The messenger (6) Anticipation (ABCD)

All 4 of the crew are sitting in the control room. Andy and Beatrice have been there for some time. Charlotte and Dave have just come in. Andy is sitting at the main control console facing the main control screen. Beatrice is sitting at the sensor monitoring console to one side. Charlotte and Dave are sitting towards the back of the control room with Beatrice and have turned towards the main screen. The atmosphere is tense as they await the arrival of the visitor.

C: “How long do we have to wait?”

B: “Not you too!” With a smile, “I’ve just been chastising Andy for asking – Are we there yet? You’ve both arrived just in time. There are about 10 minutes to go. Our visitor is very nearly dead astern, as they say. It will appear to draw alongside and come to a halt. Of course we are all hurtling towards the centre of the solar system at the usual phenomenal speeds but the two objects will be stationary to one-another. Even after all this time, I find the mathematics easy but the actuality continues to surprise me. ”

D: “Is there anything much to see yet?”

B: “Not a lot. It’ll all happen a bit suddenly. Because of the end on approach, the relative velocities at the moment and the relatively small profile of the object, it will start off as a disk which will grow in size until it resolves into a long thin object. When there is something worth seeing, with Andy’s permission, I’ll stick it up on the main screen. It won’t be long now. ”

A: “Anybody care to guess what we’ve got?”

C: “Probably a valueless lump of Ice which just happens to be a funny shape. Mind you, if that is what it is, then the shape takes a little bit of explaining.”

D: “Well, I’m going to be optimistic and say that we have a lump with lots of juicy nickel and a sprinkling of precious metals. The shape is because it got squirted out of some explosion.”

A: “That’s a good explanation. Despite all the teasing, I really can’t believe it’s an alien artefact. Those things just don’t happen outside of entertainment. Come to think of it, aliens aren’t really that popular as entertainment at the moment. I think I’ll go for an agglomeration of ice, rock and metals. What about you Beatrice?”

B: “I’m not speculating any more. I’ve seen too much. It would be cheating if I said too much. Take a look at this.” The image on the main viewing screen changes, in the centre is a small white dot. The image is surrounded by a red circle and there are target arrows pointing inwards.

C: “Is that it then? Is the little dot in the middle our visitor?”

D: ”It seems to be twinkling? ” interjected Dave.

B: “Yup. Whatever it is, that’s it. And the ‘twinkling’ which Dave has noticed is one of the things which make me think that it is rotating. There are some other interesting features too.” A table of figures flashed in the bottom of the screen.

“One of the things I find interesting is its albedo. It’s really quite bright. Unfortunately, that might suggest that it’s got a lot of ice on the surface. The twinkling might be caused by a patch of discoloration on the face towards us. As the object rotates, so the colour moves and we see a twinkle. It’s a bit like a spot in the centre of an old-fashioned vinyl record. Also there is a hint of some irregularity further back. Our visitor isn’t a perfect cylinder, that’s for sure. Any bumps may be contributing to the effect. “

D: “It gets full marks for interesting. Have you got an estimate on the rate of rotation?”

B: “That is one little disappointment. The estimate is pretty much the same: one revolution every 5 or 6 minutes. Maybe it’s the lumps, or maybe it’s something else, I really don’t know. What I do know is that we’ll know shortly when it’s alongside. There’s nothing much we can do now. The systems will take care of it all. There’s no risk. Let’s settle down and watch the show. Has anyone bought the pop-corn?”

With that, everyone turns to look at the main screen and the changing disk in the centre of the field of view.

Greater London House

This is intended as an exercise in “stream of consciousness” and description. The location is real, but I am not going to “let the facts get in the way of a good story”. Don’t take it seriously!

When I worked for Foster Wheeler Power Products, they were based in Greater London House, opposite Mornington Crescent tube station.

The building is distinctive and famous. It used to be the Carreras Cigarette factory before it was converted to offices. When I was there it was painted a cream colour and had lost some of its decoration. It has subsequently been restored to something like its original glory. It really is a spectacular building. An art-deco Egyptian temple in the middle of London!

The building takes up a full block. It’s a slightly irregular shape to fit the site. The main building stands on pillars and it has a car park underneath. Viewed from above it is a “ladder” or extended figure of eight to allow for light wells through the building. Foster Wheeler’s offices were on the second floor. Power Products has since been absorbed into Foster Wheeler Energy (or sold to Rolls Royce) and moved to Reading.

When I was there I remember the office had a suspended hardwood floor which was taken up to install some specialist equipment. The windows were original Crittall steel. One unusual aspect was that the goods lift in the North-West corner of the building had a set of doors which served the outside world, and another set of door opposite which led into the building and the man who acted as the security guard and goods inwards controller had a desk in the lift which he rode up and down all day! Maybe it wasn’t that unusual, because the tube station at Mornington Crescent has a similar arrangement where the ticket offices are in the lifts. If you wanted to buy a ticket (everyone I knew, including me, had a season ticket) you bought it in the lift. I tended to use the stairs from the platform level, even though they were really only intended as an escape route. They wound their way around a circular shaft.

 (31st December 2016 – 328 words)

Sponsorship Interview – British Steel

Over the year leading up to my A Level exams I made a lot of trips on my own. The trip to Middlesbrough left a lasting impression. I think I interviews from other potential sponsors. I have an impression that I had an interview with Courtaulds, but I may be confusing it with an interview in my final year.

