#gamesmakerproblems

I am a drone.

A cog in the machine.

I am admired.

Paid only in ill-fitting clothing

in bad-feeling fabric;

I am purple, red and tired.

I am inspiring a generation.

But my feet are uninspired.

This

This is a path laid out before us in a neat trajectory.

This is the thin blue line on which our destiny is written.

This is the closest we come to knowing what happens next.

This is a carriage of cold bright light, come to carry us home.

This is redemption from toil.

This is the way the proletarian rides.

This is a death cab.

This is a Piccadilly Line service to,

Cockfosters.

Deli-rium: The Emperor's New Coffee

We get a lot of of coffee snobs.
Like the woman who came in demanding 'Italian coffee! Italian! It has to be Italian! I only drink Italian! You have no Italian? How can good coffee shop no have Italian? Useless!"
Ridiculous. I mean, they don't even grow coffee beans in Italy. "Italian" usually refers to the brand, or the grind. When informed of this, she went pale and quiet and stormed out.

We get bored of them. We know, after all, that our coffee is the best. But there are always customers that think they know better.

So we decided to get some even better coffee, coffee that they would never have tasted before, or even heard of, although of course, they would never let on.

We called it coffee crystal.
Because it's crystal clear.

But coffee's brown!
No, dear coffee lover. No, not this one.
This, my friend, is the finest, the rarest and most expensive coffee in all the land! Why, haven't you heard of it? Oh, of course you have, yes. You are a coffee lover, after all. Isn't the aroma fantastic! Isn't the taste so rich, so multi-faceted?
And yes, the beans are completely invisible! Incredible, no? And they're hand picked by blind monks, only under the full moon, and only on leap years. That will be £7.60 please.

Of course, there's no such thing. It's just hot water.
But there's no way they'd let on. No way they'd show their own ignorance. They drink their £7.60 hot water and smile and say it's delicious, and tell their friends about it who, of course, already know all about it.

And as soon as they leave the shop we're rolling on the ground laughing, crying big fat tears of crystal coffee.

jezzemiah jebbuhdiahhh

Jeremiah Jebediah went to the beach,
He took a dip in the ocean,
and he emerged with his toe being sucked by leech,
and his friends all gave him a roasting,
(because he had been doing too much boasting)
but they couldn't hate him long cos he's such a peach.

bleach.
beseech,
tried to grab it but couldnt reach!

Jeremiah Jebediah
A sorry tale
shouldn't have gone to the beach.

10 o'clock News

Two young boys drowned and

seventeen throats slit and 

countless other bodies burnt

and bullet-ridden in war-torn lands

draw fourth no tears from me.

A polar bear stranded on melting ice 

seems somehow sadder.

An extreme lapse in empathy.

Has television numbed me into cold

misanthropy? 

Maybe.

Or maybe it's because

only the melting ice is

my fault.

I'm sorry.

What's Your Favourite Colour?

People ask it all the time. It's quite probably in the top ten questions that people ask, in the sub-category of 'questions about individual preference to which the answer is often completely irrelevant to life as a whole, but to which the response gives some kind of character insight, however trite.' What's your favourite animal? What's your lucky number? What's your favourite colour? Questions that we are asked as children, that we learn, as a result, to ask others.

 Of course, knowing someone's favourite colour can be very useful. For present buying, for instance. For knowing which straw to put in which glass of banana milkshake.

I've never had a favourite colour.
Is it something you just pick and stick with? I decided, when I was nine years old, that my lucky number was nine. When I turned ten I quickly realised that to change it according to my age would soon become ludicrous, not to mention very obvious. And I'd grown rather fond of the number nine. So I stuck with it.

Is that how favourite colours work? Do you pick an orange t-shirt out as a favourite at age 4 and then just decide, "orange is my favourite colour for life and I will never like any other colour as much as orange. Unless there isn't anything orange, then red will do."

Whilst this worked for me for my lucky number, this was never something I wanted to ascribe to. I liked all the colours for different reasons, in different ways, for different things. I like the exact red of the door to the grain-shed on my Grandma's farm. I like the colours on pigeons necks. I like the colour of beetroot juice. I like the colour of his eyes, which is somehow green and brown all at once. But saying that, as an 8 year old, would have been a bit much. So when people asked me, I panicked. I picked whatever colour seemed the most appropriate. Red and blue were safe bets. Purple was a bit different, acceptable enough. No one really says green or yellow. Black or white were boring, non-colours. Pink is much too girly; gold is much too showy. I started saying different colours to different people, gauging what I thought would be their favourite.

