She sighs. It’s a deep sigh; one that’s meant to convey all her tiredness and weary dissatisfaction with life. I look at her as if she is dead and I can tell, from the way that she stares sideways at me from her seat on the train that she doesn’t like this. She stares some more and then, almost imperceptibly, her chin begins to dip, then raise, drop, then recover, fall then fall some more. Slowly, without her noticing, she falls asleep. A few minutes pass before she starts to snore. Even the dead breathe in this new old world of ours.
I could go on. I could tell you about how I desperately don’t want this to become another tale of zombies on a train with me being the only passenger left alive but I haven’t the heart to inflict that upon the world or upon you.
Let me allow that made-up world to disintegrate instead. Let her face fade into the background hum. Let the train rattle and roll on to its destination safely. Let me now go to bed to sleep and dream and perchance to snore.
Quick story: me and the hubby, Sid went for a walk on the Tottenham Court Road. About half way down we came across a bloke sitting on the pavement. It was a fine, Summer day and the sun was out, even though it was late evening.
At first, I thought that Sid was joking when he said that we should adopt this bloke, but then he crouched down in that flexible way he has and says to him that we was going to take him home and make him part of our small, but perfectly formed family.
Well, by this time I could tell that this bloke on the pavement, who was by now looking up at Sid with an astonished tone to his eyes, reeked to buggery. I certainly didn’t didn’t fancy him being in our clean, little house, not for all the patchouli oil in the world.
It was as if Sid’d read my mind. As soon as I’d thought that he turned his head, looked at me with a grin on his face and said that we could put him in the dog kennel.
Now we’d just had a death, so to speak, in the family. Our lovely St. Bernard: Bernie (yeah, I know; not very original, right?) had just passed away from an obstruction in his bowel. We didn’t get it diagnosed until it was too late and by that time he’d… anyway, that a whole ‘nother story. Point is, his kennel was free.
I know what you’re thinking now: what kind of heartless people would house a bloke in a dog kennel! Well, hear me out first and then you can judge. It’s not so much a kennel as a heated, plumbed and padded annex to the house. It’s even got a kitchen and bathroom in there, one part for cooking Bernie’s food and the other for Bernie to use when the weather was cold or when neither of us was otherwise available to take him out, if you know what I mean.
Again, I know what you’re thinking so let me lay your mind to rest: when I say toilet, I mean a tiled, flat area in corner where Bernie did his pee-pee and poo-poo. We even taught him to press his paw down on the tap that released water to sluice his mess away. Heck, that dog was so smart that sometimes he would press the flush twice if there was any residue remaining!
In fact, as a complete aside, I suspect that this is why we didn’t know Bernie had a bowel problem. There was a long spell last winter, just before he passed away, when we just fed him and then let him get on with his business in private. Obviously he just wasn’t doing that and so … you know.
Hey, it was an honest mistake that anyone could make!
So, yeah, back to the homeless guy.
Picture this, we’re both looking at him expectantly after offering him a home in our luxury dog kennel and, you know what? The fool just shook his head and then proceeded to ignore us. What was worse is that he put this weird expression on this face as if he was disgusted with us or somethingI mean, what a cheek! Him there, on the street, smelling like a skunk and acting like he was disgusted with us?!
Anyway, we left him there and strolled on to the Odeon to see Top Gun: Maverick, which was a fabulous movie. I recommend that you go and see it too.
Just wrote this story that I think is great but I don’t want to put it here on WordPress, have six people look at it, five people click the like button, one of which will have read it (maybe two) and no one says anything about it.
She wasn’t really a goth. None of us was. We were all playing at putting on costumes and adopting roles to play out the stories rooted in the places we came from. I was raised on a council estate six miles to the north of Sheffield and she was born in a place much further north. By the time she spoke to me, at the party that was more like a collection of like-minded people drinking, talking and listening to music in a room in Sheffield, she had lost most of her Scottish accent. She still seemed exotic to me. We arranged to meet again.
The room was invaded at one point by a bunch of lads who thought, wrongly, that it was a party and was open to all. They weren’t minded like us and so we pushed them out. Can you remember blackheads and spots, or was your skin pure and unblemished when you were a teenager? The walls of the room were like skin and they were an unwelcome, yellow substance. I got punched in the face as I pushed. Others got punched too, but I didn’t feel any of it. Not really. Drink anaesthetises these things.
Later on, I would come to the understanding that it’s really the mind that immunises a face against pain. I don’t like the word meditation, but that’s what it is. It works over a long period of time and although it takes longer, it’s more effective. I’m meditating now, even though I don’t need to do so for anything happening in this room. I’m travelling backwards in time. I need to set something right. I don’t really know if I can; not really really. But I need to try.
She met me in a pub at the bottom of Ecclesall road. I think. As I remember it, the building was all on one level. Or maybe there was a cellar for the beer barrels. Or maybe there was a level upstairs that I never noticed. It was in a room at the back of the pub, where we sat drinking pints of some intoxicating drink or another, watching each other’s faces that I laughed at her.
