Minds made up – a short story

The door opened and she came into the room. He was lying on the bed and worried immediately that he somehow looked undignified. As he tried to straighten himself out, a thought appeared in his head: “Oh, he looks sweet.” Not a thought of his, but he heard it all the same.

“Hey,” he said, “how are you?”

“I’m good,” she said, and she broke into a smile from the shyness.

He looked at her for a second and thought how beautiful she looked, and much he fancied her. Then he remembered himself. “Sit down,” he said, pointing at the chair. And then he heard in his head: “Rather sit on the bed.”

 He struggled to get his voice above a mumble. “Or ...” he said, nodding at the bed.

He cursed. He knew that when he was too shy, he might seem rude, or just retarded. But she took the hint, and sat on the bed, beside him. He wanted to touch her.

She looked at him, the edge of her lip caught between her teeth. Another strange thought crossed his mind, one that couldn’t possibly have been his: “He’s got lovely eyes.” They looked at each other for a minute. He suddenly had a crazy idea. “Can I hear her thoughts?” he asked himself. And without having looked away, they somehow found themselves looking at each other even more. He wanted to worship her skin, it was like a rich blanket he wanted to cuddle up to. He wanted to cuddle it and never get up again. She let go of her lip to smile broadly for a second, before a slight frown crossed her eyebrow. Then he heard another thought that wasn’t his: “A blanket?” And he thought: “How did she know what I was thinking?”

They both sat up. “Can you hear what I’m thinking?” they thought, their eyes lit with fear and awe.

Stoning – a short story

It was as he wiped his face before getting up to make a cup of tea that William noticed the dust falling from his forehead. He stared as it floated in the air, barely coaxed by gravity to the desk. After a moment of staring, realising his hand was still at his brow, William rubbed his eye and watched again as more microscopic grains joined the cloud. He sniffed, dragging some dust to his nose. It didn’t smell good.

He hadn’t been feeling well lately, William. Hadn’t had his usual zest. He was tired, always tired, and getting slow. Heavy. Walking had become an issue; where before he could have burst up a flight of stairs, or just jauntily strolled down a high street, now each step asked the question: do I have to?

A stroll had become a shuffle, and it wasn’t just his legs; his fingers were losing their panache. The keys on his computer were suddenly deeper than they had been. He plodded around the keyboard as if he was looking for a series of scattered possessions. He couldn't sort through his pockets, or count his crumpled cash. His breath was dense, his thoughts sluggish and mundane, his skin pallid and chalky. And now there was the dust.

He traced a cumbersome finger through the powder that had collected on the desk. Greyish dust, with a hint of blue, he fancied. Perhaps his skin was sloughing. But not flaking. Not flaking, but drowning, he thought. 

Maybe try the cup of tea, loosen up the joints. He wheezed himself out of the chair. His feet clubbed the ground as he walked to the water station, head throbbing with each step.

Two of his colleagues passed by, looking at him with trepidation, as if they were worried both about him, but also that if they asked, they might have to talk to him about it. They passed without acknowledgement, eyes straining at the ceiling. William tried to take a deep breath but his nose barely pinched at the air, and he continued, thudden-footed, towards his cup of tea.

At lunch, he went out to sit in the sun. He spent the entire hour on the grass, watching the wind in the trees, and barely moved a muscle the whole time. By the end of the hour, his skin was warmer, slightly, a surface improvement. But he was slower than ever. To lift up his head took the concentration of a crane operator. 

There was no point going back to the office, he decided, so he sat for a further three hours in the warmth, hoping it might improve things at least a little, but by the end of the afternoon, though his skin was warm to the touch, none of the heat had penetrated his muscles, which remained starched and stiff. He struggled back to the office to collect his things, and to tell them he’d not be in the next day. A day of rest, he decided. That was what was called for.

The morning sun cracked the curtains as William rested flat on his back on the bed. His thoughts were gummed up, his body lay fallow, static, somnolent. His mind chanced through options for anxiety. What kind of illness might this be, he wondered. What kind of cancer? What kind of life?  

Sitting up was manageable, if slow. His eyes barely wanted to move from looking straight ahead; they would move under his instruction, but only eventually, in their own time.

He went to the doctors' surgery. They told him to wait, which was the one thing that was easy, and he managed to sit there for three hours, without the time bothering him. In fact, he thought, it was more relaxing when he didn’t try to move. If he just stayed still, there wasn't really anything to worry about. He let out a breath at that thought, one that was barely able to leave his mouth.

The doctor listened to his complaint and examined him, sympathetic but hurried, before ruling out cancer as a cause, and suggesting some brisk walking, or yoga. But William knew brisk walking was out, and yoga had been unlikely at the best of times. He left the surgery and went to sit in the park again, where he watched litter gambol on the breeze, and his obdurate limbs soaked up what sunshine they could. 

He spent the day with his cares rolled up in a motionless daze, and by evening he again could feel the warmth on his skin. But the weight, the density of his body was unchanged. If anything it was even worse. His walk home was so lethargic he barely got back before dark.

As he lay back in bed, he could feel the warmth from his body reflected on his blanket. Perhaps I should take more notice of the sun, he thought.

The summer solstice was up. The man on the radio mentioned it, as William eyed the blue sky and wondered if he could go back to the park again. Ten thousand people expected at Stonehenge tonight, to welcome the solstice dawn, the radio man said. I’d like to welcome the dawn, thought William. That could help.

He took a train to Salisbury, and sat in his seat like a sack of sand. Then he took a bus. He approached the stones as evening fell, great crowds of students and hippies and costumed mystics converging for their vigil, carrying drums, blankets and liquor across the wide grass plain. The cheerful atmosphere passed him by, and the onset of cold at dusk had him worried. He entered the circle of stones, the ancient, cragged rocks towering above him. His back straightened and tightened, his head rolled in its place on top of his spine. His breaths tightened. He took a look at his skin, greyer, and bluer than before. 

By the stones, he felt better. The revellers' bodies gave him shelter, and at least the idea of warmth. He gently moved through the crowd until he found his spot, his feet resting on a dip in the ground. Beside him was one stone that was missing its pair. His feet felt secure here. His mind lifted. These stones were going to help him. 

