apart

Life ticks on on Skiathos. The sun shines. Deserted beaches look like lost bits of Brazil, set adrift from their mother continent, negotiating the Straits of Gilbralatar, washing up short of Turkey. Restaurant owners fall with no sense of dignity at the feet of overweight tourists, begging custom from Teeside to Torquay. A snake lies dead in the road, like an omen of 'nothing in particular'. Slothrop trawls his way across the zone, Swann left behind for the time being to revel in his peculiar happiness. The chef uses one ring to concoct dishes made of olives and midget cucumbers. Sleep flirts like a mischievous she-wolf, all over you one minute, playing oh-so-hard-to-get the next. The sea's azure qualities survive the storm's ravages. A truck rolls across an unnamed land, full of some unspecified woe. Life ticks on on Skiathos. Subtle changes are genuflecting themselves in cranial corners, affirmations, reflections, mutations. The brighter the sun shines the paler glows albino skin. Somewhere on the body are written tanned flecks of how it used to glow, but like the snake's skin, most has been shed. Would need a soothsayer to put the pieces back together, reconstitute the image it once enclosed.

reading other people's postings when abroad

Makes one feel slightly off-balance.

on the way to stop 16

The bus ride is 15 minutes. There's one road on the island, one bus route. Getting lost is not an option. The radio plays on the bus as it always does in countries where the sun shines. I recognise a voice, a tune, a song. Every day is like Sunday. In a seaside town. They forgot to shut down. The sun scintillates on a sea made of corrugated pearls. The singer sings. I allow myself a smile. Come armegeddon, come. The song is curtailed before the singer has a chance to finish.

hundreds and thousands

wisdom of the elders

I am tired, the peahen said to the caiman.
Why don't you go to sleep then, the caiman replied.
You must think I was born one plank short of the full log, the peahen chuckled.
The caiman scratched its head.
I'll look after you, it said.
The peahen cried with laughter.
Why don't you go to sleep, it said to the caiman, if you're so keen on it.
The caiman shook its snout, wearily.
I've gone off sleep, the caiman said. I can't see the point of it anymore. You sleep, I'll look after you.
Yeah, right, the peahen said.
But in spite of itself, it stared into the caiman's twin glowing eyes, reflecting the light of a watery moon, and soon it was asleep.
Damn, the peahen said when it woke up in the morning, that was stupid of me. I've probably been eaten alive.
The peahen looked around and saw that the world was pretty much the same as it had been the day before. Except that the caiman had gone.
The peahen wondered what had happened to it.
A few hours later the peahen even began to get a bit concerned.
Then the caiman came swimming back.
Why didn't you eat me, the peahen said. You could have done. I fell asleep.
The caiman looked shocked.
Why would I do a thing like that?
Isn't that what you're supposed to do?
Since when did I do anything I was supposed to do?
The peahen thought about it.
Besides, the caiman said. I've lost my appetite.
So that's the reason you didn't eat me.
The caiman was upset.
That's got nothing to do with it.
You're just saying that, the peahen pouted. It was almost getting to seem as though the peahen was in some way put out that the caiman hadn't at least tried to eat it.
I'd never eat you, the caiman said. I'd never eat you, because I like you.
You're just weird, the peahen replied. Lack of sleep is messing with your brain.
The caiman was put out.
I'm weird?
My mother told me never to trust an insomniac caiman, the peahen said.
Why's that?
Because they'll eat you as soon as you close your eyes.
The caiman scratched its head. It had fallen out of love with sleep, but the peahen's tortuous logic was exhausting enough to make it want to shut its eyes and snooze in the morning mud.
Next time I'll eat you if you like, it said to the peahen, hoping it was the right thing to say.
You see, the peahen said triumphantly. My mother was right!

7 conversations

(With acknowledgements to Francis Ford Coppola)

+++

1: Living room

Where’s that?
It’s their house. In Ipswich.
I didn’t know they had a house in Ipswich.
It’s the most stupid thing he ever did.
What is?
He just left it. When he came to London.
What do you mean, he left it?
He didn’t want anything to do with it.
What do you mean?
He shut the door and walked away. He said he didn’t believe in property. It’s the most stupid thing he ever did.

+++

2: Stratford 1


The thing is – no one knows who she is.
Ricardo -
Ricardo says he doesn’t know her. He’s never met her.
So who is she?
I don’t know. No one knows.

+++


3: Soho Hotel

I know everyone thinks I’m washed up.
Do they.
And they’re right. And they’re wrong.
silence
Let’s go to the French House. Let’s get out of here.
I paid eight pounds ninety five for this. It’s got three slices of orange in it. I didn’t want any orange. Do you think if they gave you less orange the drink would be cheaper?
Let’s go to the French House.
This place is full of wankers.
Let’s go.
Let’s go to the French House.

