Thanks, River

The river burst its banks. A great serpent grown glossy and fat from the rains which fed it. It rose up in vast waves and currents, eddies tearing down trees and carrying them with it with a force we did not know it had.  The arches of bridges shrank into semi-circles. The water drank the banks and pathways, devoured bicycles and cars. And it seeped into the basements of the faculty, lapping at chairs where students once sat. It slithered into the boiler room and settled down.

The heating broke. We shivered in the upper rooms whilst the water receded. They closed the building down and we rejoiced like schoolboys sent home early due to snow. The collective dream we've shared since infancy.
No
More
School.

In the morning we slept in with smiles on our faces, saying prayers of thanks to the river gods.

Arrival

It is a journey I have made many times. By day. By night.
Now I make it again, only this time, as I rise from the bowels of the city, I feel my stomach rise with it,
and my heart rises, into my mouth. I rise from the city step by step, upwards into the amber light, leaving the city behind, a kaleidoscope of glitter and darkness. Cold wet leaves on cold wet stone. Step by step. Shoes scuff and slip. Breath burns out in cold clouds. Heart beats. Muscles sear. Numb toes stub hard on errant cobbles, though I know these streets. The climb is hard, though this too I know well. The night is young; yet the darkness is full-grown. I rise through it. Step by step. And as though emerging through mountain cloud I emerge on the platform and am bathed in golden light, breath heavy, triumphant.

I wait for you.

Selective Memory

Once you said something to me and it moved me to tears. We were walking home through the dark. I remember the exact street we were standing on, the direction I was facing in, the exact spot I stopped in when your words sunk in. I remember the way you looked at me, the way your face changed as my eyes began to redden and sting. I even remember the clothes we were wearing. I remember how long your facial hair was. And  I remember the feeling, the crushing weight of  beauty so immense, so difficult to bear. The way it filled my chest and choked me up. The way you took me in your arms and made it well up and over and melt away.

But I cannot, cannot for the life of me remember what it was that you actually said.

Writing Assignment 7

The train is full of strangers, as trains almost always are. It is stationary. The doors agape as still more strangers traipse aboard, alone or in groups. Cold air breathes in, and with it seeps the silence that is so often found in such places. Strangers sat together in an enclosed space. It is night. The lights are bright but yield little warmth.

The doors croon their closing song, a forlorn sound from which all urgency is lost into the night. The last passenger steps onto the train. The doors close.

She is drunk.

As the train moves she staggers and collapses into an empty carpet-coloured seat, falling into place amongst silent strangers.

She breaks the silence.

She begins to slur strange words in a strange language. A Latin language, but it doesn't matter which. The importance lies only in the fact that no one understands it, and no one understands her. The strangers shift uncomfortably. She begins to shout. Her features wild and angry, expressions marred by the viscous slowness of alcohol in the blood. Her hair wild and dark, her clothes, too, a swathe of darkness about wild limbs. Her eyes teary. Glaring. Wild. All the while shouting, muttering, uttering.

The strangers eyes seek something else, anything else but her; invariably they find the floor, occasionally other eyes, the eyes of other strangers, and something is communicated, some fleeting yet pervasive sense of discomfort. She stands, staggers, shouts louder, directing her strange words at no one in particular yet everyone all at once. Gesturing. The scent of alcohol on her breath is palpable, though no one can smell it. She stands and sways, shouts and spits and sits down again. Eyes look elsewhere.

The train roars through black-dark tunnels. The strangers sway. Shoulders bump. Hands that briefly brushed are snatched back apologetically.


She turns and speaks her tongues to someone else. To everyone else. To no one else. Guttural sounds that made no sense. Or rather, no verbal sense. Sense is made on another level, a primal level, more gut-felt, more profound. I am angry. I am angry and frightened. I am frightened and confused. I am hurting and I want to hurt. I want to hurt and I want to hurt myself. I want hurt myself as I am angry. I am angry. I hate you all. I hate you all and I hate myself. I am angry.


The train lights splutter.

From her pocket she draws a packet of cigarettes. All eyes lift from the floor to follow, with disbelief, the shaky trajectory of her hand from box to lip. Then she pulls out a box of matches.

The train swerves again, more violently. The box falls to the floor and the eyes follow it, see the explosive scatter of match sticks about their feet.

Silence.

Despair, despair, helplessness, uselessness, shame, hate, hate, despair.

