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#69 The Old Man Mad About Art

10 May, 1849.

The pain was too much. It was like someone had a fist around his guts and was squeezing as hard as they can, pumping each squeeze, needling pain in small, sharp hits. He turned to his side where he could see, through the doors, a bird dip its beak into a puddle in the rain outside. Sun leaked through the trees and cast a shadow of the bird onto the puddle it drank from.

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‘Shunro, stay still! The doctor said to stay still!’ Ōi, his daughter, pleaded as she crouched beside him. Sweats broke out at his temples and she dabbed them with a cloth.

‘I’m okay,’ he mumbled. ‘Okay.’

Ōi laid down beside him, mirroring his pose, and looked into his eyes.

‘This will be all of it,’ he said to her, a tear, or a droplet of sweat, crawling over the bridge of his nose and dripping onto his mat beneath him.

‘Don’t say that. You will come through this, you always have.’

‘This is different.’

‘What can I do?’

‘You can’t do anything.’

There was a pause and Ōi listened to the writhing pains of his body working through, and the light rain that started outside.

‘At least know this, father, you have become a great artist, one of Japan’s greatest ever. You have done so much.’

Shunro smiled through tears, a smile more pained than joyful, like he smiled at his unhappiness with her conclusion.

‘Dear Ōi, I am barely an adolescent in art.’

‘If you are an adolescent, then the rest of us are unborn.’

Shunro wriggled his nose and sniffled, and Ōi’s heart quivered at the sight of his vulnerability.

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‘If only I could have ten more years. Five even. Perhaps then I might become a real painter.’

‘Oh, father… I remember when you wrote to Hiroshige saying: “When I am 80 you will see real progress. At 90 I shall have cut my way deeply into the mystery of life itself. At 100, I shall be a marvellous artist. At 110, everything I create - a dot, a line - will jump to life as never before.”

‘Mm,’ he grunted.

‘Do you feel you have cut deeply into the mystery of life?’

‘If only I had five more years… I could do something truly remarkable.’

Shunro closed his eyes Ōi stared at him, waiting for him to say something. She thought deeply, about him, about his past, about his works and his legacy. After 3 or 4 minutes, she realised that he had not moved at all.

‘Father,’ she said. ‘Father!’

But all she heard was the rain which had grown to a battering. The sun was hidden behind clouds now and everything was consumed by darkness.

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Enjoy Big Special’s Black Dog / White Horse to partner this read.

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#68 A Moment In Venice

We don’t talk for ages. You’re annoyed because of something I said. I’m annoyed because you’re annoyed at something I said.

We sit out at some café stalls overlooking the canals to the left and the lagoon to the right. The sound of waiters collecting plates and mugs, cutlery clinking against the china, and the mumbling chatter of the cafe’s few other guests occupy us both. It’s like there’s something there that both of us cling to.

We have our sunglasses on, hoping that that means nobody can see the sadness in our eyes. I look away, down the path that scales the canal, watching the couples holding hands, the Dad with the child on his shoulders, the old woman walking her chihuahua. A boat slides past, silently. A golden old man reaches into what I assume can only be filthy water, and washes his face with it.

Across the lagoon, the sun sets behind some palazzo, its tall red tower reaching into the clouds, clouds that span the whole horizon, and billow and puff up into the sky, one plume protruding from another in a series of explosions. The plum pinkness in the sky pervades everything. The dark, green water is tinged with it. The windows of the café swallow it. Your skin speaks back to it.

I try to speak to you, but when I open my mouth, I don’t know what to say. Your expression is cool, emotionless, and I wonder if you’re battling it underneath. In fact, I know you are.

I go to the bathroom. When I return, I see your back through the cut out of your black dress, your face hidden beneath those sunglasses, against the sky and the palazzo. All I want to do is to put my arm around you. To say, let’s forget it. Let’s pretend nothing happened. Pretend I never said what I said.

I stand there a moment watching you. You’re looking to the canals, and I follow your eyes. An old couple walk past slowly: the man with a stick to prop him up, the woman with her arm linked in his. They walk in silence, but not in a cold way. In a way that says they have that deep understanding. Like they’re always communicating, wordlessly. You stare at them as they pass. I step closer to you. You turn slightly, not to me but not away from me. And in a glint of light, a tear slides down your cheek.

I come and put am arm around you and you put an arm around me and, as I sit back down, you put your head on my shoulder and we quietly let the plum Venetian light wash us clean.

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Enjoy Billy Nomates’s Spite alongside this piece.

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#67 Unwound Apathy

The ticket is saw-edged from where it had been cut away from a sheet of tickets, made uniquely different from the others only by the black number printed in the corner. Holding it in my hand feels strange. The weight of the weightless things - the friendship, the expectations, the disappointment - cannot be physically felt, though I know it is here. And yet I can bend it, fold it, tear it up like any other scrap in this flat. 

It’s been three weeks since I promised Ben I would go to his play. He told me, in the plainest words: you have to be there. How could I not? I couldn’t have plans. I can’t think one week in advance, let alone three. Everyone else has been to see it: Sarah, Jake, Tom. Tonight is the night, and there’s no avoiding it.

‘Of course I’ll be there. I wouldn’t miss it.’

‘You would miss it. You have. You’ve never seen one of my plays.’ He smiled as he spoke, but I knew he wasn’t smiling.

I saw that disappointment in his eyes. I see it now. It’s not the first time this has happened. Sarah celebrated her birthday with dinner and drinks on the river, and I didn’t even get invited. It’s no fault of mine, it just happened that way. We don’t speak like we used to. She sees other faces, and so do I. 

Bzzzzzzzzzzz.

I drop the ticket on my chest as the doorbell jolts me into the room. I sit up from my bed and put the ticket on my desk beside the ring-stained coaster and the chipped mug full of old coffee.

I open the door to an outstretched hand, covered in scars, thrusting a box at me. 

‘Delivery,’ its owner announces.

‘Thank you.’

‘I came earlier, but you weren’t in.’

‘Ah, I’m sorry. I was at work.’

‘You cudda saved me the effort of coming out here if you weren’t gonna be in.’

‘Sorry? I don’t follow.’ He has a twisted mouth that gives him the appearance of scowling.

‘You get the notifications on your phone, don’t yer? They all ask: Not going to be home? Click here to let us know.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry. I must have missed that.’ I check my watch: 6:23 pm. I should leave soon. I can get there early and speak to Ben. If not, I’ll find a pub nearby and wait it out.

‘Just disappointing, you know. Talk about saving the planet, but you can’t click a button here and there to stop a wasted journey. Now I’m driving ‘round at this time and I’m hungry.’

‘You could have come tomorrow.’

‘Na, tired of this. Wanted to see your face.’

‘I’m very sorry, sir. Listen, I really am. It won’t happen again. I’m very sorry, but I need to leave. I’m going to the theatre.’

‘The theatre?’ The man throws a hand in the air like that’s the last straw. ‘Whatever,’ and he turns away shaking his head. 

I told myself I would leave by half past, but that’s not going to happen. I shut the door and chuck the delivery in the kitchen. I can’t even remember what’s in it. He could never have delivered it and I wouldn’t know. 

I haven’t got time for a shower, so I spray some deodorant that solidifies into white clumps under my arms, throw on a new, unironed shirt, and slide some cheap wax into my hair to stop it floundering. I sigh, nearly ready to go, and yet my knees, my gut, my shoulders all tell me to go lie down, to fall asleep and wake up in a week.

In the mirror, I see a face I do not recognise. Tired, uncomfortable, clothes poorly fitted like their someone else’s. Whose finger is that twitching by their side? What is that bit of hair poking out of its own accord? My posture is not so hunched as this man’s, whose shoulders lean forward to counter their weight.

I reach for the ticket, my wallet, phone and keys and head for the door. I unzip my backpack and start putting my keys inside when, ‘Michael!’

I look up, focusing on the disturbing figure. It’s my brother. Unexpectedly. 

‘George? What’s going on?’

‘Where are you going? Are we not hanging out tonight?’ He looks over at me like I owe him something.

‘I don’t know. Are we?’

‘You told me last week: come over next Thursday, we’ll cook and play games. Remember?’

‘Shit, sorry. I…’

‘You didn’t forget, did you?’

‘No, no. It’s only I have to drop something off at work.’

‘Tonight?’

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‘Yeah, well…’

‘Whatever it is, it can wait till morning. They don’t pay you enough for nightwork.’ George steps past me and slaps my shoulder. I sigh and close the door. 

There’s something strange that works through me in moments like these. My shoulders tighten. My lips purse, and my teeth grind with pressure. I have a feeling coursing through my body that says: even though the fixes are simple, you know you’re going to disappoint everybody, including yourself, and not do what you promised you would do. You find an excuse no one believes, you make up a task that is suddenly the most urgent task in the world, and you fold the truth into a paper aeroplane and toss it off the bridge, into a gust of wind, somewhere deep within you. I go and sit on my sofa and let the disappointment wash over me.

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#66 Her Feet In Paris

I have this memory from before, and I just can’t shake it.

It’s summer and we’re in Paris, for what reason I don’t know. Presumably just a holiday. Perhaps a long weekend. It’s mid-morning and we’ve made espressos and are sitting out on the balcony of our rental apartment.

“It’s so hot,” I remember her saying. Or perhaps that was me.

We get bottled water too. She’s reading a thriller and has just given me a lengthy description of her theories about how the book is going to end. I’m sitting on the edge of my chair applying sun cream for the day, while watching the little human ants amble along the streets below. There are flowerpots and plants lining the outside ledges of the windows opposite. An old woman opens her window down the way and leans out to smoke a cigarette. A black cat lies in the sun licking its paws and rubbing its head on the lower rooftop beside us. Her feet are rested up on the railings of the balcony beside me, her left foot crossed over right, and her right foot’s toes curled around the metal rail. Her toes work up and down, kneading.

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That image is so real for me. I lift up my camera and photograph the people down below, framed by her feet in the foreground. I think it’s a good shot, but I’ll have to wait till we get home and send the film off to be developed.

That image of her feet, perhaps the one in my camera, perhaps only what I saw when I was there, is haunting me. Every day I wake up, I see people, they ask me questions, and I just think about that moment. I hear the sound of the sea, for some reason, the lapping waves of the sea, and I hear the honking of Parisian cars, their motors rumbling along the Champs-Elysees, the clinking of glasses and bottles at bars and humdrum of chatter. I smell Parisian cigarettes and wines.

The people who come to see me, they’re doctors. They ask me questions like do you remember this, do you remember that, but all I can think about is her feet in Paris. I tell them that, and they look at me gravely and say, can you remember anything else? Can you remember what happened?

It’s very frustrating when they ask questions like this. I can’t help but feel that they’re asking the wrong questions. And besides, if I could remember other things they should know, don’t they think I would tell them?

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After many days of this questioning by doctors, while I sit in this uncomfortable bed with tubes and wires wrapped all around me, I finally ask: where is she?

“We can’t talk about that right now. Please stick to our questions.”

But I persist. “Where is she? Is she here? Can I see her?”

Their answers are very frustrating. “You need to focus on the accident. You need to tell us simple things, like where you were when it happened, how fast you were driving, how much you had had to drink and what. Can you remember how it happened?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” That’s how I respond. That’s what I keep saying. Because I don’t know anything, other than that something bad has happened to her. That’s what I know because I feel it. And, as a feeling, it hurts.

The following day, the doctors return. “What do you remember about the accident, Lewis?”

“I don’t remember anything about any accident. I don’t know what you’re talking about. Can you please just tell me what happened to her?”

The doctor strains his lips, rubs his eyes. “I’ll be back later,” he says.

I lean back, and realise I’m in a hospital room. There’s the blue scrubs of nurses walking past, the beeping of machines behind curtains from different patients. There’s a card next to me, on the side. I turn over and face the wall, where a single chair rests with a blue cardigan on it. That blue cardigan, I know, is important. But I can’t think how.

I close my eyes, and hear the sounds of the sea, and think again of that scene in Paris. Then the scene cuts, and we’re on a ferry. That’s the sound of the sea. The water at the back of the boat, churning in our ferry’s wake. Seagulls careen overhead, squawking.

“Hello, Lewis.” A hand reaches into my hand and grips my thumb and fingers, as though testing they’re real.

I open my eyes. There she is. Her face. Her freckles. Her dark hair. I don’t know what to say, I can’t really say anything. Thick tears slide down my cheeks, and I can’t contain a smile. Neither can she.

“Do you remember what happened?” she asks.

I can’t speak so I shake my head. I don’t know what happened. All I know is something did, and it’s changed me forever.

“Do you remember me?” she asks.

This time, I nod. Of course I remember her, her soft feet on the balcony railing and her freckles, spread wide by her smile.

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To pair the main course of Before Dawn is a fine wine for your ears. This week, it’s The Offline’s L’eau.

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#54 Before Dawn

The first thing to pierce my consciousness was birdsong. Though ‘song’ is generous. It wasn’t a trilling, a beautiful lilt, or a satisfying cadence, but a series of long, shrill monotones like a desperate communication in Morse. I thought it was a whistle before my brain kicked into gear.

My eyes opened. Soft, cloudy light dropped into my room like dry ice from beneath the curtains. As I remembered where I was - a small town half way between the conference I was speaking at in Philadelphia and my home in Pittsburgh - I became aware that I wasn’t tired at all. What hit me first was a thought, a question: if I’m not tired, then what the hell time is it? Expecting to discover that I’d overslept, I was surprised to learn, courtesy of the big red lights of the alarm clock, that it had just passed 5 o’clock in the morning. Naturally, I rolled back over, facing away from the window, and closed my eyes again. After all, nobody needs to be up at that time. My body knows what it’s doing. It’ll go to sleep again.