The night passed briefly, easily. William didn’t move a single inch until the sunlight grew in the east, and the drumming grew harder, the shouting louder and the dancing wilder, and the light began to rise in the distance, and the sun breached the horizon, striking William’s sluggard mass, and he looked up, just, to see the sun one more time, before his eyes sunk into his head and his joints closed up, his feet dropped into the earth and he found his place amongst the stones.

And Stonehenge once again gave its solstice smile, this time with an extra tooth.

Only perfection is permissible – a short story

"Come in, Mrs Simpson. Sit down. You remember me, I imagine, Mr Michaels."

She pulled out the chair and sat down. The office chair was set for someone much taller, and fatter, and there were an awkward few moments as she struggled to find the lever to adjust it.

"Thanks for coming in," Michaels said.

"Thanks for having me," she said, with a little rasp. He looked up suddenly from his papers, eyed her for a second, nodded and looked back down.

She looked round at the items on the table in front ofher: a blank pad of paper, a glass and jug of water, a set of headphones and a black wire that rose out of a hole in the table and ended in the centre of the table with a chunky adapter on the end. She poured a glass of water, trying in all her arm not to spill any. A little water flicked off the lip of the jug on to the table. She clasped the glass snugly and sipped it. That would get rid of the rasp.

"As you know, this is a very prestigious job, Mrs Simpson."

Mrs Simpson looked up from her glass at that. "Oh yes," she said quickly.

"However, with prestige comes requirements. Precision. Consistency."

She didn't say anything. She wanted him to think that she knew that already, which she did, sort of, and saying something would imply that she hadn't, which she hadn't, sort of. So saying nothing seemed the safest option.

The door opened and a young man entered, wearing a laboratory white coat, with plain trousers and even plainer shoes. He was carrying a wooden box, the size of a ream of A4 paper. He placed it carefully, steadily on the table, and withdrew his hands with a courtier's grace.

"You remember Raymond."

Raymond went over to a draw and produced a table-mount, a two plastic rings caged by a constellation of elastic that looked on the one hand like a crown and its reflection, and on the other, to Mrs Simpson, as Raymond placed it on the table, like a huge spider.

Then his hands returned to the box, he flicked open the latch, and his thumbs gently prised the lid up. The lid was hinged, and she caught a glimpse of the velvet lining as it lifted. The hush in the room became pronounced. Inside, the microphone gleamed like a rare jewel.

There was a moment then, when they were all sat there, staring at the box, when she felt that it was as if she was about to undergo heart replacement surgery, and that the microphone was her new heart, beating in its box, waiting to be fitted.

Raymond looked at Michaels for approval, and after a moment he gave it.

The microphone was brought out. It took two hands for Raymond to lift, and he cradled it in both palms, only moving it on to his fingers when it was ready to place on the stand. Then he lowered his hands with infinitesimal care, until the mic rested in its breeches, enthroned, and from its vantage began to glare down on Mrs Simpson, the iridescent maker's logo shining a imperial purple. Raymond connected the wire to the bottom of the microphone.

Do I kneel? she wondered. The thought was ridiculous, but yet, she thought, not impossible. The mic's bearing had a warrior's countenance, she thought, like a royal created not by blood, by birth, but by way of blood, by battle. She almost didn’t want to look at it. Raymond departed, a last short glance at the glimmer of the microphone. Then they were alone, Mrs Simpson, Michaels and the microphone.

Everything must go into there, she thought. Or perhaps she heard. It was a thought, but perhaps she heard the thought, rather than thinking it. Then it continued, in an ambiguous gully between thought and sound: Your entire being must go in there; into there, you must direct it all. She stared at the mesh crown of the microphone's head. Into there? she thought. Yes, into there.

She looked at Michaels, who was looking at her, watching her. And she watched him, but his lips didn’t moved, nor his eyes.

Direct it all, and by all, it must be all.

"So," Michaels said, cutting off the thought as though he couldn't hear it. "We must begin."

She tried a smile, but it was short, as if it couldn't escape the brow of her teeth. She sipped her water.

"Mrs Simpson," said Michaels, "you have been selected for this job because you are capable. You are the person who we believe can best accomplish our task. However, that does not mean you will accomplish it. It does not mean that you are incapable of failure. On the contrary," he said, his mouth punching out the words, "you will have to summon considerable powers to achieve this. Considerable powers. Nevertheless, we are all – myself, Raymond and Neumann – assured that you are capable, and we have the fullest faith in you."

She thought back to her interview in this same building, six weeks previously. Michaels and Raymond had both been there. She couldn't remember a Neumann.

The microphone stared out from its desk keep, and she thought suddenly of watching Lord of the Rings with her two boys, at home on Christmas day, the eye of Sauron staring back at them from the telly.

"I don't mean to make you anxious," Michaels said, the jump from silence to speaking making her exactly that. "However, you must understand that this is a precision industry. We are in the precision business. Only perfection is permissible. Perhaps," and here Michaels permitted himself a wave of the head, as if he was deviating slightly from a strict script, "you believe that perfection is impossible. And you would be right. Nevertheless, only perfection is permissible."

"OK," she said, sipping her water again. She wanted to say that this was all fine, that perfection being permissible was her everyday outlook; that she had done many jobs with that as a requirement, and it was nothing special. But she said nothing, glanced at the microphone and looked away.

"You must enunciate, of course, you must speak perfectly clearly, but more than that you must achieve an absence of personality, Mrs Simpson, a nothingness in which your perfect diction becomes the totality of existence. There must be no hint of history. No quirks of fate or hidden hands. All must be as it was in the advent of creation, and as it shall be at the final hurdle to armageddon."

Saying anything seemed beyond the point now, so she didn't say anything, and didn't even nod, but stared evenly at Michael, and then at the microphone, and then she took a sip of water, and then she looked away.