This is what I remember my interview for the sponsorship with British Steel. The journey north was an adventure. I took the train from Euston to Darlington and then changed to a diesel-multiple-unit to Middlesbrough. It would have been a train to Saltburn. I found the idea of actually visiting Darlington (as in “The Stockton and Darlington Railway”) interesting in itself. I remember looking at the structure of the station building.

My interview was an all-day affair. It was held in the Royal Exchange Building which was close to the railway station. The morning was lots of psychometric tests and the afternoon was some sort of board interview. I remember that the tests involved me doing all sorts of things, including some where I had to use my left (non-dominant) hand to draw lines. I don’t remember that much about the board interview, but I got the sponsorship which made my life at University financially secure.

(15th December 2016 – 219 words)

Daily “Memoirs” exercise for when I’m not doing anything which I regard as “creative”. This is written almost stream-of-consciousness and is not edited very much afterwards.

This would be in 1974 or 1975. I was 17 or 18.

Choosing a University Course and Job 

This is what I remember about how I chose a University and indirectly, my first job, The action would have taken place in 1974 and 1975. I was 17 or 18. Looking back, some of this thinking may have happened a little earlier. Things can get squeezed together by my memory.

The decision making process

Like most teenagers I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. I had formed the view that I wanted to go to university, but I didn’t know what course and I didn’t have a clear idea of what career I wanted to follow. I had filled in all the careers advice forms. What I remember of the careers process sounds rather negative, but it wasn’t unhelpful at the time.

The limited careers counselling I had convinced me that there were lots of things I didn’t want to do. There seemed to be a bias in the system to direct me towards what you might call “office work”, and that wasn’t what I wanted. Maybe I was simply being contrary, but I felt I didn’t want to be stuck behind a desk (although that is what happened in the end) and I didn’t want to be commuting into London (though that happened too).

Choosing a Subject

I remember that I had some kind of hankering to be involved in “engineering”. That is almost certainly because of my Father’s background. The subject I was best at and the one I enjoyed most (at least partly because of the influence of Dr Medinger) was Chemistry. From there it was a short step to “Chemical Engineering”.

To be honest, I didn’t really know what Chemical Engineering was. I saw it as a subject in the prospective for several Universities, read the blurb, and thought “that sounds ok”.

There was probably some interaction between my choice of Subject, my choice of University and my Sponsorship. I don’t really remember which came first. In don’t think I would have chosen “Fuel Technology” without some idea of British Steel and I know that Fuel Technology (which is just a special case of Chemical Engineering) was definitely in my choice of courses.

Choosing a University

Having at least roughly identified the subject I wanted to study, the next step was to choose a university. I remember deliberately “hedging my bets”. The topic I had identified was “Chemical Engineering” but the subjects I applied for where “Chemical Engineering”, “Applied Chemistry” and “Fuel Technology”. On the advice of the careers guidance teacher, I aimed high, middle and low. That is to say, I chose courses and Universities which covered a range of exam outcomes. As far as I remember, the list went something like this (The order is uncertain, but I remember UCL was at the top and Aston Applied Chemistry was at the bottom):

• ·         University College London – Chemical Engineering (no, I don’t know why I didn’t choose Imperial College)
• ·         Manchester UMIST – Chemical Engineering
• ·         Aston – Chemical Engineering
• ·         Sheffield  - Fuel Technology
• ·         Aston – Applied Chemistry

That makes 5. As I said, the sequence is uncertain and I think UCCA may have allowed a 6th. It could be that I applied for 2 courses at either UMIST or Sheffield.

I know I had an idea that I wanted to get away from London. UCL was a deliberate choice. I think I was attracted to the ethos and particularly Jeremy Bentham!

I also remember that I took the opportunity to travel to all the prospective Universities. I remember seeing quite a lot of Euston Station and being excited by travelling. I have the idea that I had the brown chalk-stripe suit by this stage! I must have looked like a gangster!

Sponsorship

My earlier brush with the Royal Navy had persuaded me that “sponsorship” was a good idea. I knew that my parents did not have a lot of money and that I was the first from either of their families to think seriously about third-level education.

The idea of sponsorship appealed in several ways. It provided an additional income during term-time. The amount before it impacted my grant probably sounds trivial (I remember about 5 pounds a month), but was equal to what I finished up paying for a room each week in my final year. It provided guaranteed, relevant employment for the long vacations (also good for the finances, as well as for the course). Finally, it provided a firm prospect of a job at the end of my course. It was almost a guaranteed job. It all seemed like a good idea at the time and even with the passage of time and hindsight I still think I made some pretty good decisions.

I remember going through directories in the Careers room and looking for every company which would sponsor courses in Chemical Engineering. I know there was interaction between my choice of courses and my choice of potential sponsors. I remember applying to lots of companies including British Steel in several different guises (definitely Stewarts and Lloyds in Corby and Teesside (where I finished up)).

I have the impression that I applied to pretty much everything. In the end British Steel Teesside (what had been Dorman Long) sponsored my university course.

There are more stories to follow.

 (14th December 2016 – 876 words)

Daily “Memoirs” exercise for when I’m not doing anything which I regard as “creative”. This is written almost stream-of-consciousness and is not edited very much afterwards.

Airports - An experiment with "Flash Fiction"

Flash Fiction: Can I tell a story in 300 Words

Subtitle: LHR, AMS, VIE, DME, OVB

It was late September when Peter Symon presented his ticket for Vienna and checked in his bag at the KLM desk in Heathrow Airport. His breezy “I don’t expect to see that again” was met with a forced smile. The bag was found but he wasn’t.

