on the path

Words failed him.

That bloke is just such a, bloody, BLAB. He, Just, Will, Not, keep his big fat mouth shut. He's a flaming liability. I should have known better. We're in a whole world of grief now. Yeah, thanks mate. Thanks very much. Thought you'd let slip some juicy goss did you, nothing better to do. He should be locked up that bloke. I tell you what, that's it now, I'm done with him.

And so he went on, Frank, for five or ten more minutes. There wasn't much point me saying anything, he had to have his head, so he yelled and banged the table and called Dennie "that bloke", until in the twilight of his fury he expressed his feelings in a woodwind music of sighs and groans, from which burst isolated rockets of a single syllable.

But I see I'm over-writing, I'm really not used to this sort of thing, so you must forgive me if I just plough on not daring to stop, and perhaps I may shove a sign up now and then, with the words PLEASE SKIP!

In my husband's eyes one of the chief principles of morality was, Can you keep a secret. And as for blabbing to a woman! Frank had a great fear of women, that's probably why he married me.

And yes, I quite agreed with him, Dennie blabbing to Yasmin was downright bloody infuriating, and this had happened at the worst possible time, when she'd only just lent us the £20,000  and when we were so anxious to show ourselves deserving cases (which we certainly were not) and very grateful to her (which we certainly were),  and instead we'd kicked her in the guts or rather Dennie had by failing to keep his thieving trap shut, but it was us not Dennie who'd suffer all the fallout, us and Yasmin who now loathed us, as I informed Frank when she hung up.

Sex tonight? Frank said later. Oh yes, marvelous, said I though my mind wasn't really on it .........................
.........................
.........................   
,................... I could always make Frank laugh ...................
..........................
 Thinking about it now, that was one of our last voyages on the rumpled Spanish Main. What a crew we were after all, Frank always premature, the old romancer, and as for me, I never cared much about it, whoever I might be with, but let's not go into that now.

Well it so happened, this business of secrets came up that same evening, while I was at the Moral Maze. Under the green parasols, as indeed above them, there was a merry peaceful piping, not unfuelled by glasses of chianti (not the birds, obvs).

I can't remember exactly who said what, though Mimi was very strong, and Pascal stomped off at one point. Anyway, I will give you my abiding sense of it.

Kept secrets underpin our social existence. Like other reticencies they are the cushions in the sofa, or rather the hidden girders behind a neo-Baroque façade (PLEASE SKIP?), the foundations that persuade us to come out into a plaza like this one, confident of not being made to hear and of not being asked to tell, invited to display our most valuable qualities, able to appreciate each other, to listen and to love. Life, or everything about life that's worthwhile, life is the breath of a garden, it is a chosen space for delicacy and fragrance. The secrets that we steadfastly keep are like the weeds kept just outside the garden fence, the brambles, nettles and buttercups; no less true or beautiful or justified than the ruby peonies within, at least not in the eyes of a truly steady philosopher, but once let the brambles in, and you don't have a garden any more. No more peonies, no more chianti, no more sunset or Mimi's golden elbows with the matelot tee rolled up. (Perhaps I've gone a little off track in that last sentence.)

And yet.... Does the Bible ever stand up and clearly spell it out, that one of the really important commandments is to just bloody keep shtum? It has plenty to say for proclaiming God's Truth, and for letting your yay be yay, and for confessing your sins; it has plenty to say, too, against whited sepulchres, forked tongues and Phariseeism. It is hard to escape the drift of those accumulated opinions. And doesn't nature itself rise up, in the shape of Dennie's loose-tongued gossip, to assert the outrage of constraint, the indecency of manacles, upon the natural impulses of the heart? Should our words, more than our emotions, be cloaked, controlled, choked down? Shouldn't we aspire to complete transparency, our palms open, our fingers spread apart? Do trees button their roots from streaming the news, do jackdaws ration their woody caws, do infants conceal their smiles or their tears, does the sun think twice before shining between clouds?

We had automatically kept Yasmin out of the loop, for her own good (and, admittedly, for ours) --- it was not a difficult decision --- yet I doubted, somehow, if Yasmin would altogether see how right we were to keep her in the dark, or would recommend the same behaviour in our future dealings with her, should such ever occur.

It was hard to know. On which note, I turned over and went. But Frank was quiet and I sensed he was awake.

. . . . . . . . . . . .

the biggest numbness

Farting along the river at night I was bold and breathy, I dragged over gates and held on to my toe-caps through dewy white sex-fields of peed and bollock, jutted on bitten stabs and went in among the elders. They did not think that anything was wrong. Howling among the elders sand in hand to the meadow I came to a deck and stank deeply. Then I was cold enough to puke. Beth was the full moo, swimming rough the nipples as I meant to for several hours and I suddenly felt terrific at the lone breath I plunder the ranch like a wong winkey.

a cold and frosty morning

my new book

As you can see, I have published a book. I began writing these pieces a few years ago, and I didn't think anything much about them, I just posted them here on this blog. The mysterious origin of them was in part un-mysterious. I had acquired a blog, and I needed to fill it with something. I began to be interested in the dimensions of a blog post and how it is read, and I wondered if it could seem to contain a story, or at least the suggestion of a story. I didn't rationalize, I just wrote. Then, about two years ago, this impulse suddenly dried up, as mysteriously as it started. Or, perhaps, as unmysteriously. My life had changed, I was simply too busy. I'm not going to say anything more about the contents of The Littlest Feeling, but only about what happened next and how it ended up being a book, and perhaps this will be interesting to other potential self-publishers.

Now that the story-writing impulse had died, I began to wonder idly about what I'd got. About a year ago I found time to go through the tedious process of tracking down all the most story-like posts and pasting them into a Word document. I was surprised how many there were. I showed this document to a few people. It was a collection with no title. I think it's fair to say that no-one who saw it was unduly excited. The effect must have been boring and overwhelming at the same time. It's one thing to read a blog post, another to cope with a deluge like this. I was pleased, I felt I was in the zone.

It wasn't until a couple of months ago that I had a bit more time to think about this. I thought of trying to place some of these stories, but I didn't get far with that. The world I knew about was the poetry world, and I had a hard time persuading anyone, including myself, that these pieces were poems. I hadn't realized before how many poetry outlets explicitly exclude prose fiction from their list. On the other hand, I felt all at sea in the prose fiction world. I didn't have contacts, didn't know the scene, and to be honest I didn't feel much fellow-feeling with the micro-fictions that I found there. I didn't find the kind of writing that I liked, nor (I inferred) the readers that I thought would be interested in what I wrote. Perhaps I didn't look very hard.

