. You should have tried harder. You can't work here, not with filthy hands like that, he told her. Marla took a deep breath to hold back what she'd have liked to say. The breath wasn't deep enough. Fine, she said. I don't want to work here anyway, she said.

And she walked out. And on her way out she snatched a £90 bottle of wine from the wine rack and didn't look back. No one followed her because they hadn't paid her monthly wage yet, and that was worth a lot more than £90. Not that they cared about money.

Marla cared about money. She cared very much. She marched home angrily, furiously. Furious with herself. Furious with the restaurant. Furious with everything. And when she got home, she closed her eyes and screamed at the top of her lungs with fury. 

And then she brought the bottle of wine high up above her head, and furiously down again against the faux-granite counter.

And then there was a deafening smash followed by a deafening silence, and all that was left in her hand was the bottle neck, with its brand new jagged edge shining wet and red.

And she opened her eyes in shock, and everything went suddenly from black to red, as though her eyes were veiled in blood. She blinked. The red didn't go away. It was splattered everywhere. What once was white was now stained a bloody, blackberry red. She froze. She blinked again. And then she screamed in horror.

Her drawing. Her drawing which once was fine black lines against blinding, snowy white was now tarnished, soiled, tainted. Ruined. The city was awash with a sea of red. As though it was aflame. The black ink smudged and merged. Red-black ran down in rivulets. Rivers of blood.

Marla fell to her knees, and winced as she felt the shards of glinting green bite in deep.

That night Marla was strangely calm. She walked steadily, and with purpose, though her knees pained her greatly. 

When she reached the restaurant she walked straight through to the back. No one seemed to notice her; they were too absorbed in their extravagantly priced dining experience. The chefs were smoking outside the back door; no one saw her enter the kitchen. 

From her bag she pulled a big pot of black ink.

And she poured it in every pot. In every pan. Over every dish in the kitchen. Until all the food in the kitchen was poisoned pitch black. And then she walked straight out again.

This time she didn't take any wine.

And she went home smiling madly, to finish her wine-stained painting. 

The next day the police turned up at her flat to arrest her. They needed no evidence.

All the evidence they could want was all over her fingertips.

Ink (part 1)

Marla was a waitress. She worked at an upmarket restaurant, the kind she could never afford to eat at in a million years. Not on a waitressing wage. And not that she'd want to. The restaurant served the kind of food there was little point in eating, because its key functions were to look aesthetically pleasing and to cost a great deal of money. Gold-flake flecked caviar sprinkled over a single poached wrens egg, perched on a slice of rare-breed calf tongue. She hated the customers because the kind of people who ate there were the kind of people who only ate there to impress others and in her experience, the kind of people who could throw away that kind of money on that kind of food to impress others were awful people, and the people who were impressed by it were the most awful of all. They were rude, cold hearted people who did not acknowledge her as a human being. The people she worked for were not much better.

Marla was also an artist. She was working on a large ink drawing. It was enormous; it took up an entire wall in her albeit small apartment. She was drawing a cross section of a city using an old fashioned fountain pen and a pot of black ink. The skyscrapers were as tall as she was, and she was detailing every room and every object and every person inside every building. She had completed around a third of it, after over two weeks of working on it during every spare second.

It was long and tiring work, and progressed very very slowly because she was being very very careful.   She was drawing the hair on people's heads and the rats in the cross-sectioned sewers, and the hair on their heads, too. She was hoping to exhibit it at a gallery in the city, and she was hoping someone would buy it for a lot of money. She needed to pay off the hefty art school fees she'd amassed during her degree. This was why she was waitressing at a restaurant she hated serving food she hated to people she hated. The only thing she loved was this drawing. Estranged family and work-widowed friends aside, it was the only thing she cared about. Every day she considered quitting her job, but without it she couldn't afford rent or to feed herself, let alone paying back her debts. And jobs were so hard to come by that she clung on to it for dear life, despite how much she despised it. She clung on by the tips of her fingers, wanting to let go but trying desperately not to.

It would be the tips of her fingers, however, that would betray her...

George

It is the worst type of humiliation.
What I am subjected to.
I, who am older than time.
I, who have lived on this Island for
longer than they have,
since before they were born.
They who walk so hastily on
two thin limbs, cast in
flesh flimsier than the
petals of a
flower.
I am as slow, as sure,
as sturdy as a stone.
I am older than time.