The train stops and the woman, screaming a dying tirade at everyone and no one, flees the carriage like a wild, dark bird. Cawing, jabbering, into the night. Leaving the strangers to their silence, which seeps back down from the ceiling and settles into her empty, match-strewn seat.

Tree Song

On nights like this when I cannot sleep, when the rain's lullaby does not suffice to comfort me, I rise from my bed and throw the window open to let in the night. The rain lets itself in after, and I stare up at the tree behind our house, bare of all foliage, all colour; it's wet bark inky black as though blown across a page with a plastic straw. My eyes move as though to count the branches, but they appear infinite, uneven fractals spiralling wildly into a low sky, cast bronze by the street lights. In the storm, its voice is the mightiest of whispers. The most profound of lullabies. I gaze up at its boughs until my skin grows numb. Then slink back into sleep.

Nib

I can't write about you any more.

You're too deep under my skin
to scratch out with the nib of a pen.

Wish Bone

We tear you from the
still-warm carcass of some
poor, once-feathered thing.
Frail little bone, piece of ribcage.
You are everything.

You are that from which
we are made, from which
all things are made.
(Though Eve betrayed us, we are loathe
to blame the part you played.)

And we will break you.
Because we break all
things that can be broken.
Bones and vows, seals and silence.

But our wishes go unspoken.

Wine

There is a darkness in her mouth.

Teeth tainted, where the

poison swilled, purple-black.

On the pink swell of her upper 

lip it left a bruisy mark.

You can taste it, just by looking.

Blood-warm.

Grape-dark. 

Haiku: peeking through my window on a stormy night

Frail white toadstools push
through dead leaves and dark roof moss;
above, trees thresh, and toss.

Composite Sensations

There are some sensations, when, paired together, can recreate a sense of time and place with vivid realism. For example, if someone were to, somehow, make my eyes hurt with the sting of hours spent looking at a screen in a dark room, and make my mouth dry, and play me the sound of bird song, all at once, I would suddenly feel as though I was working on an essay the night before the deadline. My stress levels would increase dramatically, I'm sure. 

I don't know what I'm trying to say here, because my eyes hurt, and my mouth is dry, and I can hear the sound of bird song even though it's dark outside.

Sleep beckons. 

Good Night, Inanimate Objects.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, the sounds my laptop makes disturb me immensely. Its little electronic groans. So human. Like a stomach digesting, quietly. Or the sounds I imagine a brain might make, whilst it thinks.

I want to close it down so it can sleep.

Which, in itself, is testament to my incessant personification of things.

But at night, everything needs to sleep. The teaspoons, tucked up in their drawer, the lights, switched off like shut eyes; even the clothes hang like bats at roost. 

Only the microwave, the oven, are left awake. Their insomniac eyes unblinking, red and green, in the dark.

Littering

We do it every weekend, more or less. Mum phones up. She's good at expressing interest in things she's not really interested in. There's a voice she does. Softer. More high-pitched. It reminds me of when I was little. Which is rather sad, when you think about it.

When she gets off the phone we get in the car. Sometimes it's just round the corner. Other times it's quite far away. The longest we've driven was for an hour and a half. It isn't too bad though. We listen to ABBA, and sing along.

Mamma Mia!
Are we there yet?
Here I go again!
Are we there yet?

When we get there, there is usually a small, suburban, semi-detached house; the kind that England does so well. Scrappy front garden with an overgrown lawn. Plastic window frames. Sometimes there is a farmhouse in the countryside.Those are the best times.

We knock on the doorbell and it is answered, usually by a woman, often wearing a baggy t-shirt and jogging bottoms, but sometimes by a man, often wearing a wife-beater. But not when it's a farmhouse in the countryside.

They take us through to see them. They're usually in some kind of back room or garage, in a special pen. Mum chats to the man or woman with that voice of hers, and we get to play with the puppies.

It's not always puppies. Sometimes it's kittens, or even baby rabbits. But the puppies are the best. Fat and squirmy and playful. A mass of soft fur in white and black and brown, tails wagging, little tongues lapping and yapping. We let them lick our faces and put them in our t-shirts, and pick out our favourites as though we were picking out our new pet.

But we never were.
It was sad, at first. We always hoped that one day, Mum would let us actually take one home. Once or twice we made a scene. She threatened not to take us again. Now we're older, we understand. We know we're not allowed. We can't afford it. We've learned to play along, to gulp down the lump in our throats each time we put the puppies back.