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But it didn’t. I didn’t. I just lay there, thinking about how I couldn’t sleep. How I should be sleeping but can’t. So, as you do when you’re lying awake at a time you shouldn’t, I started thinking about things. Big things. This conference I was at in Philly, I was speaking to two hundred doctors in training, getting them psyched about the lives they had ahead of them, reminding them of their duty to the public, their patients, and their service for their country. No different than the service I gave for my country, for twenty years in the Middle East. What struck me, what I couldn’t get out of my head, is how young they all looked. How young they all were. After all, most of them were in their early twenties. And I lay there in my sixties, with back ache, scars, irreversible signs of aging. And how trite it may seem, but I just felt tired with it all. Another conference, another long drive somewhere, a hundred questions of: what was it like? Have you shot anyone? What’s the worst thing you’ve seen?

Eeeeeek! Eeeeeek! Eeeeeek! Eeeeeek!

Those damn birds would not stop!

I flung the duvet off of me, opened the curtains and looked out for those birds. As I did, their eeking stopped, but there were no birds to be seen. Dim light revealed the stillest car park, the empty road opposite my window, the thicket of trees whose leaves wobbled in the light Pennsylvania breeze. As I watched and waited, a calm came over me, arresting the frustration that previously gripped me, and the sun poked out from behind a thick cloud, and a stream of light flooded the windscreen of a pickup Toyota in the car park, and reflected up onto me in my first-floor motel room window.

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For what reason I cannot tell you, I put on my pants and shirt, slipped on my trainers, and stepped outside. The air was biting breeze, but in the light it was warm enough. I climbed down the steps into the car park, reached the road, and made the five minute walk into the morning-quiet of the town. A bus passed at the crossroads, but beyond that, there was genuinely no evidence of human life at all. The houses were still, lights off, imposing themselves on the thickets of grass and clicking crickets around them. Cars perspired with condensation, shop windows restricted your view with their aggressive shutters. Crows squawked and watched me as I made my way.

I reached a bus stop with a sign showing a timetable of thirty or forty different stops it would make, starting in approximately - I checked my watch - one hour and twenty two minutes. It reminded me of the bus I rode to school when I was a boy, and the time I flung chewing gum across the bus and it landed in a girl’s hair. The bus driver screamed at everyone, demanding that whoever the culprit was owned up, but no one seemed to have seen me do it, and I kept my mouth shut and looked at the floor and no one said anything to me about it. I felt guilty at the time. I never meant for that girl to have a chunk of her hair cut out. I actually quite liked her. But I didn’t feel guilty enough to own up to it.

As stupid as it sounds, being a motivational speaker for talented youngsters can actually be pretty demotivating for oneself. Perhaps it’s not the same for others, but for me, I prefer to be in the action, doing the doing. That probably won’t surprise you given my career. So trying to motivate others to do the doing, well, it’s less satisfying. It’s like that thing I read in a book once: do you wanna be the Michelangelo creating the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, or the critic on his high horse who gets to write about it? Anybody can do the latter. Anybody can say a few words to inspire a few doctors or whatever, but only real talent can save a life in surgery when all hope’s gone.

I walked on a little further to where a little general store stood. Not the kind run by some big corporate body, a 7 Eleven or whatever, but the kind you know has been here for generations. The sign read Milroy & Sons General Store in faded cream paint on a red board. Outside the store was a little bench, perhaps for customers, a place for the elderly to rest before they lug their shopping home, a place for the local couple to tie their dog up while they shop. I took a seat and inspected the store. It reminded me of my father’s store, not a general store but a hardware store. He inherited the building from his father and ran his store out of it for 42 years. But when he retired, he didn’t have a real pension to look after himself, so he sold the store and lived off the cash. Enough to keep him fed and a roof over his head, not enough to really enjoy himself. When I thought back about my father, and his life, I like the idea of him going to the same store at the same time everyday, opening his shutters, opening the door, flipping his closed sign to open, and going about his day. At the time, I couldn’t think of anything more boring. All I wanted when I was young was to see action like you see in the movies, like what I heard about from the news. But now I do these speaking opportunities, I actually envy the routine of it all. At least he didn’t have to go driving around state to state, sleeping in shitty motels.

My father’s been gone for some time now. Cancer. He didn’t go without a fight, though. Of course he didn’t. He beat it three times before it finally got him. The stubbornest of old bastards. I could hear his voice then, like he was sitting on that bench next to me, saying, ‘Stop whining you sonnova bitch. You don’t even know you good you got it. A beautiful wife and family, a big house with a long enough drive to fit a few cars on, the luxury of driving around all day, seeing this beautiful world… Go and see this beautiful world.’

Without really being aware, I reached up and wiped the tears from my cheeks. Their cold touch brought me back into the moment. I looked around and the town was so still, as though everything was two-dimensional, plastic, fake, like a film set waiting to be deconstructed, or blown over in a light wind. The clouds drift apart, and a blue sky emerged with a bright, rising sun at its centre. Something about that sun, on that day, in that ghost town, had a power to shift my feeling entirely. A deep breath later, a cool hand running through my hair, I felt a renewed sense of gratitude for life, for this random, lovely, prosaic town I found myself in, and my father’s words ringing in my ears: ‘Go and see this beautiful world…’

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As always, there’s a musical accompaniment for this work. The excellent Hurray For The Riff Raff has a new album, The Past is Alive, which is just so worth listening to. Enjoy!

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#64 A Journey To Distant Lands

Our little plane rocks and jolts while I gaze out the window at the endless whiteness of thick cloud. It’s my first time in these exotic lands, where despite my studied background, despite my instinct for open-mindedness and desire for embracing culture, my impression is still pockmarked with stains of television adverts showing starved children, diseased women, and homes of sticks built over puddles, densely populated with millions of people in squalor; with movies that characterise their people as criminals willing to commit the most egregious of inhumanities, or as remote tribes who worship absurd gods, titans of anti-environment industry who’ll cut down every tree in sight for a few extra quid. But what I’m here to see is the colour, the beauty, the intelligence that exists at the heart of big, international political interests.

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I think about when I was at university, when I studied international relations and we played games - the model UN, conflict mapping, pandemic responses (we literally played the board game Pandemic). All it ever felt like to me was games, theory, hardly an education. I was a timid nineteen year old who mindlessly partied, who watched friends do bad Shakespeare, who sat at the back of lecture theatres trying not to fall asleep. I had no vision for how my life would pan out, no idea of “what I wanted to do for a living”. I met smart people who’ve now gone on to write scripts for television, to do casting for Hollywood directors, to go into Parliament or move to Silicon Valley. And I always thought I’d stutter along and find a job I liked that came with little stress, buy a cottage, read books, walk a cocker spaniel and watch the rain. So how did I end up here? On this plane? Going into this job?

The lady next to me coughs as she chokes on some peanuts and sips her bottle of water. She looks over at me embarrassed, and I offer her a smile. I turn away.

I don’t really know how I got here. I suppose it’s the same way most people end up anywhere. They meet someone who says something which inspires one event, circumstances align to mean one thing can happen and another cannot, and on and on it goes until you’re sitting on a plane staring out into the bitter white sky with fear and excitement crawling all over you.

The plane jumps all of a sudden and I feel the full force of it pushing under my bum and into my legs, and the lady next to me shrieks, discomfited. I breathe out from my mouth and in through my nose. I think of Mum and Dad and how worried they’ll be about me coming to a place like this, all on my own, faced with uncertainty. I start to wonder whether I’ve made bad mistakes, whether I’m in over my head, whether I’m going to be stranded in a land I don’t know, with no friends, no life, no ability to just hit pause and have a break.

The plane jolts up and down again and again, each time more aggressively than the last. There’s the bing of the speaker and the crackled voice of the air steward. I think of my Dad who always described planes as ‘giant tin cans’ which never elicited a positive response. I can’t put my life in the hands of a tin can. Now it’s rattling extremely, so forcefully I can’t keep my hands on the armrests either side of me, the lady’s head next to me is just a blur is different images. I close my eyes.

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I took this job for the ‘opportunity to do something different’. Because everyone needs to be feeling to be going somewhere, to do something extraordinary, to pursue ‘experience’ where home life is seen as boring. But I never felt that. I only ever felt that those people weren’t choosing to pursue ‘experience’ close to home. They were lazy. They pursued wild adventures because they had no imagination. It’s the equivalent of a teenager endlessly playing virtual reality shooter games with extreme, violent graphics, and avoiding the board games in the cupboard that might objectively be better games. It’s not artificial stimulus, but it’s on the way. That said, I’m here. I was sold on it. Sold on someone else’s dream rather than having the courage to just be me.

I open my eyes and look out the window. Clouds whip past the window violently, and I try not to think about it. The plane punches its g-force upwards and into me, so much so I thought it might crush me. And then I look again to the window, and the plane drops fast and the blood rushes up my legs and arms into my head. And then the cloud disappears and all I can see is miles upon miles of green forest and farmland, and in the distance, mountains. It’s like a scene from a Turner painting, wisps of white dotted across a canvas of colour. And somehow in that moment, the tension drains out of me. I feel a strength fill my arms and hands and legs, and a sense of empowerment that I can achieve what I want to, that I can find that richness of life we all want here. And actually, it’s not so different from other places I’ve been. How much can I struggle here, when the world’s rules are the same as mine? Gravity, the sun and the ocean, language, human connection, family, friendships, music, laughter. These things are universal, and I know them and I can know them here.

I breathe deeply as the plane descends into our landing port and I step into my journey.

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To join you on this journey is Devendra Banhart’s Baby. My recent musical discovery. Enjoy!

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#63 Pop Song In Prose

I met you as we stood over beers, our mutual friend explaining how the two of you knew each other, the smell of damp clinging to our coats, the sound of car wheels through rain sizzling in the background as the door to the pub slowly fell into place. We talked about our best and worst tube lines, how many teas and coffees we drink in a day and the impact it has on our drowsiness. I explained how I measure my heart rate and the impact caffeine has on it, and left unspoken what was happening to it in that moment.

You sipped your beer and I admired the way you embraced the froth on your lip, leaving it there like a masterpiece hung in the National Gallery. You laughed when I joked about Phil, the old geezer on reception at my work, missing half his teeth, who seems to think smoking is his full time job, and who must be the master of crosswords. You stayed for an hour, talking to me, when our mutual friend left to meet her partner for dinner.

You left and when you did you said, ‘We should do this again… I’ll see you round,’ and I left with images whirring in the projector of my mind of how that meeting might manifest, how we might get to talk one-on-one again. 

I sat at the café opposite your office, not in a creepy way, it was only around the corner from my own office. I could say I just chose to sit somewhere else today on the off chance anyone questioned me. I watched as bodies streamed in in the morning. I examined every face, hoping to see yours, disappointed by the sight of the wrong hair, the wrong smile or the mole I’d learned you never had. 

I went to everything our mutual friend invited me to, in the hope you’d be there. We went to the cinema to watch beasts trample bridges, to watch heroes die and be reborn, to watch lucky so-and-so's escape what can only be described as certain death experiences. We went ice skating, even though I hate it, and some arse cut me off and I fell to my knees, our mutual friend howling with laughter even though my knees were cut. I played shuffle board and went axe throwing despite my brittle wrists. I drank pint upon pint of Guinness, in the hope that you’d stumble in and say: “Wow, a Guinness man…” or at the very least, quietly think to yourself, this is my kinda guy. I like him.

But for all my efforts, you never came. Never turned up. Never got to see my big smile, or my bad sportsmanship or my weak bladder after alcohol. And I got blue, so blue my veins turned to ice. I stared out the window on rainy nights with Ralph, my black tabby cat. I dreamed of you, long nights with you, long laughs with you. I thought of all the horrible things songs said I could do, could sacrifice to be with you. I cried staring at your Facebook profile picture. I ate croissants for breakfast with a slowness I’d never known.

One day, I’d had enough. The blues had hit me so hard I didn’t know if I’d ever make it back, unless I dragged myself out of that hole. I found our mutual friend. I said to her: what’s the deal with this girl? I want to get to know her. She’s my kinda gal.

And our mutual friend said, ‘Oh, that’s funny. I’m meeting her in a minute. But didn’t you know?’

‘Didn’t I know what?’

‘She has a boyfriend. Long term. Been together five years.’

I tried not to let it show. My mouth dropped. The door opened, and suddenly I was surrounded by Hellos and His and How-Are-Yous, and then there she was, her beautiful, perfect smile, her giggle that I’d memorised from that night. And there he was, taller than me, a perfect stubble across his chin and cheeks, a smile stolen straight from an aftershave poster. We shook hands. ‘Good to meet you,’ I said.

‘You too, mate,’ he clapped me on the shoulder, and in my head I saw myself in third person performing the finest judo manoeuvre to floor him, my elbow landing perfectly on his neck to demonstrate how I could kill him instantly. But then our hands parted, and she said, ‘We’ve got to go. Theatre tickets.’ And they waved, and there I was, standing on my own, wondering what parallel universe this life was, a very different one from the night we spent talking together. 

I walked home in the rain without bothering to take my umbrella from my backpack pocket.

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Before we dive in, as always, there’s a musical accompaniment for each piece. Today, I share with you Matt Maltese’s As The World Caves In. I saw Matt Maltese live at Electric Brixton last Thursday, and it was pure gold. Can you believe he released this song when he was 19? He’s now 25 and about to release his fourth album. Putting the rest of us to shame.

If you’re gasping for a taste of some short fiction, chew on the steak of the archive.