In Schiphol Peter changed flights. He bought a cheap raincoat in duty free and found time to shave and discard two small packages. He left his glasses in the wash-room. When he glanced at his boarding card he could see it said “DME”. He boarded an Airbus bound for Moscow.

In Domodevo Peter presented his battered passport at immigration. The woman behind the glass screen scowled. He looked nervous as he was led away.

Peter looked around the grubby office. “Things have changed a bit since you were last here” said the official in heavily accented English. “I suppose they have” replied Peter.

“You were expected. Your loyalty, or lack of it, has earned you a trip to Siberia. There’s no purpose in running” said the official. “Do you have any luggage?”

“I expect it’s in Amsterdam” frowned Peter. The official nodded. “In that case, here is all you need. You have 2 hours to wait till for your flight” he said, sliding the passport across the desk between them.

Peter glanced at the back of shiny passport, inspected one of the hundred-rouble notes and looked closely at the boarding card. It read “OVB”.

“Novosibirsk is pleasant at this time of the year. The days are still warm, the leaves have started to change colour, and the first frost has not yet come. I will show you the way out” said the official.

And Pyotr Pavlovich Semyonov went to buy a cup of coffee and live out the remainder of his life.                                                                                                (1st December 2016 – 298 words)

This whole story is intended to be slightly ambiguous. Also, the final paragraph/sentence is a play on "and he lived happily ever after". The LHR etc in the subtitle and the story are the IATA codes for the various airports.

Better to leave well alone

Better to leave well alone

Do you believe in resurrection? I don’t mean as an article of faith, or in a metaphorical sense, or even in the macabre way you see in horror movies, I mean literally. I have seen the dead walk in broad daylight. It was both a pleasant surprise and deeply unsettling. Let me tell you about it.

I don’t know if anyone ever owns a cat. We have a cat that visits us periodically and allows us to feed her. She also allows us to open doors and condescends to sleep on a chair by the fireside. The neighbours on one side call her “Blackie” and we, showing no imagination at all, simply call her “Cat”.

Cat is plump, sleek and black. She has thick, shiny fur with a white star, or spot on her belly. She lives her own life. She comes in and out at times she chooses and woe betide the servant who does not open the door or bring sustenance when she requires it, because she is complains loudly.

The other day I was returning home from business. As I turned into my drive I noticed a black bundle lying motionless in the road a little beyond my house. As it wasn’t far away, I parked my car and walked back. There, lying motionless in the road was Cat, dead, the victim of a road accident. I prodded her corpse with the toe of my boot. There she lay, not apparently injured but motionless: fur dishevelled and slick with the drizzle, green eyes sightless and dull, beauty broken. Saddened, I turned back to the house wondering what to do.

I’m not particularly sentimental, but it seemed improper to leave her there on the road to be ground into the tarmac like refuse. I went to the garage, put on a fluorescent jerkin and picked up a shovel. Then I returned the 25 yards or so to the body, slid the shovel under it and lifted it up. There isn’t much weight in a cat. I could tell from the way the shovel slid under her body that rigor mortis was setting in.

The question now was: what to do with her? I rested the shovel, with Cat, on the top of a boundary wall while I considered what to do. This wasn’t something I had planned at all. I suppose I had intended to carry the body home and bury her in the garden, but that would have required digging a grave and the ground is stony. Instead, I waited for a break in the traffic and crossed to the other side where a small copse separates the field beyond from the road. Placing Cat on the verge, I reached down into the ditch and scraped a hollow with the shovel. I placed the body into the hole and dragged the autumn leaves across to cover it. It was the shallowest of shallow graves. There were no prayers and no tears but I felt melancholy as I trudged home in the light rain.

Imagine my surprise when, as I walked down the drive, out from behind my car walked Cat! She marched up to me and rubbed herself against my legs, mewing loudly. As the drizzle was turning to rain, I opened the back door and she swept past me while I turned to the garage to put the shovel away. On my return indoors I found Cat in her usual station, on the chair by the fireplace. She watched me as I laid the kindling and lit the fire. All the time she had that look, which said: “Where have you been? Hurry up! It’s cold outside and I need the fire. And by the way – Where’s my tea?”

What had happened? Obviously there had been another cat which looked very similar to our Cat. It was this second, unknown cat which had been killed, and which I had buried. Except of course, there is room for another explanation.

When my wife returned home I told her what had happened. All the time we were being watched by Cat. My wife said: “Don’t you remember? Siobhan (one of my daughters) sprinkled the cat with Lourdes water.” And that was true. There was the tiny bottle of water, sitting on the kitchen table, and there was Cat, sitting on the chair beside the fire, washing herself.

So now there is the tiniest doubt in my mind. It seems just barely possible that I have been witness to a minor miracle and Cat has been granted an additional lease on life. I suppose I could try and put the conflicting explanations to the test, but the rational side of me has no wish to go digging for in a ditch for a corpse, and the part of me that hopes for miracles is reluctant to look, afraid of what I might, or might not, find. Sometimes it is better to leave well alone.

 (20th November 2016 – 825 words)

Johnnie (with adjectives)

(Description with adjectives- Past Tense, Third Person. This is stream of consciousness, from the Morning Pages.)

Johnnie Campbell walked like a duck! You wouldn’t dare say it to his face, but he did. He thrust his chest forward and stuck out his arse. I remember him (or maybe it was someone else) telling me that he had broken one or both his ankles at some time. Maybe that was the explanation.