After a while, Mum says, 'Thanks, they're just what we're after, I'll give you a call,' and they believe her. They always do. And we get back in the car with smiles on our faces. 'Thanks Mum, you're the best!' ABBA comes back on and we sing along again.
But we don't mean it. Our hearts are much too heavy.
Our souls are full of puppy-shaped holes.

The Advisee

Ben asks for advice.

Not because he thinks he needs it.

No one thinks they need advice.

Not deep down. Not really.

Ben asks for advice to hear his own thoughts 

spoken back to him. So he can nod and say,

Yes, yes, you're right, I hadn't thought of that.

Ben asks for advice,

Not because he needs it.

But because other people need to give it.

They need to be seen as good friends and good

listeners, good problem-solvers, good 

advisers.They like to feel perceptive.

Like their view of things is somehow of more 

value than anyone else's. 

They like to feel that their words can have an

impact on the actions of others.

They like to feel like other people's problems are

worse than their own.  

Above all,

they like the sound of their own voices. 

And Ben knows this.

It is a kind of catharsis,

that they didn't know they needed.

And Ben is just 

giving them what they wanted,

though they didn't know they wanted it.

It is something they can't seek out,

not by themselves. To advise, of course,

there must be one in need of advice.

And this is the role Ben plays.

The fulfiller of societal desires of the most 

mundane variety.

An advisee.

Garlic Sauce

The chips 

were golden.

crisp and sodden, all at once. 

Salt. Vinegar. Plastic fork. And 

garlic sauce, in a polystyrene cup, 

(which split softly in my grip

as I tipped it up).

The centre tines snap

off as I dig in,

but I don't care;

I scald my tongue in 

haste and splutter steam 

into the night air.

The sauce is all I ever wanted,

cool and tangy, great on chips.

 And I'm starving, 

scoffing, scarffing, and it's

dripping down my lips.

"You're gonna stink love!"

But I'm drunk, and I 

could not care less.

(Garlic's fine and dandy when

there's no one to impress.)

Tandem

Out of the library windows, a strange sight:

A man and a woman on a tandem bike.

The way they stopped at the bike racks, the way the man helped the woman dismount, made it all seem commonplace. As though their bike was nothing out-of-the-ordinary. As though this was how they rode everywhere, every day. They both had dark hair, and their clothes were khaki-green and tweedy-brown. Their bags were made of tan leather, as were their shoes. But none of it looked pretentious, nor pre-arranged. Their coordination, like their bicycle, seemed natural. A part of them. And when they'd chained their bike to the rack (the back of it jutting out, like a limousine in a supermarket car park), they walked off, holding hands. Their feet falling in step.

In tandem.

Honeysuckle

Last night before I went to sleep, I thought about writing.
Not about writing, as such, but more, the act of capturing something. Some elusive, nameless feeling, some almost audible whisper; some slight, fleeting colour in the corner of the eye. It almost impossible to put this process into words. But a writer must always try...

Consider, if you will, a night fisherman, casting his net into the ink-black waters for something, he knows not what. And all the while the boat is gently rocked by the oncoming tide. The waves of sleep. And before he knows it, his lantern blows out, and he is pulled adrift...

In the dream I was in a garden, adrift with snow. And  I was thinking about the honeysuckle. How to put it into words. I was staring at it, thinking, how can I describe this honeysuckle, the way it looks with the snow falling all around it. And then I realised suddenly that it couldn't be snowing, if the honeysuckle was in bloom. And then the dream shifted, and changed, as someone might turn their face away in a crowd to keep from being recognised. I found myself in bed. Still in a garden, but there was no more honeysuckle, no more snow. And you were in the bed beside me. Was this the shared dream we were seeking? "Look," you said, "look at the birds", and above us was an enormous tree, filled with birds of all varieties. The birds were building nests and flying from branch to branch. There were a great number of pigeons, I recall. And we lay there for quite some time, just looking at the birds together. And then you got up. "Why are you leaving," I asked. "We didn't need to get out of bed, not just yet." But you didn't reply, and then you were gone. And then I realised that the birds weren't just making nests, they were building something altogether more complex, a system of ropes and pulleys and strange structures. And that blossoming on the trees were huge honeysuckle flowers, and this realisation unsettled me more than the birds or anything else. It started snowing again. I realised that I was dreaming, and I woke up.

