Who was Doreen Weston?

She said that she wanted to drive and I was in no mood to argue, I'd also supped three very decent brandies within the last three hours. It had been a long day, the negotiations had seemed never ending, I thought the deal was going to fail and then out of the blue we broke through and agreed terms and most importantly the right price. I was now the proud owner of Bentley Mullinier on a really good deal, al perfect except for the fact that though I might own it, it to for my wife, a birthday surprise, the colour, the trim, the model she had wanted. When she first mentioned Bentley I was surprised, I understood she was more than happy with the Range Rover and she seemed more than a little contemptuous about the Maserati (she probably couldn’t even spell it) and would hardly travel in it never mind drive it. The Bentley however seemed to tick all the necessary boxes. “It's such a statement,” she said, “it's elegant, it's strong, almost British and it eloquently tells everybody in the way or on the edge to politely fuck off.” That was her logic, her thinking and in many ways summed up her attitude to life in general. I was glad she wasn't here with us today.

It was my personal assistant Doreen who was driving, she was quiet and confident and knew me well enough to sense that this car, lovely as it was, was not for me and that my relationship with it would be like my relationship with my wife, troubled, strained and expensive. Doreen was a natural and enthusiastic driver, normally she drove a small BMW but took to the Bentley without any bother. She had been floating around all day and as was her way had paid attention to everything in the sales and technical presentation. I could have had the car delivered of course, I could have done many things but I like to take possession, it's what I do in business, in commerce and in love. There was like just one big exception of course, my lovely and headstrong wife. She was not one to be possessed, she was one to be orbited, pampered and fawned after; hence the ongoing conflict as I gave and gave and on brief and unspecified occasions took a little back.

Doreen let the car off the lead and sped onto the motorway, in a few seconds we were up to 80, smooth as silk, silent as a submarine, the bright lights pushing ahead on the nearly empty road, trucks and slower vehicles blurred behind in our swishing wake as we headed home. I pressed back in the passenger seat, closed my eyes, tasted a little of the brandy at the back of my tongue and let the warm travel fever paint a coral blue pattern across my subconscious, I stroked the hem of sleep, touched the frayed edge and drifted away. That's all I remember, that's all I recall, the blue Bentley haze and the comfort of the dreamless void. Then I wake up here. Here looks like the wrong side of a hospital bed, flat on my back looking up into the clinical lamps, beeping noises, a wide area of pain that should belong to nobody and those swirling motorway last minute lights.

I don't how long I drifted in that place, there were words and messages, ideas, questions, all of which eventually passed through that injured sieve that my mind had become. “He's well enough to talk.'” a voice said. “Mr Severin...James...I've something to tell you...I'm Chief Inspector David Lomax of the Thames Valley Police...your wife, Jennifer has been killed..it happened five days ago.” I felt a tremor like an earthquake, I felt my own sweat, I wanted to speak, I want to cry but all I did was freeze up, except for a tremble and spasm that threw my arms up behind my head pulling wires and tubes. “Mr Severin, I'm very sorry...but I need to ask you a number of questions.”

“OK,” I was talking, my voice came out compressed and small, like a man talking through a toilet roll tube with lips part sewn together, “I'm OK, I'll talk, I'm just not sure what I'm hearing you say...you're saying things I don't understand.” Lomax spoke for a while, he explain that I'd been injured and that I'd been in a serious road accident, he explained that Jennifer had been involved in  the road accident too, killed instantly, it had all happened in fractions of seconds. Everything I was hearing seemed like me snippets from a bad and bizarre movie script, drowning me in a relentless water boarding of words and described events. Now I was choking, spluttering and coughing up contradictions and personal horrors in jagged technicolour recollections.