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#62 Notes From Underground, Two

Last time out I mentioned my trip to Porto and the painstaking editing process that I’ve been through. While I spent most of the last newsletter talking about some of the nuances I’ve tried to capture in the book, and the politics, this week I’d like to talk a bit more about writing and editing as an act.

I started this book about 18 months ago, developing the idea over the summer of 2022. Despite my best efforts to be organised and a planner, I always find that I both start and end with a clear picture of what I want the story to be, but both those two pictures are never the same. The end product is something very different than what I set out when I started. At the beginning, I wanted to write a novel set in and around Westminster, but really focusing on the character journeys of six characters, following the theory of the six basic story arcs. For those who don’t know, this is the theory that all stories can be summarised by six basic arcs (or patterns). These are:

• The ‘rags to riches’ story (imagine a line graph with time on the x axis and ‘circumstances’ on the y axis, this would manifest as a linear rise from 0 to 100)

• ‘Tragedy’ or ‘Riches to Rags’ (this would the exact reverse of the above on a graph)

• The ‘Man In A Hole’ story (on our graph, this would be a fall followed by a rise)

• ‘Icarus’ (A rise followed by a fall)

• ‘Cinderella’ (a rise, then a fall, and then a rise again)

• ‘Oedipus’ (A fall, a rise, and then finally, another fall)

The theory suggests that all stories follow these six arcs, or some combinations thereof. It’s pretty hard to argue with. When I was developing this story, I was obsessed with the idea of having six characters in one story, each following one of these arcs. And the setting for this, and the challenge at its core, would be about the culture of politics in Britain (though those themes are similar elsewhere).

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Over time, however, what has happened has been that my ideas for what the novel should aim to do have really narrowed so that I’m now far more focused on one main character arc, and the others all sort of hang off this one. These other characters now play more of a supporting role in driving the main character on her journey, while still playing an important role in painting a picture of the difficulties in modern politics. I’ve reflected a lot on whether this is the right thing, or whether I should have stuck to my original plan and that would have ended with a more powerful, better-structured product. However, in the end, I’ve convinced myself this isn’t the case. In the end, everything that goes into the work has to be driving towards making a clear case, a clear statement about why the story matters. And at the end of the day, while the stuff about the six arcs is interesting, it ultimately has no connection to the ‘why’ question of the whole story. As in ‘why should I care as a reader?’ ‘Why should I dedicate 7-10 hours of my life reading this thing?’

In the end, what matters isn’t the structure or the theory, but the story - what happens to the people, what journey they go on, and therefore, if it’s good, what journey you go on with them.

If you read at all about the process of writing you’ll know one of the most common conclusions people come to is all the hard work happens in the editing and although I’ve written a handful of other novels before, I think this is the first time I’ve really realised that. In the past, I’ve found it very hard to let go of the ideas I had at the start of the novel, even if, somewhere at the back of my brain, I knew that I was clinging to those ideas at the cost of actually writing something good. This time around, I’ve been fairly ruthless with the editing, fully grasping the act of ‘re-writing’, of starting some bits over, of scrapping things, and really just saying: what needs to happen for this book to be better? I even went through the painstaking tedium of changing the tense of the whole thing, after I’d finished writing.

For all the musing about it, and reflecting on the process, I hope the outcome warrants the work that’s gone in!

Thanks for reading. I’d be interested to hear if others battle with these challenges and how they’ve tackled them. Next time, I promise we’ll return to some short fiction.

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Before, we do, your musical accompaniment for this piece is one of my favourite songs from my favourite album from 2023, by the immaculate Young Fathers. Just magical stuff. Here’s Geronimo, performed live for Seattle’s KEXP radio station. And here’s the full set if you dig it.

If you’re a gladiator, enter the Coliseum of the archives. Given it’s a non-fiction week, here’s some short stories to chew on:

• Song From A Nearby Window

• A Night Alone

• Hoarder

• A 21st Century Odyssey

For more by other writers I don’t know, try here, here and here.

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#61 Notes From Underground

A couple weeks ago I embarked on a week long trip to Porto, Portugal, with the express intention of taking what was a very, very drafty first draft of my latest novel, and trying to turn it into just an ordinary first draft.

Unlike my previous attempts at novels, which were in consecutive order, a literary piece about memory and loss in relationships, a Pynchonian maze of a modern drama, and a historical fiction novel about the sheer greed and ambition of pioneering Victorian engineers operating in a time of paranoia, my latest effort at hitting the literary red carpet is about the paradigms and paradoxes of power in the Westminster blob of Britain’s politics.

In particular, my novel attempts to capture the strange moment we are in, of a politics achieving all of the following mildly depressing states: 1) the lowest trust levels in known political history; 2) a spike in political violence in a country where people are proud of our seeming civility (think Jo Cox, David Amess in the UK, or in the US, Republican hopeful, Nikki Haley, seeking secret service protection this week); 3) of a patriarchal work culture (specifically in and around Parliament) that is dominated by drinking, gossip, bullying, hierarchy; 4) of a media culture that demonises innocent people; 5) a spike in exposure to and support for conspiracy theories in large part thanks to the engine of the internet. Working pretty close to all this myself, I’ve heard a lot of stories from ex-staffers of all colours who’ve had some pretty arresting experiences.

So what I am trying to do through fiction is to bring that to life, to paint a picture from within the bubble, but also to charter a course through those murky waters, present readers with that reality and the mechanics of it (which is the slightly depressing bit), as well as to shine a light on the future (which ought to be the hopeful bit!).

I’m strongly of the view that many of those poisonous traits in our politics have numbered days, in particular, around the culture of drinking in Parliament, of the bullying and opaque relationships that pervade daily business in Westminster (some good journalism on Westminster culture here, here and here). Partly, I believe this because the internet and social media are increasing transparency around some of these issues, but also because the mood of the public appears to be shifting. What is made public now wasn’t necessarily being made public twenty or thirty years ago, and people don’t necessarily feel the same fear of speaking up - though, as my novel attempts to demonstrate, those fears are very legitimate and it requires immense bravery to do so.

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As a writing exercise, it’s impossibly challenging to write with nuance. For me, writing something accurate has to capture all of the above while also addressing the following paradoxes:

• MPs who can be the worst offenders can also be principled and care about the issues they choose to campaign on.

• The same people who believe in or engage with conspiracy theories can be deeply human and sympathetic. Oftentimes, we paint them as psychologically unhinged, which may be justified (I’m no psychologist), but sometimes we forget that their reasons for doing so can be grounded in personal experiences - injustices, economic/financial hardship, loss, trauma etc. etc.

• Parliament can be a cruel place to work because of the power dynamics and the culture, but beyond personality troubles, it has many structural employment problems as well - little or no HR support, little or no perks/attractions, it’s extremely low paid (yes, even as an MP - senior managers in the civil service are paid more than MPs), little or no provision for staff with mental health needs, or other complications. Those I know who’ve worked in Parliament describe what is, in employment terms, basically the wild west. Many MPs don’t have any experiences running offices, running their own teams, they think the only skills they need is having strong political opinions and not necessarily being a leader (I’m using that word intentionally).

• The seriousness of the problems, from harassment to bullying to, in some cases, sexual assault contrasts heavily what can undeniably be the farce of parliament, of PR-politics, of the media circus, of the acting, the games and the comedic age of some traditions (even being a political junkie for fifteen years hasn’t blinded me to the school hall jeering and shouting from one side of the chamber to the other, the banging of tables during 1922 committee meetings, and the frankly terrible efforts at jokes during Prime Minister’s Questions).

My novel has multiple main characters, all with their own ambitions, conflicts, and journeys to go on. At its heart is a parliamentary staffer who is harassed by her boss and the moral, psychological and physical barriers she faces in responding to this. That in itself is, of course, a very serious subject and were it treated any other way, it wouldn’t do any justice to real victims of abuse/harassment. On the other hand, there is a character who’s quit his job in parliament to write movie scripts (I know someone who did exactly that), because the work and culture had driven them away; a character who is a germaphobe and has a fear of the outdoors, and pursues conspiracy theories online; a character who works for a charity in Westminster; the wife of the accused MP, who’s recently fallen pregnant.

So there are multiple layers to it, and therein lies both the challenge and the opportunity - to write something that truly captures the multidimensional nature of life in Westminster. While I near the end of the editing process, the biggest question I’m still battling with is whether I’ve written characters that are sufficiently multifaceted, and whether I’ve captured appropriately both the seriousness of the issue AND the farcical if-you-don’t-laugh-you’ll-cry nature of politics.

I’d be very interested to hear readers’ reflections on these issues and whether they think I’ve accurately captured them or whether I’m in my own world and talking nonsense. You can respond directly to this email to write to me personally, or use the comments feature on Substack to leave a comment. I have scattered throughout this piece some film photos I’ve recently developed from my time in Porto, keeping sane throughout the writing process.

If you’d welcome more non-fiction musings on my writing work and other topics, do holler!

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There’s so much great music to choose from at the moment, for your accompanied listening. I’m writing to you from Porto, Portugal, so I’ll include one of the soundtracks of my trip, Weak In Your Light by Nations of Language, from their amazing album Strange Disciple. Here they are playing live for KEXP.

If you’re a keen cyclist, switch gears on the bike of the archives.

For stories by other writers I wouldn’t endorse, click here or here.

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#60 Dreams of war

The clack-clack of gunfire rang in his ears. His arms felt light and electric, knowing something life altering was happening. Settled clouds of smoke from stun grenades rested in clumps in front of him, as he and his unit scaled the debris of the bombed building and advanced on their enemy.

Mikey stretched out a hand in front of him as he indicated which way they were to go and they all kept their eyes and weapons attentive to any movement. A stray cat sprinted between two buildings but they were all sharp enough not to start spraying. Somewhere in the distance, horror rumbled.

Jacob followed Mikey and the others. They turned a corner, and Mikey sprayed. He turned back. ‘Two down,’ he said, before advancing. Mikey jumped forward across a doorway, while Jacob turned to look in. He had heard that, where this war is, is home to 4 in 5 of the world’s population living in famine. That seems astonishing to him. Of all 8 billion people in the world. He knows he’s the enemy, but he’s also human and he feels a deep empathy for anyone enduring that kind of suffering.

The rest of his unit had passed the doorway, but something drew him in. He entered, and stepped forward, and out of the darkness a face emerged, two hands in front of their face, those terrified eyes wavering at him. 

The instructions had been to take prisoners, but their unit leader was a take no prisoners type, kill or be killed. The man in front of him, on his knees with hands in the air, was muttering something in gibberish. Jacob couldn’t understand a word of it. He gave the man some water from his flask and some biscuits from his pocket, and turned around and ran after his unit.

The news says this is one of the most complicated wars of all time. Scraps over a tiny portion of land but a geopolitical nightmare. The US, China, most of Europe and the Middle East all sticking their fingers in to try and influence the outcome. Militia groups, terrorist organisations, doing whatever the hell they want like it’s the wild west. Jacob thinks it's absurd. Why descend into such chaos, when most conflicts could be hashed out in a room without the need for any actual fighting. 

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‘Jacob, are you coming?’ That’s his mum calling. He better go downstairs.

They sit for breakfast. It’s a Tuesday. They’re having eggs on toast.

‘Have you been following this war?’ Jacob asks.

‘What war?’

‘The one all over the news!’

‘Oh, I see. No, not really. It’s all so depressing.’

‘Have you?’ Jacob’s father asks as he pulls an egg apart with his knife and fork and stuffs it in his mouth.

‘I can’t stop thinking about it. I think I could fix it, you know, if I were involved.’

‘How would you do that?’

‘Negotiation.’

‘I’m sure there are people who are trying.’

‘Well, they’re not trying very hard.’

‘Have you packed your bags for school?’

‘No.’

‘Why not? We need to leave in ten minutes…’

‘I was reading the news.’

‘Reading the news… At 15… You are a strange boy…’

Jacob finishes his egg on toast, drinks his orange juice and runs up the stairs like he’s trying to avoid getting shot. He combat-roles across the landing and packs his bags in three minutes. He’s ready to leave the house in six. 

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Lotte battles with Prinz, her cat, to get him to settle down for a self portrait.

Your accompanied listening this week is Iemanjá by Tapioca, the song I was listening to when preparing this post!

If you’re a keen traveller, step aboard the plane of the archives.

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#59 Self Portrait With A Cat

The sun pokes through dense clouds. There’s a light wind. It’s not cold enough to stop me. I walk up the spiral stairs to the rooftop to find Prinz, watching the birds on the opposite roof, parading up and down the wall as he seeks a route to the birds.

‘Prinz, get down! Get down!’ He never listens to me. I scoop him up under his belly, his paws spread out wide like helicopter propellers as I put him down on the floor, set up my easel and canvas and take a seat. 

I prepare my paints, wet my brushes and I stare at the canvas. It’s been four days now since I opened this studio, and I’m yet to set paint to canvas. I’m still understanding what it is I want to say. Of course, I know I want to paint the New Woman, and to say something about identity at a time when identities are in flux. But then, the skill and mastery is not in knowing what to say, but how to say it.

Prinz meows and leaps onto my lap and curls into a ball. I stroke him habitually, without really thinking. A self portrait with Prinz! Yes! That’s it, that’s what I will paint!

I go and get a mirror and position it behind the canvas, to one side. I take Prinz in my arms, and sit down again in front of the canvas. I start to outline my shape, and then Prinz’s shape. The skyline behind me is dim and grey. Indeed, I am dim and grey today. A little flushed in the cheeks. But dim and grey. 

