Who'll Hear Us?

(Written October 2010)

We gathered every day at eleven. Sheila was three minutes early, as always, because her watch was three minutes fast. I knew that it shouldn't, but it annoyed me. I didn't dare say anything. The others arrived punctually. By the time we were all settled in our seats it was five past. Every day, at five past eleven, we would start playing.

We began with the Mozart. Balance, poise, control. A deep, sonorous pedal lay beneath the treble interplay, until the resolution brought perfect symmetry. Every day, at half past eleven, the cadence resolved in perfect symmetry.

We would then move on to Beethoven. Dissonances handled with masterful skill, to establish a drama and emotional relationship between the four of us and our instruments. We felt the vibrations resonate throughout the spruce chambers, their bodies close to ours.

We continued on with Schuhbert's dark, sparse quartets, and then explored Britten.

"I like this." I told the others, after a losing myself in the romantic harmony we had been playing. "I like this a lot."

Sheila nodded, with a half smile, and turned to look out of the window.
"But who'll hear us?" she asked.

Brought out of my trance, I looked across at her, blankly.

We continued to play, every day at five past eleven. Mozart, Beethoven, Schuhbert, Britten. The sonorous pedal seemed duller than usual. Perhaps it was the cold weather.

Ophelia's Aqueduct

(Written November 2010)

Sat up straight, atop the limestone aqueduct, a young Ophelia gazed out over the open valley. This was her favourite spot. From here she could see over all of Elsinore, to the ocean and beyond. She could listen to the tranquil sounds of the canal water sitting just beneath her feet, and occasionally, a few times each hour, a longboat would pass right beside her. For Ophelia, only atop this heavenly highway could she truly be happy, truly at one with herself and truly away from the complex politics of her everyday life.

In the distance, Ophelia noticed a houseboat appear at one side of the valley. As it gradually approached, she spotted a tall gentleman disappear away into the boat, leaving a smaller figure out on the deck, admiring the view, just as she was. By the time the boat was within twenty yards, Ophelia could see that the figure was a young boy, with bright blue eyes that radiated kindness and joy. His head was as bald as the valley was deep, but his smile was unmistakably genuine: the image of undistorted, uncorrupted pleasure and self-expression. The boat passed her by, as did the boy, and locked into his gaze, Ophelia reached up to wave a heartfelt good bye, and good luck. But just as she raised her arm came a strong gust of wind, and with one hand above her head Ophelia lost her balance, and toppled over the edge of the aqueduct.

As the air rushed past her ears, the sky became warm, and a piercing monotone rang out around her, drilling itself into her thoughts. She span through the falling sky and noticed the blue grass below getting brighter and nearer. Suddenly, a glimpse of the bald boy, his smile stretched out as wide as the horizon, passed by her closing eyes. Then as quickly as it appeared, it vanished, replaced by the image of a girl clasping a bundle of rosemary, fennel and daises. Her white dress bounced playfully along the grass as she skipped towards a silhouette in the distance, the tassels of his epaulettes swaying in the breeze. The sky became brighter yet, now close to a pale yellow, as the incandescence of the sun backlit every image with an ethereal glow. Then another flash, a bright white, and the girl was sat on a pearly chair, gently caressing a lute, her hands pale, her fingers long and spindly yet soft as the clouds above her. Opening her eyes, Ophelia considered how life may not be so straight as the aqueduct, but could be multi-faceted, a whirlwind of encounters, emotions and experiences, piled up and mixed around, to create one greater feeling, an expression of everything that makes humanity what it is. And with that thought, a smile stretched across Ophelia's face, wide as the valley.

As she approached the ground, the young Ophelia's dress snagged on a protruding Willow branch, breaking her fall and slowing her down to dangle peacefully above the cascading stream beneath her feet.

Safety Manual

To avoid the risk of being struck by lightning, do not use the devices during a thunderstorm. In particular, if used in an open field, you have an increased chance of being struck by lightning. Quickly seek refuge in a place that will protect you from lightning.

Pigtails

(A story in precisely fifty words).

Standing outside a Shell garage on a dual carriageway at half three. Alone, because that's how he left her, and why care, if she didn't want it? He's mashed anyway. They found her by quarter to: high costume stockings, pigtails and three Sharpie dots on each cheek. Drunk, but embarrassed.

Small Birds

// UPDATE 'Small Birds' has since been selected for the university's annual anthology, 2011! //

It has been a long time since last I saw you. Your hair has grown, and your eyebrows are different. I have a keen eye for good eyebrows. Yours are not good. 

In fact, I had completely forgotten you existed. It was as if your life and mine had never come into contact, until I made a list of all the people I know, and you were on it. That's when I remembered. So I decided to knock on your door.