There is also, perhaps, an experimental fiction scene, I should clarify. I haven't really found it. But for example, the books in the emerging Reality Street Narrative series. I certainly AM a fan of this writing, e.g. Richard Makin's forthcoming and amazing Dwelling, which is strictly non-narrative. Still, one of the reasons I'm a fan is precisely because I couldn't possibly write anything like this. And besides, I'm in awe of Reality Street. That's like, I don't know, Faber or something, in my eyes.

So I got bored with the idea of "placing" my work pretty quickly, and instead I thought I'd play around with LuLu self-publishing, with the result that you see. I don't expect to make a living from the sales, but it's a thrill to have an ISBN number, and it doesn't really cost anything. The rest of this post is about technicalities.

Lulu can publish eBooks or paperbacks (or hardbacks). I'll probably make an eBook version at some point, but the paperback option seemed the most friendly one for my potential reader. I imagined - indeed I knew - that the book wasn't very easy reading. I fancied my reader would need to pick it up and put it down quite a lot, and generally have it lying around, which is also the way I like to read poetry. Besides, I found it easier to model the product on something I knew, and the model I had in mind was a cheap trashy genre novel. That's why the format is pocket-sized and the font is fairly small.

The first thing you have to do is upload the text as a .PDF file, and the cheap way to do that (Lulu's advice) is to download OpenOffice, which I did. I could migrate my .DOC file into it, save it in OpenOffice format (.ODT), then migrate it to a .PDF file. If you're familiar with MS Word, then OpenOffice is easy to use. That said, to turn the document into something that looks like a proper printed book, I had to learn about quite a few features that I hadn't ever bothered with before. The Help files came to my rescue.

1. I had to create a custom paper size, to fit Lulu's pocketbook format.

2. I had to learn about alternating right and left page styles. This is because it's good to have the page numbers in different positions on right and left pages, and also you need to have a broader margin next to the guttering - i.e. the right margin of the left page, and the left margin of the right page, if you see what I mean. There's probably a way of suppressing page numbering on the preamble pages, but I couldn't work this one out so I just didn't bother. I was fairly perfectionist, but there are limits. This is meant to be fun.

3. I had to learn how to make a table of contents. Don't try and do this manually, it will be a nightmare to keep accurate.

4. When you write a document at home or at work, you normally use the default left-justified paragraph format, and that's fine. But it looks really unprofessional in a book. You want full-justified (text flush to both sides of the page). This was one of my biggest headaches, because it won't work properly unless you have a proper paragraph ending (hidden character) at the end of every paragraph. Because most of my text had been pasted from the web, it didn't have them, so I had to go through the whole text putting them in. (And every time you quote verse, you have to switch back to left-justified.) That took me a few hours. The other thing that took me most time was getting the fonts uniform throughout the book, not just the titles and text but the blank lines in between. Otherwise the titles aren't at a uniform height on the page, and it looks really messy when you flick through the book. (To see all this, I had to buy a first-cut printed copy - it's only with the book in your hand that you can really see what's wrong.)

Apart from the text, the other thing you have to upload is the jacket. There are jacket wizards on the Lulu site itself, but the results tend to look pretty amateurish. So I made my own jacket, using Microsoft Publisher. Lulu will tell you the exact dimensions - they calculate the spine-width based on the number of pages. The jacket is made as a one-piece image, with the back cover on the left, then the spine, and the front cover on the right. You can save it as a .PNG file (portable network graphics) and then upload it. You need to be sure that you select 300dpi - the default is 150dpi, but that's not suitable for a professional-looking jacket.

The back cover has to include the ISBN barcode. Lulu create this for you and let you download it as .PDF file, but getting it from there into MS Publisher is a puzzle. In the end I couldn't think of a better way than opening it in Adobe Reader with the largest possible zoom (while still being all on the screen), then using Alt-PrtScr and pasting the whole window into Paint, then cropping it and saving it as a 24-bit bitmap, which I could then pull into Publisher and resize. (My first attempt was similar, but I made the mistake of saving the screenshot as a small .JPG, and when I got the proof copy I could see that the barcode was a bit blurred, which looks really rubbish.)

Lulu "sell" you a distribution package to make your book available on Amazon - it is actually free at the moment. The only proviso is that you have to buy a proof copy of your own book, and then "Approve" the book for distribution. So software and hardware aside, the actual cost of publishing was about £15 - the cost of buying two copies.

So now make your book too! (And when you do, let me know...)

run away

The yellow flowers poked out among the brambles, miles of them, the sun outside slanting on them already, the window-glass smoked. Soporific smell of the carriage. I watched my beaker of tea, shy of prising off the lid to unhook the tea-bag. A jolt of the carriage during this operation would make me spill it. He went on fingering his left arm, examining an insignificant cut or bruise. Sometimes we talked about cricket, but not today.

"Grumpy as ever, my dad. The heat gets to him now. Expensive day at Lingfield. Had a rant about his firm, too. Have I told you he has a firm?"

"No, I don't think so. What kind of firm?"

"They lease delivery vans. To foodie places in general. He doesn't need to be involved so much, my mum says. "

"You become accustomed to the life."

"That's how it is. He's meant to take it easy. He had some trouble a couple of years ago: prostate. Give up smoking, so he says. It must have been serious."

"This was while you were in Jamaica?"

"Yeh. It was a shock to see him when I came home. He lost so much weight. He was a big guy before. He got upset because he couldn't find my birthday present. The worst thing was when he tried to laugh about it. My mum's eyes said everything. She's a sweet lady, my mum."

I couldn't wait any longer, looking at the tea. I got the lid off all right, but when I opened the milk it spat over my shirt and tie. I poured in the rest of it and mopped up with a tissue. I had the instant thought, I'm already at work.

"Does your mother know about - your friend. I'm sorry, I forgot her name. Leah?"

"Leiah. They did meet her once, around about Christmas time. We went to a bashment on the Isle of Wight, so we stayed a night in Portsmouth. They'd remember her all right, because she got sick in the shed as soon as we arrived. Before I knocked on the door. I was going to clean it up the next day but I slept in and my mum went and found it. So it's clear they would remember her, but they've seen other girls since. They think she's history."

"You couldn't bear to tell them."

"I wanted to. I did. I told Irwin, my brother. They would be sick. But that wasn't the reason. The mistake I made was, I needed to come straight out with it. Though I thought of nothing else on the way down, when the moment came I scuffed it. You drop into patterns. It's always the same when I come home; dinner's on the table, how's work, a toast to my successes. Dad lightens up, gives me the benefit of his advice. He loves that. Mum sits there and glows with pride, runs her hand through my hair, has to have another picture of me for the album. Then father and son. Finally me with Mum, she always makes a protest, says she looks a sight. Giggles. It's what they live for."

"I know what you mean. You had to go in with a serious face if you were going to do it."

"How do you think you would be - if your own son...?"

"I'd be excited. I believe. Yes, I'd be content about it. Other thoughts should come later, but this would be the main thing."