Then I stopped caring and just explained that I didn't really have a favourite. Or mentioned a colour that I kind of liked at the time. Wine-red. Bottle-green. People don't expect it. They think you're interesting. Or trying too hard to be interesting. Then you know you've beaten the game. Or not played it the way they wanted you too.

Then I decided that enough was enough, and that my favourite colour, once and for all, was turquoise. But now I suddenly like pale greens, anywhere between duck egg and pistachio. Sage green. The green of shutters in the south of France. And I can't tear my eyes off things that fall into that spectrum of light green, and I find myself drawn to pale green pieces of paper and things like that. And now I'm scared that turquoise isn't actually my favourite colour and that I actually prefer these pale greens but I don't know how to define such a specific yet varied range of tones.

Never ask me again.

23 minutes of battery left in Nice airport

Our flight is delayed by over an hour but it's ok because we've got fig rolls, and I bought two books because I couldn't decide which one to buy and now I can't decide which one to read, and I have free wifi but only 23 minutes of battery left on my laptop and probably even less now but I don't want to check because then I'd waste at least 3 second of typing. I ate a fig roll and it wasn't as nice as the figs I had earlier, one of which we bought from a farm shop and was a rich deep ruby red like biting into a small animal and eating its guts except it tasted lovely and sweet. The other fig was picked by my dad on a mountainside when we went on a walk and the walk was much longer than he anticipated and it was hot and he got grumpy, but the fig cheered him up even though it was slightly green and not quite ripe enough. Then we found a large cactus that was covered in prickly pears, and my dad loves prickly pears because they remind him of his childhood (or was that the smell of pine and gum trees on the hot air?) but we didn't want to pick them because we didn't want the prickles to get stuck in our fingers. So we took some twigs that may or may not have been poisonous but we didn't care that much, and we poked them right through the prickly pears and carried them down to the beach on the sticks as though they were ice-lollies, except that it wouldn't be very pleasant to lick one. Then we swam in the sea and dad left his phone in his pocket and it got wet, and we packed up and got on a train and watched Théoule drift away into the distance and it was a bit sad but we'd eaten the prickly pears and they were nice.

The fig rolls didn't taste nice because I sprayed too much perfume on in duty free so they taste more like violetty poisonnous rolls than fig rolls. I'm tired where's our plane?

Shadow Cat

A black cat stalked out of the sunlight like a shadow and rubbed up against my leg. Its fur was warm, dusted here and there with the debris of a summer street. Dried leaves. The down that falls from plane trees. It slunk under the bench I was sitting on, into the shade. I dropped my arm down to stroke it.

It bit me.
It didn't draw blood.
It just bit me, lightly.
Then it sauntered off.
No apology.
But the way its black form cut a sharp silhouette against the sunny street, the way it walked so unapologetically, made me forgive it, instantly.
I stared at my unmarked hand. Bitten by a superior being.
It was like I'd been blessed.

So Shellfish

"Who would win a fight between a lobster and a tortoise?"
"The lobster. The lobster could totally pinch the tortoise with his pincers and make him cry."
"But what if the tortoise went back into his shell? Then the Lobster couldn't pinch him."
"But then the tortoise still wouldn't win, because he'd just be sitting there in his shell. He'd have surrendered, effectively."
"Oh."
"Yeah."
"But the tortoise could stick his head out and bite the lobster."
"Bite him where?"
"Bite his pincer off."
"Bite his pincer off?"
"Yeah."
"But then the lobster could pick up a ladle in his other pincer and bash the tortoise on the head with it."
"A ladle?"
"Yeah."
"Nah, the tortoise put his head back in his shell too fast."
"Ok fine. But then the lobster could just bash the tortoise's shell until it cracks."
"Until it CRACKS? Tortoise shells are way harder than that. It would take ages"
"Yeah well the lobster's got a lot of time on his hands!"
"Well the tortoise would just swim away then. They're way faster than lobsters."
"No! Tortoises can't swim!"
"Yeah they can!"
"No, that's turtles."
"Oh. Yeah. Yeah you're right. Well still. There's no way way a lobster could crack a tortoise's shell with a ladle. It probably couldn't pick up a ladle."
"Yeah it could. And it could probably pick up a gun, too, and shoot the tortoise in the face."
"WHAT! No that's not fair!"
"The lobster doesn't care about fair. He just wants to kill the tortoise. That's all he cares about."
"Why does he even want to kill him in the first place?"
"The tortoise slept with his wife."
"Oh."
"Yeah."
"Well the tortoise deserves it then, I guess."
"Yeah!"
"But what if the lobster's wife wasn't happy. What if the lobster was beating her?"
"With a ladle?"
"Yeah!"
"Well then maybe the lobster could try and shoot the tortoise, but then the tortoise could deflect the bullet off its shell, and then push the lobster into a pan of boiling water, and waddle off slowly into the sunset with the lobster's wife."
"That sounds fair."
"Yeah."
"Then we could eat the lobster."
"Mate, you know I'm allergic to shellfish, why would you even suggest that? You're crazy."
"Oh. Yeah. Sorry."

