Ensure you insure

Late in the day we explore the possibility of once again getting it all straight and legal, always a tough call. Words that seem to be just a shade short of right and appropriate, but we must keep within an inch or less of the law and the ideas that pour forth from that idea. After all we are respectable, reliable and up to a point safe and bankable. That can't be said for everybody. So there is no point obsessing about it, you make your call or click or whatever and choose one of a million options, the one that somehow covers your basic needs, has a nice name or a pleasant logo and fits with that number you thought of when there was still time left in which to think. You can just about remember it. Enter the magic numbers and the security code and you're in and gone. Two months later you get a cuddly toy in the post. Simple.

Stay in shape

Things have changed. It was a huge shop window, brightly lit in a headache inducing way, whites, bright pinks, wild oranges and hot purples circled and bounced into the corners, lights pooled and swam, it was a show, even empty, bereft of product. It was all daring, distracting and hypnotic but my gaze and attention wouldn't hold. I was far to hungry to be entertained or enticed. Food was my current preoccupation, not the joy of art or design and filling spaces. Food was becoming a background obsession, playing on my consciousness like that stupid light show, I was feeling hungry, in and out of shapes.

Shapes are everywhere, here, there, all around, the universe is full of shapes, made up of shapes, I am a shape and I must maintain that shape or at least control it. With shape and self awareness comes responsibility, what actual shape to aspire to? Which one to choose and maintain?

I looked away from those hungry windows and their vapid but tantalising colours, across great paved areas, blank spaces set for vehicles and traffic, green lines for pedestrians, signs and awkward bollards, trees blocked in by regulation, more shapes and boundaries and definitions. I observed my own shape fitting in with the others, my shadow stepping across the surfaces, my eyes measuring and grading spaces and dimensions. Sizing up and taking account of the space, sensing as if through giant whiskers that touched the far walls, the concrete and the road noise that rose from behind the masked barriers. I am here, this shape in space.

And then she comes in to my outside space, talking, talking already without any invitation, telling me things and insisting, a threatening and enticing shape, a shape that pulls me out of shape, automatically. I decide to just stay in this orbit, to fix my reference points, to focus on myself and ignore but the joints and linkages are weak and things seep through. I stay in my orbit, tainted but revolving and with no small effort retained my shape.

Time travel made easy

It was when I was a very small boy that I first learned about time travel as a possible workable concept and potential career. I was intrigued by how it might be manipulated. I was of course stubborn and ignorant but also driven and destructive. So at first I took the simple route, I stopped clocks, holding back their mechanisms with pieces of cardboard so they strained for a tiny second and then fell silent. I would also remove the batteries from the new fangled electric clocks, then on clocks without face glass I'd catch the hands, cruelly twisting them together, like tying the legs of a pony so they stuck at some useless hours. Cheap watches were hit with hammers, expensive watches had their winders removed, that worked best, they died a slow, wound down death. I liked that and I liked the unpredictable nature of it. Of course all I was doing was stopping the measure of time and pretending that gave me some kind of power over time. Of course it didn't, for every clock or watch I quietly knobbled there were a million more ticking up or down the measured mile of time. I needed to find something that would work on a bigger scale, or something that worked on a smaller scale, affecting only me. For my young hungry mind it was a perplexing, taxing but addictive conundrum.

My breakthrough came as I watched rainwater splashing down and across the rooftop gulleys from my bedroom window. I studied the flow, the downward direction, the twists in the routes, the separation of streams that then met again and came together. The pools and puddles, the tick, the drip, the splash of each shower's downpour on the roof pattern. It was whilst watching these dancing but constrained and relentless waters that I formed my first theory about the flow and fluidity of time. It was there, always moving, always finding a level, always travelling, all you had to do was get into that flow. Once in it you could run against it, go with it or run ahead of it. It was just a matter of choosing your direction and, critically deciding on how much effort you needed to expend.

My first few attempts were clumsy and funny, like a lost dog swimming, I splashed and got nowhere, I couldn't separate myself from the curse of now. I treaded water and time mastered me. But I was determined and I persevered. The words of my old grandfather came back to me many times as I practised, “You'll never become anything unless you break out of the mainstream, quitters don't win and winners don't quit.” I wouldn't quit.