What did the night-fisherman catch, with his dream-net?
A flock of strange birds in a strange tree.
Honeysuckle flowers.
Soft flakes of snow.

Your absence.
Your absence, the feeling I couldn't put a name to. Because how can you name nothing? How can you name emptiness and loss?

A writer must always try.

The way it crumbles

There's a chocolate chip cookie sitting on my desk in the library.

I don't know who left it there.

I don't know how long it has been there.

But it's a sure sign of library-induced dementia that I am

considering

eating it.

Writing Assignment 4

Writing Assignment (4): Briefly describe a character who is as unlike yourself as you can imagine. Then get inside this character's head to individualise him or her.


I could come up with an infinite multitude of such characters. Opposite me in every way, in any way. As different from me as day is from night.

But all I would be doing would be painting a picture of myself.

How so?
Just so.

If I were to describe an elderly black man, for example, you might guess that I'm a young white girl. If I were to describe someone poor, you would know that I am not. If I were to describe someone with short black hair you might deduce that mine is long and blonde. If I was to describe someone in prison you could safely assume I'm a law-abiding member of society. (Or, at least, that I had not yet been caught).

It is like an exercise in binaries. In the separation of the self from the other. Othering. (How bleak that word looks without an M before it!)

Equally, it is difficult to avoid unconscious arrogance. For example, were I to describe a detestable character, I would be unwittingly implying that I am likeable. To describe ugliness would be vain. At the other side of the spectrum, of course, would be describing someone with positive attributes, the implication being that I do not possess them. The painfully self-aware modesty of this would be almost as bad as the unconscious arrogance.

So here I am, staring at the question, rolling it around in my head as one might suck on a gobstopper. Hoping to reduce it, eventually, to something smaller. Less problematic.

Then it came to me.
I think too much.
Not a negative quality; nor, for that matter, a positive one. But a freshly-proven fact.

My character, I realise, should be someone who thinks less.
Who doesn't torture themselves with questions, introspective self-analysis, hyperactive self-awareness, over-reactive self-loathing.




This is why I chose to write about Neil.
And I know exactly how it reflects on me.
And that is the desired effect.

Bad Taste II

I never got round to buying a poppy.

I'm sorry. I meant to.

But the welt a paintball bullet left on my arm is blossoming. Blooming. A delicate, curved form, pale red. 

Poppy-like. It's tender. It smarts to touch. 

We will remember them.

Bad Taste

We went paintballing on Remembrance Day.
Bad taste.

Going out to war we were laughing, arms looped, blurting jokes through plastic masks. And through the masks, blurred with steam and scratches and spit, the sky was the bluest blue. The leaves were all the colours autumn leaves should be, all at once, all in one wood, and the soft ground underfoot was green with moss and red-brown with the dead leaves and blue where the bluest sky had fallen in puddles. It was beautiful. And the tree-trunks were splattered green and yellow from the bullets bursting. They burst on our backs, too, and our arms and legs and hands. They bit so hard into our cold flesh. The wetness of the paint. The pain. We were surprised, each time, to see no blood. Our feet, our hands, were bitter-damp. Our fake masks couldn't keep back the fake gas and so we choked. The sound of the gun-shots. The screams. The thudding of our hearts. The fear. And when the game was over, the silence fell. The heavy silence that only falls where once was devastating, deafening noise. That only falls when everyone, everything is dead. That silence rang throughout the wood. And then we remembered them. We remembered them. We remembered them.

We put our cold guns down. Took our masks off. Ran our hands over our dirty faces. Ran our tongues over our lips, wet where bullets had burst through the mask. Thick, lurid paint.
Bad taste.

Neil

I met a man at the gallery opening last night. His name is Neil. I was standing in the stairwell, searching for my name on the list of volunteers. Neil was looking for his, too. When he found it, he pointed it out to me. That's how I found that he was also a volunteer, and that his name is Neil.

Neil has a loud voice which cracks and wavers off-key. A Geordie-ish accent being played back by an underwater tape-recorder.
Neil has a handshake which is neither firm nor limp.
Neil has dandruff. I'd even go as far as to say he has severe scalp-localised psoriasis. The flakes fleck his shoulders like stars in the night sky.
Neil has grey-ish teeth. The bottom edges of his top-middle incisors slope upwards and inwards. They don't look like teeth should look but they don't look like the photos on cigarette packets, either.
Neil's eyes are slightly green. He looks at you when you're talking to him. He looks at you when you're not talking to him. But he doesn't meet your gaze. Not quite.