Prinz wriggles in my hands, his soft fur coming out so easily between my fingers. There’s a rush through me as my hands work, and I only hope that I’m not reacting - to the need to paint, to the expectation set on me by my peers, colleagues, family, to my desire for success. Nothing can be worse for art than pandering to need. I must remember that. I’m not painting for the sake of it. I’m painting for myself. Because I need it. Because I have something inside that needs to get out. And even if I’m just painting little Prinz and me, I need to have that in the forefront of my mind. Waste no opportunity. 

Prinz rolls onto his back and starts to nuzzle himself.

‘Stop that! Stay still!’ I command, but he does not listen. 

A pigeon lands on the wall, but as soon as it spots Prinz, it flutters off again. At the sound of its wings, Prinz rights himself and, positioned across my legs, takes the stance of a lion in battle. 

‘Settle down!’ He jumps off me, knocking the table with my paints on, but not sending it over, and leaps up onto the wall. I half expect him to launch himself over the side! ‘Get down, for goodness’ sake!’

I go to collect Prinz, but he scuttles away, out of reach. I try to berate him but he does not listen. I get a saucer of milk from the kitchen and put it down beside my chair. That gets his attention. Prinz circles me, his tail high, dancing about my legs. He laps up the milk, and meows in satisfaction. I pick him and he settles in my lap. His eyes mellow.

I continue painting, outlining both our bodies, and sigh. A gust of wind brushes my short hair across my face. I stroke Prinz with my other hand, between the ears, and he purrs.

Then, out of nowhere, a bang! I look up and the neighbour’s slapping a rug against the wall, dust beating out of it. Prinz jumps to his feet, his ears pricked, and he looks around him with those alert eyes. He jumps down again and goes off in search. We’re never going to get this damned painting done. I try to lure Prinz with more milk but he’s clearly had enough. 

What will I do? When he’s in this sort of mood, there really is no reasoning with him. He’s a nuisance sometimes. His attention flits about every which way like a weather vane in a hurricane.

Then I remember that old trick my mother showed me with our old cat, Oskar. Brandy! I go find a bottle of brandy and approach Prinz. He licks the lip of the bottle and then lets me pick him up and carry him back to the chair. Again, he starts to snooze in my lap as I paint. But, out of nowhere, his eyes open, he stands up, and tries to jump down. I grab him with both hands around his waist and he stretches out like he might be able to wriggle out of my hands. ‘Stay! Stay still, Prinz!’ He does not listen. He wriggles and wriggles but I don’t let go. I try to pull him into me but he rotates to face me, reaches forward and scratches all the way down my forearm, from elbow to hand!

‘Ow!’ I instinctively let go, and Prinz runs away, inside, where I cannot find him.

I stare at the scratch on my arm, the blood seeping out onto my skin. The canvas, a chaotic mess of lines, flicks and squiggles. What the hell is that?

I take in the surroundings for no other reason than it’s something to do while I sigh, catch my breath, regain myself. 

I pick up the brushes again and start to work on myself, my face and shoulders, the surrounding skyline. I don’t need Prinz for that bit. An hour, two hours pass and there’s no sign of Prinz. I think about my career, my work, and what I want to say. I think I have something there, but perhaps it’s better to just paint and see what emerges. 

Strange, Prinz is always up here, on the balcony, unless I’ve locked the doors. But no, nothing. I’ve not seen him at all.

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Then, from behind the chimney, Prinz emerges with a little leap, landing on the wall he paraded earlier. Stranger still, as I’m sure he went downstairs earlier and I didn’t see him come back up. But then here he is. He stops in the middle of the wall, and turns to stare at me.

‘What do you want Prinz?’

‘I want you to stop painting, Lotte,’ Prinz returns. He has a deep voice.

‘Why?’

‘Your work lacks voice, lacks value. You have nothing to say.’

‘Nothing?’

‘Well, nothing that hasn’t been said. Nothing new.’

Prinz rubs behind his ears with one paw and yawns, before lying down, stretched out like a queen on a chaise longue. The arrogance!

‘There are bigger things happening in the world than your art can express. Think about politics and war, and economics, and human suffering. These things are real. What you are doing, well, it’s nothing. Face it, you’re nothing. Worthless. You’ll never run a successful studio. Never sell a work of art. Just whittle away until you run out of money, scrape by somehow, until you’re old and ill and realising you’ve wasted your time.’

‘That’s not very nice, Prinz.’

‘Well, it’s the truth.’

I put my head in my hands. And then I reach for the brandy and take a sip. Prinz stands, jumps down from the wall, and approaches me. He reaches both paws up onto my legs, and I offer him some brandy. He laps it up, both paws around the bottle’s neck, until I pull it away to stop him. ‘Thank you,’ he says politely. He leaps up onto my lap and settles down into a long sleep. 

I continue painting all day, until the self portrait is complete. 

When it’s done, I stare at it and stare at it and wonder, have I done something good after all?

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Enjoy!

Your paired listening to start the year is House of Woodcock, composed by Jonny Greenwood, for the film Phantom Thread from 2017. Here it is as part of the opening scene from the movie, an excellent work from my favourite director, Paul Thomas Anderson.

If you have a voracious appetite, eat the baked goods of the archives.

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#58 Vignettes

A Living Nightmare

Please don’t call my name. Please. Please. Please. Please.

‘And the winner of this year’s award is…’

This is the moment he’s dreaded for so long. Getting up on stage with hundreds of eyes staring at him. Having to, God forbid, “say a few words”. A few words? A few goddamn words? And for what, for some industry award he didn’t know existed two weeks ago. 

I’d like to dedicate this award to my mother and father who, despite not understanding exactly what it is I do for a living, indeed, not actually knowing who my employer is, inspired me to get here every single day. Without them this would not have been possible, for, naturally, I would not have existed in the world had they not… you know… well… We don’t need to go there. And my fantastic team who… complain about their holiday allowance all the time and… leave their mugs piled in the sink rather than washing them up and… clock off at five minutes to five every day despite what the leadership team decree…

No, thank you.

‘David!’

Oh my God. It’s me. It’s me. He panics. His legs are standing but they feel like jelly. He’s successfully slid out the chair from under him. He nods at the people on his table and does up one button on his jacket so he look marginally smarter. 

Wow, an award. Maybe it is quite exciting. Maybe it is kind of cool. As he makes his way to the stage he thinks, I can put it on the mantelpiece where the birthday cards from two months ago are, the ones I haven’t yet taken down.

He climbs the steps up onto the stage and approaches Ralph, the host. They shake hands.

‘Congratulations, David, here’s your award.’ I take the trophy and look it over once. ‘Let’s take a few photos. Tell me, David, do you enjoy your work?’

‘David… No, no, my name is Michael.’

‘Michael?’

‘Well, why the hell did you come up then?’

‘What? You called my name.’

‘We called David’s name.’

He looks out to the room, hundreds of blank, pale faces staring at him.

‘But I won the trophy.’

‘I don’t think you did.’ Ralph snatches the trophy back out of his hands.

‘B-’

‘Are you David?’ Ralph looks over Michael’s shoulder. There’s another man standing by the steps awkwardly. He nods.

‘Right, come on up here. You,’ he points at me, ‘you keen bean, get back to your seat…’ He turns to the audience. ‘There’s always one,’ and he rolls his eyes.

‘I was sure you said my name.’

‘Well, go take your seat, old man,’ the host laughs, and the room joins in too.

Michael goes and sits down at his table, takes a gulp of wine. 

Sarah, next to him, leans over and says, ‘Just think, at least you were fully clothed. It could have been a lot worse.’

Michael sinks into his chair and wishes everyone would die.

A Situational Comedy

‘Have you ever been here before?’ he says. 

Oh god, he’s not… flirting with me… is he?

‘Where?’

‘To Mexico. Where this flight is headed?’

‘Oh… sorry. No.’

‘I have,’ he nods reflectively.

‘Ok.’

‘Beautiful beaches.’

‘Sure.’

‘Where are you headed once we land?’

Do I have to tell him? What if he follows me and knocks on my hotel door at night. Just lie. ‘Staying in Mexico City.’

‘Ah, me too!’ Sure you are.

I nod in a way, intentionally, to suggest this conversation is over.

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‘You’re a very beautiful woman,’ he says. Christ, no. It’s happening. ‘Would you like to go for a drink with me in the city?’

‘Listen Casanova, I’m not really much of a talker. I’m trying to read my book here. And anyway, even if I were a talker, and interested, I’m not going for a drink with anyone whose opener is have you ever been here before?’ 

His back straightens and he puts both hands up. ‘There’s no need to be rude about it.’

I pull a face at him like, yeah, sure, you can have your higher ground, you bastard.

Out of nowhere, the clumsiest man in the world appears, struggling to navigate the aisle. He’s like a praying mantis caught out of his natural habitat. ‘Oh, oh, sorry!’ he says, as he accidentally opens one of the overhead lockers with his elbow, and someone’s bags come launching out at him, drowning him on the floor. He fumbles them back into the locker as the surrounding spectators gawk at him.

He turns and knocks a little girl’s headphones off her head. ‘Oh, oh, oh so-so-sorry!’ He reaches down for the headphones and picks them up, replaces them on the girl’s head and the mother stares at him while he stares back, as they consider why his hands are on her daughter’s ears for an unnecessarily long time. He jumps back frightfully and lands in the lap of the person on the other side of the aisle. 

‘Ah, what the hell?’

‘So-so-sorry.’

They push him off.

Finally, this man makes his way down to me. Of course he does. He stops, looks at me. And then points at the seat between me and Casanova.

‘I think a girl’s sitting there,’ I say.

‘Oh, oh, yes, we’re swapping.’

‘Why?’

‘She didn’t like the way he,’ he looks over at Casanova, his eyes wide, frightful, ‘stared at everyone.’ 

‘That’s good enough for me,’ I say. I unbuckle my seat to stand and let him in but he stops me.

‘Ah, no, no, don’t worry. I-I-I don’t want to bother you.’ He lifts one long leg, the longest leg I’ve ever seen, and reaches it over me and into the space for the middle seat. When he leans in, he gets a blast of air from the fan which sends him into a frenzy. His head tilts forward and he loses his balance, landing on me face first.

‘What the hell!’ Now this man is sitting with one leg either side of me and he can’t control himself. He fumbles his way into the seat. ‘S-s-s-sorry!’

‘I’m going to the loo,’ I say.

When I get there, I lock myself in and stare at my facade in the mirror. Jesus Christ. How did I get here? How does this happen? There are millions of people who could be on this flight and I’ve got to sit next to these two… And I’ve barely slept. Had to get up at 4am. My eyes are so goddamn bloodshot. And… forget it…

I splash my face with water, take a deep breath, and reach for the door lock to let myself out. The door won’t open. The lock is jammed. I try it two, three, four times. And then I really tug it and the whole door makes this big clattering sound. No, nothing. Christ!

I bang on the door and shout. ‘Hey! Hey! I’m stuck in here! Can someone let me out?’ And of course, I get claustrophobic too. The air is so damn stale here.

A girl from the cabin crew finally arrives. ‘Hi, is it the lock that’s stuck?’

‘Yes!’

‘You have to give it a wiggle.’

‘No shit!’

‘So you’ve tried that?’

‘Of course I’ve tried that. What do you think I’ve been doing?’

‘Please, ma’am, calm down. We’ll get you out of there. There’s no need to be short with me.’

‘I’ll be short with whoever the hell I want. I’m the one stuck in here.’

‘Right.’

God, I can’t handle it. The heat. The exhaustion. My nerves feel electrified, like a vein or a blood vessel or something might burst. I run my fingers through my hair. 

‘Ok, cabin crew girl? You there? Get out the way, please.’

I charge at the door with the whole two steps run-up I’m afforded. Nothing happens. I try again. To. Barge. Down. This. God. Damn. Door. 

Nothing.

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A fire rages, and I lift a foot and thrust it at the door with everything I have. One of the panels of the door cracks, and I do it again and again and again until there’s a hole. ‘Ahhhhhhhh,’ I scream throughout this whole episode. 

‘Lady, calm down!’

‘No!’

I clamber out the hole, hyperventilating. ‘Thank God for that.’

‘Are you okay?’ she asks.

‘Oh yeah, I’m fine,’ I say sarcastically, huffing to catch my breath. 

‘Would you like an upgrade to first class?’

‘Sure… That’ll do it.’

She nods.

‘Your door’s broken by the way.’ I point at the door with its massive hole.

‘Yes, it is.’ She nods.

I turn around to return to my seat, and the whole flight seems to be standing, staring at me, a hundred mouths agape. 

There’s a great thump and movement at the back. The praying mantis has tripped over his shoelace and landed in the aisle. He turns his head towards me, smiles, and offers a Looney Tunes wave. 

Get me off this goddamn flight.

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In this story, Simon, an aspiring actor playing Santa at a Christmas market, thinks he’s reaching rock bottom when a miracle unfolds.

Last week, I went to see a newish band called Jockstrap. Their music is a beautiful mish-mash of pop, ethereal ballad, and nightclub energy. It’s curious and weird and thoroughly addictive. I saw them at the Barbican Hall in London, with a full orchestra in support. Your paired listening is the mesmerising Concrete Over Water performed for the Mercury Prize earlier this year.

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#57 A Tale of Seasonal Redemption

1974.

One.

The cigarette scalds his lip. 

‘Bugger!’ he mutters as a cloud of breath and soggy fag smoke lingers in front of him. Despite the swearing, he doesn’t mind it so much as the cold in his fingers hurts more than the burn. He sucks at the final clutches of his cigarette, winces before exhaling, and reaches into his pocket for another one. Lighting it hastily, he sucks again, and rubs his tired eyes with the knuckles he can’t feel.