"You are different from my father. They are not well, you can feel the strain for them of just holding it together. And can be..."

He looked out of the window. Units passed by, a flyover with traffic queued all along it. We arrowed between, soporific, to run away with the yellow flowers to the broad sea - well no, only to work again, only to work...

"You mean, if it isn't decided? I thought she told you she made up her mind."

"That's what she said. But she was not in a good state. She was in a rage, she wanted to shit me up. Maybe it depends on me, how I react. I've been seeing someone else and - she's got to go through this too, I mean she's got to tell people. I thought we were finished. It feels very weird, her and me. "

"You need to have a proper talk with her. At once in my opinion."

"I know it man. I will, but she's been away. I'll call her."

I didn't know him. It was ridiculous to have an opinion, but I wanted to say something more; about my other son, the one I never saw who spoke a different language. But why would I have held it in, and then if I told him... The train had stopped. A hundred people surged towards the doors; they'd all have to stand. Those autumn faces like leaves on graves.

I went to work, I went to work, I went to work again. He was not there now, but I thought of him and of this conversation. I understood that there was a part of it that did not "ring true"; it was about my friend's achievements. It was his steady brother, the younger one, that they lived for. His father had an idea of the way a man should behave. I saw that he could tell them about what happened. But he could not tell them and then have it seen, if so it turned out, that he a man could not have control over Leiah if she had an abortion.

I began to understand that they must not know for this reason.

I felt even my own responsible word to be deflected and only to confirm his anger towards Leiah and I regretted speaking it, and I made protestation of my intention but I felt hollow and perhaps it is so when men talk that we must always shake our heads over a woman.


[from the littlest feeling, a book of sixty stories]

silence

Cornus. Mahonia. Audi. Saab. Cypress. South Elevation. Mark Prindle.

Smoke - swayed... grew in the eaves, developed. It was only a puff of cloud, nevertheless. and taking our ease in the greenlight under boughs.

The dry chattering of a typewriter, on and on in the corner of the stable block, with that commercial certainty that only comes with possession of a definite audience: it is more than commercial, it is assurance.

When the cousins came their mother hissed at them to stop meddling with their phones on the sofa. They did not pay any attention to our talk. There was nothing for them here except a rotten swing under an apple-tree.

I couldn't concentrate with their fidgeting. Go, I waved them away liberally.

You come back here if you want anything, mother said.

Well, we all chipped in, I continued with the story of Tania's bike ride.

guide-vocal

Pre-season is quite hard. The coach is also a PTI for the Marines (for £104.33 Ballantynes of Walkerburn ship him in bronze, but I am sick of hyperlinks!). First we had sprints round the pitch. Jogging is one kind of exercise, sprints are a different kind. Then tackle-bags, continuous - 2m sprint, tackle, go to ground, jump up, sprint - . Then fireman's-lift runs the length of the pitch, flip 3 tractor tyres and then fireman's-lift run back to the start.

My mate is going for Ironman. That is a 3.5km swim, then 180km bike ride finally run a full marathon, you have got to finish in 17hrs.

I know an old guy called Frank, he's retired, and he is an artist, he has exhibitions and he paints the whole time. It is mostly or all abstract paintings.
Well as the years go by old Frank builds up a stock of old paintings and unsold promotional postcards of these old paintings, and this undistributed stock depresses him and he wants some more space in the studio. Well if Frank had died it would all be perfectly simple, it would all just go to the charity shop and join the public community of objects at the appropriate level. However since Frank is alive and he is an artist who values art, especially his own, he has different ideas. He thinks it would be ungenerous to just box up things that members of his family might well appreciate. They might not appreciate the painting so very much for itself, though they say they do, but Frank knows if only from this polite over-enthusiasm that they love him and therefore an object that he has worked on would quite likely prove an acceptable and graceful gift. The relatives do not know how to refuse. An artist's art is a religious person's religion, you do not insult it. Therefore the paintings find their way into homes and (being abstracts) usually a suitable place on the wall can be found. "Blue Engagement" usurps a space that might otherwise have been taken by a 2009 calendar.

As for the postcards, well here I must admit that it isn't exactly Frank's fault. He really would bin them, the postcards have gone a bit curved and the backs are a bit yellowed. But just as he has stacked them up someone happens to stroll in and says (to Frank's surprise and mournful pleasure) that they would be quite keen to take away a block of 150 x "Rainstorm - Pwllheli", if Frank is just slinging them. Frank's pleasure is muted because by now he is not particularly keen on this or any of the other paintings from that era, he is aware of how he used to paint and who he used to be and the provincial enthusiasms that then had such an undue influence on his work. But still, he reflects that it's by no means unusual for artists to be harder on themselves than posterity is. It might well be that the period represented by "Rainstorm - Pwllheli" will come to impress others by a certain freshness and lyricism...

What Frank does not appreciate is that, from the relative's point of view, a stack of unused postcards is quite useful. It has nothing to do with what's on the front; they would be just as acceptable if they portrayed a white kitten looking winsomely out of a sewing-basket rather than "Encircling Light, III", Acrylic on canvas 75cm x 50cm. And if you take the stack of postcards now, it might make it easier later to express your reasons for regretfully NOT taking a trilogy of the dusty splay-legged clay sculptures that Frank experimented with back in the nineties.

Zero, however, is an insidious price. The recipient, attracted by the thought of getting a free stack of stationery and of cheering up old Frank at the same time, is subtly condemned by their own action to years of visual deprivation. Every note or scribble or phone number, every hasty communication or impromptu congratulation is accompanied by the same small account of an olive wash with its white arc. And these were people, were it not for Frank, who might have enjoyed the White Rock gardens, Mullion Cove, Rosa 'Ena Harkness', glass-blowing, Ciampino Airport - Rome, Exmoor ponies....

I am glad there is no undistributed stock on the internet, nothing left over, nothing that takes up space and becomes an encumbrance. We walk up from the changing-room with our sports bags and slicked hair, completely unburdened by the weightless mass of all the billion websites we never visit. Creative people can now proudly join the rest of us who have nothing, literally nothing, to PASS ON to their families.

long land

she spoke to an empty desk until it attacked her. She cried a bit and went into a park but its shadows were too thin. She went down a sally. A sparrowhawk angled into a willowbush. There was silence. Then there was the terrified twitter of when it's too late to be silent. Then the sparrowhawk smashed back out of the bush and flew broadtailed and laden back to its own nestlings.

She went into the wood. When it got dark it also got choked with old snapping twigs, solid tracery, she crashed through it, she tumbled into the ferns and a swirling brook swirled away a biro.

She left the apple on the bottom stair and went down to the boat. On the sandy banks the mining bees rolled massed in a furry mating ball.

Set adrift she ran the boat down the river, wiped the needle and dropped south into the broad fluttering ocean.

in my chair

He nursed her, he nursed her, while it lasted - this would aways be true.