Wingbeat

Lying on a lounger in the sun-drenched courtyard, weighed down by heat as though by water, limbs languid, heavy, leaden. Holding a book is exhausting. Eyelids drowse down, again, again. Above, overripe grapes are beginning to bulge, to burst their own skins, to rot. The light through the thick thatch of vine-leaves is lurid yellow-green. Eyes up, eyes down. Sunlight leaves black swathes on the retina. Looking up and down is harder than usual. Ball-bearings for eyes. Eyes up. A red flash in the periphery. Red and black. Flash. Flash. The wings of a butterfly, perched on a grape. To feed, perhaps.     A monarch, sporting stained-glass heraldry. Orange-red and black. Flash. Flash. The wings open and close. Open and close. A decision was made not to look away, but now that decision has now been transcended. The choice has gone. Ball-bearing eyes are locked, heavy eyelids stuck open somehow. Flash. Flash. The wingbeat is ever-so-slightly irregular. A heartbeat. Flash. Flash. Flash. Flash. Breathing slows and so too, does the heart until it seems to synchronise, until it seems that your heart is  the butterfly itself. The sun the vine the grapes the heat of the day all melted away. There is only the butterfly, beating, beating. Flash. Flash. Flash.

Eyes close once and it's gone, suddenly.
Resurface into the heat of the day, and sweat big cold droplets because for a second, you thought your heart had stopped.

Théoule, Nuit.

The day's salt washed from my lips,
the day's heat long dissipated,
I sit in the of fresh blackness of the sepia night,
and lick the last taste of dark chocolate from
my teeth.

Citronella skin stings,
pink sore.
Sleep drags slow and sweaty, then it
crashes. Heavy, dark waves on an
infra-red beach.
It buries like sand.

Kayak

The kayak was banana-like, in colour and in shape. I sat inside it with my legs stretched out in front of me, life-jacket puffed up to my chin. I held the paddle lightly, weighing it in my palms, trying to get a feel for it. Then I dipped the blades into the tourmaline water, one after the other, dragging them through it and pushing the boat over the waves. My arms were brown from hours on the beach, and now they shone with droplets of sea water and sweat. The blades threw water up onto my hair, my legs, my face. I weaved through the wakes of yachts and speedboats, arms burning in the sun and with the effort, brow furrowed with concentration and the dazzling waves. Way off in the distance, some pinkish cliffs jutted out into the bay; I fixed them as my goal and paddled on.

The cliffs loomed up and I could suddenly see brown figures scrambling up them, clinging onto them, jumping off them with an immense splash. I paddled in amongst snorkellers, into the shadow of the cliffs, into the open cave they formed. The water was dark, the snorkellers circling eerily, like sharks. High above, a boy prepared to jump. A fall of fifteen metres awaited him, and beneath, a blue-black pool of sea. He dropped; I winced at the impact of it, like a cannonball missing a pirate ship and landing in the waves. He bobbed to the surface unharmed. I paddled on.

The cliff-cave opened suddenly, like a cavernous, jagged mouth. The mouth of a whale, whose belly I was paddling out from, into the light.

Once out, I paddled back round the rocks, back towards the beach I'd rented the kayak from. The journey back felt twice as long, my arms lead-heavy as I paddled fiercely on.

Back on the beach I stepped out and stretched my arms. My skin was covered in a fine layer of salt. It reminded me of the sea. It caught the sunlight.

Bird or Beast

In the courtyard of the villa, overhung by vine leaves, and grapes like smooth beach-glass, strange creatures hover.

At first they look like giant insects. Bigger than bees, bodies much thicker than moths but wings much smaller, much faster. Grey, with a small black tail, like the tail of a bird, and their wings flash orange.