"Please remember, Mrs Simpson, when you speak, that you are speaking, in a theoretical possibility at least, to every man, woman and child on the planet. At some point, over the next 20 years, barring a planetary catastrophe, these words we are going to record are going to be heard by more people than had lived and died on the Earth for most of history. Your words will be heard by millions day in, day out, 364 days a year. No pop band, Mrs Simpson, will be heard by so many as you. No great politician's speech, or football commentator's peal. Your voice, Mrs Simpson, will conduct the great swathe of humanity through its wretched span, as polite, stern and familiar as each person's mother. Over and over again, your every nuance will be replayed. So there must be no nuance. There must be absolute equality in timbre, tone and pronunciation. There must be, Mrs Simpson, simply perfection."

"I understand," Mrs Simpson said, a little loudly, attempting to embody absolute equality in timbre, tone and pronunciation, but all she saw was the muscles in Michaels' face tighten momentarily, and then relax.

He took a small key and unlocked a drawer on his desk, and from it produced a thick file of papers. "Your script," he said, handing it over, with his right hand, far to the side of the imperious microphone.

She took it with her left, and placed it on the table as far from the mic as she could. She opened the file and read the first page. It was a list of places. Some of them she recognised – London landmarks like Tottenham Court Road, Drury Lane, The Old Vic – some she had never heard of – Spa Road, Anchor Street, Warndon Street.

"Now, if you would put your headphones on, we shall get a recording level."

She placed the huge headphones around her head, the clammy rubber clamping to her ears. From inside the headphones she could hear the room, the same room she had been sitting in, but drawn through the one mic, with its one ear, which made no distinction between the sound of her voice, the sound of her breath, the wheezing of Michaels’ chair, or the sound of dust settling on the desk.

"OK. Raymond," said Michaels, his voice booming in her ears. "We are ready to record." There was a short silence, and then Raymond's voice cut in. "Recording."

"To begin with," said Michael, putting on his pair of headphones, "could you tell me your name."

"Mrs Janet Simpson."

"And your place of birth?"

"London. University College Hospital."

"Is that OK, Raymond?"

"Good for levels."

"Everything OK?" said Michael. "Yes," came a faint reply. Not hers, and not Raymond's. Must be the mysterious Neumann, she thought.

"Mrs Simpson," said Michael. "Could you try reading the line at the top of the page."

She read it. "Number one," she said. "To."

"Stop there, thank you." There was a pause, as if Michaels was waiting for some kind of sign. But if there was one, she didn't see it. "Again, please," he said.

"Number one," she said. "To."

Michaels let out a faint sigh. It came from his nose, and was so faint that if it wasn't for the precision-engineered microphone clasping all sounds from the room with equal pull she would probably never have heard it.

"Again, please. Remember: be nothing."

The thought started up in her head: stare into the mic, it said. Just stare into the microphone. Let everything you give go into there. Your whole being. Your entirety. Let it go only there.

"Number one," she said. "To." And Michaels nodded, and sat back in his chair slightly.

"Now the list," he said. "From the top, one at a time."

"Tottenham Court Road," Mrs Simpson read. Michaels drew a breath, and looked at her. “Mrs Simpson, please. This is not a discotheque.”

Whatever can he mean, she wondered. Best not to listen to him too much, with his bizarre advice. The thought came to her: Read the name and then speak it, she thought. Yes, that's right, she thought. Read the name first, and then speak it. Don't read it and speak it together. She looked down the list, and then she turned her gaze to the mic, and stared into it.

"Tottenham Court Road," she said. "Drury Lane." Michaels gave a faint nod.

"Holburn Station," she read. "Aldwych / Kingsway."

"Stop," said Michael. "No, no, no.” There was a pause and she looked up at him for guidance. “It’s not you speaking, Mrs Simpson. Stop speaking. It’s not you who’s speaking." His grim face nodded towards the mic. She looked at it again.

“Holburn…”

“No!” Michaels nearly rose out of his seat. “No! Mrs Simpson, come on! You can’t fail Neumann like this!” And then he paused, and his body briefly clenched, as he was forcing himself to calm down. “Mrs Simpson, the bus passengers of London need you. Please. Try again.”

Wow, she thought. He’s a crazy one. Best to just look at the microphone. That was safest. And she stared at it, into the eye of the microphone, into the mesh cage, she stared so hard that she felt herself drawn in, felt herself move inside the cage, as if she wouldn't even need to speak, that the microphone could record her from within, as if they were one and the same.

"Lancaster Place."

Michaels relaxed in the chair, and the leather exhaled beneath him.

"Waterloo Bridge / South Bank."

"Waterloo Station / Tenison Way."

"The Old Vic."

It goes in cycles – a short story

“Hold your fucking horses, bike boy.”

The cyclists crushed his brake handles in shock, crushed them so hard his tendons stung and he felt the imprint of the handles dig into his palms. The bike screeched to a stop, the back wheel rearing up behind him, and he wobbled on the spot, partly off balance, mostly out of fear.

Superman was stomping towards him, cape billowing, ground quivering, bright boots kicking through the thin puddles. No-one else was around. Hardly any windows, and only a few birds, overlooked the quiet side street. The cyclist wanted to look round, wanted to turn his head, but he was too frightened. His stomach wrung like a towel at each of Superman's approaching steps.

“Now tell me,” said the Man of Steel, when he was close enough that the cyclist could feel his breath rasping against his ear. “Do you know what a red light is for?”

The cyclist spoke, but said nothing, unable to muster the air to stir his vocal chords. He looked down at his bike, as if it was responsible; either for his dereliction or his feeble lungs. The bike in turn, as if equally ashamed, wobbled beneath him, then the front wheel twisted out, and it collapsed in a heap. The cyclist, still without looking at Superman, dropped his head a little more.

“Well?” asked the only surviving son of the planet of Krypton. “You know the rules of the road?”

“I do sir,” rasped the cyclist, finally, looking bolt ahead.

“And what are they for?” the costume-clad superhero spat, glad to have a response and not just be yelling at a mute.

“Stopping traffic.”

“Right. And you? Are you traffic?”

“I am sir.”

“You are traffic, yes indeed, you are. And tell me, did you stop at the red signal?”

“No sir,”  said the cyclist sadly.

“And why not?”

Superman’s breath was heating up now, and the cyclist wondered if it was going to singe the hairs on the back of his neck. 

“I don’t know sir.”

“You don’t know do you? That's a pretty pathetic answer, if you ask me.” The breath was hot. You could probably cook on that breath. It was like a bunsen burner.