No-one should be burdened by me, there are nursing institutions. I fought against institutions all my life. It is right.

At last I can go ahead and publish my

When someone dies, a large scab gets peeled away and mysteriously lost, and the world appears in simpler colours. The emptiness is pleasing in a way. It nags at you that you don't know where the large scab has gone (it's about the size of the slate bed that underlies a snooker table - not quite so much, perhaps). All the nursing, and the unfinished, unsettled conversation, which ends with a question.

that no-one should know the way it was for us. We lived differently enough, we were never in the papers. It was sorry, tawdry, strange. What does it matter that this information cannot be processed? That's only for now. One day among the trillions it may be possible. Throw it all down, tell the stories you don't even understand yourself, the stories you know you distort. Yet, as I write this, the distinctive thing that seemed just a minute ago so essential to preserve about our lives begins to thin out and to swim rapidly away from my gaze. Was it all in my head?

Harry unzipped his pocket and felt around - lozenges, plectrum..

Here we go.

He unfolded it. Plugger got to his feet and pulled open the fridge.

Kale. .... Kale. What is that. I need some breakfast! J.J. Kale, that is. Eh?

Nell gets it. I don't know about it man.

He's a shithead.

It's about Con. Three times a week for thirty years

Forty years.

Forty years, are you sure? Anyway, banging out Say Good Mama three four times a week. It's all he knows.

So if it weren't for Con.

Don't get me wrong, but one hit.

And Mississippi

Like I said, one fucking hit. I'd as soon drop the connection and tour as a fucking tribute band.

Yeah right, but it's not so easy you know. No fuck-ups there, it's gotta be right spot on. I like to see us doing the 4-part harmonies in Mr fucking Blue Skies. Hey mate. I like to see you ripping out the solo in Bohemian fucking Twatsode. Note-perfect, you know?

Fuck.

Like fuck.

Help me. I can't read this shit. Here, take it.

Plugger closed the fridge.

What's it saying?

Crikey. How many points have you got man?

What's this shit about court?

Who's gonna drive the van? Harry. I mean, you play real good. Loose. You know, we're the Axe. Don't matter if we come apart. It's the Axe. That's what they pay for. Something real. Fucking tribute shite. Fucking theatres. Musicals man! I mean - we . are . Rock . and . Roll .

The floor upstairs creaked.

My little girl. Maureen. Hello sweetheart.

She came sleepily into the lounge and Harry opened his arms to her.

I'm not the Axe. You're not the Axe. I never even heard of the Axe that much when I was a nipper. Generational thing. Funny thing, cos Con, when he knew I grew up in Horley Mead, Con said that's why you're the Axe man. But the truth is not one of them was from off of an estate. Cotterall, God rest his soul. His folks were fucking loaded.

Yeah. His old man paid for the bike... That's what I heard.

You won't get nothing out of Con. He never went...

to the funerals.

Right. There's times I think he was no more there than you or I.

Mitty was saying about taking him to Nuneaton to see his boy.

Mitty should keep his fucking nose out. Why can't his boy come over here if he's so mad about - Jesus, you wouldn't wish it on him.

Plugger slumped in the chair and began rolling. You got eggs, right.

I don't know man.

I just seen them. Fried bread. That's the kind of food I like. Do you ever go back?

Never. It must be fifteen years. None of the people I grew up with would be there. If they didn't move on they died. My mum and dad, we weren't really Horley folk. Being Micks and all. I don't fucking miss it. I'll tell you another thing. You know at the end of the main set it's der-ner-der-DOM-DOM...

Been on the run all my life...

Yeah. I hate that song. Shift over a bit, sweetheart. Mitty made us do it. He "exhumed" it, he said - it came off of their live album, which was a fucking catastrophe, sold about fifty units, the sound engineer was - you know, all he'd ever done was Dutch boompah - Eurobeat shite - he had no fucking clue. That's by the by. Mitty dug up this fucking tune, "anthemic" he said it was. Anyway, so Con had to learn it cos of fucking Mitty carrying on. He hates it more than I do. He's never remembered it.

But he played on it...

Not only that, he wrote the fucking song! I'd never even seen the album before but, that knobhead in Chepstow last month, he brought it with him and I read it on the sleeve. C. Lynch. It's him! Even Mitty didn't know that.

panHellenic

Nor did it seem, there lay among the shells. No reason why

elaborate cross

I would have wanted to think connectedly about what I would most have liked to do, and then - so to speak - do it. But it's never been like that. There was a sort of glitch. There's a knot running through the grain of my life. The image is Chesterton's.

How still the sea is today! The supercharged drizzle of last night; you could hardly breathe it in; and it made a fair stab at flooding the very sands, which is altogether an impossibility. Well! now it has vanished away leaving only clean air, and here we are, attended by the lumens of Exmoor and Tiger Bay.

No reason why!

Show Peter the play you wrote, Molly intervened.

I took in a great hot draught of tea, tears springing to my eyes, while he pushed objects around in his desk. The objects emitted dry, blocky sounds. I supposed they were made of ebony, leather, and silver; paperweights, chess-pieces... Such sounds are very precious to me, they are sounds you will only hear in the home of someone old.

Eventually he found the playscript. It was type-written, perhaps photo-reproduced in some indefinable way, and it had production notes in the margin. It was a radio play from the sixties. With a sinking feeling I saw that the content had something to do with religion; it was exactly what a radio play of that era was sure to be about, I supposed; but whether its tenor was godly or ungodly, I never read enough to find out. I was interested, not just out of politeness either, but I also wanted to carry on talking.

There was a lot going on. Lorna was afraid of dogs, but their friendly, clumsy terrier was trying to climb onto her lap. Someone was going from bad to worse, probably a son-in-law; sisters were at loggerheads; a grandchild was having to re-sit.

Blonde sisters heavy with children; silver-haired sister in a different country, phone-call at Christmas.

description beginning "Lettricia"

Lettricia january noon

rock grey: side-street
sorbet: hi-vis jacket
rose: pushchair

I've used 1200 minutes. Could explain my headaches. Microwave my head.

TWO ALL BUTTER FINGERS lanyard, cow hitch slipped into Dad's hand going across

*

And it rains and gusts. Nice weather for ducks. Was that just between the car and here. Windows blurred, down-striping; thrrough tree-crowns flurrying; french drain, creeking, we are water.


*

maybe this

A tea-light burning in its pool.

A flame was, on the whole, one of the more bright things. One did not, on the whole, consider a flame at all remarkable for its invisibility. But, the base of a flame. There's something obscure about that. You would like to get right underneath the flame and see its bottom whole and undivided, but you can't get there, you can't find a standpoint to gaze at it from. You can't see the base of a flame. Is it even flamy, or is it only a transparent discharge of hot gas?