She wanted me to have sex with her. She told me that she couldn’t have orgasms, Or that she hadn’t so far. She was open to having them in the future. She perhaps hoped that she would have one with me. Or maybe I’m reading too far into her mind. No; she seemed hopeful. I was full of all kinds of thoughts about being young, skinny, gifted, handsome; all the things that come with being intoxicated, not by beauty, but by the cheapest lager on tap. I saw her as fat. She wasn’t ugly. In fact, she was rather beautiful in her own way. Young, bright, intelligent, educated, self-aware and vulnerable.
I laughed. Not really at her. Not directly. It was more a laugh that expressed the delight I felt at being better than someone else. I didn’t feel evil, even though I probably was at that moment because it was definitely an evil laugh. It was the kind of laugh that cuts through the psychic flesh of vulnerable people like a sharp blade that penetrates the heart and damages it.
I go inside and then I go back to that place. I touch her cheek tenderly. I look into her clear, young eyes and take a parcel of love from the part of the universe that is pure and I hand it over. She looks at it and spits in my face. I accept. I open my heart to the purity at the heart of the universe and I open a channel. I let the light flood into me, through me, into the memory of her and then into her that is now. The love in my hands is swept up and into her by the light that continues to pour out of the universe and into her. I step out of the stream and leave her connected. She will always be pure now.
Eventually, we all fall to dust. In that dust is a sparkle. Through this hesitant, yet eternal shine, we stay connected to all that is pure and honest. The more parts, of the area within me that I call memory, that I can fill with light, the purer I become. I want to wash away all my mistakes and there is just enough light and time available for me to do this.
I want to write a whole set of stories about what goes on behind the scenes in life. I don’t mean the kinds of things that go on behind closed curtains but more like how the machinery behind our lives works.
For example, when we do things, like smile at strangers, meditate for world peace or doubt our faith, what happens next? I want to write stories that show what happens next. I want to show the consequences of both trivial and profound actions, words and thoughts. I want to take the lid off the machinery of life and describe what’s in there.
So often, we have no idea whether the card we signed to send best wishes to Mrs Smith in the accounts department to recover from her operation quickly had any effect. I want to show exacly what happens in situations like these.
If you don’t hear from York again except through a series of increasingly horrifying reports of a zombie plague spreading across the north of England, then this is where it started:
photograph of litter on the ground in York – former city of culture and light (now a zombie battlefield (maybe (hopefully not)))
Anyone out there have an appetite for a man’s account of a theoretical discussion between a man and a woman seen from a woman’s perspective? So, like, how a man imagines how a woman maps out a conversation with a man that she’s never spoken to, vis-a-vis a text of the actual conversation (that never happened and never will (except in my imagination)).
Okay, so we argue. Hey, doesn’t everyone? Mostly I argue with logic. Surprise, surprise, this doesn’t work. The argument escalates and nothing is resolved.
Yesterday, because I didn’t want to waste time arguing, I gave in. I conceded that all her points were correct (even though, logically, they weren’t) and, AS IF BY FREAKING MAGIC, the argument stopped. Her face lost that sulky expression that it generally has when we argue and, moments later, she cracked a joke! Life resumed and all was good.
Later on, she thanked me for ‘coming from love’. I clarified that she meant regarding the argument. She did.
So here’s my takeaway point: she equates giving in to love. If only I’d have known that. Sheesh. I mean, where’s the manual for this stuff and which page is that on?
defining scene of my life as a heartless bar steward? dunno really. you mean, like, as if I was in a movie? like i was the star in the movie of my own life? okay, okay, let me think.
got it.
i was in a building with my mate marvin. he was being a proper knob about something or other and so i pushed him down the stairs. he ended up in a coma and he ain’t come out of it yet. that kind of defines me. not the pushing part, but the fact that i don’t give rat’s arse about him. he can stay in a coma for the rest of his life if he likes; i just don’t care.
i do wish, though. that i had a life without violence. i don’t really think it’s the best solution for life’s problems. i don’t be violent for fun. it just happens. it’s just a natural consequence of my unique personality. i mean, sure, it turns me on a little, but that’s just a by-product; not a cause.
hold on, i got to take this.
hello?
yeah, that’s me.
yeah, i suppose i would have been. not no more; all that’s by the by.
he woke up?
interesting.
thanks.
what’s that?
no, i’m okay.
no, i’m fine thanks. goodbye.
bye.
well would you look at that; marvin’s woke up. shall we go to visit him?
nah, it’s just around the corner from here. we can be there in about three minutes. two if you take off those heels.
okay, three it is.
what do you mean looking forward to meet him. we’ve known each other since we was babies so i guess we don’t really have much to catch up on. unless, of course, he’s had some particularly interesting dream to tell us about.
me? well, I ain’t got much to tell him really.
you? what about you!
nah, nah, it was only last week he went comatose. we ain’t met since then.
dunno. like i said, it just didn’t seem important enough to tell you. and i’ve had a lot on mi mind, babes, what with the wedding coming up and all of that.
what do you mean ‘call it off’! what’s …
but you already knew I was heartless! and it’s not as if you actually know marvin! you can’t miss what you never had now can you!
well we’re here now. at least come and say hi to marvin. he’s a nice bloke. like i say, i’ve known him all my life. the stories i could tell you about him.
yeah, i suppose he could tell you some stuff about me too.
great, let’s go see him then. after you, princess.
Robert C Day 