They fly, at extreme speed, from flower to flower, extending into each a thin black proboscis. Their heads, too, are bird like. Only, they have thin black antennae which extend out like those of a butterfly.

They move too fast to see. It is impossible to watch one for long enough to discern whether it is a bird or an insect, for having never seen such a creature before, one can only apply the criteria one recognises and hope to categorise correctly. But it is somewhere between the two. A tiny bird with antennae. Or a large insect with a feathery tail, that moves like a hummingbird.

We've watched them sporadically all day. They are rarer than the bees. You need to wait a long time before they come again, once they've been. And when they do come back they're too fast again to see what they are, and you're left with the same feeling of unsated curiosity, of wonder.

I'll wait for them in the morning by the orange flowers, hoping to catch a long enough glance to decide, bird or insect. To categorise. For now they rest in that space between two circles of a Venn diagram. They hover, between the two.

All the Sixes

We went to bingo with Granny in the Dysart Community Centre.
Bought ourselves bingo books and borrowed pens because there
weren't any dabbers.
The women behind us had three books each and at least 5 dabbers in 3 different colours.
We weren't the youngest there, but our table radiated youth and the smell of chocolate and popcorn.
It wasn't the cinema. But our excitement was different from the others, all the old women and old
men for whom this was the highlight of their weeks. We were First Timers, and we
believed we would win.

The hall was large and full of tungsten light and chipped plywood tables and sad, sagging
basketball nets. And sad, sagging faces.
The bingo caller had a thick country accent. All the trees, terty tree. And the balls bubbled up out of an old machine with tatty paintwork from the seventies, in colours only seen on Refreshers packets. And the numbers were called both too fast to find them and too painfully slowly, and they were never in lines, and never in the same box, and never predictable, and never the ones you wanted.
But it was addictive. I could see the thrill the bingo-players got. And my brother won a line (CHECK! 20 Euro!) and so did my cousin, and the rest of us stared at our sheets even harder but nothing came up, it was never fourandtree-forty-tree or all-the-sixes-sixty-six or legs-eleven when you wanted it to be. It was unpredictable.

And by the end the way the numbers were called and the way we all had no control and how anything or anyone could be called at any time made me sick and sad, it made me think of life and dying and how we never know when it will be, how old we will be, 85, 63, 21. The way some people win and others don't, and you can't control it, you can never control it.

The way we ripped out the pages,
one
by
one,
until we reached the back,
and they were
gone.

Brideswell

The day started out soft. Soft rain softened all the colours, like someone had turned a dial and muted the fields' fierce greens right down. Even the dry stone walls that rose and fell like backbones had their hardness softened by white lichen. Running up the lane, the puddles softened my footfall, the rain softened my burning breath. Then the sun came out. Flies, lethargic from their blackberry feasts, emerged from the hedgerows to dance in the heat. I ran on and the road stretched out before me, patched in alternate swathes of light and shade by dark trees and low-lying, rain-pregnant clouds. In the lanes the sound of rare cars approached slowly, a low hush like the sound of the sea in a shell. As the cars went passed the sound wave crashed over me and all the briars and  hemlock swayed like kelp and bladder-wrack. The rain came in much the same way; I saw it coming down the road, a patch of sound and darkness building over the fields, and then it hit me. I ran straight through it. I ran to Brideswell.

On the way back along the impossibly long lane my mouth was desert-dry. I stopped at the rusted water pump by the old school house. I lifted the handle, breaking cobwebs. The paint flaked off in my palms. My body was exhausted; my leg muscles, burning. I'd run out of the rain again, and the sun baked down on my shoulders as I brought the handle up and down, up and down. I could hear dry raspings beneath the earth. The pump was as parched as I was. But then I heard the sound of water rushing up from some deep forgotten well, and I pumped faster, until it came splashing out onto the dry rocks, onto my raw palms. I splashed it up into my salty face. My thirsty mouth. The water tasted of grass and rain and rock. It tasted of the fields I'd run through. I walked home, exhausted. Refreshed.

Molehills

Some make mountains out of molehills. But others make molehills out of mountains. The latter must quietly loathe the former; for every painstaking hour spent concealing, minimising, understating, hiding skeletons in closets or elephants under beds, the mountain makers spend seconds exploding gaudy importance out of nothingness. Oh you cut your finger? End of the world is it? I've got a prosthetic leg on and you haven't even noticed. What's that you're crying over? Your boyfriend told you that skirt does, in fact, make your bum look big? Great, I've got six months to live. No. These things are never said. The latter remain silent, whilst the former leave their mess of molehill mountains lying in their wake. They just trudge on carrying mountain-heavy molehills in their pockets, weighing them down like lead weights.