‘Simon! Simon! Come on, we ain’t payin’ you to smoke fags. We need ye back out there.’ Jerry, the manager, is a fatty with pink cheeks who says money is time and time is money. But what if time is just time? Money was made by men, but Time was made by… well, the damn universe or something. ‘And put your beard back on.’

‘I don’t want to put my beard back on.’

‘Put that beard on, Si, or you’re not gettin’ paid.’

‘B-’

‘Ah! No questions. I make the rules. You stick to them.’

Jerry walks back, checking some notes on his clipboard, and Simon throws the fag into a puddle and phlegms on the pavement. There’s a stabbing at the back of his head and it throbs in sync with the terse jingle of the carousel and the flashing lights of the carnival around him. The smell of burning sugar and roasted chestnuts claws at his neglected appetite. 

‘You’re not Santa!’ a little boy, astray from the main path, shouts up at him.

‘Timothy, stop that. You’re not to go back there. Come here.’ A mother calls after the boy, who stares at Simon with grave mistrust in his eyes. 

‘I’m so sorry,’ the mother says. 

‘That’s no way to speak to Santa,’ Simon replies, looking down at Timothy. ‘After all, I’m the man with all your presents.’ He crouches down to the boy’s level. ‘Do you want your presents this year?’

‘You don’t have my presents because you’re not Santa! Santa doesn’t smoke cigarettes!’

Simon’s back straightens. What the hell does he say to that?

‘Well, kid, you clearly don’t know Santa. Of course, he smokes. He smokes 20 a day! How else do you think I keep warm up there in the sky and when I’m back in the North Pole? It’s all that smoke inside me, warming me up like a log burner in a country house.’

He catches the mother’s eye, who’s glaring at him with what-the-hell-are-you-talking-about eyes.

‘Right, I’ve got a job to do,’ Simon sighs. ‘Excuse me.’

As Simon passes the kid, he receives a strong kick to the shin (so strong, he’s sure the kid’s boots are metal-plated… or maybe it just hurts more in the cold). 

‘Hey! What was that?’ Simon turns around and the boy has a grin on his face. The mother didn’t see it.

Simon reaches down and pushes the kid’s head and he drops to the floor.

‘Ow!’ the kid cries.

‘What are you doing?’ the mother starts.

‘Your kid kicked me, the little sh-’

‘Simon, what is going on here?’ 

Jerry’s back.

‘This kid jus’ kicked me for no good reason.’

‘Is that so?’ Jerry asks like a regular high court judge.

‘Well, yes. But then this man dressed as Santa pushed my son over. Palm to head!’

Jerry turns to Simon. ‘Is this true?’

‘The kid kicked me, Jerry…’

Jerry goes quiet for a moment before asking the mother to leave with her son. 

‘Simon, you can’t be pushing kids over like that.’

‘I know, I’m sorry.’

‘Look, we’ve got twenty minutes left until we close up. Can you just get through that and we’ll call it a night?’

‘Yeah… Yeah… Course…’

‘Thank you. Right, on you go.’

Simon gets through the twenty minutes, and when I say gets through, he sits in his chair and smiles with the children and asks, ‘What do you want for Christmas?’ But he has no cheer, no smile, and two children left asking their parents why Santa smells like their grandfather’s cardigans.

‘John!’ Simon calls. ‘A quick one at the pub? I could do with it.’

‘Aye,’ John calls back, pulling a kink out of his unnecessarily gripping elf tights. ‘Let me change, I can’t go anywhere looking like this. I’d go home with a black eye.’

‘But I haven’t got anything to change into…’ 

‘Si, I ain’t goin’ nowhere dressed as an elf. If you want your pint, you’ll go with regular old John.’

Two.

The pub’s his favourite place to be. The beer-soaked bar smells sweet and there’s warmth that spreads life back into his fingers, his cheeks and his heart. They get lagers and inhabit a small table opposite the bar, with beer rings all over and legs of inconsistent length.

He lights a cigarette and reaches for the ashtray.

‘How’d it go this morning with the TV role?’

‘Oh, so, so. I think I performed well. Although they want an Irish boy and my Irish accent’s about as good as a long turd.’

‘Mm,’ John grunts. What was the role again?’

‘Lobby boy at a desolate hotel, set in Devon or Cornwall somewhere. Supposed to be a comedy but the script ain’t all funny.’

‘They do have odd ideas, don’t they, these writer types.’

‘They get cocky, they do. They ain’t just writing what people want. After they’ve done two or three good gigs, they just write what they want and tell the world they’re Shakespeare reincarnated.’

Simon’s hands shake a little as he pulls at the corners of his eyes.

‘How about you?’

‘Aye, yesterday I got a call back for that stage show. The murder mystery one.’

‘You did?’

‘Yeah.’

‘And… the role?’

‘Police officer.’

‘Ha, ha, ha!’ Simon erupts. ‘You’re playin’ a goddamn police officer!’

‘Well, I ain’t got the role yet.’

‘What are the chances?!’

‘Tell me, Si, when was your last actual gig?’

Simon’s face drops. ‘Why in hell’s name would y’ask that, John… You know the answer too well.’

‘I know. It’s just been so long. And play’n Santa’s little grotto for spoiled kids ain’t doin’ it for me.’

‘Me either. Some little brat shouted at me today. Telling me I ain’t Santa, like don’t I bleedin’ know it.’

John shakes his head.

‘I’m just so tired, John. My flat in Camden’s a shitehole, and this Santa job is… is… demeanin’, that’s what is. Demeanin’...’

‘At least you’re Santa. I gotta wear tights. Tights for chrissake.’

‘There ain’t no hierarchy in this line of work, John. We’re all in the bleedin’ gutter.’

‘Another beer?’

‘Yea…’

John gets two more beers, froth sliding down their outer walls, onto his hands as he careens back to the table.

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Three.

‘We’re actors, we are. TV, film, that sorta thing.’

John’s chatting to the girl at the next table. She’s smiling a lot at him, but Simon can’t stop staring at her teeth: why are they so short? All he can see is black spaces between them, and gums, such pink gums.

‘Wow, what kind of roles do you get? Apart from Santa, of course,’ she nods at Simon who smiles back, a bitter smile shadowing his loathing.

‘Oh that, well, that’s just a side gig. I’m play’n a police officer in a play.’

‘You are?’ She laughs hysterically to John’s consternation.

‘Yeah.’

‘Will you get handcuffs?’

‘Yeah…’

The girl sniggers and curls her cheek into her coat. Simon’s earmarked her as a regular dunce.

‘I’m gettin’ another pint,’ he says.

‘Ah yeah, can you’s get me one too? And one here for…’

‘Maureen.’

‘Right, yeah. One for Maureen?’

Err, no? Simon thinks to himself. But John’s gone back to chatting to her and he technically does owe John two pints, so that can be his two. 

He comes back with the pints. Neither of them even says thank you. Simon sips his beer and watches the crowds around the pub, most of whom glance at him when he looks over, wondering why on earth he’s dressed as Santa in the pub. Next thing he knows, his pint is finished and the other two have barely started theirs.

He won’t admit it publicly but he feels wicked about John’s callback. He hasn’t had a callback since… he has to think… March… Nearly 9 months… And even then, he was flatly rejected twelve seconds after finishing his audition. It’s nasty work trying to be an actor. Represents the worst of humanity. Thousands upon thousands of people who say they’ve got talent, but only a few of them actually do. And then they’re treated like lambs in a pen, one by one waiting to have their coats shaved and possibly shot for someone’s dinner.

Simon knows things get dangerous when he gets… blue. He does things he wishes he’d never done. Things that make him hate himself. And it gets worse after a fair few pints. He better save himself.

‘I’m going home,’ he says to John and the girl. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’

‘See you, Si.’

‘Bye,’ Maureen calls after him, her gums protruding out the lasting image she leaves with him.

Simon steps into the cold. Tears are bunching up around his eyes but he won’t admit the fact. He’s shivering, and he rubs his cheeks with his hands. The bones in his legs ache, and the joints that connect his arms to his shoulders are burning. His fingers sting. He’s just so goddamn tired.

He walks down the main road, and some guy bumps his shoulder.

‘Scuse me,’ he says.

‘Watch yourself, mate.’

‘Piss off,’ Simon spits back.

‘What did you say?’

‘Nothing.’

Simon turns to walk away, and closes his eyes, hoping that’s the end of it.

‘No, go on. What did you say?’

‘Nothing.’ He walks briskly but he can hear the man’s footsteps behind him. He looks back and he’s getting closer, so Simon breaks into a run. 

‘Oi! Santa! Get back here!’

Simon runs and realises he can actually run quite fast, despite the weight of this damn Santa suit.

No, he thinks. I won’t be dragged back by the weight of this bleedin’ world. I can do whatever I want. I know I’m extraordinary. I know I’m talented. I know I can be whatever in Christ’s name I want to be. 

All of a sudden, there’s a rocketing whoosh over his head, and a hurricane wind sweeps him forward. A great shadow folds over him. ‘What in the fu-’ but he can’t finish his sentence. He looks up and is rendered totally speechless by… is that… are they… hooves? And… some sorta bleedin’ carriage…?

Four.

Back in the pub, John’s got one hand around Maureen’s waist. He can’t see anything around him. There might as well be no one else in the pub, it’s just him, little inebriated John, and Maureen, lovely, beautiful Maureen. She’s the most beautiful girl in the world right now. He leans in for a kiss.

‘Ey,’ she interrupts him. ‘That yours?’

John opens his eyes and looks where Maureen’s looking. She’s pointing at their table, where Simon’s pint glass is standing on its own. In the middle of the table is a black wallet. He burps a little.

‘Ah, shit. It’s Si’s.’

‘We should…’ she says.

‘Yeah…’

John grabs the wallet and runs out into the street, closely followed by Maureen. He looks both ways, but can’t see him. ‘Si!’ he shouts. ‘You forgot your wallet!’

His voice seems to echo into the city darkness, nothing happens.

‘What’s that?’ Maureen says, pointing up into the sky.

John looks up, and the silhouette of a long carriage, being pulled along, drifts between clouds.

‘Some feckin’ prank probably. A light show for kids.’

‘Maybe your friend Simon really is Santa.’

‘Some goddamn actor if he is.’

Maureen giggles and John notices how gummy she is beneath the streetlight. 

‘Come on,’ he says. ‘I need another pint.’ He tucks Simon’s wallet into his pocket and they delve back into the honey pot of the warm London pub.

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Your paired listening is the song from which the lyrics in the story came, written by Thom Yorke - of Radiohead and The Smile fame - for the beautiful horror film Suspiria, which I thoroughly recommend if you want to be properly terrified. This is a soul-snatching cover by the 25-year-old British Saxophonist, Jess Gillam MBE. One of my favourite pieces from recent years.

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#56 Song From A Nearby Window

This pandemic never ends. I’ve been in my apartment for nine straight weeks. There’s a pile of plates in the kitchen which started to accumulate in week two. I’ve watched so much TV I now dream about its characters more than people I actually know. They seem closer to me than those I’ve known for years, than friends I grew up with.

And my work, my work is slowly killing me. The constant pinging and binging of colleagues desperately pretending to be busy.

Do you know anything about this project?

Do you want to join that call?

Have you heard from such and such a person?

If the city around me was literally up in flames, like Moscow when Napoleon arrived, I’m convinced my colleagues would still ring me up and ask: What’s the status of that report for Bla Bla Bla Ltd.?

Today, I’ve received 400 notifications, whether that’s emails or messages or whatever else. I know because I didn’t reply to a single one and then I checked at the end of the day. I’m now on a call with my manager who’s asking where the hell I’ve been all day.

‘I’ve been working on that research project. Desk research. I needed to focus so I muted my emails and notifications.’

‘But what if we needed to contact you? What if it was urgent?’

‘Everything’s always urgent, Chris. Meaning nothing is urgent.’

‘I’m your boss here, remember. You shouldn’t speak up to me like that. I’m putting you on a warning. Formal warning. One for not messaging or emailing anyone, and one for talking to me like that. Unacceptable.’

‘Oh, piss off, Chris.’ I slam shut my laptop, and throw it at the wall. As it drifts through the air, my eyes widen as I consider the consequences of my actions. Is this what isolation does? Is this what being driven crazy actually looks like?

I half expect it to shatter into a thousand pieces while I watch in slow motion. Perhaps the shards will bounce back and cut me all over. Perhaps there’ll be a small explosion and I’ll be left here, singed, like a Looney Tunes skit. But in reality, it hits the wall with a thump, and a bit of a squeak as its innards beg for forgiveness.

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I open the laptop again and hit the buttons, but nothing happens. On any normal day, this would not affect me at all, other than to cause mild frustration. If anything, I might find it funny. But today, tears build up around my eyes. It all feels inevitable, inevitably cruel, and I ask myself: Am I ever going to catch a break?

I sink to my knees in a way I can only do knowing no one is around. I’m in the pitiful company of no one at all.

With my head in my hands, a distant voice emerges. It’s soft and comforting. Like a lullaby. Its words drift all around me, embrace me, like a pair of cold arms.

I haven’t heard a real voice, other than the guy who delivers my food shopping, for the best part of a month.

It’s a woman’s voice, and she’s singing.

‘This is a waltz thinking about our bodies
What they mean for our salvation
The little clothes that we stand up in
Just the ground on which we stand
Is the darkness ours to take?
Bathed in lightness, bathed in heat’

As she sings her voice gets louder. I scramble around to find where it’s coming from. I look out the window of my room, but all I can see is the fog hanging over the courtyard. All the windows are shut, their lights off, curtains closed.