I wanted, she explained, to make it as un-Christmasy as possible. She ran the tap, washing her feet in the bidet. But it was difficult, without seeming to mean something else. You have orange and if you put black it's Halloween, or if you put green it's a market. If I can I'm going to spend some time on it over the week-end.

And besides there are satsumas, he tried to join in. She changed the subject.

So you've finally managed to dispatch your latest collection of tea-lights.

I know. It's like killing an ox isn't it?

The pan was too big to go in a washing-up bowl. He filled it with hot soapy water and desultorily washed a wooden spoon and a fork in it. The pan was its own washing-up bowl. Alarmed at being alone at the back of the shop, he cut it short. He tipped the pan by one handle, emptying a gush of water into the dublin, while he wiped quickly underneath. It still felt greasy. He turned the pan right over and wiped some more, but this was the kind of cooked-in grease that you couldn't altogether remove.

A gravy-stained plate with sprouts, a couple of sozzled parsnips, and a roast potato with a skin of leather. Someone had eaten only the innards of their cod in batter. The batter casing had found itself marooned on top of the remains of the roast dinner, leftovers combined onto a single plate so the other plate could be stacked beneath. Stack 'n' Go. Golden crispy crumb on the outside; the inside was white and gelatinous, something you should never see. For some reason he imagined trying to sell it: Fisherman's Roast. It was a commercial art; he admired it. No status-seeking, no fucking shit. But it was an art. You called a cake a "Fruited Square". You called a candle a "Scented Pillar".

He was aware that he was crashing. He had simply forgotten his timetable. You have to crash sometimes to go again. It was something to do with the pineapples in her frieze. He knew if she called he would go through the open door.

Driving at nightfall in the warm car, he was fascinated by the silent shrubs on the embankment; a desperate place, out there. If you did stop the car at a lay-by and took a walk into that chilly thicket, it would be different. Because you were in it then. To be inside something, or to contemplate it from without; always different. Both valid views. You couldn't be inside everything. Two views. But not infinite views. There wasn't a continuum of opinions about anything. You can live and breathe opera; you can walk past the doors with a folded newspaper and hear the pigeons wheel in the square. Distant roar of a stadium: they've drawn level! Human experience organized itself into the two views: the external one, the internal one. The thing that generated this pattern was an aspect of the thing itself, its boundary. Like a cell wall. Death is the breakdown of cells. An art still lives while someone can still get inside it. But you have to get outside! Inasmuch as it still lives, the people die. But you must get inside something. A home to go to. Like a dialectic.

I don't understand you, he said. I've come to a decision, he meant.

You don't need to understand it, I don't.

I want to have a proper talk about it.

It's too late tonight.

I don't mean now, I mean. He tailed off.

There's a machine, you know.

I know. I find it therapeutic.

She hung up the towel.

I'm warmer tonight. (She meant, it doesn't matter about your decision.)

They said it might warm up a bit.

Oh this poor plant! It's so pot-bound! I neglect everything.

That's how it goes, I know.

She didn't think he did know. His good nature was what she liked about him. He had a happy disposition. But that was because he wasn't driven. Where after all was his portfolio? Where was the stupendous stuff, the stuff that mattered? She had believed in it, but the more she probed, the more elusive it seemed to become. What was he working on now? His binders contained only dust-covered juvenilia. And then what? He spoke as if he was on the verge of finding something out. He talked as if she could help him lay some final chain of fire across the vast foggy continent that brooded above his temples. He implied there was a project. But the pattern of his day had long been settled; the latte, the Independent... There was never a time when he actually did do his project.

And consequently, though he would not admit it, he did not love artists. He worshipped art, he lived in art. Artists disappointed him. With all their narrowness, ignorance, hapless clichés, political infighting, childish materialism... how could such people as this make art? Somewhere far down in his green depths, something that might not surface for many years but one day would stare them both in the face, he hated her. Or he denied what she did. He minimized it. He put up with it. He said nice things about it. He never quite admitted it. And now she saw that these patterns were already forming, in these first few hours.

three stories

"It's only a short one, so she reckons that's all right. Anyway it's mink or something, some vermin. Master and Mistress both smoke like chimneys. She has a cigarette-holder to keep her fingers from going yellow."

"But it must get horrible inside."

"Yes it does. Sometimes a bit of black comes out and it sticks to her teeth. She has them professionally cleaned every six months. She's got one gold one with a diamond inset..."

"So Flounce and Floozy - "

"Nothing's too good for them. They have coats made from the same material as Master's suits. He's taken out a funeral plan with Heavenly Pets. Mistress thinks burials are messy so they're going to be cremated and have the ashes kept in studded casks. With their portraits on the outside. Painted by a local artist. She's already been round to make sketches."


*

"While I was waking up I was thinking about this idea I've got for something called 'Jamembert'."

"What is that, a kind of spread?"

"I haven't decided yet. It's just a name at the moment."

Gradually people began to laugh about the idea of 'Jamembert' and to embroider on it. Matty began to warm up.

"Yesterday I thought of a new extreme sport called 'stormbathing'. Well, basically the idea is going swimming in dangerous conditions. I'd market a clothing range, the catalogue would have lots of pictures of models standing around on rocky coasts with bursts of spray. It would be technical gear, technical but sexy."

"Or you could call it 'white-water swimming'."

At each invention there was a bellow of laughter. Pint-glasses, nearly drained and slathery with froth, were banged enthusiastically on the table-top. Other people chipped in. The clothing range could be called 'Red Flag'.... One section could be called 'après-storm'...

After a few minutes they dried up, it got a bit too elaborate. There was a pause, people sighed and drank and the quizmaster's voice came through: Now, Question 29. Who was the first footballer to be knighted. That's right, it WAS Sir Stanley Matthews. Stan the Man, God bless him. The answer to Question 29, Sir Stanley Matthews. OK, we're nearly there. Question 30. I think a few of you might have had trouble with this one. It's a saying.

They went up to the bar. Matty made Chris's girlfriend giggle - not about white-water swimming exactly. He saw Becky shoot them both a curious look but he continued to feel unconcerned.