At work he wore a long brown warehouseman’s coat and a white hard-hat which was set at a jaunty angle. He always wore a blue shirt to work. I’m not sure if it was always the same shirt, maybe he had several. At the neck was a dirty brown knitted tie. That was always the same. There could hardly have been two like it! It was dirty and its colour shifted from one end to the other. Nobody else wore a tie at Someplace.

When Johnnie was washed and ready to go home he looked smart. Still the same shirt and tie, but his face was polished and his grey hair combed and he wore an old, but smart, tweed jacket.

They were all characters at Someplace. They all seemed to dress distinctively. There was Arthur Fothergill, the Manager. I’m sure I remember him having a grey raincoat which he wore with a belt tied round the waist. Maybe it wasn’t a belt at all, but a length of rope, like a tramp. He was a lean man. That is all I remember.

When Someplace closed, along with everything else at Somewhere, he went down to Redcar. That must have been a hello a way to lead up to retirement.

Davie Foster (the called him “Doctor Foster”, or “The Black Doctor”) wore a grey warehouse coat. I seem to remember that he was the only other person who wasn’t clean shaven. How times change!

 (23rd October 2016 – 321 words)

Johnnie (without adjectives)

Johnnie

(Description without adjectives- Past Tense, First Person)

I remember Johnnie, or maybe it was someone else, telling me that he had broken one or both his ankles in the past. Maybe that was the reason he walked the way he did. He thrust his chest forward, stuck out his arse and swung his legs as he strode along. It made him waddle like a duck! But nobody would dare say that to his face.

All the foremen and management at Someplace were characters. The production workers wore uniform overalls, but each of the supervisors dressed as an individual.

When Johnnie was at work he balanced a hard-hat at an angle on his head. He wore a blue shirt, beneath a dust-coat, and round his neck was a brown knitted tie which changed colour with grime from one end to the other. Nobody else wore a neck-tie at Someplace, but Johnnie did. Before he left for home at the end of each shift he washed and polished himself and put on a tweed jacket, but he retained the blue shirt and brown tie which rather spoiled the effect. I hope he changed them when he got home.

Many years before Johnnie had done his National Service in the Airforce. It still showed in his bearing. He was Scotsman and he said that he disliked the base in the east of England because the country had no hills. Goodness only knows what had made him come to Somewhere, probably work, like the rest of us. He said that when he left the Airforce and first came to Someplace his hands had blistered when he first shovelled coal. That had been a lifetime ago.

 (23rd October 2016 – 291 words)

The Argument (Second Person!)

The Argument (Second Person!)

(Second Person – Future Tense – This is unsettling!)

You will change trains at Darlington. You will hurry along the platform to the waiting diesel train. When you climb aboard, you throw your bag into the overhead rack and throw yourself into a seat. You will notice that the carriage was almost empty and that it smells like a damp dog. You will notice the rivulets of condensation as they run down the inside of the window, as you settle to watch the rain outside.

When people start to join the train a couple will take the pair of seats opposite you, on the other side of the chipped Formica-topped table. He will be was wearing a stained khaki jacket, and holding a bundle wrapped in a black bin-liner, which he will stuff into the luggage rack. She will be smartly dressed in tight jeans and a tailored black jacket. You will assume that they are together, because they will keep exchanging glances.

Outside, the guard will blow his whistle. The steady rattle of the diesel will rise to a roar, and, with a jerk, the train will lurch forward and pull out of the station.

The man in the khaki jacket will lean towards the young woman and say something which you do not catch over the roar of the diesel. She will shrug her shoulders and look away, out of the window, at the passing buildings.

 (16th October 2016 – 245 words)

This is rather unsettling, both to write and to read. I imagine it feels strange to listen to as well.

The Argument (Third Person)

The Argument (Third Person)

(Third Person – Past Tense)

Tom changed trains at Darlington. He hurried along the platform to the waiting diesel train, climbed aboard, threw his bag into the overhead rack and threw himself into a seat. The carriage was almost empty and smelled like a damp dog. Rivulets of condensation ran down the inside of the window, as he settled to watch the rain outside.

People started to join the train and a couple took the pair of seats opposite him, on the other side of the chipped Formica-topped table. The man was wearing a stained khaki jacket, and holding a bundle wrapped in a black bin-liner, which he stuffed into the luggage rack. She was smartly dressed in tight jeans and a tailored black jacket. They were obviously together, because they kept exchanging glances.

Outside, the guard blew his whistle. The steady rattle of the diesel rose to a roar, and, with a jerk, the train lurched forward and pulled out of the station.

The man in the khaki jacket leaned towards the young woman and said something which Tom did not catch over the roar of the diesel. She shrugged her shoulders and looked away, out of the window, at the passing buildings.

 (16th October 2016 – 210 words)

The Argument (First Person)

The Argument (First Person)

(First Person – Past Tense – This is derived from the original)

I changed trains at Darlington. I hurried along the platform to the waiting diesel train, climbed aboard, threw my bag into the overhead rack and threw myself into a seat. The carriage was almost empty and smelled like a damp dog. Rivulets of condensation ran down the inside of the window, as he settled to watch the rain outside.

People started to join the train and a couple took the pair of seats opposite him, on the other side of the chipped Formica-topped table. He was wearing a stained khaki jacket, and holding a bundle wrapped in a black bin-liner, which he stuffed into the luggage rack. She was smartly dressed in tight jeans and a tailored black jacket. They were obviously together, because they kept exchanging glances.

Outside, the guard blew his whistle. The steady rattle of the diesel rose to a roar, and, with a jerk, the train lurched forward and pulled out of the station.