Neil likes fashion. "Do you go on lookbook.com? I do."
Sometimes I do, yes. "Who do you think is the best dressed girl in here? I think it's the one with the dreadlocks. She looks fabulous." I agree with him. "You look nice, too." I thank him. So does he. "I like your coat." Thank you.
Neil is wearing brown slip on shoes, the kind mostly worn by men who want to be comfortable but still smart, or those who don't know how to dress.
Neil is also wearing black trousers, a light pink shirt and a black anorak (with star-spangled shoulders).
I think, for someone who likes fashion so much, he doesn't seem to be very fashionable.
"Girls have such nice clothes," says Neil. "I sometimes wish I was a girl so I could wear pretty dresses."
He says it without undertone, neither shame nor irony. His grey teeth smiling, his eyes looking at me but also elsewhere.

What do you do, apart from volunteering? I ask.
Neil's slightly green eyes look less at me and more at the back wall.

"I eat," he says. "I sleep. I drink. I dance. I piss. I shit. I ....... I wash the dishes!"
Me too, I say. I do those things too! And we laugh.

Later I go in to the vault to watch the film installation. In the dark the colours and sounds make me feel like I'm drowning. My heartbeat slows. Then Neil comes in, walking in front of the projector so that a human-shaped silhouette slices through kaleidoscopic lights on the wall. People around me bristle. He sits down and looks at me. It's dark and I'm looking at the film but I can still tell that he's looking at me.

"HELLO!" he exclaims. It's dark and I'm looking at the film but I can still tell that everyone in the room is looking at us.
Shhhh, I say, and smile.
"You're nice," he says. People look once more. "I'm glad I met you because you're nice."
And suddenly I'm not in that dark room, I'm inside Neil's head and in there it's very light, and simple, and filled with pretty girls in pretty dresses, and his whole life is separated out into nice boxes, sleep and eat, drink and dance, piss and shit, and when he looks at me he sees a nice girl in a nice coat, nothing more. He can't see inside my head. Perhaps for him I don't even have an inside-of-my-head and neither does he.

I looked away from the film and looked at him in the dark and suddenly I could have cried with the burden of it all, the weight of the past and the pain of being and the sadness of everything, everything, everything. I just looked at him and wanted to be like him. To be him.

 I've never wanted to be a person with dandruff and grey teeth more than I did just then, in that moment.

You're nice too, Neil, I whisper. You're really, really nice.

Sad Food

There must be a special place where all the bad food goes. Not spoiled food. Bad food. Food that's badly made, made using bad ingredients or by someone who doesn't know how to cook. Food that's made on production lines by sad people. The food you get in garages and hospitals and regional airports. Food with no taste. No soul. Sad food. The kind that is easy to chew but difficult to swallow, that leaves a slight lump in your throat as if you were about to cry. The kind you feel ashamed to eat. That leaves you feeling full, but somehow, slightly empty.

There must be a special place it goes. Not a real place, of course. Not tangible or visible or visitable, in any case (who has the right to say what's real and what's not?) But a place like heaven, or hell; some spirit-world, some purgatory, inhabited by cold, badly crimped pasties, dry scotch eggs and packaged sandwiches that taste like soggy paperbacks, amongst infinite other culinary mediocrities.

Perhaps they don't go anywhere. They don't pass on to the next life. They stay here in the mortal realm, floating forlornly after those who had the misfortune to eat them. The saddest part is most people don't even see them. They don't notice anything's wrong because that's the only kind of food they eat. There's probably a taxi-driver out there being followed by a ghost jacket potato covered in rubbery, insipid 'cheddar', and behind it, a whole host of other banal breakfasts and dismay dinners, trailing after him as though he were a kind of sorry, school-canteen pied piper. Does that woman at the bus-stop see the microwave lasagne sitting on her shoulder like a squat parrot? If these things were visible to you, you might even come across a swarm of those greasy prawny-chickeny creatures Iceland sells in 'party boxes' drifting forlornly around the office. Or white-flecked, flaccid bacon and a big lump of over-cooked scrambled egg hovering around a construction worker's hat.