+++

4: Stratford 2


The thing is –
What?
silence
What?
Ricardo –
What?
He does know her.
He said he didn’t.
I think he knows her.

+++


5: Kitchen

It’s just like –
What?
I know you’re not going to like me saying this.
Say it.
It’s like. Well, OK. I’ll say it.
silence
It’s like you’re afraid of success. It’s like you get right to the point, and then.
Then what?
I don’t know. You back away. It’s like you’re scared of it.
Is it.
It’s what I think. I think it’s something you picked up from your grandfather.
Did I?
He had it too.
You think so.
Yes. I do. I really do.

+++


6: Stratford 3

She’s a hooker.
No –
I think she is.
She wouldn’t have been drunk if -
She wasn’t drunk.
I don’t think so.
I think she might have been.
She didn’t seem like a hooker.
She fell asleep.
I don’t think she was asleep.
I don’t think so –
So who was she then? What was she doing here?

+++


7: Soho Chinese

What do you write in your blog.
It’s a long story.
It’s the democratisation of –
You write a blog?
He writes a blog.
What’s the point?
What’s the point?
It’s the democratisation –
Isn’t it just like reading someone’s diary? I don’t want to read someone’s diary.
I know what you’re saying.
It’s the democratisation of –
So what’s the point?

+++

sneak preview

the runner

[A short story written in 1999, taken from the unfinished series 24 hours]

+++

After the accident I suffered from insomnia. I found it upsetting, lying awake, with too many things on my mind, unable to lose myself in sleep. This went on for a month or so, and as I couldn’t see any sign of it stopping, I decided I’d better do something, so one night I put on my tracksuit, laced up my trainers and went running.

I didn’t know where I was going. I just ran around the block three times. When I got home, I found it had worked: I fell asleep almost straight away. The next night I followed the same routine, and it worked again. The third night, I felt tired anyway: I’d had a particularly stressful day at work and by the time I got home I was almost in tears. After two nights of good sleep I thought that my body might allow me a third one for free. So I went to bed without running, and didn’t fall asleep until after the dawn.

From then on I went running every night. I soon got bored of running round the block, and found myself exploring the back ways around my house, and then, as I got fitter, I found myself running further, into areas I barely knew at all. The parks are shut at night, so you have no option but the roads. I used to go to sleep around midnight - it made sense for me to run for an hour or so around eleven. I soon realised that this involved devising a route which steered clear of the pubs. Being a lone female in a tracksuit going past a pack of men stumbling about at closing time was just an invitation for trouble.

I ended up with a circuit which took me from my flat in Stockwell, through the back streets of The Oval and Kennington, up to the river at Waterloo, and then back down along the Embankment, past the Houses of Parliament. I’d time myself by Big Ben: if the face said later than twenty to twelve on my way home, I knew I was late, if earlier, I reckoned I was making good time. Running along the river at night is pleasant enough, and the Embankment is well lit, so it’s safe. The only section of the run that ever made me nervous was the last ten minutes or so, after I turned off from the river and headed along the streets behind Wandsworth Road, near the big Sainsburys.

The first time I saw the tiger, I wasn’t all that scared, because I thought it was a dog. Dogs will run alongside you for a hundred yards or so, but they never bother me. I don’t think they like the way I smell. I soon leave them behind. I was on the first ten minutes of the run, near The Oval cricket ground. It’s a slightly odd area. I was always glad to get it out of the way. A real mixture of pleasant, terraced houses, with gardens which smell sweetly in the Summer, and large concrete Council blocks, which seem to belong to no-one and smell only of piss. Often the pretty houses face directly onto the council blocks, as though the two are taunting each other. As soon as I’m past the cricket pitch, the roads get a bit wider and it all feels more relaxed: it’s just those first ten minutes which are awkward.

It looked like a very large dog, just standing on a crossroads, waiting. I had to run straight past it, and I expected it to bark, or follow me or something. It was only when I’d crossed the road and left it behind that it struck me that there was something odd. I stopped, half-turned, and looked over my shoulder. The dog was sitting down, and I saw that it sat like a cat. A cat big enough to be a dog, with stripes.

I kept running. Marcus had told me before about how, when you go running, it affects the brain in all sorts of way. It gets chemicals flowing that don’t normally get used. That’s why it can feel trance-like, at times, when you’ve gone through the initial pain. As I carried on running, I thought about all this, and decided I must have seen an apparition or something. A trick of the brain. Five minutes later, a wave of fear swept over me. I thought: I’ve just run past a tiger ! I almost ran to the nearest tube to get home as soon as I could, but decided to keep going. By the time I got home I’d deliberately chosen not to think about it anymore, and slept soundly.