Lomax was standing at the foot of the bed, his face was grim and straight as an undertaker on the job. “Mr Severin, I need to present you with some facts about your wife's death and your injuries. On the evening of the 27^th your wife was outside of your house, the family home. She was standing at the top of the drive way removing some shopping bags from the back of her Range Rover. You were approaching in a Bentley, apparently newly purchased by you on that same day. For no obvious reason the Bentley was being driven at high speed and collided with the rear of the parked Range Rover. Your wife Jennifer was killed instantly by the impact. You were found in the driver's seat of the Bentley, your passenger Doreen Weston was also killed instantly. We've looked at the evidence, the cars, the tyre marks on the driveway and at the CCTV images from your security system and I have to tell you that your direct actions appeared to have caused this terrible incident and the two fatalities. Is there anything you'd wish to say?”

Hidden in a lengthy footnote in the Bardo Thodol (Tibetan Book of the Dead) in the “sidpa bardo” is a brief explanation of the transition and transformations a soul must make when death is closing in:

“Imagine that a swimming fish eats a fish and then that fish is eaten by another larger fish and then that same fish is eaten by yet another larger fish. How many fish are there? There is of course one, the one that has triumphed by natural process over those that were consumed but whilst those that were consumed may no longer swim themselves they are still as fish and their spirit ranges and travels looking for a place to rest. In the final transformation, in extreme situations of passion and pressure there may indeed be manifestations and movements between places and in bodies that seek to bring a final justice and judgement – to close out. This may make no sense to us as we are unable to see every fish that is in the pool and understand the complexity of their relationships as there are many fish each swimming at different levels. The eye can only see so much, those who travel in some final cycle may move sideways or backwards as well as forward.”

“No man is born with spiritual understanding, he must acquire this through special training and experience. It is good that such to all intents and purposes useless books exist. They are meant for those (queer) folk who no longer set much store in the uses, aims and meanings of present day civilisation.” - Carl Jung.

It's an awkward age

A wise woman once said...but then maybe is was all a kind of rough plagiarism.

1. She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.
2. Her artistic sense was exquisitely refined, like someone who can tell butter from I Can't Believe It's Not Butter.
3. She was as unhappy as when someone puts your cake out in the rain, and all the sweet green icing flows down and then you lose the recipe, and on top of that you can't sing worth a damn.
4. Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. travelling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.
5. The politician was gone but unnoticed, like the period after the Dr. on a Dr Pepper can
6. Her pants fit her like a glove, well, maybe more like a mitten, actually.
7. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.
8. He was as tall as a 6′3″ tree.
9. The sunset displayed rich, spectacular hues like a .jpeg file at 10 percent cyan, 10 percent magenta, 60 percent yellow and 10 percent black.
10. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't.
11. The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.
12. John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.
13. The lamp just sat there, like an inanimate object.
14. He was lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck either but like a duck that was really lame. One that had stood on a land mine or something.
15. He spoke with a wisdom that can only come from experience, like  a guy who went blind when he looked at  a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at conferences and schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.

Disloyal to the brand

The blind madness of an impulsive purchase, the blood soaked, brain zapped moment of insanity when reason escapes, chased by cats scattering furniture, ideas and artists who's work is still in progress (as above). My life is a long line, progression, process, parade and carnival of these things. Ill thought through and ill conceived then punctuated with odd segments of clarity, remorse, joy and fulfilment. I'm never quite sure the order in which these will arrive or how long they'll last. They move along quite nicely which I suppose is a good thing.

As you get older you get used to the world and then you get used to yourself. Some might say you grow into yourself, as if you were a deflated balloon of indeterminate shape  that needs 50 plus years of slow inflation before you can see the final shape. Then you stand a chance of knowing yourself. Anyway I bought a Volvo a few weeks ago, that was a strange experience. I still have the Cougar (waiting on all the paperwork), it's parked up but now signs are that the power steering's probably knackered.

Going to sleep

They went to bed and fell asleep with Gilda, then they woke up with some crazy mixed up actress, so they said. Of course that would never happen these days. Gilda was just the figment of a writer's imagination, a character in a film noir plot, a shadow and an illusion. Some light and shade flickering on the tarnished silver screen, walking across, following directions and instructions, making a career and then blowing it. Dreams, illusions and reality, very hard to deal with when they get blurred and confused.