I too, am haunted by these monsters. I am followed by a ghoulish, phantom picnic. I see them all, sitting on my desk or stalking after me in the dark. The own-brand biscuits. The discount lemonade. The curled up egg sandwiches. The shrivelled cocktail sausages. I am followed by a ghoulish, phantom picnic.

Stop, stop, it's too sad, I might cry.

Dreamshare

We tried to share a dream last night. We decided when and where to meet. We set the scene. Something simple and at the same time, specific enough that it might stick in the memory with ease. Somewhere recognisable and strange both at once. So that our minds could hold onto it whilst falling asleep, as a child might hold a small bear. 

I formed, in my mind's eye, a perfect recreation of the scene. I visualised it to perfection. I held onto the image, held onto the idea of being there in that dream place with you, held onto it so tightly. Then I drifted off into sleep.

I woke up and realised I'd missed our meeting. I'd been elsewhere, with other people, doing something else. I wondered if you'd been in our place, waiting for me, alone, or if you had dreamt that I was there with you. But it seemed more likely that you'd been elsewhere, too. No matter how hard we held onto the place we wanted to go it still escaped us in the end. We couldn't carry it across the border into sleep. Much as, no matter how tightly the child hugs its teddy to its chest as it falls asleep, it is always on the floor the next morning. The same sorrow applies. Though it is not our fault. We are sorry nevertheless.

I'm sorry.

Sparrows

A sparrow flew across my line of sight. In its beak, a slice of bread bigger than it's entire body. Its flight was significantly impeded; it flew in dogged dips and swoops. Then it dropped the bread. It turned back but alas, much too late; another sparrow had already reached the bread. The first sparrow managed to grab it back at the last moment, breaking it in half. Then it flew away, much more competently, with a more reasonably-sized slice.

I wondered if sparrows knew how to share. Or if they could learn. Surely the first sparrow would learn from his experience? Or if, instead they were doomed to a 'dog-eat-dog' mentality that meant they would always try to take everything all for themselves, and often be left with nothing.
Silly sparrows.

Carshare: Le Vieux Fou et son Chien Pourri

Clermont-Ferrand to Paris, 11.20. Mercedes camping-car, it said. Gros luxe! I thought. €27.00. I reserved a seat. Daniel F, 70 years old. Nice old man, I'm sure. 

I turned up fifteen minutes early. Not a "camping-car" in sight. But an old man was waving at me from beside his dusty white Renault people carrier and I had to face my fate. He gave me a kiss on each cheek and gestured towards our fellow car-sharer, a tall mixed-race man with glasses and a flat-peak cap, who was smoking. "J'espere que vous n'avez pas peur des chiens!" No, I'm not scared of dogs. Then I saw his dog. Enormous. The size of a bear. When I got into the car the smell of its breath hit my nostrils hard and I had to grit my teeth not to gag. When we set off, it leapt up and tried to lick my face; I squealed and Daniel F ran round, opened the boot and shouted "PILOU! ARRETES!" whilst pummelling the great beast in the stomach. All this happened in the middle of a busy street; buses were hooting their horns and people on the street were stopping to stare. I quickly realised that Daniel F was un vieux fou, a mad man, a point which was reiterated by his constant attempts to make slightly sexual jokes about English girls and constant failures to apply the brakes properly. I resigned myself to a long journey spent politely fake-laughing, breathing through my mouth,and glaring at the back of the flat-peak-cap-man's head, jealous that he'd gotten the front seat and wasn't chilling in the back seat with the beast. He knew it, too, and looked round to laugh every time the putrid bear-dog decided to lick my hair. 

Then the third passenger got in. She'd already made us an hour late demanding we detour to pick her up. And, it transpired, she was terrified of dogs. She was from Burkina Faso and when she spoke French her accent was mad and beautiful, lilting and drawling and speaking twice as fast as I could follow. And once she started talking she could not keep her mouth shut. Screaming wildly every time the dog came near her, babbling about how the French are sick and strange for loving animals enough to let them in their houses, to feed them at the dinner table, to let them sit on the sofa and watch TV like human beings. When I eventually fell asleep I kept waking up periodically to find that she was using my arm or leg as a prop to illustrate a point in some wild story or other she was telling Daniel F, who was partly loving her loud-mouthed honesty and partly terrified. Flat-peak-cap was sleeping, too, or at least pretending to like me.

Then Daniel F stopped the car because the radiator was too hot.