That breath. A superhero's breath. That breath had been up the noses of some of the greatest master criminals of the modern day. It had blown in the faces of Presidents and Vice-Presidents, berated evil dictators and tantalised the necks of the world's most beautiful women. And now it scorched a cyclist's ear. How times had changed. The paparazzi had a lot to answer for, that was for sure. 

There was a pause, and it occurred to the cyclist that he should probably say something, some kind of entreaty, but he had no idea what that might be, and in any case it felt infinitely safer to just remain silent, as if things would only get worse if he spoke. But Superman didn’t speak either, and the cyclist began to worry now quite considerably that he was probably meant to say something, something clever or apologetic, or whatever it had to be, in order to stop the tireless fighter for peace, justice and the American way from drop-kicking him over a skyscraper, or bionically lobbing him into a special flat glass prison and Frisbee-throwing it into outerspace, or just delivering him to the police, arms bent back in a completely unnecessary and much too harshly applied full Nelson, because superheroes don’t know their own strength – I mean how can they – and they probably injure far more captives than they mean to, even when they don’t mean to.

The cyclist bit his lip. Still nothing occurred to him. Then Superman spoke again, only he was much quieter, and his voice echoed about the buildings.

“Hey you, pick up that litter!”

And the cyclist turned his head, saw Superman some fifty yards down the road, berating a middle-aged woman in ill-matched woollens. He picked up his bike and made off, pedals rattling beneath his shaking feet.

Purveyor of LSD to the Royal Family

"I took acid with the Queen in 1963"
Transcript of conversation with Dr John Mehmart

In the early sixties I had a job as a research psychologist in Cambridge testing out LSD on students, trying to find out if we could use it to treat depression or alcoholism. It was an exciting time, because everyone involved could see straightaway that here was a treatment with absolutely stupendous potential, and although the research results were mixed, there was no doubt that LSD induced a very powerful experience and the question had become about how to go about harnessing that. So one day a call came through from Buck House asking if someone would meet a royal officer to discuss this new drug, and this very odd chap who was clearly utterly against the whole idea came to my office for a meeting where I explained that physically it was safe and that in the right circumstances and with the correct precautions it was totally safe, not realising they were asking me to take responsibility for the Queen. I hate to think what would have happened if she'd gone completely stark raving mad, I'd have probably been guillotined; but in those days no-one had heard of bad trips, they were just called bad reactions and were normally over after a few hours. Admittedly, the CIA had killed a few but, you know, Americans.

So a few weeks later and after feeling a bit suspicious that my phone was being tapped and letters being opened suddenly I got a call to come up to London and, as it turned out, meet the Queen, although I didn't know that before I got there. She was very nice, disarmingly so, a bit like I thought Diana was portrayed later on, very pleasent but somewhat otherworldly, not really like anyone else you've ever met. After some preliminaries she asked me a lot of questions about LSD, and it turned out she was a great fan of Aldous Huxley - who of course had first got me interested in the psychedelic experience as a PhD student - and then she told me she was interested to try some and could I get some and sit with her during the experience. So, I obviously said yes of course and we made an arrangement for a Saturday in May, after she'd returned from some colony or other and I went up to Buck House and it was a lovely day so we sat in the huge garden with all these 200 and 300 year old trees just the two of us with a servant close by and everyone else even Phillip banished and she took a 100µg dose which I think was quite high for a starter but not excessive and we sat and discussed African independence and the trees and so on and she enjoyed it, let down her hair a bit and we sat on the lawn and played games and the servant brought some food and she ate it giggling and he gave me dirty looks and later on I had some paint and paper brought over and she drew these quite pretty pictures of her and Jomo Kenyatta in some kind of embrace and quite soon after she asked when it would finish and I told her to take it easy for the evening, but she told me she had to host a banquet for 150 and there was a moment of anxiety then, until we agreed that she could just keep quiet throughout the evening if necessary. Then she asked could I come back with some more the next week. As a matter of fact it wasn't until the next month that I returned and we both took 250µg this time and again we sat in the garden and she drew mountains and talked about her father and we ate houmous and pita which she'd brought back from Greece and which I'd never seen or heard of before then, and which was like eating lava. She did complain after several hours that it wasn't stopping but I reassured her and we went and watched the fish in the water fountain which she found enjoyable. The most significant thing I can remember was her saying was "Oh how awful it must all be for Charles" and at one point she declared "you know, everything is one" and for a moment I didn't know if she was talking about herself or the universe, and she found that hilarious and kept repeating "yes, one is at one", which I found quite funny. She did get anxious at one point when we were talking about what it was like being the Queen, and she kept saying things like "Who's Queen? Who is the Queen? What is Queen? Who is the Queen?" and started to get upset, but she soon calmed down. Mostly, she was quite good company and of course very well educated and informed on every topic you could think of.

So I returned to work and some time later received a request from the Queen for a few doses of LSD that she could share round at a party she was having at Windsor with a list of luminaries who were all keen on trying it. I was invited along to observe but I think I was busy, at a wedding or something, anyway I couldn't go but I supplied her with 10 doses of 200µg Sandoz acid and bid her good luck. So what should happen but I get a frantic phone call on the night from a servant saying a car is coming to drive you to Windsor because the Queen, thinking the trip wasn't working, took another one and now has climbed a tree and is cackling at the (full) moon. So we drove to Windsor at top speed but when I got there Malcolm Muggeridge had talked her down and she was making a house out of leaves and clay with him and Lord Mountbatten. Anyway she wasn't much interested in me and it was quite dull watching them stare at the sky and laugh so I left them to it and that was the last time I met Queen Elizabeth, although shortly after I got a nice note from her saying wasn't it a shame the Americans were going to criminalise it and what did I think and so on, and it was made illegal over there and soon after over here and I was out of a job. Now, a few years later Prince Phillip came to open a new ward at the hospital I was working at and he took me aside and said now look here Lizbet wants to know if you can get any more of that stuff, and I said I obviously couldn't but I put him in touch with a guy I knew in London called Acid Dave and Dave supplied the royals with loads and never suspected who it was for.