And yet,
they control me.
Because I am old,
and slow, and alone.
How can I be such a
novelty, when I am as
old as a stone?
Yes they feed me,
bring me water to
drink, but did I not
survive without them,
since the dawn of time?
And what's so wrong
with being alone?
(Why won't they leave me
alone?)

They bring me
female after female.
They coax me into it,
they cajole me into it,
to no avail, of course,
and the females mock me.
They all mock me.
Too old, they say.
Too tired. Impotent.
Ignorant youths!
To them, there is
nothing more important than
sex. Their lives revolve
around that primal urge.
That rush of blood
to the head.

All means nothing,
to me.
I am as still as a
stone.
I am older than the
sea.
I need
nothing,
and
no one.

And I don't
care,
if my seed is not
sown.
I don't care
if there is
never another
George because
that is a foolish,
human thing
to want for.

I older than the
trees and
carved
from
stone.

I am the
Last Giant Tortoise
and I'll
bloody
die
alone.

Headache

My head hurts. It feels hot and heavy, like lead, like the head of a snowdrop, hanging low, burning white against the black winter dirt. Hot and heavy and full. Full of thoughts and boredom and hate; full of nostalgia, full of fear, full of love. All of these things burning up together in a big furnace in my skull, and the pressure is building up behind my eyes and I want to let it all out. In words, or tears or screams or big, heavy sighs.

Or perhaps I’m just coming down with a cold.

Ode to the Victors

I'd like to hate them,
but I find it hard,
when sweat gleams
so nicely on their
victorious cheeks, lit up
with the verdant light
of the vast green pitch
and offset by deep
lapis lazuli kit.

Look at their
lovely Italian faces!
Like Caravaggio
painted them.
Like Michelangelo
sculpted them!
No, I cannot hate them.

My only regret is this:
That Balotelli's not as
poor at taking penalties
as he is at putting on a
bib.

Clementine Cooks Dinner

"What shall we have for dinner tonight?", asked Mum, not looking up from her fingernails, onto which she was busy painting tiny penguins. She was going to her annual book club dinner, hosted by the mayor, who was an avid reader. It was due to be a very boozy event, which was why Mum always tended to eat dinner beforehand, also. She'd painted her nails ivory with orange tips, like the covers of Penguin Classics. The penguins were proving a little difficult. They looked more like amoeba.

"I dunno," replied Dad, not looking up from his fingernails, onto which he was busy painting a shaky layer of black varnish. He was going to his friend Jimmy Wenderson's heavy metal themed 40th birthday party. He wasn't doing a much better job than his wife, even taking into consideration the fact that her nail art was a little more ambitious. One supposes that no-one could really fault him for this. The blame lies mostly with gender conditioning. By painting his fingernails in the first place, one could say that Dad was in fact doing his very best not to succumb to it.

"I'll make dinner," volunteered Clementine, not looking up from her PVA sodden, gold-sprayed pasta, which she was busy sticking onto a sheet of fuchsia coloured card.

"That's nice, sweetheart," said her mother.
"That's a lovely rabbit you're making," said her father, glancing up from his blotchy black fingernails.
"It's not a rabbit," said Clementine. "It's a dinosaur. A tryy-Sarah-tops!"
"It's a lovely triceratops," said her mother.

"What's for dinner then," asked Dad.
"Well, whatever it is," said Mum, "I certainly won't be making it. I'll ruin my nails! I've spent hours on these!"
"Well, you're not the only one with wet nails," said Dad, grinning. Mum looked over and laughed at him, and he laughed at her too. "Nice amoeba," he said.
"They're not amoeba! They're penguins!"

"I said, I'll make dinner!" piped up Clementine.

Mum and Dad stopped what they were doing (trying to slap each other without smudging their nails) and turned to look at their daughter. She had PVA on her cheek and green glitter all over her hair, which was clementine coloured, naturally.

"You'll make dinner?"
"What are you going to make for dinner, my little tangerine?"
"A surprise," replied Clementine.
Mum and Dad looked suspiciously at her gluey, glittery, triceratops shaped pasta painting. Then they looked at their nails and shrugged.
"Ok. But it will have to be a cold dinner, because you're not old enough to use the cooker."
"Yes yes yes," said Clementine. "You have to get out of the kitchen though."

So Mum and Dad went and sat in the living room, fighting over the hair dryer to dry their nails with. Meanwhile, Clementine got busy in the kitchen. They could hear her bashing and banging. They were slightly worried. Then Mum noticed that Dad was wearing fishnet sleeves and started to laugh at him again. Dad blew the hair dryer at her.