This happened several times. He kept getting out to put water in the reservoir and every time he opened the boot he had to wrestle the bear-dog to stop it running into the motorway (RESTES LA PILOU RESTES LA!!!)  Later, Pilou the bear-dog attacked Burkina Faso and she threw her blackberry at his head.

When, five hours later, we arrived in Paris, we couldn't have gotten out of that car faster had it been on fire. Once Daniel F was out of earshot, we all looked at each other. I said, "Camping car?" and flat-peak said "LOOOL!" and Burkina said "Camping car MON CUL!" and we all laughed, united, at least, by our collective discomfort and disappointment. 

Next time, I said, I'm taking the train.

Scooters

In Lombok you drove a scooter over hot dusty roads,

wearing an old pair of jeans cut off at the knee.

The sun burned your forearms deep brown.

And behind you, there was I.

Clinging on for dear

love.

In Clermont you drive a scooter over cold black cobbles,

wearing tracksuit bottoms underneath your jeans.

The rain leaves you soaked to the skin.

And behind you, stacks of boxes.

Full of pizzas,

Getting cold.

Sun and Moon

We sat on the steps of the black cathedral in the sunshine. When the sun passed behind the clouds you said, look at the moon. I laughed. That's the sun, I said. No, you said, because you can look straight at it. A clear, white circle. It's the moon.
You're stoned, I said. Keep watching.
And the clouds moved on and the moon turned into the sun, and we were both blinded, and we collapsed with laughter on the black rock steps.

When we climbed the spiral staircase we were still blind. We spiralled upwards in the dark until we couldn't breathe and then emerged into the light, panting. You'd never been up before. The red roofs glinted below and clouds loomed, bruisy plum blue in the distance.
Look at the rainbow, you said.
And there was a rainbow more beautiful than I'd seen in years.
We were blown away by its beauty. A sight for sore eyes.
Eyes blinded by the moon.

Comfort Cuts

Nostalgic. We're both nostalgic. So we were content just doing the things we used to do, before I left. Walking down the streets we used to walk down, arm in arm. Sitting on your sofa drinking coffee after sleeping past midday. Eating meals made from whatever we could find in the fridge, in front of American films from the 80's, dubbed into French. 

All the things I thought I'd never do again. 

Like cutting open old wounds.

But instead of pain comes happiness.

Cuts that comfort.

Dunelm

We're so close to Dunelm Food stores that in the time it takes to walk from door to door you couldn't even smoke a whole cigarette. Then you have a choice. Stamp it out and enter. Stand outside and smoke it, bathed in the bright yellow convenience store light. Or cross the road and walk out onto Kingsgate Bridge, and lean on the rough concrete wall watching the river ripple with the Prince Bishop Centre's lights, and admiring the way the great arches of Elvet Bridge are mirrored in the water (numbered 1 and 2), and glancing left towards the cathedral that looms like a great ghost above black trees. There you can smoke to the sound of black water running far below, you can watch the smoke rise from your lips, set a-glow by the white halogen lights that line the bridge. You can admire the red ember's slow descent towards the butt and see, suddenly in the distance, a similar red light, floating down the river, and wonder what it is. You'll never know. You'll just stamp out the butt and head back to Dunelm for your Rubicon and Kingsmill or whatever it is you were going to buy. And your fingers will be cold, the cold river air will have chilled you to the bone, but the cold will feel like a kind of peace that has sunk deep down into your soul and you won't care about the pint of milk you forgot or the Ritter Sport you bought instead.

Hello, Ween.

Walking down town in the dark. Cobbles glossy with neon lights and vomit. All around me dance strange creatures of the night, whooping, hooting, howling. Wolf-whistles and cat-calls. Boys and girls, birds and beasts. Faces daubed in garish warpaint, bodies clothed in strange plumage, tattered rags, or barely clothed at all. Chips fall to the ground and scatter; bottles fall to the ground and smash. Girls' ankles twist sickeningly in heels and yet they stumble on. The walking dead. I walk on past zombies and skeletons, mummies and vampires, witches and devils and so, so many slutty cats (Clare's accessories are terrifying, granted). Here's a jilted bride and there's Bane and here's Alex and his droogs and there's Cleopatra (comin atchya), side-step to avoid a pack of Smurfs and dear-god-no-he's-NOT-Edward-Cullen-urgh
and then,
there's me,
A lone hotdog wandering through Market Square. Neither terrifying nor terrified. More, bemusing. Bemused.