Some years after that I met the servant from Buck House in a pub on Victoria and he said that throughout the 1970s the queen constantly took doses of acid to perk up dull state visits and the like and that they used to refer to it as her remedy and were under instruction to give it to her if she said "one is feeling a bit heavy". He also said that they'd once accidentally given a dose to Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden and there'd been fears of a diplomatic incident but he'd turned out to be an old hand at LSD and the pair of them had a gay old time. Apparently she was awesome at Balmoral shoots after taking 120µg, but her favourite place to go in London when high was the Natural History Museum, which she referred to as the huge arcade machine. I asked him if he thought she'd changed much through her LSD experiences, and he said that as well as a brief interest in Indian philosophy, she had become more open-minded and considerate, but it didn't last long after she gave up the drug. Acid Dave had got busted in 1978 and the Queen felt it was the universe telling her to pack it in. Poor old Dave did 15 years at her Majesty's pleasure, little knowing it was the second lot of her Majesty's pleasure he'd supplied. I became fascinated with ketamine in my later years and ended up dying in a chainsaw and petrol incident. The Queen is still going, and how awful it must all be for Charles.

The Same Time

I met a guy from Sydney who was born one day after me. What time were you born? I asked him. 5.45 in the morning, he said. I was stunned. I didn't even need to go and check the time difference on google. I realised what that meant. You weren't born on the day after me, I told him. We were born on the same day! At the same time! Ah, no we weren't mate, it says on my birth certificate, he said before it dawned on his face much like the sun on that blessed day. What time were you born? he asked. I told him: 6.45 in the evening! He paused to think. Was that GMT or BST? he asked. BST! I replied. Fuck me! he said, we're like star twins! Fuck! Amazing! What's your favourite colour? How do you like your tea? Do you have a friend called Nigel? He paused. No hang on a second, he said, it needs to have been GMT. Mate, sorry, we just weren't born at the same time. Close though. I thought about it for a minute. Well, at least the same hour, I said. It'll be hour little secret, he told me.

so eh how about it

While I was in Scotland someone told me about this ad they used to have up there where a lad practices his chat-up routine before he goes out on a Saturday night. He fancies this one girl, Sarah, and he tries out what he's going to say, tests out various lines, until finally, washed and brushed up, he hits upon his tack, a smooth, sophisticated, gentle, friendly tactic: "Sarah, you know I really like you." Cut to the party, a typically Scottish alcoholistic affair, and our lad, well pissed, spots young Sarah in the kitchen. She looks hopefully at him, touches her hair, and he seizes his moment. He lurches toward her, and over the blaring music delivers his now degraded epistle: "Sarah, I really fancy you so ... eh ... how about it?" Cue repugnanted revulsion by Sarah and Cupid's bow is once again at rest.

The message is, of course, that you don't need to drink 15 bottles of Buckie before you mingle with the opposite sex, in fact you might be better off drinking only 10. Or 11, but no more than you need to keep out the cold. But the Scots didn't much go for that message and instead claimed this advert for themselves, and so "I really fancy you so ... eh ... how about it" became the number one chat-up line round the country, especially used by schoolboys on their teachers. The slogan even has its very own facebook page. I seem to remember that the Heroin Screws You Up campaign of the mid-eighties was said to have given birth to junkie chic. Perhaps government adverts are just always going to go wrong.

anyway, even though I barely remembered the relevant line, the internet still served me up the ad, and here it is



Bonus Scottish health education catchphrases

"It tastes boggin!"
"He jus doesny know when to stop"

on the train to Hackney

The man on the train to Hackney wears a cheap duffel coat, red chequered shirt and blue jeans. He slouches in his seat, slumping across the gangway to the seats opposite. His slouch occupies a lot of space. One hand fiddles with a tatty canvas bag on the seat beside him while the other flicks through his phone. He calls someone. His African-accented voice sounds slow, tired. He moves his other hand to rest on his lap.

“Hello?”

“Do you not have my number on your phone anymore?”

“Hello? I said, do you not have my number on your phone anymore?”

“I met you in Richmond, don’t you remember?”

“In the morning. Yeah.”

“Yeah that's right,”

“Are you sure?”

“Are you sure you don’t remember”

“You used to have my number on your phone.”

“Are you sleeping?”

“You sound tired.”

“Where do you live?”

“I’ve forgotten”

“Croydon? Oh, East Croydon.”

“Do you remember my name?”

“Sanya. Sanya. S-A-N-Y-A.”

“I’ll give you a call back.”

“Should I be expecting your call?”

“I might call you later.”

“Bye”

Across from him, on a seat opposite, I try to scribble down his conversation. As I do so, as nonchalantly as possible, I steal glances at him. I wonder if he is wondering, "what is that man writing?" Next to him sits a very buttoned up middle-aged woman. She sits up straight. Her heavily made-up face doesn’t even twitch. I swap my glance to look at her. She seems as though air is holding her upright. A tiny, tinny cross hangs around her neck.

Next to me a woman is flicking rapidly through a make-up and surgery magazine. I look back at the puffed-up lady in front of me.

“Everybody’s judging,” I scribble.

The man is still flicking through his phone. He alights on a number and puts the phone to his ear. I sit poised, listening.

“Hello Ilts. How are you, it's Sanya, everything’s fine. Just calling to say hi. Anyway hope you’re well. Bye.”

I realise he’s been talking to an answerphone. As he clicks shut his phone, our eyes meet for a moment. I turn the page of the notebook rapidly. He is in grabbing range of it. I picture him snatching it and reading it out to the crowded train. I have deliberately made my scribbles hard to read, but not illegible. I put the notebook in my pocket and pat the flap of the pocket down.

I feel like I am stealing from this man. I am a thief, operating in full view of everyone. I get my notebook out again to write that down.

As I get off the train, I think to myself: “Of all the things in the world, is this what you want to write about?”

My car, ma

I was taking a sunday stroll down a suburban street, nice day, trees rustling their leaves in a summer breeze, when I looked up and saw two cars falling silently out of the blue sky. No-one was about and I watched rapt as the cars fell, one ahead of the other, both rightways up, wobbling as they fell. I looked up in the sky for a plane or somewhere the cars could have come from, but there was nothing to see, just a thin cloud far up in the distance. Only then did it occur to me that if I didn't pay attention I might get crushed by one so I started ducking around trying to judge the trajectory as they closed in.