*

With each passing year he felt more burdened with - more rewarded with - secrets. It was not so much the definite secrets that he learned in the course of professional duties. As time passed, he found that his thinking on so many subjects had become too complex to explain. In a serious conversation his habitual part was not to express his own beliefs but instead to exult in miracles of tact and to yield no grounds for suspecting his entirely divergent opinion of the matters at hand. Instead, he emitted a qualified approval of the other person's prattle. He - well, he tinkered as deftly as he could, strengthening one thought with high praise, passing over another as if it had not been said. He understood the mentalities of people who came to see him as patterns that had been too long formed for drastic adjustment. Patterns that were admirable in their way, often praiseworthy, at worst an earnest response that he might well have shared with them if he had suffered the same portion of experience. It was not his fault that he saw further than they. Indeed he was now so unused to expressing his own thoughts that he was prone to take refuge in confessing that he no longer knew exactly what they were. And perhaps this was actually true. His flexibility, his total responsiveness to the tones and assumptions of those around him was, he hoped, comfortable and attractive. It had become rather important to be on everyone's side. Why he hardly knew. But companionship, after all, was more important than sounding off about what one thought. Love was what mattered most in our world; God knows it was lonely enough without useless confrontations. And no doubt his thoughts were often mistaken anyway, so why rock the boat? Yet at the very outset he made his own diagnosis of the other person's trouble; instantly, and secretly. It might very well not be a matter on which he could claim in a demonstrable way to be qualified to decide. Nonetheless he was sure he was right. He had seen it all before. It was all nonsense. What was the point in exposing his diagnosis to the public view and to the same weary lines of questioning about its relevance or his capacity to judge? That is, if he could even gain a hearing for it - and if he did, he was prone to stumble in the exposition and to become so impatient with the details of his case that he ended up leading people to infer that he believed something silly, something different from what he really believed; perhaps something more like what they believed themselves, or else its mere inverse. Then it seemed he was wilfully contradictory and they began to take offense, unfairly in his view. So it was better to withhold everything. At night he walked in the avenues of his secrets, only on desperate occasions turning aside to scrutinize them; on others, happily much more common, merely quieted by a vague approval of their huge soft shadows.

days

It took seven weeks to throw off the cough and I was a lump from sitting around so long. While I was still getting worse an on-off boyfriend had his bike taken from outside my house while a brief visit developed into a needy one. He didn't get away with it this time. I was more upset about it than he was, and afterwards I had an unrelaxed feeling about where I lived. Years had slipped by while I was working. I found out that I didn't know much about my neighbours, the kids flitted like a mixed flock of birds and I wouldn't even recognize them. Now I wanted payback, somehow. I was aware I must keep my wits about me and know people's names and where they all lived. I sat in the shadows a little back from the window and spied. On Mondays and Wednesdays the noise of the binmen was a pleasure, and later still the postman cycled in with his bag of supermarket offers and election promises. Library books expired. When the kids went back to school the scooters no longer revved round the flats and with a sigh of relief frightened old people crept out on their steps and read in the sunshine, but not for very long. Soon the mothers and toddlers filed up the road from the playgroup. I tried to learn the doors they entered. Every afternoon was fine. Sometimes the sky was hazed and the sun was a hot copper ball. The next day it was clear again. Driving in the countryside the rapefields hidden by hedges smelt of honey and also of cheap margarine. A cloud like a large comic turtle was being drawn across the sky. The shorn head of a child on a bike glided along the top of the wall. A crow, every feather fanned out, swirled to rest bouncing in the cypress. I ought to know the cars they drove; what a car betrays about its owner. If someone gave way to me at the end of the road, I didn't just wave my hand, I tried to learn their faces too. Friends. Enemies. I tried to make out that I was still hazed, but it was an art that didn't come naturally to me and my attention provoked attention in its turn. What's your problem, they looked. Want a picture? My coughing invaded their homes. I had panicky thoughts of them talking about me, saying She's a bit funny. I was beginning to have a face.

*

I was just getting ready to leave when Jen called me over and she told me Nerys would be doing the bar in the evening so I wouldn't be needed later. She said Nerys had been promised Saturday night but now Mark and Jen had cancelled their plans for the week-end she wasn't needed so it was only fair that they let her work Friday night instead. I said to Jen that's fair enough but I felt gutted. Friday has always been my night and I've been working at the King George a lot longer than Nerys has but she was taking my shift so I wasn't impressed. I've had the feeling from the moment when Nerys started there she was brought in to replace me so I think I might have to start looking elsewhere soon. In the afternoon I went and did for Margaret as we arranged and then I went shopping. I had no plans for the evening and I was going to have a quiet night in but then I told myself don't let it get to you girl so I decided to show my face anyway. I wore a halterneck bustier and slingbacks plus the new snakeskin bag I got down town. It was a bit awkward at first because I was sitting at the bar on my own and Nerys made it plain she did not need my help so I just sat quietly and had a drink. Then Mark and Jen and Jen's sister Trish came in and I got talking with them. Later on I had a couple of dances

*

One thing which gets me every time is when I go past a field and I see the elm trees coming up behind the gate. I think, that field hasn't been mown for three-four years, and it gives me a good, peaceful feeling of nature coming back strong and green. Then I go on thinking, and it's always the same. I realize it's the next field to the last house on the edge of town and I realize that they're just waiting for someone to cark it so that they can sell it on for building land. If by then the field is all full of thistles and thorn then you'll never get any problems with the planning department because the people who live next to it say: what an eyesore, it's time it was sorted out. It's all about greed. But for me this is a good opportunity because I can tether my animals in there, of course that makes people even more anxious to get it built over. We've always lived along the edge. The edge keeps shifting just like I say but there'll always be an edge. Right from when I was young I used to play the game of looking for money in the street and I still play it now. You learn to look along the gutters where people get out of their cars because the change falls out of their pockets. Markets are good places too, and best of all are the pubs of course but I can't go in that sort of pub, I'm too conspicuous and in two minutes it turns nasty, you'd be surprised. When Kelly was a baby we used to go down to the NCH day centre where you can use the washing machines and kitchens. The dogs are part of our lives. It's good to keep dogs, it's about respect because others are the same around here, they're not very well off and they keep their eyes open. The rule is, if you look after your property you won't have any trouble, but if you take liberties with it then it's fair game. That's how it works.

bronze impulse

Sky. Clouds, down.

Data CDs, puddles, up.



spray, hairdo under the trees - february haze - collects -


*

     you are not sincere,
     I can't stand your voice.
     If it was my choice
     we would not be here.


You are not sincere, you're broken and scrabbling in panic, you talk words but it's a long roll of excuses and to head me off

*

spray, say syrup ;-
hollow-chinned tureen

copperbeaten temples, prise it, thumbnail along the seam, hinged sherbet-cup. Similar to a clock inside, gears cogged at 90°, an oily rag in the lid, eyes staring, up.

the sky plane pastry, marked by a cooling-tray

as far as the esso

Don’t give Nan a hard time you.

She tickled his neck, watching his fine black brows, haircut that morning, eyes fixed on the story. He couldn’t come out of the story but he returned her caress, rubbing the back of his head into her palm.

*

It’ll just have to wait. I went back for it but Cuntface had locked up hadn’t he. Such a fucking tosspot.

They slowed to a cruise coming up to the lights. Out the window he fired off a burp like a pig rooting in a trough.

Living the moment. That’s for people with fucking Alzheimer’s.