Things were easing up at work. Life had begun to feel easier. It didn’t seem to be hurting quite as much. I was sure that the running had something to do with this. The enforced loneliness, coupled with the physical strain, took me out of myself. If I felt depressed, it was a relief to know that I had the run to fall back on, at the end of the day. The run which allowed me to sleep, which helped me sweat the sorrow from my system.

Two weeks after the first sighting, I saw it again. This time there was no doubt. Further up towards the river than the last time, it bounded out across the street. The streetlights lit up zagged stripes. I came to a sudden stop, standing, my knees locked. It stopped too. In the middle of the road. Looked up and down, and then moved on.

I stayed where I was, in shock, feeling fear pulse through me. I became aware of my breathing. Took my eyes away from the spot where the tiger had stood. Heard the background noises of the street again: cars, words, a humming.

The spot where the tiger and I met was half way between Kennington and Waterloo. I was no more than three minutes from a main road, which would allow me to blend in, increase the range of the tiger’s targets. Still, I couldn’t move. The terror of moving forwards seemed no different from the terror of standing still. As though every path took me towards the carnivore. The unreality of having just seen a tiger in the centre of a city hadn’t struck me. The only thing I felt was fear.

There’s no real way for me to explain what happened next. The easiest thing is to just say that, somehow, I decided to keep on running. The processes by which I made that decision, and then executed it, seem so complex to me now that the truth is, rather than try and explain them, I’m content to let them slip beneath the cover of that far simpler expression. I decided to keep on running. What I am aware of is, having achieved this choice, finding myself running along my normal route, up to the South Bank, along the river, past the Houses of Parliament, under Lambeth Bridge, all the way home, I had achieved something courageous. I’d confronted fears within me that I had not been forced to confront before. Of course, this is all tied up in some way with Marcus, and the accident, and the fact that I survived, not just the accident, but afterwards, the hardest days, when there seemed to be no point in anything.

I had little option but to carry on with my routine. I imagined an ancestor, in the wild, having a similar moment of terror, and realised that these things would have been everyday occurrences. Nothing you could allow to interrupt the way you lived your life, the paths you were required to take. You had to learn to live with the fear. Which I did, my apprehension diminishing as the weeks passed. The tiger never reappeared. I still run now, though less often. Once or twice a week. I run half hoping to spy the tiger again. But I don’t expect to see it. If it hasn’t been caught, it will have moved on, or returned to the savannah.

politician keeps promise

In Copacabana in 2004, a good natured middle aged man with impeccably bad teeth sat on the veranda with myself and Rafa and talked for an hour or so as the sun smoked and we set light to powerful tobacco. Lake Titicaca slowly receded into mother night. The middle aged man with the impeccably bad teeth seemed to enjoy the chance to talk. He exuded whistfulness. He told us how his country had wealth, the trouble is there didn't seem to be any way of matching that wealth with the welfare of the country. Either corrupt politicians, businessmen and military annexed it for themselves, or it went abroad. Foreigners had a better grip on how to maximise Bolivian wealth than Bolivians. He seemed resigned to it. A year or so later, Evo Morales won the election. He won it on a promise to 'nationalise' Bolivia's natural resources. On Monday he began to fulfil that promise. Many think he's crazy. That 'many' does not appear to include the majority of Bolivians who voted for him. Who knows if the middle aged man with the impeccably bad teeth is still looking after the guesthouse with the best view in Copacabana. If he is, I guess he'll be pleased to be telling the travellers a different story for a change.

spring locked

I had high hopes of this bed. By a casual reckoning, this might be the thirteenth bed I’ve lain my head in since November. Many of these barely deserving the title bed, cama, lit, etc. This one is a sofa bed. Upon occasion, (drunkenness or denial), it seems like too much of a fuss to make it, in which case I throw some cushions on the floor and hope for the best. But by and large, I prise the beast out of its cage, ratchet it up, ignite the cylinders, and crawl in. The sofa bed has not done too bad a job. Until recently. When it’s begun to cavil. An unorthodox mattress, it now aspires to concavity. There is a way of lying on it and maintaining a flat surface, but the springs growl and whine, and it feels for all the world like you’re sleeping on three planks placed over a ravine. Better to let the springs have their way, sinking about twenty five degrees in the middle, creating a Grand Old Duke of York of a mattress. Who knows, this might be a model of orthopaedic soundness. It might be the future of sleep.

Then again, it may be an aberration in the face of nature. One day I expect it to snap its jaws shut on me like something out of a Chaplin film. My legs and arms waving at the ceiling as the mattress placidly digests my corporeal being.

some more lennon

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