The man in the khaki jacket leaned towards the young woman and said something which I did not catch over the roar of the diesel. She shrugged her shoulders and looked away, out of the window, at the passing buildings.

 (16th October 2016 – 217 words)

This is the original version, scribbled in a few minutes in class. I’ve transcribed it here with very few alterations.

Listening is what I do best (First Person - Loving)

(First person – Loving, Kind – Present tense)

Listening is what I do best. I sit here in the twilight listening to someone I cannot see and who cannot see me. We are supposed to be anonymous, but that is a fiction. I usually know who is sitting there, and they certainly know who I am. In a sense though, I’m not me at all, but someone else entirely.

They come to me with their troubles and the things that are troubling them: the things that weigh down on their shoulders and make them sad. I listen to what they say, and give them relief for at least a little while. They come to me with their misdemeanours and I give them the means to wash themselves clean again. Like little children they will get dirty, but they will be clean for a while, and that is important.

Listening is one of the great services I provide. It is so personal, so private and so intimate. Of all my sacred duties, this listening is one of the greatest, behind that greatest service of all, when I am lost, transformed, transfigured and they are fed.

I have heard so many things here, from the serious to the trivial, but who am I to say what is trivial? That is why the listening is so important. It is important that they feel that someone has heard them, and I feel it is important that, through me, he hears them, that he hears their cries and, in his mercy, through his grace, grants them forgiveness.

Now I hear sounds from the adjoining space. What will I hear in a few moments? Yes, there will be the formula, and the excuses, but what will I hear? Perhaps I will become witness to some tragedy, or complicit in some felony, I cannot tell. These things I do know: This is important, it matters to them and it matters to me. It is important that listening is what I do best.

(9^th October 2016 – 348 words)

Listening is what I do best (Cheerful)

Listening is what I do best

(Third person? – Friendly, Cheerful – Past tense)

“Listening is what I do best” he used to say. Then he would lean back, take a long pull from his pint and create that pregnant silence for someone else to fill. And he was good at listening. When someone started talking, filling the silence he had left, he would lean forward, his eyes focussed on their face and follow what they were saying intently. His grey eyes opened wide as he followed their words and he would nod or shake his head to demonstrate that he understood the significance of what they were saying.

Jack was certainly a good listener but he was a good talker too. That was why people used to join him at the table and buy him drinks. People would even hover behind those who were seated and strain to hear what he said. When the first speaker had finished, Jack would pick up the thread and start weaving his own story.

Jack’s stories where the stuff of legend. He didn’t talk about the usual pub topics of: politics, sport, current affairs or the state of the nation. Instead he would take whatever the first speaker had been talking about and slowly turn it into something else, something strange and other-worldly. As often as not, he would start with “I remember when…”, telling the audience about some event in the distant past. Then the magic began. He would draw people into the story as slowly it became more and more bizarre and eyes opened wider and jaws dropped lower.

The best tales involved fishing. None of the audience doubted that Jack had once been a keen angler, but in his tales he had landed fish that should have required a trawler to bring them ashore. The “ones that got away” were larger still. People recounted one occasion when Jack described himself riding one particular monster down river like a surfer until it eventually escaped him in the sea.

Jack was certainly good at listening, but most of the regulars in the pub, and plenty of visitors, thought that what he was best at was telling stories!

(7^th October 2016 – 363 words)

Listening is what I do best (First person menacing. Present tense)

Listening is what I do best

(First person menacing. Present tense)

Listening is what I do best. I am good at so many things, but listening is certainly the thing I do best – listening and, perhaps, waiting.

My hearing is good, but listening is so much more than just hearing. I have learned to listen very carefully. I am not listening for conversation, oh no! I am waiting for the slightest sound which disturbs the silence. I turn my attention first in one direction and then in another. I focus my attention in each direction in its turn as I search the darkness. I don’t want to miss anything.

I can feel the coldness which surrounds me. I can feel the darkness. Sometimes I think that I can touch it and feel its texture. Sometimes it feels cold and slick like polished metal and sometimes the coldness feels soft and yielding. Then it is like stroking a fish.

In fact, all my senses are acute. My eyesight is at least as good as my hearing, but I don’t use sight very much in the darkness. My sense of smell is subtle and delicate. I can usually smell things before they come within reach. Finally, there is my sense of taste. I long to experience taste again. I am so cold and I am so hungry.

If you come this way, then do not think that you will evade me. I am sitting here patiently in the cold and the darkness. I am waiting for you and I am listening. Listening is what I do best.

(7^th October 2016)

(I’m talking to you! Yes, you! You’re peering at me over the top of the screen on my laptop. Your head is just above the webcam and your fingers are either side, just like Chad or Kilroy. I wonder what you are like. I’ll never know.)

"Peter"

If you go to the same place, at the same times, repeatedly you start to notice people. It was true when I commuted through Waterloo railway station in London twice every day and it is true now. Faces seemed to stand out from the crowd. Staff or passengers lost their anonymity and I began to recognise them and look for them. Sometimes they faded back into the background but sometimes they remained, pricking the curiosity. I would wonder: what are they like? What do they do? What are they called? Then I wouldn’t notice them anymore and ask myself if something had happened.

If these moments of recognition occur among the thousands streaming through Waterloo each day, imagine how much more likely they are in a small country town in rural Ireland.

Peter, let’s call him that, because it is so much kinder to give him a name, even if it is not the one he would recognise, was such a face which stood out from the crowd. I started to notice him around the town. Mostly I would see him in the morning, but sometimes in the evening too.