I run to the bathroom window, but there’s nothing there. The window of the spare room, empty as it always is. And then the kitchen. In the kitchen, the voice amplifies again, so I must be closer.

I clamber up onto the counter beside the sink, open the window and look out for her. There’s nobody there, but the voice sounds so near. And yet, at the same time, it could be an echo from far away.

Her voice is so beautiful. I crawl up into myself, rest my head on the window and listen.

The voice soon finishes and an emptiness beds in. I get on with my evening: cook dinner, eat, watch TV, read a book. All the while, though, in the back of my head, I’m thinking about her voice. Will I ever hear it again? Where did it come from? Who is she?

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The following day comes and passes the same as yesterday. I have to use my personal laptop while they courier me a new one. A lecture from Chris. A grovelling apology from me. 376 notifications. Another phone call.

As the day ends, however, at the same time as yesterday, her voice returns.

All is well, as long as we keep spinning
Here and now, death still behind a wall
When the old songs and laughter we do
Are forgiven always and never been true

I scramble up on my kitchen counter again and look out for her, but there’s nothing. When she stops, the words ring in my ears:

All is well, as long as we keep spinning…

What they mean for our salvation…

The next day, the same thing happens. And again, I clamber up on the kitchen counter and listen to her voice. I close my eyes as she sings:

When I arrive, will you come and find me?
Or in a crowd, be one of them?
Wore the wrong sign back beside her
No tomorrow's at peace

I open my eyes, peer out of the window and, to my surprise, in the window of a flat in the building opposite, there’s a woman standing there, her pale, sickly face staring at mine. And she’s singing.

The most overwhelming cold attacks me, seeps through my bones, and my face flushes like someone’s just walked in on me getting dressed. I leap down from the kitchen counter, slide my trainers on and run out the front door. Her voice keeps ringing:

Is the darkness ours to take?
Bathed in lightness, bathed in heat

I run down the three flights of stairs to the ground, sprint across my building and over to hers. The door’s shut, but then someone walks out on the other side. I sprint over and catch it before it shuts. I run up the stairs, look over for my flat to find the one opposite. Turn left and run.

Here it is.

It must be here.

I bang on the door but nothing happens. I look in the window but there’s only darkness. I look in the window next door. Nothing. Her voice is so painfully loud now:

When I arrive, will you come and find me?
Or in a crowd, be one of them?

The door to this next apartment is wide open. I step inside and there’s nothing. No one. Not even any furniture. And it’s so cold I start to shiver. In the middle of the room is an empty photo frame, with the glass cracked. I pick it up and stare into it, my own broken reflection the only thing looking back.

The voice now has stopped. Now there’s no sound at all. The only presence is that of the darkness, swallowing me up.

And I know now, I’ll never hear it again.

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Your accompanying listening for this story is Dry Cleaning’s hotly-pressed, frequent flyer: Scratchcard Lanyard (with an excellent music video).

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#55 Encounters With An Old Man

I have to leave. I can’t take it any longer. All the shouting, the behind-the-back games, the favouritism and the nepotism. I’ve been here two-and-a-half years and it’s time for me to get out of this job.

The truth is, I’ve been relatively successful. Some would say I’m one of the favourites. I’ve been promoted twice. The CEO likes me. He invited me to play golf with him. He took me to the posh restaurant around the corner for lunch, on the company card. 

I grab my coat and head for the door. 11:42 am and I’m already fed up.

‘Where are you going?’ Lisa, my manager, asks.

‘Fresh air. Feel a bit sick.’

‘Don’t be long, we need to finish that paper.’

‘Yep.’

Lisa… lovely person, decent manager, but last week everyone heard that she’d been sleeping with one of the directors. One who’s married. Yeah, she’s pretty, but he’s seventeen years older than her. Why do they do it? Everyone in this situation has embarrassed themselves and for what? Is it about the sex or is it about power? Promotions? Do I even want to know?

There’s a park next to the office but it’s a little too close. I don’t want to be seen by anyone. I walk along the Thames to the little gardens by the police headquarters. There’s a scattering of pigeons atop a statue, a few oddballs sitting on the grass. A homeless man lying along a bench, his face hidden.

Last week, this new director started: Martin. He’d previously worked in a different sector, construction or gambling or something like that. He’s a man’s man. Meaning he’s short and loud and in your face. You can see him already. On his second day, he took me for a meeting and told me his plans to take over the business: ‘You and me, mate. We can turn this pile of shit into something good.’ And then he took me on a tour of his career history. Quite a long list for a fairly young guy. Red flags all over. Some quick maths told me he’d been at each company for an average of seven months. Over the course of about 16 years, give or take.

This morning, he told me to drop everything I had going on and to provide a one-page report on what had caused the recent changes in the stock of Amazon, Apple and Google. Amazon, Apple and Google? Really? He told me it was for a new client he’d brought on and that it was urgent. Naturally, I dropped everything and got to work. When I finished, he stood in front of me, reading it diligently. His little wiry glasses were a superficial attempt at making himself seem like an intellectual. Next thing, he scrunched the paper up, tossed it in the bin and said: ‘Good work. It wasn’t actually for a client. I just wanted to test you. Make sure you were worth your salt. But this is really good work. Thank you, mate.’

Turning back to his laptop, he started aggressively tapping away as though I’d never existed.

Are you serious?

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I had a client deadline I missed for that. A real client deadline. One with real consequences. Lisa, now, is telling me we need to move along this report. We’re late and we need to get it out.

I know, Lisa.

I know.

In the park, I find a bench away from its other inhabitants. One tucked away, where I can see people but, really, they can’t see me. It’s hidden behind a thick tree trunk and a branch that sweeps forward. You’d have to be really looking to see me there. With my hands tucked into my coat pockets, I sit, my legs rattling with adrenaline, with anger. A pigeon flutters down and lands in front of me, gawking in my direction before strutting back and forth aimlessly. It starts to make its way towards me, before I flick a foot out, sending its wings aflutter. 

A young, attractive girl walks past and I half wonder what will happen if she turns to look at me, and I’m just sitting here staring at her. But she doesn’t. She’s got her headphones on. She’s in her own little world. She’s gone before I can really even comprehend it. I look down at my shoes and it suddenly seems so absurd to me that I’m here. On my own. For absolutely no reason, with absolutely nothing to do.

I look up again, and then it happens. The weirdest thing. An old man, whose age I can’t tell you (he could be fifty and just look terrible, or he could be the oldest man on earth), sidles along in front of the open passage beside my tree trunk, and turns and looks at me. 

He’s so old, he’s got two walking sticks, and his hands shake violently as he rests his weight on them. His back hunches over so far I’m surprised he can look at anything but the floor. His head is bald and scabby, like he’s suffered centuries of bad weather. He’s wearing a big, mahogany cloak, with folds of fabric wrapping around his neck and head, like a monk. Through a gap in the bottom of his cloak, I can see his muddy boots, though I’m not sure they warrant the name ‘boots’: cloth wrapped tightly with string about his ankles.

He looks at me for a while, perhaps thirty seconds, and I look back. Neither of us move, and then the old man sighs, and puts one stick before the other as he takes a seat next to me on the bench. 

Right…

‘Can I help you?’ I ask. I feel guilty for sounding so rude, but his long stare and his sigh… it’s no coincidence. He’s here to say something to me.

A little smirk creeps around the old man’s mouth, but I don’t look too long in case he thinks I’m staring.

‘What is your name?’

‘John.’

‘John…?’

I nod. He doesn’t look at me, he only stares out to the gardens.

‘Why are you here?’ he asks.

‘Here as in, in the gardens?’

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The old man nods slowly. His lips look painfully dry and cracked.

‘Had to get out of work, they were driving me up the wall. What’s it to you?’

‘Hmm,’ he grunts. He doesn’t say anything, merely rests his forehead on the back of his hand which is, in turn, resting on one of the sticks.

‘Sorry, I think I’m going to go.’

‘No,’ he grunts. ‘I’ve travelled a long way to be here.’ The old man coughs. It’s all phlegmy, like he’s going to cough up a lung. He pulls a cloth out of a fold in his cloak I hadn’t seen, and covers his mouth.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I’ve travelled a long way to be here…’

‘To be here?’ I point at the bench, at the gardens - like, what is he talking about?

‘Mmhmm,’ he grunts, before coughing again.

‘I’ve come to tell you, John, to change everything in your life. You need to change it all. You were not built for this life. You had another purpose.’

‘How do you know anything about my life?’

‘Oh, son, stop asking questions of me and ask them of yourself. You’re getting on my nerves.’

‘Oh, well, sorry,’ I say, sarcastically. ‘So, who are you? How do you know anything about me?’

‘Don’t you listen?’ He sounds like he’s got more to say, but he stops to cough again. ‘Don’t you hear anything I say?’

‘Okay, I’m leaving.’ I stand. ‘Nice to meet you, old man.’

He waves a closed hand at me, gripping his coughing cloth, and I walk out of the little area tucked away with the bench. 

What a strange old man?

Maybe he had dementia. Maybe he was just losing it and thought I was someone else. Maybe he’d come to London to visit a grandchild or something, and got confused when he saw me sitting there. But then, what was he wearing? He looked like he’d been dropped out of another century.

Wind knocks a few raindrops out of a tree and onto me, and I skip forward. Is that old man just going to sit out here on his own? I turn around to see if he’s there, perhaps walking in the other direction.

No, no sign of him.

Just as I get to the gate, I have this urge to turn around. I can’t leave him on his own, can I? What if he really is unwell? What if he stumbles in front of a car, or has a fall?

I scale the gardens and approach the bench from the other side. He must still be there, sitting on his own.

When I approach the bench, I come around the other side of the tree and the space opens up, but there’s no old man. No sticks, no man, no sign of anyone having been there at all. Only a bench without an occupant, inviting someone in to join it.

For what reason, I don’t know, but a wave of sadness comes over me and I’m suddenly aware of being cold and alone. I pull my jacket tight, thrust my hands in my pockets, and slowly meander back towards the office.

The old man’s voice is scratching at the back of my mind: ‘I’ve come to tell you to change everything in your life… You were not built for this life… You had another purpose.’

Dark clouds circle overhead so I pick up my pace and get back to the office, where work has now seeped in to occupy my mind.

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Your accompanying listening this morning is the beautiful Romain by Bill Evans and Jim Hall. Seems to me to be vital Autumn music.

#54 Three Scenes In The Seaside Town of Selby

1987.

The sun set over the seaside town of Selby, and the orange glow of windows peeled out into the dark Autumn air. Thomas skipped around Eleanor, his mother, and sang some silly song he learned at school. His uncles and aunts and Granny and Grandad and cousins, and that man and woman he doesn’t know how they’re related, and so forth, had retreated to their cottages for tea. He’d insisted on staying out on the beach and playing in the cold, shallow waters with Charley, the black and white dog, until the dark invaded. The wind sent a chill right through Eleanor.

‘Watch your feet, it’s slippy,’ said Eleanor, her lips pursed, with little daggers pointing up the front of them.

Thomas grabbed her by the hand and dragged her forward. ‘Stop it, Thomas. That’s plenty fun for today. It’s cold and we need to eat.’

Thomas let go, skipped around her, and grabbed her other hand, at which Eleanor pulled back and slapped him across the back of the head. ‘Stop that, I told you. You’re six now. Act your age.’

Thomas stopped skipping and sulked, dropping his head low and thrusting his hands in his pockets. He stared at Charley who walked obediently in front of Eleanor. They made eye contact, together ruing the death of fun.

Up ahead, a girl walked with her father and Thomas watched as she tried to hold a ball as well as a sandcastle mould and spade. ‘This way,’ her father was saying, as they turned the corner onto the road where Thomas, Eleanor and Charley were. As they completed the turn, the girl lost control and the ball bounced out of her arm, off the corner of the pavement and across the road. Thomas ran forward to retrieve the ball, but as he did so lost his footing on an uneven pave and crashed to the floor grazing his knees and hands. He burst into tears.

The girl and father ran over. The girl picked up the ball while the father picked up Thomas under the armpits and set him on his feet.

‘Are you okay, young man?’

‘Y-y-y-yes,’ Thomas replied. He wiped his runny nose on his sleeve.

Eleanor brushed the gravel and dirt off his palms and knees and kissed the crown of his head.

‘Sorry I dropped my ball,’ the girl said. ‘If I didn’t you wouldn’t have fell.’

Thomas looked at her and didn’t say anything and then looked at Eleanor. 

‘Come on, let’s go,’ his mother said.

‘Sorry, excuse me,’ the father interjected just as they were turning away. ‘I think they’re both around the same age. I wondered if, once this little man is all better from his fall, whether he might like to play with Jess on the beach tomorrow. We don’t really know anyone here.’

‘My name’s Jess, what’s yours?’ the girl asked.

‘Thomas.’

They smiled at one another, Thomas through wet eyes.

‘Okay,’ Eleanor said. ‘Perhaps we’ll see you tomorrow and they can play.’

Eleanor turned away holding Thomas by one hand and the leash of Charley in the other.

2000.

Jess sat around a thick, weather-worn table at the Olde Horseshoe Inn with her father, stepmother and stepsister. They were by the window that looked out over the sea, and the tide was in. Waves crashed up against the wall, spraying the window with sea-foam. She held the bowl of her gin and tonic, and enjoyed the contrast of the cold of the glass with the warmth of the pub. 