"It's ready!" called Clementine, ten minutes later.

Mum and Dad went through to the kitchen, tentatively.
Laid on the table were three plates, and on those three plates was an assortment of food in lurid colours. Orange fish fingers. Yellow mashed potatoes. Bright green peas. Mum and Dad sat down at their places, wondering how Clementine had cooked the meal in front of them without having used the oven.

"Bon appa teeeee!" said Clementine, smiling broadly.
"Bon appetit!" said Mum and Dad.

Clementine didn't start. She was watching her parents, waiting to see their reaction.
Dad looked at Mum. Mum looked at Dad.
Dad took his fork and impaled a pea. He brought it up to his lips. He looked at Mum again. He looked at Clementine. He froze.

And then he put the pea into his mouth.

Immediately, his face creased up in disgust. Mum and Clementine's faces creased up with laughter.
"It's play-doh!" squealed Clementine, "You ate play-doh!"

Mum laughed and laughed and then Dad laughed too. Clementine laughed so hard she slid off her chair under the table, where she poked Dad's big clown feet and laughed even more.

By that point, Mum and Dad's nails were dry, and they made peanut butter and banana sandwiches for everyone, and then the babysitter arrived, and they went to their book club dinner and heavy-metal-fortieth-birthday-party.

Clementine fed the play-doh fish fingers to the pasta dinosaur.

The Girl Who Runs a Lot

Every day this week I've seen the blonde girl from number ten across the road leave the house to go running. She wears red trainers and sometimes black Lycra leggings with red stripes down the side and sometimes black running shorts, with a different t-shirt every time. She doesn't look as nice in sports kit as she normally does, but I don't think she's trying to look nice so it's not very important. She's usually gone for about 40 minutes. I couldn't run for 40 minutes. Today she was gone for an hour.

I wonder why she runs every day, all of a sudden? Maybe she wants to lose weight. I don't think she needs to. Perhaps she's training for a marathon. But I think there's something more to it than that. She seems so relieved when she starts running. And she seems relieved when she stops. But it's a different kind of relief. When she stops she's physically relieved. But when she starts... When she starts it looks as though she's slipping into a warm bath after a hard day at work. As though she's escaping from something. 

Maybe that's it. She runs to escape. She's running away from something. Or she's running back to something. Perhaps if she runs fast enough she can go back in time. That's the other thing. When she's finished, it seems as though she's physically relieved. But also disappointed. As though, no matter how fast she ran, she got nowhere. Nowhere she wanted to be. She never caught up with whoever or whatever or whenever it was that she was chasing.

I can't tell from my window, but sometimes I wonder if it isn't tears, not sweat, rolling down her cheeks.

Loss

Loss feels like a big cold ball that's difficult to swallow, and it drags your heart down with it, into your stomach. And it sits there, cold and heavy, and it makes you sick and quiet. Even if it's just a book you left on the train, or an earring you lost in a park. Anything you won't get back. It can be a place you'll never go back to, or a house that doesn't exist any more. Or a moment in time. They're always lost for good. But the ball of loss is biggest, coldest, hardest to swallow when what you've lost is a person. Even though sometimes you know exactly where they are, so they're not technically even lost. But they're lost to you and that's why your stomach feels so cold. So sad.

The Girl Who Couldn't Stop Crying

There once was a girl who couldn't stop crying. She cried into her cereal in the morning and into her pillow at night. She cried at home and she cried in public, too. Cried on the bus, cried in Topshop, cried in the Post Office and cried at Lloyd's TSB. She cried whilst waitressing, and the customers would have sent their coffee back because it was full of salty tears but they felt too sad for her so they just heaped a few spoons of sugar in, to even things out. She cried until her eyes were red raw. She cried until she had no tears left to cry, and then she drank some water to rehydrate and cried some more. She cried in the shower, hot tears mingling with hot water and getting lost. She went to the swimming pool and cried underwater. If a tree falls in the forest and there's no-one there to hear it, does it make a sound? If you cry underwater, does anyone care?

One day she was sitting on the train, crying as usual. Making quite a scene, although no-one had the heart to say anything because they were British and British people don't like to say things. It's not in their nature. But everyone sat there in silence, not wanting to interrupt her crying, because that's not in their nature either. Then the train stopped, and a girl got on, and the silence was broken.