Where I was standing a small road forked off from the main one, a scratch of grass separating them, and a wooden shelter sat in front of me on the grass. The first car hit the ground on the small road some way away. There was a ferocious noise, heavy and deep and gut-wrenching, but which it seems slightly pointless to use a metaphor to describe - the best I could think of might be the sound of two cars hitting the ground from a great height - followed by a succession of smaller, higher-pitched noises, like cymbals accompanying an orchestral epic. It was metal versus tarmac - a well-matched battle, both left in a bad way - and then bolts ripped from their fixings, glass shattered and sent spinning into the road, a searing smoke and the burning of things that shouldn't be burnt, and then the quiet.

Dust settled, glass stopped tinkling, bits of car came clattering and then to rest, smoke sailed on and up on the breeze. Perhaps, the thought occurred to me, I should check whether there was anybody in either of the cars, and see if they were alright. I looked up the main road and a small car was driving towards me. There was something strange about the way it moved, jerking through the gears and yet never getting up much speed. As I looked inside I saw a huge, fat guy, eyes drenched with medication, hunched over the steering wheel, looking worried. He drove past without acknowledging me.

Now people appeared, out of their houses and who knows where and starting gathering around, ringing other people, and probably the police, on their phones. There was talk but I was suddenly worried that no-one knew about the cars, that it had all been my imagination, and that they had all gathered here for some other reason, so I didn't say anything. Then I asked one woman: "Did you see the cars?" and the pause before she answered was long enough to make my heart flutter. Then she said: "Yes," and put me out of my misery. "We should ring the police and tell them about the plane," I said to the crowd, imagining a plane with its doors hanging open, cargo dropping away like gifts being showered by a benevolent god. Then I said: "Mind you they're probably going to Heathrow anyway."

Overheard overhead

"Yeah all the adults who want to be down with the kids are doing it."

"What's it called?"

"Weblog, or drivel for short."

Vacancy

How to look busy. Hmmm, Stare out the window, not good. Read the paper, not good. Type something meaningless in Word, not great. Do some work? Impossible.

Is that the editor over there, peering across the savannah of computer screens at my under-rated corner? Don’t be ridiculous, he’s got much more important things to be pondering than why you haven’t done any work for the last hour and a half. No way is he going to march over, grip you by the shoulders and say: “Haven’t you done anything since you’ve been here?”

No chance of anything that exciting happening. Instead of bit of work crops up, occupies me for a minute and a half, no make that two minutes, and is done, wrapped up and shoved back down the pipe to the next keyboard monkey to soak in spittle. Back to staring out the window.

Hmmm, I’m pretty sure he’s looking at me now. He’s thinking, “What is that guy writing when he’s supposed to be working? Does he think he’s some kind of reporter? Some comment writer? Obit guy? What’s he doing in the spaz corner, with all the ne’er do wells then? Ah, that must be why. He’s probably on work experience and they haven’t found anything for him to do today. Probably he’ll be gone by next week, no need for me to worry my editorial genius over him, he can stare out of the window to his heart’s content. But I think I’ll get someone to read what he’s writing though, I’m sure its about me.”

Not a chance of that, matey. I’d rather write about eating my own tail than write anything you’d recognise. Yum, yum, cor this tail is tasty. Don’t know why I’ve never tried it before. Yumptious. Good quality protein and all, I must say. A real hearty snack. Hopefully it’ll grow back by tomorrow and I can have another crack at it.

Oh god, now the night editor has got the look as well. Better get my coat ready for the off. Hopefully the oystercard’s got enough to get me home, because it’s a long walk back with no raincoat and no money to buy one.

It’s a long walk back with a raincoat, of course. Tappity tap tap, what a load of important work is getting done in this room. Everyone’s so typie its amazing. No time for a chat, I’ve got important typing to do. Ooh look at me, typing up the world’s news, ain’t I a bit of all that.

Even this drivel can’t keep me occupied any longer. I’ve run out of crap to write. That’s it, I’m on my last legs, I can’t even turn out utter nonsense anymore.

I might invent a torture called Chinese typewriter torture. They sit you in a chair and type around you for 40 years until your brain finally caves in and then they give you £60 a week pension and a decrepit flat in Haringey. Actually its not called CTT, its just called life.

Tapping must be the world’s most uninspiring sound. Rhythmless, tuneless, its completely devoid of any of the things that make sound worth hearing. Although it does hold a faint needling quality, that other people are getting on with work, while you sit there worthless and wretched. If you listen long enough you can hear waves of tapping across the room, like, well like waves, I suppose. I did say it was uninspiring. Little bursts of tapping, like gunfire in a war torn Slavic city, as you sit in a grim hotel room, betting on how far the damp will rise before the night is out.

I wonder if I should time exactly how much of this shift I spend working and how much I spend not working. At a guess I’ve spent less than half an hour actually working and its already half-8. On that basis, I’ll can do no more than the best part of an hour before I go home. Assuming they don’t toss me out with the recycling.
I wonder how long you could do a job that paid you a decent wage for just sitting somewhere for eight hours a day.

Tunnel Rat

The rat looked up as he heard the tube train clattering up the tunnel.
“I’m getting old now,” he thought. “That noise ain’t doing me no good.”
He continued gnawing on a long juicy snake he’d found lying away from the wall.
“That’s funny,” he had thought. “Don’t get many of these down here normally.”
The track rattled as the train approached, knocking his tail off the metal.
“I’m too old for this game. All this noise. I need some peace and quiet. I fancy a move to the country. Maybe I’ll try St Albans.”
He nibbled a bit more of the leathery snake, which hummed with the vibration of the oncoming train.
“Cor, I need this. I haven’t had any protein for days.”
The noise was deafening. The train was almost upon him.
“Rats!” he thought. “I’ll have to leave it till later. That bloody Benedict will probably get it.”
If he didn’t leave it now he’d be in danger of getting crushed. But he was still getting through the tough skin; a few more nibbles and he’d get into the meat.
The wind was getting right up now, the screaming of the wheels as the train braked for the corner shimmered in the air.
A nibble, a nibble, another nibble. The lights of the train shone off the wall from around the corner.
“I can see the meat,” thought the rat, eyes gleaming in the new light. He sunk his teeth deep into the electric cable. The arc of the electricity sent him flying, fur burning, straight into the path of the tube train. The last thing the driver saw before the train came to a sudden halt and the lights went out was a flaming rodent splattered across his windscreen, cooked through, practically falling off the bone, the crazed gleam in his eyes still evident to the shocked driver.
Not as shocked as the rat though, obviously.

