The Blog
(its not a blog)
What if
Jesus lived on Terrace Road
and held his sermons on South Beach?
Fed the 5000 on fish and chips.
And blessed wine from 24 Hour Spa.
Meet him
on Great Darkgate Street.
Would he drink at the Ship
or at the Vale perhaps?
Bouncing from Angel to Pier
with boozie
Aberystwyth sinners slipping down
his jeans, forgiveness forgotten
it can wait till morning’s
first light; three times she denied him!
Would he
kick the bar at both ends
of the prom, at the same time?
Miracles in the rain!
Would he be crucified
on Consti?
Paraded through seaside streets
by rugby boys
for the banter,
for the blood.
Undulating hills sweeping towards the cliffs,
England’s edge is in sight
falling dramatically into the sea.
But perched here on this wild windswept,
sun bleached hot holiday headland;
the brave few bare their summer shorts
to the elements - white sailor hats
bobbing amongst deck chairs and
barbeques, fluttering pendants, pegs and
harmless English pedantry.
For this is where the campers go -
those wild adventurous souls!
Pitching up with territorial windbreaks,
mallets and tents; fantastical fields of fabric
and colourful canvas. Shoulder to shoulder with
curvaceous caravans, like the breasts
of the chubby wives of bald red faced men
in vests and be-socked sandals;
holidaying with the kids in Cornwall.
The rain drops are starting up again,
the man on Radio 4 said it would
be “dry and bright for the foreseeable
future” – that Met Office false prophet, brought
courtesy of the BBC. The dreary drizzle turns to downpour;
“It’s lashing it down!” comes the collective groan from
across the site as umbrous skies lead to umbrellas
unfolded in hasty battle with the elements as
tent zips sting shut and caravans’ clammy
portals close to this overarching grey nemesis;
our beloved English weather.
A twitch of curtains as the lightening cracks outside;
the board games are spread out on
the multi purpose kitchen/dining table as
Dad struggles to find all the pieces to make
Travel Scrabble complete and as dull as the name implies.
It’s no good, the N isn’t there. The worn colouring
books are dredged up from “underneath” –
that vast repository of wet day camping
amusements - and those red stools, now faded to pink.
The thunder shakes the vans axles.
Is the adventure turning sour?
Have the campers had enough? Is it time to go home?
The doors are suddenly sprung open. The awnings
are unflapped. The dripping drops for the
final time. A calm is restored. The sun
slides its golden fingers through a brittle
cracking pavement sky. Life resumes
as before. The storm forgotten,
our campers thoughts turn to food and
the holiday summer spread before them. Life continues.
Show your tickets to the tour guide, try not to tear
them into roach too soon, you’ll need them
to get back from the naughty 90s. Should of course you
wish to get back from the oversaturated rave on
the outskirts of the M25, were the grass grows wet
with the summer storms and the summer boots.
You get on the bus anyway.
Hold tight! Yells Tom, as you plunge headlong into the time
void, devoid of all things yet full of everything, a drug fuelled
haze of E’s and whiz, and neo-glowing youths
in baggy pants and homemade woolly jumpers.
First stop Castlemorton ‘94, mumbles your guide, the
crusty crew are there to welcome you, with spliffs
and open arms, is this a symbol of new universal brotherhood?
A fusion of heavy sounds drift towards us;
wholly or predominantly characterised by the emission
of a succession of repetitive beats, repetitive beats,
the repetitive beat goes on for a week long set
of debauched happy hardcore. Just keep on moving!
Everyone’s your friend, its all ok. A bell rings –
back on the bus, don’t be late!
But you don’t hear, your lost in an unexplored
wilderness tripping over thoughts, sliding off logs,
stumbling on stones and stubbing your toes on
words before you can even open your mouth and speak.
Your return ticket long gone, smoked away in a succession
of rollies, burned up in the summer of 1994
and, as Jarvis said “you can never, never go home again.”