Because the girl who had just got onto the train was laughing. She was doubled over laughing; she couldn't stop. She sat down opposite the crying girl and just laughed and laughed and laughed. Making quite a scene, and although no-one said anything, everyone stared, because whilst it's not in their nature to say things, the British do love a good stare. The laughing girl was laughing so hard she was red in the face. Laughing so hard her eyes were watering. Laughing like a madwoman.

The crying girl was staring at the laughing girl, and the laughing girl began to stare back, but she couldn't stop laughing, even though she realised that perhaps her laughter was inappropriate. In fact she laughed even harder, because she knew she probably shouldn't. It's always the way. The crying girl was a little taken aback. So much so, that her tears began to subside. She stopped sobbing. She caught her breath back. She just let out small whimpers which grew fewer and farther between.

The laughing girl laughed harder than ever, because she had gone beyond the point of no return. She was laughing so hard that tears were streaming down her cheeks. She was laughing so hard that she was, in fact, crying. And suddenly, the crying girl began to chuckle. Her watery eyes creased up, her shiny lips stretched out into a tentative smile. The laughing girl cried even harder.  The crying girl laughed even louder. And the two of them laughed and cried and cried and laughed until they were exhausted, until they had nothing left in them, no more tears, no more laughter. They just looked at each other, both wearing wet, weary smiles and shining, smiling eyes.

The Man Who Drives in Circles

There once was a man who drove in circles. Not actual circles, that would be ridiculous. More like circuits. Which is also ridiculous, nevertheless.

He looks rather harmless. A man in his thirties who wears sporty clothes but never seems to do any sport. He drives a black ford somethingorother, and he drives it round and round the town, in big looping circuits. And we don't know why.

Sometimes, for example, he starts at the top of the High Street, drives to the end, circumnavigates the roundabout and doubles back on himself. Once at the top, he turns again and repeats, over and over. Up and down the High Street, past mums in black 4x4s and pupils scarpering from Sainsbury's, past charity shops and jewellery shops and shoe shops and restaurants. And again. And again.

Other times he does larger loops. We don't know where he goes, but he'll pass the same café on the same road from the same direction, over and over.

Why? Why? We want to know. We want to ask him. Sometimes Laura sees him, carless, and looks at her as though he knows she knows. And he looks away.

What possible reason could one have for circling, round and round the way he does? Wasting petrol, burning down his tyres, wearing down his breaks, for no reason we could fathom. What strange short-circuit is occurring in his brain? OCD? Schizophrenia? Or something altogether worse? Worse in that, in fact, there's nothing wrong at all. He just does it because he likes to. And that is worse because why, why, why would a normal person find joy in that? What is it about those big looping circuits that pleases him more than, say, taking a walk in the park, or watching Countdown? 


We won't know 'til we ask him. But we're a little frightened. There's something ever-so-slightly sinister about him. About the way he drives in circles.


 Like a shark circling in on his prey.

Drink Your Sorrows

My throat is burning.
Stomach coldly stirring. Like
Whisky, on the rocks.

My eyes squeeze up like
lemons. The juice tastes like salt.
Where's the tequila?

My heart is bleeding.
No, wait. Those blood stains are, in
actual fact, Claret

Old Friends

You know old friends are good ones when,
after years of absence, you can
sink back into easy friendship
like an armchair that still holds
your form.

The things that I've done

Sometimes I think about all the things that I've done.
All the things I've said, and
The things I left unspoken.
The people I've hurt.
And those whose hearts I've broken.
All the drinks I spilled,
and all the living things I killed.
I didn't mean to kill them.
Not all of them.

All of the inappropriate jokes
that made nobody laugh.
All of the things I broke.
All of the ugly photographs
of times I wore bad faces
and bad clothes.
All of the haircuts I really
loathed
and all the times I made a fool out of
myself or others.
These things come back to haunt me
they asphyxiate and smother.

Sometimes I wish I could be reborn.
Life stretched before me like a white blank page.
Like newly fallen snow, still untouched,
before dawn.

East Coast

The train shuddered,

and the castle and cathedral

heaved its ancient brick

away

into

the mist.

The hills

rose up in wet green

waves.

I slipped into

sleep.

And verdant trees

rolled out of the cloud;

broccoli steaming in a

stainless-steel

sky. Black birds

swarmed like

bees, the light turned

pewter.

And then the storm

came, and

swallowed

us

whole.