*

Meanwhile lit up in neon the two girls went undisturbed about their work and chatted. It was the lazy hour when the trucks had all gone. Beneath it all, they were waiting.

They tell you to lift your arms, or you get smileys under your boobs. I had an Aloha and I wished I’d have had a Mediterranean.

Cos like nothing happens at first.

Totally! I only had some red marks across my stomach when I went to bed and I thought, right... Then I woke up in the night and I went into the bathroom and went oh my God!!

Oh no, it looks amazing.

Oh my God I was in the shower trying to wash some of it off. See this - I had to make up to tone it down!

Oh that reminds me, let me get to my bag a minute.

They pushed past each other in the narrow space. The ugly cow’s balled tissues had built up behind the till.

Liam’s showed first. They parked near the car-wash and flicked the bonnet. Under its shade they went on talking. One scooter, then another, materialized out of the day that had ended.

Around the pumps sleeked the muscular engines, revving, manoevring. Some had a blue LED in the dash, glinting like a single ear-ring.

Nail Extensions! I went Yay. The other one was .. Safe Baby Massage.—No – Numpty - Delivering Baby Massage!

Oh I know. When I was having Dean

*

Jen leaned out, young plump bare arm and tube of death curling.

What’s happened to Banger.

Oh, Banger. Fucking Christ. He called me this morning said mate, I’m just not going to make it. I said you fucking lazy arse I’m coming to pick you up in ten minutes. He says no, it’s not that, I’ve got to see the dentist this morning. I’ve got no front teeth.

Oh my God. I thought you stayed with him.

No. No, I’d gone. It happened after they left, outside the kebabby.

The kebabby, well that’s a surprise.

Yeah.

(Nita shimmered again like a massive wave of sound. And then she just come over, pressed up against him so hard.)

What? No I don’t know, he couldn’t take it in. Just come out the darkness.

The same guy who threatened him in the pub.

I don’t know. Listen I’m gonna shoot.

Sweet.

the history of her commons

They steamed into the Gravesend Basin crowned with gulls wheeling.

The sky was overcast and mild for late September but as yet there was little sign of Sunday strollers along the shore. True, it was only ten-thirty; no, nine-thirty; MacArthur swiftly adjusting his timepiece.

"Back to watching the clock again. Back to tight rations and that damned thieving government," he complained. "I tell you something's finished about old England."

"Be quiet, dear." Joan's eyes shone out of her tan; she was looking tired, absolutely worn out, but marvellous.

"Wouldn't you like to go back home? I don't see why we should hang around."

"Back to Capetown? I would, of course I can hardly wait, but we've talked about this."

"Why not? Look! - there's a P&O boat just sliding alongside us now."

London River was getting busier. Tan-sailed barges and lighters bearing heaps of coal and crushed stone under stretched tarps were making slow headway close to the Kentish shore. Excise craft, wide-prowed with their cabins forward and big windows flashing, darted across the tide.

"And what about Cassell, the little matter of that book?"

They were wrapped up in each other and the excitement of making port, yet still David's eyes looked over her shoulder. A young woman of extraordinary beauty, a woman who made Joan of all people look practically dumpy, had advanced to the rail.

Miss P. Lindkvist cast a glance in return. No doubt about it, he was good-looking, well into his forties though. Those Navy years had given him a hungry look that two months of touring Sweden had satisfied but not done away with.

He even reminded her a little of the hero in that absurd film, so lean and brilliantined. But why was it two huge diamonds he'd snatched from the vault in Scotland Yard? They represented balls no doubt, like the thunder-stones in the stone circles of Mälaren. And Farbror Erik, he was as unsure of himself as another man, he had pocketed plenty of diamonds! She had been shown the pictures of Wimbledon Common. She would disappear in that house. But could it really be so close, could it really be somewhere in this vast, dirty city?

Even down-river the signs of the war were everywhere, coast defences, bombed-out sites. Further in, London was ramshackle. Blackwall Docks was a rubble zone, St Katharine Docks might not be rebuilt at all. Whole streets of the East End were ruined, citizens of the Commonwealth's heartland living in barracks and dormitories on farms. This was what Stan had gone home to, Jimmy Barnes too.

They found themselves elbows together in the gangway, the morning light churlish through salt on the glass.

"Have you been long out of England? Ah, - " he saw her name-tag "Förlåt, jag trodde inte att ni var Svensk..."

"That is all right. As you see, I speak English quite well."

"You don't look Swedish - according to our silly ideas, you know."

"Of course my black hair, I understand."

“It’s far from black,” he protested and then paused, embarrassed.

They were down among the cabins. There was a change of motion; Saga was warping into her berth. "Your first time in England?"

Suddenly she looked vague. "Yes - I have some things to do here. It is psychological work."

"And I have been studying the Swedish psychology! It's a fine country."

"I don't know. We don’t speak of it easily. We never used to have flagpoles everywhere, but now, we seem to need them."

After disembarking he forgot about her, watching for the car to be hoisted on to the quay-side. As the crane swung it up he enjoyed its rakish dustiness. For this moment it still remained apart from the life he felt closing back in on them.

"Well, we've got our notes."

As soon as he thought of the precious notes, Joan's and his hand-writing side by side, all spotted with mosquito-blood and rain, he felt repelled at the thought of working them up into a clean-typed manuscript.

"You'll be busy in no time. I know you." Joan felt for him, how deflated he'd suddenly become. "As soon as we've been home and seen the dogs, I say we meet up with Bill and find a drink somewhere."

“Good idea – so long as the R.A.C. have done their homework. Steel is more in my line than a type-writer, I'm afraid. It isn’t really what I call work. Lord, how I envy Nils! But there's nothing for it. It's going to take an age to clear the car. Ach, Jennie – I wish we could just – book into a vandrarhem."

"In the middle of Westminster! Besides, vandrarhems did have one or two drawbacks...”

Stored theings

Outside the very roadways rinsed, leafbaby rosettes
stand scout-guard by the dingy skeleton banners of not so long
and it's Dunkirk & bugle, water rushing down. A basin of winter suds plunges the air
into skating, all black the trees and brick places
from which serene children emerge whistling and loitering: how warm and peaceful it must be in those fine blocky homes.

I need this, what you preserve

You keep rows of jam to eat, pickled eggs, old wines to drink; because I know their end, because I perceive them not as finished but as yet-to-be-consumed, the glass still sparkles, it's pleasant to look at them.

But it's different to open my own stores:

photographs, stationery, letters, sea-shells, ribbons, old felt-tips
that I only ever uncap to check if they still make a mark, games I've never played, brass rubbings I've never rubbed, projects I never started, essays never chucked, clothes never worn, and a fur of dust on the lids.

Stored theings, hardly ever to be unstored or brought back into use.