The house feels emptier without him. Well it ought to feel emptier without him. I know I ought to feel as though everything is different now; that everything has changed. But it doesn’t. It feels the same. I try and conjure emotions; try and feel surprised when entering the kitchen not to see dirty tea cups, unwashed and sitting in the sink. But I don’t feel that. I still see the empty tea cups when I enter the kitchen. Where they come from I’m not sure. But it’s familiar to see them, it’s reassuring. It’s a continuation of what has been before and what will continue to be. Like the universe cannot bear to give up the ghost of the lodger, that not only will he linger in my memory; he will linger as a physical manifestation in the house. His mail still arrives; I place it in his pigeon hole by the front door. Eventually it disappears as it used to - back when he lived here. The mail itself is mostly catalogue stuff – those leaflets that sometimes come with the Daily Mail’s Weekend magazine. Lifestyle choices magazines is how they brand themselves. Full of so-called labour saving devices; automated potato choppers, lemon sub-dividers, egg timers that can regulate the toaster; expensive toys for people for whom the peeler is an archaic device, something which to them is a throwback to mediaeval methods along with kitchen boys and candle lit grimy stone rooms. Instead my lodger desired Modernity. Well that’s what I think he aspired to anyway - clean cut living through catalogues.
I once asked him about where he got the money to pay for all this stuff cluttering my kitchen. He laughed at me and threw back his long wavy hair and said: “How can I afford not to buy these things? I’d spend so much time dicing carrots and chopping onions by hand I’d never have time to actually work and so couldn’t afford to buy nice things for myself.” His glassy green eyes gazed into mine earnestly. I couldn’t tell if he was joking or not. He doesn’t actually have a job though. I relented and changed the topic.
This modernity never lived up to the promise. The devices broke. The modernist concepts came unravelled; like the broken promises of 1960s tower blocks; the ideas about “streets in the skies” instead becoming something fearful; dark, under lit corridors of crime. Or the fear of crime rather. It was the same with the catalogue goods; eventually one by one they would be rendered useless and broken. Dreams of the leisure orientated future shattered. I have a whole draw full of them.
He was never very good at cleaning at all actually. He still isn’t, despite not being here any more. I still come home to sinks full of crockery and grey water. His white square plates mixed in with my heavily patterned ornate ones. A clash of cultures; a clash of ideologies in a cheap plastic basin – modernity versus tradition. But both sets of plates equally grimy; both soiled with the same sort of stains. Dirt is no discriminator. But both from very different foods; mine bangers and mash, egg and chips – ordinary food he called it. His meals were always very sophisticated. Well he thought they were sophisticated. Maybe they were; maybe I am not a man of a cultured enough palate to appreciate the odd smelling spices and minute portions he always ate. Sometimes he’d offer me some and I’d decline politely, but I knew he could always see the disdain however hard I tried to hide it. He would say “I know you don’t trust fashionable food, I know how set you are in your ways.” And then he would grin and turn back to the oven, his low cut shirt just a little too tight on him. He knew I disapproved of that too. And he knew too that it was because I couldn’t wear such shirts with my figure as it was anymore. His clothes were always trendy. And numerous. Never have I known a man with so many clothes. They littered every corner of my house, £80 shirts folded in ugly contortions sitting atop piles of designer jeans next to the fridge. A man obsessed with his image outside of the house, but unable to maintain the illusion inside. It wouldn’t have got washed at all if it wasn’t for me constantly trying to keep up with sweating piles of laundry everywhere. I came home tonight and did the mountain in the hallway but there is more to do, there is always more to do. He must change his clothes three times a day at least. Well at least he did when I knew him. And his habits don’t seem to have changed much. The bedroom door is always ajar, I can see his desk piled high with the curios and collectables he so much enjoyed ordering from yet more catalogues. More seem to appear weekly. Even though he doesn’t live here any more. Why he left I still don’t properly know. There was the note in the toaster. An odd place to leave one I ruminated at the time. It read: “Dear Graham, I’m sorry but I can’t live here any more with the constant pressure you put on me to change my habits and ways. I enclose the rent for the past month in the other bread slot. Thanks again for the room. Yours sincerely, your Lodger.” I looked in the other half of the toaster vainly but failed to find any money. Very much like him to be late with rent. I haven’t got the note any more, its vanished somewhere under his things.
I’ve set the table for two as usual. We used to eat together. We don’t any more. I notice he’s already cooked and gone out leaving behind his mess. We never encounter each other any more since he left. I linger over my sausage, eggs and beans. I’ll have to clean his old room in a bit; he always leaves it a mess. Even though I’ve been at work all day and he’s unemployed. As I have done for years and years now without a word of appreciation. It’s probably been over 10 years since I found that note in the toaster, yet it still seems like yesterday. And he’s still my lodger and always will be. I ought to feel different; I ought to feel something at least. Instead I turn from my thoughts and go to the sink to scrub the mess off our plates and put them back in the overflowing cupboard.