Obsessive drum

Watching yourself in mirrors, staring into that void and not seeing and then seeing but not recognising that foreign face and frame, the total loss of the sense of self. Making eye contact with a complete and nameless stranger who is travelling in some different and unknown direction but only exists within the confines of that reflected and forever cheating surface. The transparent trap that calls us with it's banal and unreasonable fascinations to move into a more murky place where consciousness and ego float like helium balloons, just out of reach and no more. I don't know why those images should be labelled as stupid, why is that the only word that will do? Stupid is as stupid does as it stupidly reflects and flashes back in it's red anger without question, perhaps that's the heart of the definition. Then there is the long borne out frustration in the called out attraction of the place and never being able to reach into it. Like deep water, like the patterns in a pool, like drowning in a teaspoon. Never quite forming or asking the right questions because there is no answer, only that obsessive drum beat that translates back to the heart. The fatally formed and flawed organ from which all other things must flow.

Free for all

Free for all Electricity: The large sign above the motorway declared that all lanes were clear and that traffic was flowing and of course, as ever “electricity is free”. It was a message that people all across the world had become used to, they hardly needed reminding, they took it all for granted. So the electrically powered traffic hummed along, all moving smoothly at an even and controlled speed, no real running costs, no breakdowns, all free and easy thanks to the great electrical revolution. It was a world operating and powered in ways that an old guard scientist like Tesla could only have dreamed of and it all worked.

People looked back on the historic moment that everything had changed, it was in 2014, May 16^th. A huge electrical storm had raged across the equator, lightning strikes were continuous, wild fires ran out of control, systems and communications failed all over the world. Aeroplanes fell from the sky, ships sank, building crumbled and satellites tumbled into the heaving oceans. The storm climaxed at midnight, there was a huge explosion, almost everybody in the world heard it. Then there was a long and pregnant silence. People huddled together waiting for the end, others prayed, others rioted but slowly order was restored and the damage and the effect of the storm understood, gradually.

It became apparent that the storm had created a fundamental change in the earth's characteristics. A ring of power was now hanging in place across the former storm. Ten miles hight and a hundred miles wide, earth was ringed like Saturn but with one that has a unique and incredibly powerful impact on the planet. Over time the ring was explored and understood and, thanks to some revolutionary processes tapped into and milked. Power was free, power was infinite and power was global; certainly for all of the countries on the equator. No more coal, oil or nuclear energy, almost overnight the power stations shut down as the new source came on line and was joined to the web of grids that fed the freely harvested power all across the world.

The freely available power had of course created instability, the old order had lost it's financial and negotiating base, minor wars and skirmishes broke out, there were disputes and political instability. Nothing could however change the fact that the ring of energy was (with the correct technology) easily and freely tapped into. The old costs were the harvesting equipment and cabling and transformer infrastructure. Fortunes were made and lost, ownerships disputed but inevitably the truth and equalising impact of free power was realised. Industry and commerce demanded it, all people welcomed it and the tap was fully turned on.

So it was that Mike bowed his head, he was allowed a few moments reflection, his eyes were dry, his palms were wet. His stomach was full from the steak and eggs, the cold beer had quenched his thirst and those wise worlds and warm ancient spells echoed around in the emptiness of his head and heart. He looked into himself and reviewed and archived his memories, turned over recollections, pondered the mistake, the one big mistake. A man had died, an innocent man, a man who had simply been at the wrong place at the wrong time. Mike had killed him, fried him with the flick of a switch as the power harvester loom had been turned on. The pilot was on a routine inspection, nothing should have gone wrong and wouldn't have if Mike had waited just a few seconds before turning on the harvesting gear. But he hadn't. He'd pulled the lever but he didn't check, he didn't follow the procedure and the microlight had been hit by the huge surge of power shooting downwards from the ring into the holder. Not much remained as evidence but the incident was well documented and understood.