Regurgitated Beauty

Lift my head up to see
blacker-than-night sky
with its brighter-than-white
stars in all their un-light-polluted beauty;
On the horizon amber clouds gather;
modern. Silt-like. And the peace
between countryside and city,
silent. Perfect.

Lower my head to be sick in the
bushes.

Out of the darkness,
the dog comes to eat it.

The Reluctant Shepherds

We pile into the back of the dirty Jeep, sweeping mud and rope off the benches to make space for our bums. The bumps in the avenue down to the fields jolt us about; we bounce off each other and wince as bones are thrown into metal and laugh at the pain. Holly is black and white and skinny, like all sheepdogs, and her eyes are wild and amber, and she's running about climbing on Tara's shoulder when she's trying to drive. The Jeep's gear-stick is grime and rust-encrusted, unweildy. Please be second gear! Oh thank God! We all scream as our bums and spines clack against metal, then laugh.

Someone open the gate! is met with a chorus of SHOTGUN NOT ME! I volunteer, run to lift the rope from the fence and scramble over the gravel, nearly falling. Hop back in and on we go, through the next gate, and the next, over the bumpy fields in the big park and carrying on up to the sheep we're after.

We skirt round the edge by the dry-stone wall. At the top of the field, we all tumble out. Adam has Holly, tied to a scrappy rope we found in the Jeep. She's pulling it taught, tongue out, whole body pointing towards the sheep as though every cell in her body knows what she was bred for. They don't.  She doesn't have a clue, she just wants to bite sheep's legs.

The sun shone over the sodden fields as we spread out, circling the sheep, uttering strange sounds and clapping like mad-men, laughing as we ran over thistles and cow-pats and dark puddles full of the choppy clouds. The sheep sporadically sprinted or dawdled, followed each other or made singular breaks for freedom. We were a motley crew of reluctant shepherds, in a bizarre arrangement of what barely constituted as farming clothes, with a sheepdog that had no idea what she was doing.Tara brought up the rear in the Jeep, engine spluttering and roaring. We chased them through gates with no more ease than had we chased them through the eye of a needle; they were simultaneously utterly stupid and deviously clever. One sheep, hanging at the back of the herd with a limp, collapsed and refused to get up again. Baaa! Baaaa! Carry on without me! It seemed to say. Adam gathered it up into his arms and carried it to the back of the Jeep like a weary babe. When we brought it out again its leg was miraculously fine enough to make a break for freedom.

After we'd rounded them into their pen we all collapsed on the lawn in the sunshine, listening to their baaas of defeat and laughing.

My baaamily

Once there were four sheep. A mummy sheep and three little lambs. Actually they were quite large lambs. In fact they were pretty much full grown sheep. Baaa. Anyway. Every year these four sheep went on a long journey to a faraway field, in which their sheepy family lived - Grandma sheep, uncle sheep, aunty sheep and cousin sheep. Baaaaaa. When the four sheep arrived in their Granny sheep's field she offered them a cup of sheep tea (a drink from a puddle). One of the sheep didn't want one but Granny sheep insisted. Baaa! Baaaaa! she said (Ahhhh go on! Go on!) 

Granny sheep had prepared a delicious feast for every one to enjoy (a big aul' heaaaap of grass). All the sheep ate until they were full. But then Granny sheep said baaaaa! Baaaaaaaaaaaa! Baa baaa baa! (Will ye not have another bit of grass? Ah go on. Go on go on go on!) and when they sheepishly declined, she heaped it in front of them anyway. They pushed it around their plates (the ground) with their forks (feet) and nibbled a bit here and there. Then Granny brought out dessert (more grass) and they were all suddenly hungry again! 

Then they had five more cups of sheep tea and watched Coronation Sheep and everyone was happy.

The End

Vignetti Spaghetti

I found an old photograph on the ground.

In it is a girl, close up, slightly out of focus, slightly overexposed, so that her face is too white and the background is black. She has glossy dark brown hair, cut into a thick, blunt fringe. Her eyes are screwed up small because she's laughing, but her lips are pursed shut. Red-orange is smeared all over them; a strand of spaghetti hangs down over her chin. Her white blouse is stained with the spaghetti sauce. Her mirth bursts out of the photo like a camera flash. 