A big wooden door, painted black, with an iron letterbox in the shape of a mouth at its centre. Oxidisation had caused the letterbox lips to turn a dirty crimson, and crack around the edges. You didn't answer, perhaps because when I knocked, I used the fleshy part of my hand, wrapped up in my scarf, and even then I tapped lightly. But you didn't answer, so I let myself in.

It's difficult to hear you when you're shouting with your mouth closed. When your lips are hermetically sealed, firmly covered, and you're shouting. It's hard to hear you yell all of those words, so violent, so angry, over the shallow breathing at the back of the room. Over the falling snowflakes outside the window, and over the whisper of the gas cooker in the room next door. 

I follow your glance across the room to a small chest on the mantle piece. Oak, perhaps, and into it carved once again an ornate pair of lips. But when I open it, I find it is filled with the sounds of small birds: sparrows and robins, whispering awkwardly to one another. This makes it harder still to hear your shouts and whimpers.

So I close the chest, turn off the cooker, stop the snow and silence the breathing at the back of the room, so that you can be heard. But then, as you appear to be having trouble speaking (perhaps because your mouth is in a state of self-induced paralysis) I myself speak, on your behalf.

Don't worry, you say. You can have me back, you say. We can wile the nights away, trapping sounds of conspiring birds in ornate boxes, and perhaps even bake a lip-shaped cake, out of our love for one another.

But I can hear your sarcasm in my voice. And I don't like it one bit. So I turn the gas cooker back on, and just before leaving the house, I remove your eyebrows, as a courtesy.

Pepper Problem

Yesterday, I bought a bag of Market Value peppers from Tesco.

There were three peppers in the bag. Two were average in size,

one yellow and one red. But the third was

vast.

The Everest of the pepper community.

The Goliath of the vegetable world.

Its ambiguous hue defied obvious colour-based

categorisation, and as it loomed over its contemporaries,

it peered down arrogantly, with an air of contempt.

I put the pepper away in the fridge, at this point

uncertain of its destiny.

But today I wanted Fajitas for lunch.

So I removed the pepper from its refrigerated sanctuary

and placed it on the chopping board, ready for preparation.

On dissection, however, I found a small family living inside.

They were unhappy about me carving into their home without permission,

although they did admit that its organic nature

meant it probably wasn't a suitable long-term housing solution.

I suggested the milk carton as a less degradable alternative.

Life is a Minestrone

Here's a short piece based on the chorus to the 10cc song of the same name.


"Life is a minestrone...
served up with parmesan cheese
Death is a cold lasagne
suspended in deep freeze..."

So if life is a minestrone, served up with parmesan cheese,
then life's most intimate moments, are surely onions, lentils and beans.
Ok, so let's try to keep an open mind, I mean this isn't a tinned Heinz microwave lunch,
this is a fine Italian delicacy, 10cc's microcosmic metaphor, and perhaps a whole lot more.
Let's think it through.

Life is Italy's most substantial soup, a hot pot of dreams and fears.
Love's a mushroom and lust's a turnip and our sadness, and all our tears, are
bits of shell-shaped pasta, brewing in a bean-stock broth, all brown and… British?

But death is a cold lasagne.
A cold lasagne suspended in deep freeze.
A layer of pasta, a layer of sauce and another layer of cheese, and
there's the thing.

On one hand we have life as a bowl of mixed morals, feelings, moments and histories
kept in flux by a hot savoury broth. On the other is death, a plate
stacked up with me and you, and everything we've ever felt or seen or heard,
kept from collapsing in an avalanche of Béchamel sauce and over-cooked tomato by the cold, congealing cheese.

So I guess when you put it that way, 10cc were onto something big.
So I'll take out that old lasagne, that cause of so much strife,
And I'll whack it in the blender and have a good old bowl of life.

Bottle Opener

Save me.

Save me from everything I'm rapidly imbibing.

From the liver-guzzling

mind-puzzling

death of me.

The dinner-spewing

kin accruing

breath of me.

The head mashing

public flashing

car crashing

festivity.

The bank breaking

household shaking

mass head-aching

ingesting spree.

This "bottle of fun,

quick hit and run

regret what I've done"

felony.

Never Mind

Never mind the piles of paper stacked

up on my desk.

Never mind the seventeen missed calls

flashing

on my phone.

Don't worry about the wall of sticky notes

covering my window

my book case

my face.

It's not as though I use my wall calendar for anything

other than looking at the pictures of

puppies.

Why does it matter that the clock is an hour slow?

I'd forgotten it even was.

What's important, is that

I beat your high score.