Julian, her father, told a story about someone at work whose son won the postcode lottery and bagged themselves £13,000 which paid for the deposit on their flat. She’d heard it last week but he told it afresh for Heather and Olivia. Heather had big, adoring eyes and her smile swallowed up every word of his. Jess liked Heather, but found she was almost too perfect: her smile sugary-sweet, her words too thoughtful, her actions too on-the-money. That said, she was careful not to say anything as the advice she’d had was what makes her Dad happy should make her happy and so, from that perspective, she is perfectly content.

They paused to laugh at some joke Julian told, but Jess was struck by the laughter coming from the table behind them. For a moment, she thought they were laughing at her Dad’s joke, which was very strange as they didn’t know them. She turned around but soon realised they were talking about something completely different, as a young man there followed up immediately with some additional detail of a story which caused a second rumble of laughter. She turned back and sipped her gin and tonic.

Shortly after, she caught a snippet of the conversation from the table behind her, and she heard, she’s sure, someone say: ‘Thomas!’

It got her thinking about the boy she knew ten years ago, who she played with as a child on the beach for three or four years in a row. She’d join in their family’s football games, play frisbee and build sandcastles. When Julian took her, however, in 1992, there was no sign of Thomas, of Eleanor or Charley. There was a great big hole on the spot of the beach their family occupied. Her and her father had a quiet year that year. 

A few minutes later, she turned around casually, as though scanning the room, and caught sight of the young man who could be Thomas. He had long dark hair, freckles around his nose and cheeks, and a thin, patchy moustache, the sort of questionable decision-making all 20-year olds demonstrate. He smiled at someone across from him, and she instantly recognised his smile. It was him. She turned back and thought a lot about that boy she’d once known.

Twenty minutes passed, and she couldn't remember much of what happened in that time, but she went up to the bar to get another gin and tonic. She was waiting for the bartender to make it, when the boy from the table behind came and stood next to her and ordered a pint. They stood in silence for thirty seconds or so, not looking at each other. Jess stared straight ahead, wondering if he’ll look over.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him tilt his head towards her, then look away, and then back towards her. She couldn’t help but turn, and suddenly their eyes were locked straight into the other’s and they both knew exactly who they were speaking to.

2023.

The kitchen filled with steam which billowed in front of the lights. Thomas poured the spaghetti out of the pan and into the colander in the sink, but as he did so, his son Ben careened out of the corridor with a small, sandy football, and crashed into Thomas’s leg, knocking him. Thomas was strong enough to catch his footing, but some boiling water leapt out of the pan and onto his hand. 

‘Shit!’ He dropped the pan into the sink, sending spaghetti all over the place, ran to the sink and thrust his hand under the tap. ‘You’ve got to be more careful when we’re cooking.’

‘Sorry,’ Ben said, as he kicked his ball into the living room and ran after it.

‘Jess! I thought you were keeping an eye on him.’

‘Keeping an eye on him? The boy’s six years old, he’s not a baby.’

‘I just scalded my hand thanks to him!’

‘Well, we should teach him to be more careful.’

‘Or you could keep an eye on him!’ He turned the tap off and was trying to return the spaghetti to the pan.

Jess came out from the bedroom where she was getting changed out of her beach clothes. Her hair was wet from the shower; she had it hung around one shoulder. ‘He’s both our responsibilities, James, that’s what parenting is about.’

‘I think it’s about give and take. We can’t do everything together, we have to balance things.’

‘Well, thank you for the life lesson.’

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‘I just wish you’d kept an eye on him. I wouldn’t have a scalded hand if you had.’

‘Jesus, Thomas. Will you give it a rest for one night? This is what you married. This is what you married!’

‘I married a mother content with her husband having a scalded hand?’

‘I’m not content with that, I’m just saying…’ Jess started to cry, wiped her tears and went next door to the other room.

Thomas threw the pan back into the sink, put his shoes on and slammed the door after him. Out in the dark, the road ran up to a footpath, which he followed all the way to the pub three kilometres along the coast. He watched the dark waves lash the rocks below, and thought about Jess. They hadn’t had a night of fun in god-knows-how-long. They used to all the time. But now they just aggravated each other, and argued petty, pointless arguments. Did either of them even really care about the things they argued about? He couldn’t even remember most of them. 

When he got to the pub at the end of the path, he turned around and walked back to Selby, where he passed the closed shop windows, the flat his mother rented with her new husband (they’ll be walking over for dinner shortly), the quiet, parked cars and the lurking seagulls. At the end, where the ramp led down to the beach, he turned a corner and saw a father with his daughter, who was carrying a ball. As he looked up at them, the girl slipped on the curb and dropped the ball. Thomas stopped it with his foot, picked the ball up and gave it back to the girl. 

She smiled at him. ‘Thank you, mister,’ she said and the father followed up with a polite nod and a thank you. Thomas watched them disappear into the darkness and into some doorway along the main road. For whatever reason, he felt like crying but no tears came. He sniffled a little and ran a hand through his thin hair.

He walked back to his apartment, where the lights were on in the window, and thought about what he’ll say to Jess to put things right because - he knew now, in that moment - more than anything he wanted to put things right.

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#53 Fragments of life

One.

She was walking in the fields at her sister’s husband’s family home, nestled into the hills of Montana. They were there for a wedding party, but she had the opportunity to stay a few weeks as she was between jobs. 

‘Clara, when are you going to get married?’ her sister, Mel, was asking. ‘You’re old enough now.’

‘When I can be bothered.’

‘That makes perfect sense.’

Mel bumps into her and says, ‘We’re so different.’

‘Yeah…’

‘Maybe you should move away from London. Move here permanently. You’re clearly not meeting anyone there.’

‘Look around, Mel. There’s quite literally no one here. There’s 7 million people in London.’

‘Actually it’s about 9 million.’

‘That only reinforces my point.’

‘Maybe you’re just not what the people of London are looking for.’

‘All 9 million of them?’

‘Yeah. What’s wrong with you?’ 

Mel starts laughing and then they go quiet as a breeze rustles up through the grass. The sun is dimming, leaving a golden syrupy drizzle draped over the grass. A single cloud hangs low over their heads and breaks into scattered fragments, like a snowball that’s dropped to the floor. Parts of it have soaked up the sun and sent the light onwards, while other parts were mired in shadow. The moon was a distant thumbnail, a white speck on an otherwise space-dark sky.

Mel couldn’t see it, but Clara’s heart was fluttering. She took in a deep breath and her mouth worked as she bit the inside of her cheek. She thrusted her hands into her jeans pockets and asked herself what she was doing with her life.

It’s not been so long since she was with Michael, she thought. Well, actually, it’s been three and a half years.

Two.

The click of the shutter was his favourite sound. He got the Canon that squeaks, the one that everyone complained about on Reddit, but he liked it. It made him feel like he was working a proper piece of machinery, with mechanical quirks and failings.

‘Can we stop soon? I’m freezing,’ Lina asked, grasping the lapels of her trenchcoat and wrapping them tightly around her.

‘Just two more minutes, I need to change film.’ Michael replaced the film in his camera, and snapped her again. She wasn’t wearing a lot beneath the trenchcoat and he didn’t blame her for feeling cold. It was supposed to be warm this week in Berlin, but the weather was only as he’s ever seen it: wet, cold and grey. Even the pigeons looked disappointed.

They were under a passageway and Lina rested a big umbrella over her shoulder, the light of a streetlamp creating an almost-silhouette of her figure. She was a German model he met on a shoot in Palm Springs. It sounds glamorous and he was desperate to look professional but it was his first shoot outside of England. Without telling anyone, he revelled in the small pleasures of how they paid for his flights, how he got to claim the air miles, got his food paid for and dined on the magazine at what he’d call a fancy restaurant. 

Not only was Lina beautiful but she was - much unlike her behaviour on this day in Berlin - not much of a complainer. In Palm Springs, she followed his every order about how to pose, which way to face, teeth or no teeth, head down or up. And those photos, the ones she was in, were his favourite from the trip. She called him up a few months later and said she’d got a job in Berlin and they were looking for the right photographer. Did he fancy it? 

Did he fancy it?

So, of course, he went to Berlin. 

‘Let’s stop. We’ve been out all day, and I fancy a drink. We’ve earned it.’

‘Let me pack up my camera.’

She took him to a bar and she told him about how she got into modelling and how, she knows it’s cliché, but the job she really wanted was to shoot in Bali. She’d never been. All she wanted was to sit in a bikini for a week, drink pina coladas and to go diving in her spare time.

Michael entertained her and laughed at her little smile, and who knows, maybe he did actually find her funny. After they finished their drink, he checked his watch, but Lina asked if he wanted another one and, well, it’s rude to say no, isn’t it? So there she went, and here she came, another drink in hand.

This went on and on, until she held his hand and led him back to her hotel room, which was weirder than it was romantic as the room happened to be next door to his room, and he spent the whole time wondering whether she was leading him to her room, or delivering him to his.

Later that night, she was fast asleep the way he imagined all models sleep: serenely, facing away from him, her long dark hair drifting back onto his side of the bed. He stared up at the ceiling. Resisting the urge to move, his heart fluttered and he was attacked by a quite violent feeling of anxiety, the subject of which he can only identify as loss.

Why was it that, now, after he met perhaps the most beautiful woman he’ll ever meet, he thought about Clara? It had been so long since they were together. So long that he ought not to be able to remember her face. But he could, and he was thinking about the freckle on her cheek, and the birthmark on the back of her thigh, and the slightly crooked tooth that, if anything, added to her beauty. 

He put a hand to his heart, looked at the clock, and despaired at how long this night - this night he suddenly considered unbearable - would go on for.  

Three.

They met at a birthday party. Ten people weary from overpaying for 25 minutes of shuffleboard, and only two of them were single. She was weirdly good at it, caressing her little discs and watching them settle into the highest scoring triangle. He watched her as she jigged with joy after scoring so highly each time, and the smile on her face was one of total elation. 

When it was his turn and he slid the discs too harshly and they went careening off the end of the board into a wall, she laughed at him. He was clearly trying to impress her and overcompensating, and he never learned his lesson. Each time, they’d tell him to be lighter with it, to let the disc do the work, but he just kept making the same mistakes over and over. 

‘I’m going for a beer,’ Michael said, after one such failure. ‘Call me when it’s my turn.’

His friend Andy nodded.

‘I’ll come. Need a top up.’ Clara held up her empty gin and tonic, and shook the ice.

As they walked,  he said, ‘I don’t think we’ve met properly before? I’m Michael.’

‘We actually have, once. At one of my sister’s parties. But it was just in a big group. Anyway, I’m Clara.’

‘Well, it’s nice to meet you...’ Michael bought Clara’s gin and tonic, took a sip of his frothy beer, and watched the drips of condensation run down her glass onto her fingers as they talked.

Later that night, they’d long since moved on from shuffleboard. At one moment, walking between bars, Clara and Michael were left chatting at the back of the group who’d turned a corner or two out of sight.

‘How’s your night going?’

‘How’s my night going? Who asks how the night is going on the night itself?’

‘Well, apparently, I do.’

‘Apparently so.’

‘It’s terrible, Michael. Truly terrible.’

‘Really?’

‘No, but I feel forced into saying so. Because saying it’s good or it’s fine would be too boring, wouldn’t it?’

‘I suppose it would.’

She smiles at him. ‘You’re weird.’

‘No, I’m just a bit stupid. You’re weirder.’

‘We make a right combination then.’

He laughed.

‘Do you know where we’re going?’

They looked up and around. They were down some dark street somewhere in Shoreditch. A streetlamp lit the path. Murals of graffiti were all over the walls. There was a group up ahead, but not their group. A fox slid under a fence onto the road, stared at them, and then disappeared through some hole they didn’t know was there.

‘No idea.’

‘Well, that’s good, isn’t it?’

‘Yeah… What are we going to do?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Do you want to keep walking?’ Michael rubbed his nose and his eyes, as though affecting nonchalance.

‘Sure…’ she said. She looked at him for reassurance, as though this was totally normal, and he chuckled at her expression, and she cracked a smile.

The night seemed never to end, and they walked down towards Tower Bridge and over it. The scale of it was suddenly overwhelming to Michael, and the lights were so bright. They wound up sitting on a bench somewhere overlooking the Thames and talking.

He looked at her and thought how he could sit here talking forever, and maybe he’d have the courage to ask her out, and he wondered what they’d be like as an old couple together. He wrung his hands and smiled before taking a deep breath.

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#52 Experiences Near Death

‘Did you consider that these things might be related?’ Elizabeth looks at me with a clean-slate face that says she’s heard these things a thousand times but understands that each scenario, each individual’s tale, is as unique as the next.

The fan overhead struggles to battle against the heat pounding through the windows. I’m sitting in the exact spot the shaft of sun is reaching down into. 

‘Can I move the chair?’ I ask. ‘I’m sweating here…’

‘Yes, of course. Sorry, Liam.’ She stands up, but sits down again when she realises I’m already moving the chair. I reseat myself in a shaded area. ‘Would you like me to open a window?’

‘Yes, please.’ She does, and a gust of wind reaches in and brushes my face.

‘Right… so, my question… Did you consider that these things might be related?’

I think about her question for a moment. Can the sight of a man with cancer, a couple of years ago, really have an impact on my ability to do my job today? Never had I considered such a thing.

‘No, of course not.’

‘Doesn’t it seem strange to you?’

‘Not exactly.’

‘Okay. Let’s try looking at this another way… Can you tell me what happened that day, if you can remember? Tell me the details: was it hot or warm, bright or dim, had the day been busy or quiet on the ward, was the patient friendly? Did you know his life story? Okay?’

‘Well, I can’t remember all of it. It was a few years ago.’

‘Try, please.’