Met Office Mood Forecast
Issued at 22.07 BST by the Met Office, the Mood Forecast for today.
Rockall
Malin
Hebrides
Warnings of gales in my heart
Feeling a real Low
Visibility Moderate or Poor
Rain. Not much Hope
Plymouth
Biscay
Trafalgar
Thoughts veering dangerously, skewed 5 or 6, occasionally more later
Severe gale 8 to storm 10
Thundery showers expected soon
Possibly Depression
Lundy
Fastnet
Irish Sea
Rough, occasionally very rough at first
Later becoming Slight or Moderate
Squally showers
More Hopeful
Mind
Body
Soul
Still Poor
Becoming Fair later
Some occasional Moderate happiness
Good
When I was young I always thought the playing fields went on forever. Stretching on and on towards infinity. However hard I tried to run, to reach that faraway horizon, I never could make it. Running from the school, feeling the freedom; the dry grass licking my feet like parched tongues, my arms waving in front of me; grasping out ahead of me at the barely tangible distant horizon. And the joyful screams of the other children behind me; each in their own world, but each running, hopefully, endlessly, onwards. Forever. The fields are long gone now, buried under the new houses, a hideous maze of self looping cul-de-sacs and identikit houses. You can have any design you want as long as it’s in the pre allocated design book; The Oaks, The Wainwright, The Sheperton, The Hartington. These names and these houses endlessly repeated throughout the estate. John Moore used to live there, a long time ago.
Now everywhere I walk is suburbia. I tramp endless boulevards and avenues. 1930’s arts and crafts architecture all around me, stained glass porches and half timbered roofs; more like mock churches than houses. I can feel that summer closeness forcing my clothes to cling damply to my arms, to my back. The sweat is unalloyed. It drips down my nose and through my beard to the floor. Everywhere is quiet and still. My feet in their worn shoes hitting the cracked concrete flags below me is the only sound in the silence of the summer haze. The houses on either side of me, hidden behind there manicured green hedges and freshly chopped lawns, are deathly still. The windows stand curtainless and empty, like dead eyes blankly staring long after life has departed. In many houses a glimpse of the greenery behind can be spotted through the lengthy living rooms. The denizens of these silent domains must be away at work or school. Either that or a stealthy plague has obliterated all human life. I give this serious consideration, it has been over an hour since I left the overheated jobcentre and I have barely seen anyone since. Maybe these people have been consumed by the plague as they sat munching their cornflakes and slurping their tea at the breakfast table. Maybe they were listening to Radio 2 as it happened, suddenly finding themselves vomiting up their stomach contents, gripping their chests in agonising pain and falling to the floor as there faces turn a grim shade of blue and a meandering line of pure red blood seeps from their once breathing mouths onto the polished laminated floor were it divides and subdivides itself into ever smaller tributaries. Maybe. A passing car wakes me from these reveries. Well not everyone’s dead then I think. I muse on the jobcentre, it’s only ever given me one job, and that was only temporary. I remember turning up to the interview and forgetting my C.V. I’m surprised I got it really, considering. I’m starting to feel as though I really know the jobcentre staff now. My friends and I discuss the relative merits of each ones. The ones who are easygoing; “just sign here please, see you in two weeks!” types and the other, more snide, variety - the ones who want the absolute details. The ins and outs of your last two weeks job searching. The times and dates and exact responses from companies. All that shit.
I wonder again about the houses. Which ones have pools behind them? Which ones were full of happiness? Which ones were home to sadness and heartache? Which ones have got the dead wife buried under the patio? Interned in concrete in that place were the present owners relax of a summer evening. The secrets of the suburbs. What kinds of people live here? What interesting stories do the houses contain? Perhaps I’m wrong. Perhaps nothing happens here. Just everyday life. I stare ahead of me through the shimmering haze which is causing the road to wobble and the distant double carriageway to drift in and out of focus. Once there were fields here. Fields in you could run in forever. Fields that were limitless and boundless. Well that’s what I believe anyway.
Blazing trails
Of soft white cotton
Across the blue
Three headed straight to the heat and the heart
Of the sun
Delegates of the eternal conference
Rushing in their crystal crafts
Blinding white reflections
The passengers sit in comfort
Unaware of the observer far below
Early morning on the fields
The outskirted suburbs
Where city bleeds into country
The regimented boxes come to an end
The nettles reclaim the old sports centre
These aeroplanes are far above
I stand in awe
As the grass grows
And the silence echoes