I can picture it all. The pasta dish thrown together in a ravenous scramble, and scoffed before it had cooled; the forkfull too big for her mouth; the sauce dripping down; the laughter of the photographer; the way it infected her until her mouth was ready to burst like a dam. 

I couldn't help but smile.

I couldn't help but want spaghetti.

Button

The tip of my thumb now has a circular scar where the knife half-cut a flap of skin. It looks like some kind of irregular button. Like you could push it, and something would happen. Time would stop, or I would turn invisible, or my x-ray vision would be activated. So I pushed it.

It just hurt.

Slice

You only realise when it's too late.

That you weren't being careful.

And then it's much too late.

Bright blood beads from a 

new little mouth, wide open

in hatchling shock. 

As quick as the

blood comes, so you are quick

to place blame.

Thumb bleeds, innocent.

Knife pleads guilty.

Running on a Summer's Evening

The summer air tonight is
hazy with the smoke of a thousand
barbecues. The streets empty, save
for prowling cats, and drooling dogs
dragging sluggish walkers. Even
the flies are hungry for flesh. They
scream in my ears as my feet pound
home. Stomach growls.
Sweat drips.

Sun
sets.

The Woman Who Ate Her Own Leg

Once there was a woman who went mad.
She ate her own leg.

She drizzled a little oil on it. Salt and pepper. Bit of rosemary.
Then she roasted it in the oven until tender.
She ate it with a knife and fork, starting at the foot. With some roast potatoes on the side.
She got a bit full before she got to the knee. So she put it in the fridge for later.
The next day she had cold leg sandwiches, and they were delicious.
That night she picked the rest off the bone with her fingers.

In the morning she woke up and realised that her leg was missing.
She found her dog in the kitchen, gnawing on her femur, and put two and two together.
She figured she should probably get help.
But then she went mad again and made a stroganoff with her left arm.

On Beauty II

Does being beautiful matter? Does it, really? Does a butterfly know it is beautiful? Does a new-born baby know it’s beautiful? Does a wildflower, does a rose? No. No, of course not. These things don’t know, or care if they are beautiful or not. They just exist, and are beautiful in doing so.

And were there no mirrors to look in, would we know that we were beautiful? Does a hermit living alone on some life-forsaken, sea-swept island know that he is beautiful? Would being beautiful make him happier, somehow? How could it make him happier than the beauty of the iron-green sea whipped wild by the wind, or the grace of terns and gulls slicing currents of air with their scythe-like wings? 

The moon knows not that it is beautiful, but each night a million eyes lift up to gaze upon its silver light, and not one heart is left unmoved by its singular beauty.  And not one of those eyes, nor the faces they are set in, could ever hope to rival such beauty, though in our vanity we imagine that they might. We are enamoured by beauty, we are slaves to the aesthetic. We endeavour to harness it, become it, possess it. We perceive beauty in others, in nature, and shame ourselves that we cannot equal it. We should desist in our futile quest. Admit our ugliness. And be content with merely experiencing beauty, with creating it. 

Because painting a picture is more worthwhile than painting make-up on your face. Because gazing at the stars is better for your soul than rhinoplasty. 

Because when you're old you'll be ugly anyway, and on your deathbed you won't think about how beautiful you were or weren't. You'll be thinking of the way the light played off the water in the harbour that night you first kissed your first love. And how beautiful it was.

Hateful Horace

Horace sat in the Station Master’s Café hating everything. He hated how long he had to wait for his train. He hated the way his tea tasted, he hated the man who had served it to him and he hated the blonde girl with a nose-ring sat at the table next to him because she kept looking at him sideways whilst typing really quickly on her wretched laptop. He hated laptops. He looked around him, hatefully. He hated the fancy crisp flavours they had for sale. Pesto. He hated pesto. Probably foreign. He hated foreigners. He also hated the milk dispenser. Nice Cold Ice Cold Fresh Milk, it said. He hated milk. However, he did hate warm milk more than cold milk, because it reminded him, subconsciously, of his mother, and he hated his mother.

Horace hated the seat he was in and he hated the clothes he was wearing because they were black and he hated black. He hated how much he’d just had to spend on a train ticket for a train journey he didn’t want to go on, and he hated the Tarka Line especially because it was full of old women and tourists declaring how pretty everything was. He hated the rolling fields and verdant forests, he hated the otter-brown rivers and he hated the quaint old cottages and churches. He hated how most of the seats faced backwards.  He hated not seeing where he was going, even though he didn’t even want to be going there. The blonde girl was sitting across from him on the train and he began to hate her even more because she was typing whilst looking out of the window at the scenery, which she probably thought was beautiful, and not at her keyboard. He hated his shoes. They were new and shiny. He hated new and shiny shoes.