I don’t remember the first time I noticed Peter, but I am sure that the first thing I registered was the coat. Most men don’t wear coats these days, but Peter does. He wears a shabby, charcoal grey, knee-length overcoat, come rain or come shine. After the coat, the next thing I noticed would have been the elbow crutches which he uses to steady himself. The crutches are explained by the orthopaedic slipper he sometimes wears. His face is weather beaten and florid, beneath a tousled mop of dark greying hair.

Peter isn’t a man whose company I would seek out. In fact, I would probably avoid him, because the final part of Peter’s ensemble is the beer can. Almost every time I see him he has an open beer can in his hand. I feel that he is a man who needs, rather than enjoys his drink. I have seen him engaged in earnest negotiations with a local publican at 10 in the morning and I have seen him in the evening, leaning against the door jamb watching the traffic climbing the bridge on the road out of town. He was sipping from his can with others sitting on the window sill beside him. I imagine him as a cat, lying in a place it finds comfortable. But this is not a relaxed cat fast asleep with its legs in the air, or a sly, alert cat observing through slits but a sick cat (disinterestedly) watching the world passing with faded, watery eyes.

Then he was gone. Since starting to write this I have realised that I haven’t noticed Peter for several days, possibly even weeks. The cat is no longer lying there watching the world go by. Peter is no longer in his usual spots as I pass. Another face has differentiated itself from the multitude for a moment and then disappeared again. Perhaps he has changed his habits, perhaps I have, or perhaps something really has happened and he is gone for good.

17^th February 2016

The End

The Sun is rising over Veranasi. I have been observing the sky since before dawn. The air is fresh and clear but it will be another hot and humid day. The Sun is rising for the final time. Before it is time for the next sunrise, Veranasi, the Sun and the rest of the universe will have ceased to be.

I am dying. There are other, more complicated ways of describing what is happening but “I am dying” is sufficient. Detail, precision and even accuracy no longer seem as important as they once did.

As Mother Ganga flows downstream and eventually loses herself in the sea, so I am nearly at the end of my journey. Shortly, the cycle of deaths and rebirths will end and my consciousness will be lost when it merges with the greater whole.

How long have I known that I was dying? We begin dying when we are born, perhaps even when we are conceived. Think of that: we begin dying before we exist! And yet we continue to live our lives from moment to moment, ignoring the inevitable.

A little while ago (though it seems like an age) I relinquished my final responsibilities, then came a period of immense relief. I had no more duties to perform. Nothing would suffer particularly if I did not do whatever it was that I felt I was supposed to be doing. Eventually, that feeling of relief was replaced by one final duty. I felt obliged to tell my story, so that others might gain whatever benefit they could from it. Maybe memories are meant to be conserved, like matter and energy.

The remembering and the telling have been refreshing, even therapeutic. From this point, perhaps for the first time, I can track the trajectory of myself through all those lives. Each birth, life and death has been reviewed. All those names have been identified. They are the means by which we connect, but they are so transient. Our names are not as immutable as we imagine. There are the formal names, the shortened forms, the pet names, even the names we ourselves did not know, and all ultimately identifying the same entity.

For every name, the memories have been accessed and reviewed. They have been sieved and sorted, checked and consolidated, indexed, collated and categorised. All those memories have been cross-referenced to allow easier access and easier referencing. All those facts have been stored away. They have been sanitised and cleaned, stripped of their emotional content. Even the feelings have not been lost. They have been rendered down and distilled. They too are stored as more information on the time-line of my lives.

Nothing has been lost, but everything has been transformed!

Names: the way we identify things and differentiate one thing from another. But if there are two names, are there two things? Not necessarily. Two things can share the same name and one thing can have several names. And if you do not know the right name, how can you find the right records? Do you want to know my name? Do you want to know my real name? My name is… I am…

Problem with lights

I'm giving myself an easy day, because I'm getting over a disturbing experience (no harm done though) which I had last night. I'll share it with you, and hope you don't have anything similar, and also hope that I don't have a repeat.

Yesterday evening I went to my course at University College Cork. That kicks out at 21:30, so after a chatter with "the wimmin" I set off home. On the way out of the car park I noticed something odd. Why are the headlights of the car behind me making my car cast a shadow? After a short distance I pulled into a convenient car park and checked my lights. Both dipped beams have failed. That means I have sidelights, main beam and nothing else and I'm 40 miles from home. What do you do? I thought for a moment about kipping in the car (no sleeping bag etc), or finding a B&B (it's 22:00 and I'm not actually standing outside one) and took the typical Irish decision - "oh, it'll be grand" and decided to set off home. The next decision was "which route?" The choices are: "over the mountain", which is the way I normally go, or up the main road (N20). The main road is straighter, and has more lit sections. "Over the mountain" is curvy, through woods, some steep drops, thoroughly scenic. I plump for the N20.

Getting out of town was "grand". The rest wasn't. I had thought that I would have enough light from the sidelights to reflect off cats eyes to keep me on track when I doused main beam. I was wrong. The Irish don't have as many cats eyes as you do in Britain. If I left main beam on, people coming the other way thought "selfish bastard" and I got dazzled, and if I switched it off, I couldn't see the road. This isn't a straight dual carriageway, so this is not a safe situation. There are enough turnings off to make it possible for someone to pull in front of me when my lights are off. I decide that I'm likely to either have an accident or cause one, so I really ought to stop. New problem: there is nowhere to stop between the North side of Cork City and Mallow. Pulling onto any of the side roads will only make matters worse and pulling up on the hard shoulder is positively dangerous. Probably 20-30 of the most stressful miles I have driven in a very long time. Eventually I get to Mallow and pull into The Roundabout Inn (the only roundabout between Cork and Limerick). It's only 10 miles to home but I've had enough and really don't think I could justify driving to a Garda. I ring Noreen, tell her what has happened and check in to the Roundabout.