Now it was Mike's turn, society demanded it, the power (and the glory) had to be respected, the power's sanctity had to have prime place in the courts and via the legislators and lawyers. There was a very fine balance and discipline to maintain, that had all been part of the settlement, part of the worldwide agreement. Anything else could and would destroy the dream and that could not be allowed, it was all too costly, freedom, however it is described always has a price. Mike would take his punishment, irreversible, terminal, inhumane, painful but quick. Those who live by the power die by the power. He sat in the electric chair and reflected on those events a little more. The Empress prepared to pull the lever.

Perfect rapport

The book of obituaries

She was sure that death, when it came would follow a series of long, intense, blinding headaches. Sharp and blurry head pain was her expected herald of the end, a pain that was so pure, pitched at such a high point of sonic perfection that only the clear white light of death could follow. It was that moment of perfect rapport with eternal mystery that could only end with the one appropriate and final conclusion. She was staring at her face in the mirror, that caring and conflicted face that had stared back at her, always in the same frightened way. She concentrated on her features, the detail, looking into her own skin, beyond the pallid cheeks, the tired eyes, the shreds of yesterday’s make up, the lazy and limp curls that framed her face, all familiar but all still enjoyable and strange to explore. You never really know your own face any more than you ever know the back of your hand, “whoever made that silly observation?” she thought. How easy it must be to say something and have it scooped up and framed in some assumed profundity. Nobody really knows themselves, people surprise themselves all the time, I’m surprised to be here today, thinking these thoughts, feeling this bloody pain and unaccredited disappointment, she thought how good was to have the courage to face her thoughts.

The hurt inside her head was normal, familiar, she was normalising it, absorbing it  in a book, or by humming a song, reading an article or talking to birds or cats, strays that landed in her garden and lost themselves between her feet. She curled a wisp of hair around her finger and squinted at it close up, trying to make out the colours. The strain reminded of pain and the ache returned from it’s hiding place, somewhere just around the corner.

Smoking eased things, the poisonous aromatics of tobacco lightened her inner nasal passages, the smoke licking around inside her head, clearing the swollen and pink imagined breathing tubes. White puffs of hot rising air to toast the brain with a mild narcotic. She sucked the tip hard filling her mouth, throat and lungs, holding it in so the smoky fingers could get to work and stroke away that festering tension with their sticky massage. Again and again till all that was left was the inch and a half of brown stained filter tip with a red lipstick signature to complete the ending. It has worked but she was already counting the moments to the next cigarette or aspirin or cup of coffee, that’s how you navigate when the white light is calling you. These mild reference points and markers. Signs and wonders along the way. Relief anyway you find it. Inside her head she’s reading, devouring up the words they use so anatomically, so tragically to describe all those other lives, lives floating past in carriages or on escalators, in their hundreds and thousands, grey heads bowed down, children looking up, hats and bonnets. Badly written and unassuming, trivial and vital, spreading seeds and taking photographs, scraping the rust but then realising it’s all too late, the moment, the one that seemed to be lasting for so long has now passed. The pain has passed to, she’s reading again, all about herself, her exploits and loves and long periods of inactivity, conversations and turning away smiles. It’s all there, told as it happened but not as it really was, in the book of obituaries.

Something about January

It's back to that bad old time of temporary inner conflict, the old Cougar is failing (in small ways) and as 140k approaches I'm not sure how long running him/her is affordable and practical. This may signal the end of a long and pretty pleasant era - and I'm double minded about ending it this way. Maybe it's just something about January and the lack of vitamin C in the watery sunshine that either blinds you or stays away from you. The main rival(s) to the Cougar is the Alfa Romeo 166. I've seen a few, though they are  scarce in Scotland. The best one I've seen (virtually) is down in Bristol, it looks pretty good, maybe too good to be true, an air ticket, a taxi ride and a tank of petrol away. Maybe it should just be a regular old and sturdy Mondeo that I should settle for. Playing it safe or playing it real?