Horace hated the newspaper he was reading , and he hated the obituaries especially, and he hated them especially today. Horace hated the sound the train was making, and he hated the golden fields of wheat flashing past the windows and he hated the sky that looked like it would rain. He tugged at his black tie. He hated wearing ties. He hated the fact he had to go. Or rather, he hated the circumstances that meant he had to go.

He hated crying. He hated crying in public. And he hated the blonde girl even more because she kept looking at him crying in public and even though she was still typing she looked like she might cry in public too.

He hated his mother. He hated his mother. He hated his mother for dying. Or maybe he hated the fact that she had died. Which meant, (and this is a fact which he hated), that perhaps he didn’t hate her very much at all.

Or perhaps the blonde girl with the laptop was making it all up, and he wasn’t called Horace, nor was he going to a funeral, and he wasn't hateful at all, that was just what his face looked like. 

Cloudspotting

Fine cirrus etched in an arch

Over bulbous cumulonimbus;

The wispy comb-over of

A portly old gentleman.

The Unwanted Companion

I collapsed into seat 77a, coach B of the 18:06 from Paddington to Penzance. I checked the reservation ticket of the seat beside me to see if I would have the two seats to myself. Yes, but only until Reading. I settled down, took out my book (Ismailov’s The Railway) and the train rolled away, London’s outskirts flickering past like television in my peripheral vision.

By Reading I was engrossed in my book. I’d forgotten I was due a travelling companion. He appeared in the aisle beside me like some horrid apparition. Watery eyes bulging above puffy pouches, grizzled facial hair extending up towards them. Flaccid lips wet and shiny. His beige trench-coat was irredeemably soiled, but in a way that implied years of slow putrefaction, rather than a one off incident. Dirty tide-marks spread downwards from the collar, undoubtedly a direct result of his flabby, seeping mouth. He smiled at me. The sight of his teeth made my molars wince in horror.

“Is this seat 78?”

I wanted to lie. I have seldom felt such an overwhelming impulse to lie as I did in that very moment. But it would have been an incredibly transparent lie, made utterly redundant, besides, by the fact that his behind had already begun its slow descent towards the seat that was, of course, 78.  

Then the smell hit my nostrils and the impulse to lie was swept away by the impulse to vomit. He smelt of what his coat looked like, and that was just the top note. I resolved to breathe only through my mouth. I felt a little as though I was drowning.

“Where are you going? I’m going to Plymouth,” he announced, in exactly the kind of voice I’d imagined he would have, the kind children have stranger-danger nightmares about. He was taking up an extremely unnecessary amount of my personal space. He had putrefied my air. He had disrupted my reading. I couldn’t even look out of the window, because I could see his reflection, drooly lips shining gloriously in the evening sun. He had, in short, ruined this train journey for me entirely. No. He had ruined trains for ever. And I love trains. I smiled, and replied, “Exeter,” whilst silently pledging that I would escape, at any cost. There were spare seats taunting me out of the corner of my eye. He leant into my side a little more, and I began to taste his smell on my tongue. I considered just holding my breath for the next two hours, but realised, with defeat, that this was not humanly possible. 

Then he got up to go to the toilet. He asked me to look after his bag. This was my chance. This was my chance to escape!

But I couldn’t. I couldn’t just leave his bag there – what if it got stolen? I couldn’t bear the guilt of it. Maybe it would be ok. Maybe I could strike up some sort of conversation with him. Maybe I could learn something.

Then he came back and said, “That’s better!” in a way that made me think of him defecating and I retched, invisibly, inaudibly. I regretted my fleeting moment of kindness, wholeheartedly.

I tried to focus on my book, but I felt much too uncomfortable to become absorbed by it, just as one might feel too uneasy to fall asleep on an inner-city night bus.

But then he turned to me and said, “If you look to your left, you’ll see a white horse!” and I expected to be utterly underwhelmed by some field-bound beast of burden. And there before me, spread out in splendour on a rolling, sun-drenched  hillside, was a huge white horse hewn into the chalk. The beauty of it floored me. And in that moment I felt like an awful, awful person for the hateful thoughts I’d had about this poor bedraggled soul who was nothing more than an innocent receptacle of beauty, beauty that he’d chosen to share with me, a complete stranger, a complete stranger who’d spent forty minutes silently cursing his very existence. His humanity humbled me, humiliated me. I was unworthy of sitting beside someone who wanted to show me something so nice, when I’d done nothing to deserve it.