Bill goes Virago

I told him “I’m pregnant.”
He said, “Congratulations! Who’s the father?”
There was a long silence.
“You bastard,” I whispered.
“Oh,” he said.



She told me: "I'm pregnant."
I said: "Congratulations! Who's the father?"
There was a long silence.
"You bastard," she whispered.
"Oh," I said.

Ron Jonson

I’m reading the paper on Saturday morning. “Cor!” I think, “This Jon Ronson’s quite good. I think I’d like to write something like him.” I wonder if I should write to Jon and tell him about my idea. “Hang on!” I think, “perhaps Jon won’t like that. Perhaps Jon will think ‘there’s only room for one person to write off-the-cuff, insubstantial fluff cunningly concealing real, genuine insight into one life’s merry masquerade.’ Perhaps, he’ll even take it as an attack.”

I wouldn’t like to attack Jon. I think he’s great. How do I tell him that I think he’s great without looking like I’m trying to attack him?

My boy Noel comes into the room. “Dad,” he says, “Can we go out and play in the pond today.”

I sigh loudly. My wife, down the hall in the bathroom hears me. “Ron!” she shouts, “take him to the pond. Stop obsessing about Jon Ronson.”

Later on, after I’ve wiped the flakes of mud off my glasses and out of my hair, I reflect that life must be really hard for Jon Ronson. “All those people writing to him the whole time, expecting things from him. I wouldn’t like that at all.” I decide I’ll definitely not write to him.

My wife is unimpressed and tells me that if I don’t stop watching Secret Rulers of the World again she’s going to go to her mother’s for the rest of the weekend.

Hmmm, I think. How does he do it? How does he transmogrify his dull everyday meanderings into comic nuggets of gold?

“I can’t stand the way he uses his family in his pieces,” my wife always says when we discuss Jon. I have always agreed with her. I decide to steer clear of anything like that and just report objectively on the things people want to know about, using my charming neurotic persona to smooth out any suspicion that I’m a grasping, malevolent journalist. I wonder what I should have as my first topic.

“How about conspiracy theories?” says my neighbour Dan, who’s come round to borrow the paper. “I can’t,” I say, “Jon’s already done that.” I point to a copy of Them, which sits on my shelf next to the Secret Rulers DVD. “Oh,” says Dan. He takes the paper and goes back next door.

I pause, stare out of the window, and clean my glasses. “I know. I won’t tackle any really big things at all, at least not at first. Instead I’ll just sort of write about what I’m thinking and the conversations I have.”

I stare out of the window a bit more. Then I have a very significant thought: “It’ll be sort of like an episode of Seinfeld.”

The lazy do the work

I live in a small flat. Cramped. Cluttered. I do have a washing machine, which is mainly a good thing and only slightly a problem because of where to hang the clothes. I could shell out for a washer-drier, I suppose, but I am either far too piously environmental for that, or just too cheap. For many years I had a very cheap plastic triangular rack which, despite being some way short of commodious enough for the inundation of my laundry, managed to air hundreds of washes in any case. Then, at a friends, I spotted a multi-triangular affair, reminiscent of the spacecraft in Close Encounters of a Third Kind, able to accommodate a veritable bonanza of soggy Mr Byrite products. After some sine qua non procrastination I located and bought a similar one. Two full loads of washing hung from its eaves, plus you could hang towels and sheets over the top. My airing pile-up crises were over. The original puny triangle rack lay against my bookshelves. I twice considered throwing it out. I meant to. I even began to, but it somehow remained, leaning languidly against the shelves, like a too-cool teenager who knows something you don’t.

And then today I was putting up a blind and I rested it on the triple-decker alien spaceship washing hanger, momentarily. It folded up flat on the floor, the way it would be if I ever got round to taking the clothes off it before I’d washed a new load, which is never. After I put up the blind I tried to restore the structure to its full architectural glory but I soon realised that something had gone very wrong. Further inspection revealed all. The fleeting stress of the blind’s weight had caused the chrome effect bars to shear apart, destroying entirely the carefully plotted equilibrium and leaving the entire edifice limp and flat and completely worthless. I briefly wondered if I’d bought it from a reputable store like John Lewis, from where I could never bother to go and claim a refund, but thankfully I think it was probably from the cheapo hardware store down the road. It lies in a heap on my bedroom floor. The cheap white plastic triangle still leans against the bookshelves, coolly smoking a cigarette.

Life's bitter conundrum

I was feeling bored, like, like I was a really boring person and I hadn’t done nothing interesting ever more or less so I got a gun and I shot a couple of strangers, thinking now this is fucking interesting isn’t it and they came and arrested me and now I’m in prison and I’m bored again.

Modern Proverb #1

A friend of mine was once selling LSD in the West End, outside a club on a summer night, high on the acid himself. A man came and bought a few trips off him and went away. A few minutes later he returned, robbed my friend of all his acid, along with some weed, ecstasy and most of his money. My friend, bereft and feeling very edgy, walked down the street into the arms of several policemen who stuck him in the back of their van, searched him thoroughly but, finding nothing, were forced to let him go. So it is said that your guardian angel can take any form, even that of a thief who robs you in the night.

Run Come Rally

How they had got there was a blur. But now they were here, a large wood-panelled lecture room. People sprawled on tables along the walls of the room, while the centre, where hundreds of chairs were laid out in rows, was left alone.

He began shooting infiltrators. “You can tell who they are,” he announced to the room, “you just look into their eyes,” and it was true. The securitars had a sly, wicked look, their eyes had this dull sparkle which was quite obvious once you knew what to look for. A lot of them had these studded sleeves as well. He circled the room, looking in everyone’s eyes and shooting all the infiltrators. There was no protest. He shot them quick and gave them no time to react.