The rain drilled the

window panes and

fled like frightened

eels. (Whose mothers

ran beside us through

the fields).

Lightning glimmered,

darkly.

And then we

emerged.

It was like waking

from sleep and

beginning to dream,

all at once.

The sky too blue.

The post-rain grass

too green.

The horses too shiny

in their paddocks, like

plastic figurines.

Ode to Lipstick

Stepping out of Boots with a
rainbow of reds on the back of
my hand. Scarlet swatches,
poppy pantones. Like tiny
cuts, or exquisite scars.

Leaving lip-stains on
napkins and filters,
red traces on glasses
and suddenly, kisses
are visible, their
transience made
more permanent.
Heart shaped smudges
on cheeks like calling
cards, saying, last night,
for a brief moment,
somebody loved me.

If only boys wore it too.
I'd have more than a
memory to remind me of
you.

Gothic and Norman

One towers darkly -
A volcanic shard of
jagged rock,that
looms over magma roofs.
Black spires pierce the
sky, and from her lofty
vantage point, Black
Mary keeps her
vigil.

The other's vast
grey form dominates
kindly, fair and
square, giantesque.
The slow river wraps
round it. Trees grow
up towards it. And after
sleepless nights, the sun
rises up to bless it.

The Man with the High-Vis Jacket

The tube is a cross section of society, specially selected and placed on display on the carpet-print seats. Like a box of biscuits, or crackers for cheese. More Tesco finest than M&S. Whole grain people and Cream Cracker people. Business men, clean and sharp as water biscuits. Some people crumbling. 

Some broken.

Perhaps my digressive, biscuity observations are the fruit of an empty stomach.

The tube is a plastic fish tank, hurtling through dark tunnels, lighting them up with its aquarium light, filled with bewildered, colourful fish, blank eyes perhaps observing, perhaps not.

Mine are. I’m observing a man in a grey suit and odd socks, though not odd enough that he worried about wearing them to work. He’s doing something on his smart phone, caressing the screen carefully, delicately, with a fingertip. Staring at it intensely. As though stroking a very beloved pet mouse.

I’m observing a middle aged woman reading a book I can’t see the title of, wearing nail polish I couldn’t quite describe the colour of. Sewer rat grey? Wouldn’t sell very well. The woman next to her has hair the colour of overripe cherries, but flaming orange roots. Both of which are nice colours, of course. The overall effect, however, was even less pleasing than the sewer-rat-grey nails. Which, on reflection, were actually rather nice. They went well with their owner’s sludge-green trouser-suit.

But what I’m observing most of all is a small Indian man in a maroon woolly hat and glasses. Not because he’s a small Indian man in a maroon woolly hat and glasses. But because he was wearing a fluorescent yellow jacket.

It’s the third or fourth time I’ve seen him, though the first time, I suppose, I can’t have found him all that remarkable. I had assumed that he worked on a construction site, or was some kind of steward somewhere. Some profession that requires its workers to be highly visible, for safety, or to lend them some semblance of authority.

But now, looking at him again, it didn’t quite fit. It looked more like a costume than a uniform, as though he was an actor I couldn’t quite suspend my disbelief for, or a spy I was beginning to suspect. He’s sitting opposite me on the tube with a slight smile, eyes glazed over by his glasses. I take a closer look at his jacket. The acerbic, highlighter yellow is a little grubby, the reflective strips ever so slightly frayed. There are no markings or labels to suggest he belongs to any kind of association or enterprise. His shoes are simple, battered, brown leather lace-ups. Not protective or functional. He doesn't work in construction or stewarding or ticketing, as I'd imagined.

No. He must just wear the jacket because he wants to. Because he likes it. Perhaps he discovered that wearing a high-vis jacket would give him some unspoken authority over others, some fluorescent right that no-one else had, a neon permit to go places he shouldn’t. Maybe he wandered into places for free, skipped queues, opened doors with ‘Private’ signs, moved things, stole things, graffiti’d walls and climbed onto rooftops to look down on the city, smiling slightly, eyes glazed over by his glasses.

Or maybe he's a lollipop man.

Home is where the heart is not.

The hardest thing in the world is
A soft, red quilt
that I will never sleep under again.

Pathetic Fallacy

The sky wrung itself.
And the sad rain washed me out
of the city I loved.