Domestic bliss

The long and short of the long sentence: She was determined to be more than a simple housewife. Then she thought about that thought and how it in itself was a blatant piece of stiff prejudice and was simply untrue. Nobody is simple, we are not simple creatures on any level and nobody understands the term housewife anyway. If it was to be a description, a career and compliment, or an insult towards some station in life that transcends all of them. Then she thought about the earring that had just fallen into the kitchen sink drain, how annoying was that? She though of how it looked, how it was a part of a now ruined pair, of the details, shapes and shiny faces, the fine wire work and how it had sparkled, the outfits it had gone with. Now it was somewhere down in the murky darkness of the drain, beyond her reach and now the only possible means of rescue was via the dumb spanners of some plumber or DIY expert. She blamed herself (just a little) for not pressing the back on tightly enough, it must have pinged as she leaned over. It could have been a manufacturing fault, poorly made of inferior material in the far east and in the great timings of all the small things it had failed at that critical moment when she'd been at the kitchen sink. The place where many greasy, culinary and domestic, clean events had taken place.

Then she smirked into herself and thought about the occasional sensual or sexual moment that had taken place there, across the sink, bending at the waist, glazed eyes, vulnerable, touched. After parties it had sometimes happened, a byproduct of drink and relief, a parting celebration at the dog end of a difficult social situation, a way to channel up and end the stress. His and her's in some unequal measure. These thoughts wouldn't return the earring or do the other chores, they were empty musings that passed across this kitchen sky like a flock of birds above the barrels of the hunter's guns. Those guns were always ready, pointed. Everything that flies by gets shot down sooner or later, all winged things find the hard earth as it argues with gravity for attention and supremacy. And so it was that the earring had fallen on it's golden descent and was somewhere, amongst the lost things.

She thought of the great pile of lost things that everyone imagines; teddies and toys, coins and keys, jewellery and precious stones, phone numbers, tickets and messages. The physical mixture of those things we cared about, too much to begin with and then not enough later, we were lazy and careless or taken advantage of by a surprise hole, a gash, a stretched pocket in a purse or the failure of some component part in the grand chain. We witness this small universe as it collapses, time and time again and washes it all up as foreign flotsam and jetsam on a strangers beach. She twisted the tap too hard, a stream of warm water rushed around the steel sink, swishing right then left in a desperate torrent always drawn to the drain. The crest of the wave hit the drain and a tiny hydro explosion occurred, froth and foam, bubbles and an earring, pushed up and quick as a flash back into the palm of her hand. Tight shut on the shining prisoner. More than a simple squeal was needed, she allowed herself a chocolate smile.

The economics of motoring

There isn't a financial expert or economic correspondent alive who would ever advise anybody to purchase a used Alfa Romeo. The small numbers and risk traffic lights trip them up, they dance before their eyes in an unholy significance that breeds a mathematical fear and makes them use such terms “strike a note of caution”. Modern man is undone by the backwards power of this forest fire. Nothing is safe, nothing is stable, nothing can be done but somebody is making a lot of money. Some trees were cut down in the making of this statement.

Under over pressure

A dodgy air line, a dodgy gauge and not wearing glasses, add to that the inability to do the mental arithmetic necessary to convert PPI to BAR and throw in an interfering rainstorm and you'll understand why I got my pressures so badly wrong. Then of course I had the incorrect coins and then the airline was out of order.

Eventually I've gotten it right but not before I'd magically over inflated all four tyres and still managed to mysteriously cure a slow, lazy puncture that's been slowly puncturing for weeks if not more weeks. Now the fog lamp warning light stays on, I'm sure what it's trying to tell me but at least the bulbs in the rear lamps have stopped flickering like the Blackpool Illuminations on a blustery October night. Win, lose, win I make it, could be the best week's ownership ever.