The room reminds me of some of the places I used to stay when on the road. Even smells the same. I don't mean "it smells", nothing like that. It just has a characteristic odour which evoked memories. The décor in bar is odd. It would have been tasteless in the 70's. Sort-of mock something or another. Fake wooden beams, but wood beams are rarely curved like that, and copper coloured?! Weird! Two pints of Murphy's, good night's sleep, a shower and a full Irish breakfast and the world looks a lot better and I'm Euro 45 poorer.

This morning I took the car into my friendly local mechanic and ask him nicely if he can fix it _now_? He says yes. How many men does it take to change two light bulbs? Answer: three, one who knows what he is doing, and me and another customer watching! The mechanic had to take out the air filter to change one of the bulbs. He needed a socket set and a couple of different screwdrivers. It would have been impossible for anyone other than an AA man at the side of the road. The mechanic said that I had probably had one failed for a while but not noticed. He said that the spread of the beams is such that you can do that, especially as most of the time I'm either in town or on main beam. He said I'd probably have been better off going over the mountain because there would have been very little traffic. He may be right. I'm certainly not going to do the experiment. The car was due a service so I've booked it in for next week. He's going to add the bulbs and some labour to the bill.

Could I have got away with it? Very likely. What should I have done? Definitely stayed down in Cork. Either found somewhere to doss or slept in the car. Having started, I think I did the right thing and I got a couple of beers and a breakfast out of it. The advice for sailing and hill walking used to be "avoid getting into a situation where you have to finish". I came dangerously close to doing that. No harm done, but I'm letting myself wind down for the rest of the day. This is definitely one for "the annals".

"hitch-hiker"

Outline for story "Hitch-hiker"

Start with a character who has the resources to do almost anything he wants - Elon Musk/Richard Branson.
Give him the motivation to do something - Dying of cancer(?) - Iron Man Marvel, but also Black Sabbath Song.

Story
Character has interest in space travel. Discovers that he has x. Decides he would like to "go out with a bang".
At the same time, new comet is identified inbound from the edge of the solar system.

Character decides to marshal his considerable resources because he wants to see the edge of the solar system.

Spacecraft slingshots around sun to catch comet on the outbound journey.
Character lands on comet with limited material but with "3d printer" and lots of designs and uses the comet as raw material.
He builds a reasonable home. A comet nucleus could quite reasonably be an 8 km sphere. As much surface area as a reasonable small island.

You can borrow ideas from "Silent Running", "2001" etc.

Maybe he finds something interesting out in the Kuiper Belt or Oort Cloud.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Branson
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Man
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Man_(song)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_(spacecraft)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuiper_belt
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oort_cloud
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halley%27s_Comet
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet#Long_period

Empires...

Empires come and go. They expand and contract. This is true and it is empirically provable (or disprovable, if you prefer).

Places, on the other hand, are static. They remain in one place. If one ignores the movements of the earth, then they do not move at all. A place remains the unchanged. Things located there may change. If one encountered a building once, and returned to the same place in a thousand years time (if such a thing were possible), then one would find the same building, if it were robust enough. More likely, one would find it's ruins or only traces in the ground.

If a place stands near the boundary of two empires, then over time it is likely to be part of both. Sometimes it will belong to one, and at other times it will belong to another. There will also be times when it sits in a no-man's land between the two.

Like the tide ebbing and flowing, the empires will reach out and engulf a place and then recede and abandon it. History has a rhythm, like that of the tides. Not driven by our sister the moon, but by more distant bodies; the stars themselves, moving in their paths.

Novomosty is a place which has been subject to least two empires. As political allegiances and languages have changed then so has its name. The name may have changed, but the place has remained remarkable constant over the last century. It is, to use the common vernacular "a hole". Some people would call it something worse, by adding an adjective. They would be right. There is little to recommend Novomosty, except perhaps one thing and that only matters to someone like me.

At one time Novomosty (it went by a different name then) was a bustling frontier town, made rich and unsafe by trade and its proximity to the border. But fashions and borders and the goods which people want to buy and sell changed and the merchants and their money went elsewhere. Almost everyone who could leave, left, and what they left behind was a sparsely populated place, inhabited by ghosts, some alive and some dead.

Yes, Novomosty is a hole, and I call it home.
  

Alice

Hello Steve, That was nice! Don’t worry about rambling. I like rambling stories. I’m on my lunch-break now, from doing some interminable course about an Oracle database. Useful, but…

I can’t say I was ever a “fan” of Alice Cooper (or should I say “Vincent Furnier” and try and sound like I know him?). I liked the music. When you’re our age, “School’s Out!” still has a particular ring. I really like the idea of “Eating from the bush”. So much so, that I just walked to the bottom of the garden and picked two of my own apples. The crows have pecked away at most of them but I found two decent ones. They’re now sliced up and sitting on a saucer beside me. Oracle will be just a little sweeter this afternoon.