Glass Nest

The winding spiral staircase of the black stone cathedral ascends into the dizzying air. Heads spin, legs ache. Hands sweat a layer of cold metallic sweat as they drag up the handrail. Every window (narrow, dusty paned) sets a scene a little higher than the last. The red rooftops diminish. The horizon expands.

Nestled in one such narrow and dusty paned window, a pigeon. Feathers black-grey like volcanic rock, orange-red eye swivelled round to see its beholder. Frozen between the glass and the narrow stone hole that opens onto the sky, like an animal in a zoo, or an artefact in an exhibition. It shifts, nervously, and reveals beneath it a single egg, startling white. Whiteness such that its existence astonishes. Purity borne from drab filth. 

The pigeon's nest is safe from predators, safe from wind and rain. How shocked it must have been, to find its security false. To be regarded by humans, closer than they've ever been, separated only by glass. To have your private bubble of safety and quiet suddenly cross-sectioned, exposed like the film in the back of a camera. 

I felt sorry for my invasion of privacy yet I couldn't help but stare. If I could, I'd come back daily. Watch the egg crack. Watch it feed its pink and bawling fledglings. Watch them grow, sprout feathers, fly away.

We are addicted to the overexposure of others.

Common Garden Tragedy

There once was a snail without a shell. Everyone thought he was a slug. It got rather irritating. He'd say, "I'm NOT a SLUG!" and sometimes slugs in earshot would say, "well, what's wrong with being a slug?" and it would put him in awkward situations. It wasn't that he didn't like slugs, or that he didn't want to be one. It was just that he wasn't one. He was tired of having to explain things. He was tired of people putting him in a sluggy pigeon hole, tired of people questioning, tired of showing bosses medical notes.

So one day he drowned himself in a beer can.

The snails felt guilty and the slugs felt offended.

I want to ride my bicycle

Coursing through the streets on my flat-tired bike and I'm not avoiding cars, they're avoiding me. I'm not turning corners, they're turning me. My legs are pumping and I can't even feel them, I can only feel the wind in my hair, the grit in my teeth. The midge in my eye.

I'm faster than lightning and I know it, I'm not racing the clock, I'm racing the rain, I'm racing buildings, I'm racing the air. I'm racing my own clothes, and I'm almost winning, I'm almost there, lactic acid bubbling over my knees and undone laces, legs pumping like pistons in the fiery engine of a machine made of girl and bike, bike and girl, hands fusing to the handlebars, hair fusing with the air.

Then I got hit by a tram,
In my mind's eye but I was too fast for it, too fast for blood and pain and broken bones,
too fast for dying.

(Can you get pulled over for drunk cycling?)

Surprise!

When I was little, my father spent some time working in Paris. When he'd come home, he'd always bring us back gifts. "I've got a surprise for you," he'd say. As infants, we learn words through use and context. Thus, in my head, I equated the word "surprise" with a physical gift. 

One day I asked him what a Jack-in-the-Box was. He told me it was a "little man who jumps out of a box and gives everyone a surprise". 

So I found a box, dragged it into the living room, climbed inside jumped out again to give everyone a surprise.

No one was very surprised in the traditional sense. But I had filled the box with my teddy bears, and I ran around giving one to everyone in the room - what a nice "surprise"! 

Like Ships in the Night

I built a paper boat today. A sky blue catamaran. I used two and a half pieces of paper and sellotape. I drew a skull and crossbones on the sail.
You're building one too. It's a competition. When night falls, we're going to take them to our secret spot and float them down the river.
I think mine will win.
I spent an hour on it.
(I wanted you to be impressed)

We'll drop them on the dark, rushing river and they'll probably collapse before they even reach the bridge, and we'll laugh, and they'll be gone. An afternoon of craftsmanship down the drain, sodden shipwrecks washing up somewhere in the morning, puzzling ducks. Will I be sad, for my little boat? I might be. I think I will be. The sellotape is sloppy, but the paper is such a nice shade of blue! I was happy making it. I'll be happy watching our boats race together, on a dark secret bank of a rushing, hushing river. I will have no regrets, though I'll be sad for our paper vessels, sloppy and fragile, transient and beautiful.

I will watch them float away with sad eyes, set like glistening opals in a golden, happy face.
We will hold hands and watch them go together.
And say goodbye when they're gone.