But by then the smell, his closeness, everything had gotten too much. I told him I was going to the loo, and couldn’t bear to meet his gaze as I, much to his suspicion, I am sure, brought all my baggage with me. Liberated, I found a seat in the next carriage, and sat in peace watching the sun light up the dove-hued clouds in a syrupy haze, setting thistles a-glow, glinting off rivers and marinas, making the dark-green trees burn emerald.

I could still smell him in my nostrils. I almost missed him.

Almost.

Hilda Hates Tomatoes

Hilda pushed her tomatoes round her plate. They didn't look very appetising. In fact, she was of the firm belief that tomatoes were the single most disgusting foodstuff known to civilisation. When her mother wasn't looking she dropped one under the table into the cat's mouth. The cat ran outside into the garden and exploded.

Hilda saw it through the window. It happened so quickly. The cat just burst, like a fluffy balloon filled with red. Like a dropped melon. Her family didn't see it. They just saw Hilda's mouth drop open like a broken trapdoor.

"What's wrong with you, Hilda?" "You look like you've seen a ghost."
Hilda's eyes stayed fixed on the red patch where the cat was on the lawn, right outside the window.
"The... the cat exploded," she said.
"Oh yeah, this is like that time you said you saw a bear skiing."
"Oh YEAH! And it was just a fat man with a beard and a brown jumpsuit."
"Liar liar pants on fire!"
Hilda tore her eyes from the window and looked down at her plate, stymied and shell-shocked. Then it hit her.

"DON'T eat your TOMAAATOES!" she exclaimed vehemently.
"Or what?" her brother sneered.
"Or you'll explode! You have to believe me!"
Her mother and father looked at her, bemused, wondering what had gotten into their otherwise fairly normal little girl. Her brother was laughing at her, her sister looking at her with that disgusted look that thirteen-year-olds do so well. Then her brother stabbed his fork into a slice of tomato and brought it up to his big-fat-clown-mouth in faux-slow motion. Her parents smirked, then grimaced guiltily.
"NOOO!" screamed Hilda, and she threw herself across the table to knock the fork from her brother's hand.

The tomato slice flew off the fork and landed in the sink where it instantly exploded, blasting chips of crockery and dirty dishwater all over the kitchen.

The family turned and looked at Hilda with wide, disbelieving eyes.
It dawned on her sister that her beloved cat was actually, really, in all likelihood, in smithereens, and she ran into the garden screaming "BINKY!!!! NOOOOO!"

Her father rang up Morrison's and told them about the tomatoes. Then he made a few calls to the NHS and the Police and the BBC, and within a few hours most of the country knew not to eat tomatoes because it was on the TV and everything.

Hilda felt slightly smug because she'd always known that tomatoes were horrible. For years to come, she would tell anybody who would listen about the explosive tomatoes which exploded her cat, and how she helped avert a national crisis, and she would always finish her story with, "And that is how I saved the world."

On Being Dead

Once I asked an old man if he was afraid of dying. He said no. Because once I'm dead I won't know anything about it, he said. I said, isn't that the part people are afraid of? And he said, yes, but it doesn't mean they're right. What do you mean, I asked. I mean, he replied, that they should stop wasting time being afraid of dying and spend more time being afraid of not living. For all they know, it's the only life they've got. They should stop sitting quivering like frightened rabbits and just live the best lives they can live. Do something great. And I said, yes, I see.

 But then I said, so, what have you done with your life?

He paused, and I was worried I'd offended him. Then he said, I lived it. And I said, well, so did everyone else. And he said, well, I lived it well enough for me. Maybe I didn't do anything great, he said, but all those men who did - and women, I said - and women, he said - all those men who did, where are they now? 

They're dead, I said.

Exactly, he said.

Brown and White Cat

Walking home from The Bounty we saw a brown and white cat sitting on the railway tracks. So we stroked it, and picked it up, and then it climbed onto our shoulders and walked around on them precariously, like a monkey, or a pirate's parrot. It rubbed its head against our cheeks. It didn't scratch us at all. I walked down the moonlit road with it climbing on my shoulders, being careful that it didn't fall.At the end of the road we put it down and it ran away as some headlights came around the corner. When it was gone I could still feel its soft weight on my shoulders and I missed it. Brown-and-white-parrot-cat.