I like the idea of you and Carol watching and listening from a distance. It strikes me as being just a little naughty, in a child-like kind of way. It sort of reminds me of when Noreen and I were on our honeymoon (gosh that’s a long time ago!) We did a cruise around the Baltic. This particular day, we were ashore in Stockholm and the Swedes had some enormous festival on. Even though we had a cordon-bleu dinner waiting for us on the ship in the evening, we played hookey (at least that was what it felt like) and dined out on ice-cream and hot dogs! (In that order too!)

I know what you mean about Alice being accepted by the establishment. It seems strange. I thought it was odd when I found out that he plays golf as well (and he plays it well, too). I don’t know but I have a feeling that Alice himself considers his situation mildly amusing.

One of the things which I think we’ve lost with the wonders of the internet is some of the idea of “foreign-ness”. Would anyone think of buying an imported disc any more? I don’t know. I don’t buy much music these days. Being a citizen of the world is nice, but I don’t want the world to become homogenous. I want it to be difficult to get some things, just so I can have the fun of finding them and the satisfaction of getting hold of them. And I don’t want to go to the far side of the world and drink Guinness. I know it’s good for the Irish economy, but I don’t want to do it.

When I was in Siberia I had a little money trouble. Nothing serious, but for the first few days I couldn’t find a cash machine that would accept any of my cards (that’s a Pre-pay card and credit cards and debit cards from two different banks, in two different currencies). You can’t buy roubles outside the country, and I’d only got about 50 quid’s worth I’d bought in Moscow airport. I was due to be there for 4 weeks and I was worried I was going to be short of cash. There was a Frenchman on the same course in the same predicament as me. With a little help from the Russians we identified several _different_ banks (no point it trying “Barclays” twice) and one afternoon  set out to try them out. We were successful. We had already agreed that if only one of us was lucky we would do some kind of deal, but we both “struck gold”. He spoke a little English and my French is limited to numbers. In any case we were supposed to be speaking Russian. He looked at me and asked “Pivo?” (Russian for beer), to which my response was, of course “Da. Pivo!” The first bar we found was an “English Bar” serving “Fuller’s”! (Not London Pride, but a made-for-the-market version) It tasted good (especially as an hour earlier I had thoughts of going hungry, never mind thirsty), and it was a blistering hot day, but I didn’t really want to be drinking English bitter in the middle of Siberia. Especially not “…made in Siberia by Britons” bitter!

That’s _my_ ramble over. “Back on your heads.” I don’t know if I should base a philosophy of life on a pop song, but I will try and eat a little more from the bush. I still have my saucer of apple slices to help me with Oracle.

Good wishes to Carol and the family,

Regards,

Tom    

----------------------------------------

Tom,

When Carol and I were young, before we were married, we were keen fans of Alice Cooper.

You may remember a record collection with all his/their recordings from the first 10 years of the career.

But we have never been ones to attend live performances.

Our favourite song by Alice is ‘Apple bush, apple tree’ from their first record (in 1969?), not released in UK until late 70s but purchased in 73 as an import by a boyfriend of my sisters.

Anyway this song has proven to be a philosophy of life that we have stuck with.

‘There’s people who succeed, they don’t try hard, they’ve found a way to live with ease, by eating from the bush instead of the trees’

We have always been modest in expectation and see pleasure in small things that are already around us. It helps if you live in the finest little village in all England, surrounded by National Trust property to which we have free access, so you don’t have to work yourself to death to earn the money to buy it all and then worry about maintaining it.

We have watched Alice’s career with amusement over the years, culminating with his acceptance into the establishment, presenting his radio show on the BBC.

So you wait 40 years and in the end.....he arrives to play in the next village.

‘No Mother he is not playing a wedding at the village hall’ although stranger things do happen around here.

Fairport Cropredy Festival you know, but what are they doing inviting Alice to play to folk fans?

Just because he’s old doesn’t mean the music is any different. ‘We play all the old hits as close as we can get to the original sound’ says Alice in an interview for the festival.

It was almost 2 weeks ago, he was headline act on Thursday evening. Some years we have heard every song quite clearly, we are 2 miles from Cropredy and can almost see into the site if we go to the far side of the church yard. We decided it might be fitting to listen in from there. What time do you think the last act will be on? 11 or 12pm? No this is Cropredy and they all expect to be in bed for 10.30pm.

But disaster, by 9.30pm the wind was in the wrong direction, all we could hear was the motorway behind us. So we got in the car and drove toward Cropredy, stopping at a favourite spot of our girls, beside the Oxford canal at a tiny hamlet called Apple Tree. It’s 3 farms spread over half a mile and a group of shanty shacks along the canalside, clearly built without regulations or planning permission, housing people more dedicated than we are to ‘eating from the bush’.

And there he is singing away, unmistakably Alice Cooper sounding really good, about half a mile over the hedge and across 2 fields. The light is dazzling and that’s just the floodlights around the site, we can’t see the stage. The sound is clear although the wind is still in the wrong direction. Carol says she wouldn’t want to be any closer, she is uncomfortable with it pounding in her chest. We lean back against the side of the car and watch the stars and bats swooping around us. When another car comes past we see the air is thick with moths and bats diving between them.

We listened to 4 or 5 songs, I recognised only 1 of them and that not a great classic, and that was enough for us oldies. Glad that we hadn’t been deafened and blinded. We drove on some more but not past the site, through Cropredy village which was quite lively with people leaving the concert, more oldies all looking a bit dejected in their brightly coloured home knitted jumpers. The pub was very popular, running a festival fringe concert, more like traditional folk, they are welcome to it.

Sorry this has turned into an epic, I only meant to write a couple of lines.

Steve