At one point he looked at four kids sat on a table, one with red hair, dressed like a devil, the others in green boiler suits, clown masks pushed up on the top of their heads. He whispered to the priest behind him, “what do you think?” The priest looked and said under his breath, “red hair.” Mendy quickly walked up and shot them all. As he did so the priest started to protest. “No, only the…” he said, but his voice drifted off.

Mendy had a TV handset in his pocket and suddenly thought of turning on the news. It seemed the thing to do. He had wondered what they were going to make of it. The pictures were from helicopters, showing the building’s brutal, concrete exterior. Words sat at the bottom of the screen. HOSTAGE CRISIS, they read. MANY HOSTAGES SHOT. He could see battalions of black-armed agents advancing towards the tower, like spilled coffee spreading across a carpet. Won’t be long, he thought.

Now, with all the infiltrators shot, slumped haplessly against the walls, the rest of the group began to patrol, waiting for it to happen. They shuffled around the room in a big circle. As they walked they passed bullets along the line, the bullets they had filched from the infiltrators. As he took a few from the person behind him, Mendy thought to himself, “we’re going to need a lot of bullets if we’re going to get out of here.”

Tree tops

Space cadets. We sat at the corner of the park, waiting for the sun to go down far enough to make it too cold to sit there any more. The wind picked up and the light trailed across the grass in long, stalactite-like rays. The sun glistened at the top of the trees, like a diver waiting to plunge off a high board. The grass rustled in the wind, spelling out the wind’s impetus, as though two invisible people were having a wrestling match. We was high.

It was inevitable, nowadays, but in a car crash you’d prefer an airbag and so, living in a society of car crashes, I’d come to prefer a cushion or two. It blew up in my face, and smothered me, just as I was getting worried. Sometimes I worried that I couldn’t breathe, but that went away.

My friend, who was restless by nature, had gone off and was considering the higher branches of a tree. Mentally, of course, all things are possible. And as the mind and the body are one, that means that physically all things are possible. It is just a matter of bending physics to will, I suppose. Not necessarily to will, of course, but perhaps more to intention. These subtle differences meant nothing to me, but they provided us with a great deal of idle chat.

I looked up in time to see my friend skirting those same upper branches with the agility of a small monkey. “Its still warm up here,” he told me, as a blast of wind stung my face.

I turned around and looked at the tree, which seemed to be still growing out of the ground as I stared, a gigantic thing of constant motion, which I suppose it actually is. The trunk seemed to be straining to get away from the roots, just as the roots seemed to be snaking out of the ground. The intention of a tree is plain – to go upwards – but does it have a will?

Climbing a tree is as natural – perhaps more natural – than walking, but it requires a certain lack of attention, a forgetfulness, which is the forgetfulness of down. Your body carries you upwards quite happily, but your mind will remain on the ground if you let it, and constantly interfere. Only when you have to return to the ground do you appreciate what it was going on about.

We sat up in the branches, smoking weed and staring into the sun. Suddenly a wave of dissatisfaction came over me. “This is all very twee,” it said, “we want more about the car crashes.” I turned to look at my friend who had nestled between the branches like he was on a sofa, but his eyes were shut. I realised I was both in the tree and on the ground at the same time. If I made a wrong move, it occurred to me, something very wrong could happen. I could either fall out of the tree or, possibly, fall back into it.

The branches seemed to constrict me now, full of intention. I realised that my arms and legs were not in their usual place, that is somewhere to the left and right of me, but instead appeared to be all around me, in front, behind, above, in places in which you’d never think they’d get to. I stretched my leg out and began felt a long hard stab in my back which ran up my spine and past my head. Air rushed past my ears, whistling a favourite tune. Branches bounced off me, as though a whole gang of schoolkids were attacking me. I grabbed one as it went past and held on tight to it, hoping to use it as protection. It spoke to me.

It said, “Hold tight.” The other branches stopped hitting me and I dangled in the air listening to the movement of the tree. I thought I’d open my eyes at this point. When I did I realised that I was above my friend in the tree, and not below him, as I had thought I would be. This gave me a powerful shock as I realised the tree had actually been attacking me, instead of the whole thing being a cosy hallucination as I tumbled downwards.

Later on we repaired to my house and sat around staring at the ceiling.

Punishments and Rewards

We met in the café. He seemed to look out at me, as though he’d stayed at home. I felt very far away. He took a deep breath.

“Gina visited,” he told me. “She told me that she loves me.”

There are times when a sentence is so at variance with its setting that you doubt firstly that you heard it right, and, if so, that you are going mad. I looked at a bleak, defeated man, and heard the words that I knew he’d spent his entire adult life waiting for. Obviously there was some kind of catch.

“You remember Deborah?” he asked. I did. I met her about a year before. Strictly on-the-side material, a girl he’d barely wanted to introduce to me but who he’d kept on through dry times. “Got her pregnant,” he said, flatter than Kansas.

Grey eyes. He seemed to have built himself one particular facial expression and cemented it in place. A kind of pensive, downcast look, like that of someone who’s still waiting for a bus even though he’s missed the job interview. Not so bad that old ladies would stop him in the street, but the kind of guy to whom you’d say, “might never happen” and he could reply, “already has.”

So Deborah was pregnant. That was a minor disaster, although of course it wasn’t at all, and he knew it. In fact, he went on to say, he was quite happy about it. But then Gina had turned up, the cheetah among the pigeons. “She told me that she loves me.”

Another deep breath. He was moving air the way Sisyphus moves rocks, slowly, without enthusiasm. I was beginning to join in. I could see the problem. If you loved someone and you continued to love them, over years and years and you gave up, you moved on – although moving on implies somewhere to go – and then, when the die has been cast, when the window has shut, they come back, and tap on the glass…

“The worst thing,” he said, as though at a funeral, “is that I can’t even kill myself, because of the kid.”

There was a short pause while we digested that little statement.

Punishment and rewards. If only you were punished immediately for your transgressions, then nobody would ever do any. It’s the waiting around for your karma that does it, you never know which of your doings you’re being punished for.