The 99th Secret

There are 99 deep and true secrets in the universe, hidden behind things, in things, outside of things and arounds things. And so it was that we realised that god knew only 98 of the secrets and not the full 99, never the 99th. Turns out that only the old wise monkey, the monkey of wisdom knew them all including the 99^th. God isn’t particularly pleased about this arrangement and he's angry and frustrated about it. He's angry that the monkey knows the 99^th and frustrated that despite the various pressures and bribes he has subjected the monkey to, the monkey steadfastly refuses to reveal Number 99. An intolerable position for any self respecting divine personage, so god lost patience with the old wise monkey. “Monkey” he said, “you know that I wish to know this 99^th secret that you persist in keeping from me, you know that I could destroy you and your family, you know that I could wipe you from the pages of history and make your name to be as nothing but still you defy me, why oh why?”

The monkey didn't answer at first and looked god up and down and set a deliberately grim expression onto his face. “God you know I love and respect you but you also know that I cannot simply surrender my deep secret to you for nothing at all, in order for me to share secret No 99 you must give me something, something special, something that at least matches the value of the secret, something truly unique and precious.” The monkey smiled, “I have waited a long time for this moment, I believe you can and will give me the full desire of my very simple animal heart.”

God sat back, clenched his thumbs and thought long and hard. Finally he broke his silence saying, “Gentleman’s relish”. The monkey looked puzzled. “I know that you desire more than anything to be like man, I know that you, if you could would rather be a man than a monkey.” The old monkey smiled and nodded, god had seen straight into his monkey soul and pierced him with a plaintive and powerful truth he could not easily deny.

“If you will share with me the 99^th secret then I shall share with you the secret recipe of Gentleman’s Relish and that my monkey friend once known to you and applied will make you more man than monkey and set you on level terms with the grass cutting, meat eating, coal diging, beast taming, number crunching men of the world.”

The monkey replied, “then tell me the recipe and give me the plain directions to the Road to China and I will reveal to you the 99^th secret.” God looked pleased with himself and allowed himself a grin and snapping his fingers produced a glass full of gin and tonic, with crushed ice and fresh lemon. He supped it slowly slurping slightly. “Approach me and whisper your tale.”

“No”, said the monkey, you first.” God looked a little frustrated but humoured the monkey, “very well, here is the recipe, once you know this, once you have mixed it and tasted it you will be more of a man than a monkey and more of a man than any man on earth.” God did a quick hand shuffle and handed the monkey an A4 sheet headed “Gentleman's Relish Recipe”. Then in another quick move he produced a Tom Tom Sat Nav, “this is set for travel to China, by both the shortest and fastest routes.” The monkey grabbed the paper and the Sat Nav and scuttled into a corner to study them. “Stand tall, stand straight monkey,” cried god, “you're so close to being human now!”

For a few moments the monkey looked over his items and then stood up, tall, straight and (for a monkey) almost erect. He approached god and cupping his monkey hands began whispering in god's right ear. After a few seconds the smug look on god's face began to change, his eyes widened, his jaw dropped and he seemed to be swallowing hard. He straightened up, ripped the recipe sheet from monkey's hand and tore it up and then threw the Sat Nav against the wall smashing it to pieces. Then he stormed out of the room, stamping his feet as he slammed the door.

A small blue bird flew into the room, narrowly missing being trapped in the rapidly closing door, the bird circled for a few moments and then settled, landing on the shoulder of the monkey. They regarded one another for a few moments. The bird began to tweet sweetly and then gently spoke in a thin, birdie voice, “so what did you say to him to upset him so?” The monkey allowed himself a little giggle that seemed to twinkle up into his eyes and across his face. “Well god wanted to know the 99^th secret of the universe, the final great secret, so, once he had given me the tokens that I asked for I told him, yes I did.”

“And just what was that?” The monkey grinned widely, “ I simply told him the truth, I told him that despite his Relish Recipe and his Sat Nav gifts the 99^th secret stays with me because long ago I promised my own monkey god that I'd never reveal it to any lesser being. I don't think he liked that.”

"Tweet” said the bird.