I close my eyes and pause. It takes me a few seconds to recall it all, but then it comes back to me and I see everything. ‘I had only been in post for barely an hour. There was no easing into the role. My seniors were on holiday, so it was just me and two others working the whole ward. It was a frosty March morning, and I was still defrosting. My palms and the top of my nose were pink. My eyes were still glazed with morning sleep. I was very nervous about working with cancer patients. I had these images of hairless people, clinging to life, deep bags around their eyes, but their smiles and stares were filled with hope that I would perform some magic trick upon them, ending the cancer, bringing back their hair and their life, and they’d sit up and stroll out of here a new person. When I approached my first patient, Qin Yongliang, I felt my breath get sucked out of my chest. He was a middle-aged Chinese man, perhaps 45, 50… He was quiet and unassuming. He looked at me the way a dog that wants a treat will look at you. Eyes wide and deep, eyebrows raised (though there were no actual brows there). The skin on his head was sagging like the contents of a bag had been removed from it leaving an uncertain mould. His hands were shaking above his legs, his skin lacked much colour at all.’

‘Did he remind you of your father?’

‘He did. Not so much because he was another Chinese man, like my Dad, but because he had the same traits I remember from Dad before he died. His hands shook like that, his skin was the same colour. His head, hairless, was so vulnerable and bare like that, where it had previously been such a thick and dark head of hair.’

‘You were only ten when your father died.’

‘Yeah… but what’s worse is he was only in his forties. I’m closer now to his age when he died than I am to my age when he died.’

‘What happened next? With the patient?’

‘I don’t really remember, to be honest. I don’t think we said anything to one another. Perhaps that would’ve helped. Perhaps I would’ve realised this man was nothing like Dad, had I had the chance to find that out. Almost immediately, I fainted. I fell to the ground and actually hit my head pretty bad on the floor.’

‘Did you think anything of it at the time?’

‘No, not at all. The doctors I spoke to put it down to stress. New ward, new job, et cetera. The expectations can be high, and the pressure you put on yourself… You’ll know better than anyone.’

Elizabeth nods. ’And that was a few years ago. What happened recently?’

‘I was three weeks into my specialty training programme. Three weeks… out of a total of six years. I was in nursery… As I left the hospital after a long shift, I was driving up the lanes of the car park, my mind clearly working through the many things that I had seen that day, including a young mum who died. Without thinking, I rammed the front of my car into the back of someone else’s. My car was fine, but the other person’s car had a deep dent in their back door. We exchanged details and I promised to cover the cost… It was my fault after all.’

‘And then?’

‘I went back to work and got through three more weeks. Then, again after a shift, I was driving home. On my route home, there’s this place where you hit three consecutive roundabouts. I crossed the first two as normal, but the second one, I didn’t slow down when I approached it. My mind was completely blank. I was somewhere a million miles away. It happened to be peak commuter time, so the roundabout was full of cars. I flew out into the roundabout and hit a van carrying an Italian family who were here on holiday. They had three small children in the car… Everyone was fine, of course, but I can’t stop thinking about it… What if those children were not fine? How could I live with myself?’

‘Did you go back to work?’

‘No, I took some time off. When I returned, five days later, I handed in my notice.’

‘Why did you do that?’

‘I knew it was to do with work. And I knew it had something to do with my Dad. But I didn’t know what else.’

‘It didn’t occur to you that maybe you went into oncology because your father died of cancer?’

‘No… Well, I don’t think so. Maybe I knew deep down. I don’t know.’

‘And maybe all these incidents took place because of the trauma, or perhaps psychological recognition, that you couldn’t heal your father’s cancer, that it was too late. And that healing other people was not a substitute?’

‘I don’t know. You’re the expert here.’

‘What have you done since?’

‘I haven’t worked for three months. I’ve been living with my mother.’

‘How’s that relationship?’

‘Strained…’

‘Why?’

‘Because she’s Chinese and I’m a thirty year old man not working.’ I sigh. ‘And because our relationship has never really been the same since Dad died. She was a head teacher. The head of the family. But then she had to raise four children. It was impossible. She could never do it all and we suffered as a result.’

‘Do you feel better for quitting your oncology training?’

‘Yes. Definitely less stressed.’

‘Have you thought about what you will do next?’

‘A friend of mine suggested I take up general practice.’

‘And does that appeal to you?’

‘Perhaps… I don’t know…’

‘Hmm.’ Elizabeth nods and looks down at her notes. The heat here is unbearable. I can feel the sweat dripping through my shirt under my armpits and at my back, where it's touching the faux-leather back of the chair. 

Not long later, she thanks me and tells me she has another appointment starting in two minutes.

In the car park, I sit behind the wheel of my car, riding my hands up and down the wheel, before sighing and resting my head on it. The thing no therapist ever tells you is that there’s no letting up. There’s no moment of relief. Even at your happiest, you still bear this extraordinary weight. Like the weight of a fat man sitting on your chest. I imagine his silky, sweaty grin as he bounces up and down on my chest. I put my hand to my heart and squeeze my eyes shut.

Minutes later, I’m driving out of the car park. The traffic lights are green but change to amber, and I slow to a stop just as they hit red. The sky is a blazing blue, and I think about Qin Yongliang, the man who looked like Dad, and the way he looked at me, helplessly. I don’t know anything about this world, but I know I can help people who really need it. 

Eventually, the lights turn green and I drive forward and pull out onto the main road, in the direction of home. 

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#51 Mother Nature Cradling Its Children

Everything that begins ends. And everything that ends has a beginning. At the end of the day there is night, and at the end of night there is morning. That is the fingers of the morning sun reaching over the horizon, through the trees of Meghalaya, over Udem, and into the windows of the Khasi people, and Kordorshisha and her husband Rynkatbor who wake with puffy eyes and the sounds of Mother Nature clicking and whistling and whirring from the vast mountain-space that surrounds them.

Kordorshisha puts her hand on her husband’s cheek and smiles as his eyes adjust to their surroundings. Their world his been set alight not two months earlier, at the birth of their youngest daughter, Da-ailang, who they expect will be their last child, the one who will inherit everything their family has. The future.

Surprisingly, all three children are still sleeping, even the young Da-ailang. They wake the eldest, Aitilang, and tell her to watch the children this morning as they go fishing. ‘Continue your teaching with your brother and see your grandmother and get her anything she needs.’ Aitilang, the stoic, quiet child nods and the parents leave.

They head down to the river, where the sun’s fingers are glistening in the water, reflecting the greens, blues and whites of the trees and sky around them. They head out onto their modest fishing boat. Kordorshisha takes Rynkatbor between her hands and whispers in his ear, ‘Mei-ri-sawkun… mei-ri-sawkun…’ and kisses his forehead, before they slip out on the water, faint ripples the only sound as the rest of the mountain sleeps. 

They row out into the centre of the river, cast their lines and wait patiently. Kordorshisha drifts her fingers in the water of the river and touches it to her forehead, before pulling out two small fish in quick succession. She giggles like a child at her success, and Rynkatbor marvels at her. After two hours, Kordorshisha has caught five fish to Rynkatbor’s none, and they laugh and joke that she is better than him at everything. Rynkatbor asks if they can swap sides and he stands to shimmy past her towards the back of their little skiff. As he does, however, he loses his footing, the boat rocks from side to side and, all of a sudden, the peace of Mother Nature’s morning is broken by the almighty splash of Rynkatbor’s body thundering into the water!

For a moment he’s fully submerged, but when he resurfaces he sees the stretching hand of Kordorshisha reaching down to him. He grabs her hand and she grabs his, and he pulls the side of the boat and she leans back, tugging him back aboard. It takes two or three goes before he gets the momentum to fully bring himself up onto the little boat. When he does, he’s covered in water and algae across his face and chest. He’s heaving and she is too, sweat tickling her cheeks and temples. 

He’s chattering between breaths, ‘This is no good, this is no good,’ and she pushes his hair back from across his face and tells him, ‘It’s okay. It’s okay. I am here.

For Rynkatbor, it’s a great relief that she is here. With the sun’s fingers reaching down over her shoulder, he sees Kordorshisha and the sun as one and the same. She is his sun, the great Kordorshisha, the morning to his night. Rynkatbor starts to cry, a joyful cry, at his great reward in life, to be with Kordorshisha. She still has her hand on his forehead as she smiles down on him, and whispers, ‘Mei-ri-sawkun…’

Mother Nature that cradles its children and all else that exists around them.

Soon, the fingers of the sun will recede again behind the horizon, and Meghalaya, and Udem, will return to the night. The end of the day. And soon, the sun will return and bring with it another morning.

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It’s official, this is my fiftieth post, a half-century. A milestone, I’ll be honest, I doubted I’d reach, and one I certainly thought no one would be that interested in. We’re also about two weeks away from my two-year anniversary of publishing short fiction here - 1/25 of the way to an actual half century.

Rather than post another story, I thought I’d take this opportunity to reflect on a year’s storytelling, some of my stories I’ve enjoyed or thought a lot about over the past 12 months and what I’ve learned from doing it (here’s what I wrote a year ago on the same subject).

And, before we get into it, a quick plug. one of the best ways I attract new audiences is by taking part in fiction promos with other writers. If you’re interested in reading other, free fiction, try the following links: The Magic of Pure Hearts Promo; The Is Your Library Fully Booked Promo; and the Selective Bookworm Promo.

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#50 A half-century (of sorts) of storytelling

Art at the heart of it

The first story I want to revisit is Pine Trees. Before delving into the story itself, those of you who’ve been reading my stories for some time now may have picked up on a theme. Many of them relate to or feature in someway, paintings, photography or some other art form. I believe I’ve mentioned before, but a close friend of mine suggested using art as a prompt for story ideas to help encourage me to write regularly, to engage in the act of writing without worrying too much about story development. Rather than telling stories about the things I see, think and feel about the world in front of me (I mostly save that for novels, given how arduous a task that can be!), using art as a prompt encourages a creativity and a boldness that I’m not sure I’d 100% attempt otherwise.

Pine Trees is a great example of a story that was inspired by a piece of art. Very specifically, the charcoal sketches titled Shōrin-zu byōbu (or Pine Trees), by Hasegawa Tōhaku from the sixteenth century.

Most often, I try to remove the art itself from the story, and just piece something together that speaks to the subject, or whatever I think of as a response. However, sometimes it’s impossible to remove the art from the subject and I felt that with this. Hence, in the story, the protagonist is a man who recalls a very specific memory from a long time ago, prompted by seeing these sketches in a gallery in Japan. It felt fitting to me because that is what art does best: stir feelings that sit right at the core of whoever is viewing it, feelings that are deeply moving, often existential, but ultimately crucial to what that person stands for and believes about the world.

Along similar lines is this recent story, The Portrait that Eluded Death, about a portrait of a woman whose house burns down but the painting survives. It’s a response to this portrait of Baby Almeida, wife of Guilherme de Almeida, by Lasar Segall. It’s worth noting, and perhaps is most interesting about the storytelling process, that prior to writing, I knew (and still know) absolutely nothing about the artist or the subjects. For me, it wasn’t about telling the truth of the painting or those involved, it was simply about looking at the picture and writing whatever I felt like as a result.

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The politics of nostalgia, and the power of time

One of my favourite stories I published this year is Abandoned, about a young man, Lucas, who goes to Amsterdam and winds up in a dark, dingy nightclub in an abandoned school. Unrelated to any paintings or works of art I’ve seen, this was inspired by a story a friend told me, where he ended up somewhere like this. Many of the European readers among you, or those who’ve travelled to Europe, will likely know that there are all sorts of curious spots like this across our cities - most prominently on the continent. More than anything, I think they evoke powerful images. Just thinking about it now, I can picture the strobe lights, the sweaty, drug-addled faces, the heavy monotonous basslines, the black leather get-ups with the chain necklaces. Graffiti up the industrial walls, deep inside some old factory or some underground waterway or abandoned metro station or something… The idea that something like this exists in a school seemed, still seems, absurd to me, not because of the actual location itself, but in the irony that some would or could find between what a school represents to societies and communities and the sort of place it had become. That’s not a political statement about whether I support what it’s become (though I do, I think it’s both hilarious and creatively industrious in the best possible way), but signifies, or speaks to, an inherent, unspoken truth about how people grow up, what becomes of them, and the things that influence their development in one way or another. Reflecting on childhood and upbringing is a messy exercise for many because the consequences people often experience are existential in nature: developments that changed the course of their life, memories they feel are better left suppressed, or relationships they no longer have. Ever since I’ve started writing, that’s always been an interesting theme for me, whether consciously or not, and I think many of my stories touch on this in various ways.

Stories with similar existential and political themes from this year, include The Flower (in two parts, here and here), The Timemaster (here and here), and Hoarder.

Hoarder, is about a senile old man who, after losing his wife, hoards all sorts in his London home for years. One day, a young woman who volunteers for a charity offers to come over and help to declutter his home (many excellent charities I know offer decluttering services in London, to help prevent fires, burglaries (the homes of old people are targeted far more frequently by burglars in London, and the signs are clear: clutter, overgrown gardens, poor maintenance of external features etc.)) He rejects the service thinking, ironically, that she might be trying to scam or con him in some other way. The consequences are fatal.

Circling back to imagery

Alongside my storytelling, I’m also a keen but very amateur photographer - mostly on 35mm film, but digital too. My photographs inspire some of my stories, but mostly I think they add dynamism to my posts and help to bring them to life. If you’ve been reading this year, you’ll notice photographs scattered throughout my work.

To wrap up, here’s some of the photographs I’ve published on Substack this year:

Thank you for reading - see you in two weeks for a new story!