Stored theings whose main theing that they now do, the only theing they do that is is thoroughly tangible, is to be stores. [They show their age in rather a different way than I anticipated: what person under thirty today would have letters? Who has felt-tip pens, diaries, floppy disks, negatives, tapes?] So far as needing new shelves is concerned, or lumbering them in PC boxes to a new roost, this I don't mind. It's when I try and get the precious theing to do what it was for, that's when I know that I don't really even want to try.

They used to be fun. How often when time
was infinite I spent a rich evening
among her letters, or my clever writings

I listened, but now I'm depressed by a different sound:
that futility they seem to all have, the out-of-date voices,
the unrealized picture, the desperately mortal fragments that are only being held up
out of the drain of winter for a reason that I now need time to understand
and that, instead, I respect.

Did I put them aside, marking them as ever-precious to me, in order for them to be respected?

How can I get there now, into the muffled, incompetent snap that betrays so much more than it expresses? Through whose poor composition and murk and economy format the most remarkable thing is the dazzling smooth skins of those sauntering people who didn't know how to dress and who unwitnessed stepped through the crowds though if you only knew oh crowds how spectral that appearance was would you have valued them any more than yourselves who were also ... : -- I of course never did...

Winter's work at night. The water gurgling in the sluice reminds me all of a sudden of my young mother standing at the sink, the water rushing over the willow neck of a stainless steel fork, and steam spreading up the window. (I was three and I had become a rebel; frightened by all the languages, jealous no doubt of all this new competition, I would now only respond to English. Unfortunately I got my own way.)

Will you ever call? I say my mood's going downhill but that's a cover-up. If I stay in the archives I'm frightened the ghosts will begin to speak. It's not only dreams that it's healthy to forget.

story with no ending

It meant a great deal to both of them to keep the dirt out of the house. To her, especially. When she used a dustpan and brush on birch-effect flooring, then fleeing nature, sparse at the worst, rapidly thinned away to half and tenth and hundredth. Her breathing lightly elevated, she pushed the swing-lid aside and gently knocked the pan contents into perfect chrome waste storage. Then she grabbed the vacuum cleaner and whizzed the last pencil-line of dust into its inner liner where as she imagined it festered harmlessly with a cool pink pulsing glow.

This line of dust might be embellished with one red larch-needle though whenever possible they did not park under trees. The worst was shed skin whitening the chest of drawers and knots of hair in the carpets, for Martyn did not wish her to cut it short. Then there were cobwebs that invisibly grew in the ceiling corners, crumbs of toast and the fluff of mohair. All this she dusted or wiped with squirts of abrasive shine from the sink and surfaces.

They walked on hard-top from porch to car-port and car-park to work-place. Though the foot-and-mouth controls had been lifted they felt no desire to step off the tarmac. Shopping he moved like a dancer in immaculate trainers and lifted her slim body laughing over a crash-barrier so they could take a short cut through the trolley-park. Though their eyes feasted on the sight of new skimpy things shivered into slim gold-lettered shop bags they did not fear their purchases being sullied on exposure to their well-ventilated kitchen area or to the calfskin recliners in the living-room.

Butter pats chill
Swimmer you asked me a question gropes in his lane
my nicole my enid my hillyer my barrowboy frank monte carlo
Coarse sunlight blazer

It was while shopping that they relished seeing the pavements and their sealed geometry extending widthways, but later in the evening when they returned for drinks and friends they were yet more deeply aware of the brilliant solidity of kerbs and the slowly ascending travellator gleaming with a hint of night chill. She was driver since Martyn was having a beer and they admired the sapphire curved lines and the promise of efficient halogen in the dimmed reflectors of their parked vehicle lathered in the car-wash.

And thinking of foreign airports and their wide plazas of marble that were perfectly smooth for baggage trolleys and the motorized vehicles of those unfortunate enough to be uh-huh yet nevertheless able to trip abroad. They were exceedingly fond of swimming and working out and were conscious of their healthy-bodied looks as of their cars which were ordered in a show-room for their dedication did not end in the gym but extended to the workplace where both knew how to look good in a suit and eagerly picked the brains of their colleagues in order to learn how to excel.

It was not that there was no nature indoors for she nursed the satin leaves of African violets in a glazed planter whose compost silvered with specks of water-retaining jelly was a full two inches below the rim. The grains of plant food left emerald trails in the water which she accurately applied to the saucer beneath with a long-stemmed watering-can. When it came to Saturday morning she did the crawl on the zebra throw while Martyn slid himself quietly right up to the thump and back. At length they sagged appreciatively, but she knelt aloft nevertheless from the bed-fabrics until he felt ready to disengage and head into the wet-room to rotate the clock-heavy controls of their powerful shower. They deluged beneath it hearts still racing and stepped into all-enveloping bathsheets.

Sometimes it was true while flicking channels a fountain of rally-driver’s mud would fire across the large TV screen though without any risk of marking their oatmeal rug, a golfer’s divot would loop into blue, or rugby forwards would emerge streaked from rucks on a badly cut-up pitch but these were not their preferred viewing. They liked terminators and bad cops doing a tough saint’s work, the squealing choreography of cars in flight, the horrendous threats of aliens and evil men, the eye-candy babe who does not stay right there til I get back or if she does gets taken hostage, and the firework warehouses and spaceships whose incessant chain of detonations signalled the finale of the DVD. At such a time relaxed in the week-day evenings small disasters would spill from wine-glasses and wedges of pizza whose sturdy cartons lined with greaseproof paper could not protect against every basilled glob of mozarella or gleam of diced onion.

casement

What will we do? Win a 3 day mini break? Both the sweet-wrappers, though empty, reassumed their lozenge shapes.

There's some shit in there.

What is it?

Something crushed under her finger-tips. She came down off the steps.

Some shit or something. It's like a snail-shell. A shed skin.

We had a violin made of clear resin which was its own case. I never used to practise. Remarkably dusty it got. You never wanted to put it under your chin. I don't mean the rosin-dust. Rosin on resin, I know. You got so you didn't notice, like when we lived in Frog's Bottom.

When you open a case like that, each half is known as a casement

opening on the foam of perilous seas

and when they're closed, secondary glazing, but it started as evacuated glazing.

Secondary glazing. I didn't have much to do with it, ever. But it makes me think of fitting up the ledges - you know, for mosquitoes. The fixing screw put a camber in the sill.

Just before sunrise, the sky was barred with cloud and it went surprised into gold. Moment the sun was up it all went. Do you get a different kind of clouds forming when it's dark?

Last night, just after sunset, there was one cherubic bar-fire, a fat contrail like Garrard the Jewellers.

You could buy a London Bus with diamonds in the headlights. Carnelian bead on a swizzle stick. All the same names: Garrards, Harrods, Gamleys, Hamleys. I held on to Grannie's hand, our breath was clouds at Hyde Park Corner. I can still see him hammering the air, and I can still hear every word I heard that day: nothing.