The Jiaozi Maker

Somewhere in a vast Chinese city, there lies a thin street, steep and narrow, lined with restaurants and grocers and junk shops and bicycles. In the summer storms, the street floods with a rapid stream that carries noodle packets, soda cans and melon rinds like tiny boats, and shoos away stray cats and dogs, and sprays dirty water onto cyclists backs. It washes people like flotsam into the restaurants, where they dry their feet on grubby cardboard, hang umbrellas on hooks and are ushered onto tables, menus pressed into their hands.

Old Mrs Yang sits on a stool at the back of her restaurant, watching the rain tumble in heavy silver cords. A single room with four tables and seventeen chairs, white walls decorated with fading red paper cuts, delicate as lace, wilting and peeling at the edges. The shop window empty. There is no menu, no open-closed sign. Only condensation gleaming as the light dies, as the rain bleeds colour from the sky. And a sign above the door whose symbols read "Jiao zi". Dumplings. Nothing more.

Old Mrs Yang sits on her stool all day, making Chinese dumplings. Watching people pass and watching the rain fall.

Each morning she mixes minced pork, garlic, spring onions and spices in a large bowl. Then she rolls out the dough, first into long cylinders, which she slices, then rolls into flat circles. Once this is done, she spends her day folding dumplings, wizened hands covered in soft flour, repeating her deft movements over and over. Firm and delicate, all at once. Placing a round of dough onto her palm, a ball of stuffing, exactly the right size, at its centre. Folding it into a crescent, then pressing the edges into folds, three on each side. Before her on the table lie hundreds of dumplings, little half moons with crimped edges, bone-white dough dusted with chalk-white flour. And when the rain washes up its driftwood customers, sodden and hungry, she nods at them to sit and drops the dumplings into the pot of boiling water to cook.

The dumplings dance and bob, their delicious smell rising as steam to warm the cold noses of her famished guests. When they're ready, Old Mrs Yang scoops them out with a big holey metal spoon, places them on a plate and hobbles over to the table to serve them. They come with a bowl of soy sauce, chilli oil, minced garlic and a myriad of spices, and a cup of green tea. (If you ask her for a beer, she'll wander out to the shop across the street for you, even in the rain.) The dumplings are hot and delicious and always perfect. Always twelve of them. Always fresh and steaming hot.

If you ask Mrs Yang how many dumplings she makes in a day, she'll laugh and say, more than you could make in a week. How many has she made in her lifetime? How long has the she sat there, on her little wooden stool, looking out at people and rain? Folding little moons between her wise fingers like some deity, sculpting the sky.

As though she'd been there forever. As though she'd be there always.

Le Lac de la Cassiere

The day was unbearably hot. The air hung heavy and bloated like a balloon filled with water, drops of condensation beading like sweat on its surface. Then it burst. Raindrops drenched the streets, intoxicating people with the scent of cooling asphalt. I ran through puddles to your doorstep.

Later we hurtled over still-hot motorways in your car, windows stuck shut. A capsule of heat in which we were drowning. We got to the lake and spilt out the doors in a sticky mass. The freshness of the air hit us like lake water.

Towels spread on rocks, we edged into the water. Rocks sharp on our feet and water cold around our ankles. The sun sank behind the trees. We sank up to our shoulders.

We spread ourselves out to dry by a fire we made from pine cones. The smoke rose up like incense. The sky turned pewter, bruisy clouds dancing across the horizon like wild beasts. Pine trees, black against the sky's dim glow, cut a pattern against the sky. We stared so long, so deeply, that the light through the trees looked like cliffs of silver jutting out of black rocks.

As night fell we watched lights sparkling across the lake, voices drifting across, carried by faint trains of music. Above them, bulbous grey cloud burst with lightning, sporadically lighting up the lake.

We lay on our backs staring up at the pine trees boughs until the fire went out.

Storm in a Teacup

Belinda didn't particularly appreciate the little clouds gathering above her cup of earl grey. Nor did she enjoy the tiny waves thrashing about, splashing out of the fine bone china teacup (gold gilded pink roses) and staining her white lace blouse. The bolt of lightning that struck her upper lip left her really rather vexed indeed. But the final straw was possibly choking on a small shipwreck that had sunk to the bottom of the cup.

I miss you.

I miss you like I miss trains.
I miss you like I miss deadlines.
I miss you like I miss the things you throw me.
I miss you like I misunderstand you.
I miss you like you misogyny.
I miss you like we misanthropy.
I miss you like I Miss Haversham.
I miss you like I mistakes.
I miss you like I miss the boat.
I miss you like I miss the point.
I miss you.