My non-scientific reasoning told me that flows were strongest when time played tricks, at night, on the solstice, at dawn, at dusk or noon. These were the key times when time itself was busy, preoccupied, distracted, caught up with it's own ends and purposes. If I could break in there, at one of these weak points I could enter the flow and navigate a passage from my self forwards or backwards or in the nowhere time. Maybe I could make time time stand still. That would be my first trick, like stopping all those clocks but this time not mechanically but from the inside, from the heart of time, from the stream.

It required a hearty breakfast, a careful choice of footwear and a good deal of concentration – focus. It was noon (or a minute before), time's attention was elsewhere,this was a key moment. I focused, stood still, my back to the sun and inwardly perceived the flow. It was in me, around me, all over me. I held out a weak open palm and slowly, as the seconded counted down closed my fingers into a fist all around the flow of time. I closed my eyes and pulled tight on the flow, like holding back a straining, stupid puppy dog on a lead. I gripped it, I held it. I felt the breath leave my lungs, I felt a grey draining, I heard the stopping of the clocks as time scrapped on the bottom of the tiny reef I had created. It has stopped but I hardly dared to look out.

I didn't want to lose my concentration but I had to see what was happening. I decided to blink. Blink slowly that is and only letting tiny slivers of light in. I had to keep concentrating and that took a surprising amount of effort. I was after all holding a whole lot of time in my whitening knuckles, a whole lot of time.

Our glorious past

She was talking to her friend across the top the wide and stormy surface of the two champagne glasses, the bubbles rose, dispersed and defused into the conversation, their pink tinge shadowing the words, underlining the points and occasionally, when oxygen was paused for and breathe sucked in, added their own drunken punctuation. “There is nothing at all wrong with that previous sentence”, said the dark haired lady, “I simply wanted to remind you of the great heritage to which we belong, years of activity, expression, theatre and glamour, stretching back into the black, the white, the sepia. The squeals and the traditions, it's all there, exciting and fascinating for us, entrancing for them”. Up popped a bubble. “We can't afford not to maintain the standard of our predecessors’, or even exceed them, the drugs do work.” She giggled as the bubbles burst and she snapped a finger at the young, ginger waiter. She said nothing just momentarily met his eye and pointed a long finger down towards the glass. The boy nodded and spun off towards the dark and mysterious place in the cafe, behind the bar.

“This career has made me a snob and I love it for that, it's done more for me than any man...or woman, I owe it something”. A fresh bottle arrived pristine in a bright white stem ironed napkin, the neck spurting a faint fog as it was tilted and poured. There was no conversation. “A toast!” Declared the blonde lady, “To a glorious past and richer, finer future!” They giggled and there was a brief silence as the drank from the flutes in a well practiced move that avoided wetting the lips or smudging the lipstick. “...And darling, I will not be eating this afternoon as I have such a schedule, such a time and my shape and that is my livelihood to look after...as ever in the grandest style.”

From his station the waiter watched the two converse, occasionally scanning the tables for new customers or signals for attention. Today, this afternoon things were quiet, a light drizzle was falling, the pavement cafes were chewing on the remaining clientele, it was nearing the end of the season, the leaves had lost the summer sheen and were beginning to wrinkle. His gaze returned to the two women, he focused on their necks, the early wrinkles, stretches, tones and pale skin, half hidden by scarves and collars. Then he looked up and saw as a single leaf fell from a tree branch that was stretched across the cafe sunshade, it floated lazily down from above, almost floating from side to side like a parachute and then with it's own strangely determined trajectory landed gently in the champagne glass of the dark haired lady. Time was passing.

Curse of the floating head

Sometimes you just get completely detached from things, it can happen in the strangest of places.

166

Ode to the 166: Trucking along the M9 or some other such number I saw it on the hard shoulder, stopped still, hazard lights blinking meekly, unable to move. A silver 03 plate Alfa Romeo 166, a rare car, a rare sight on the road and possibly a vehicle I might very well have owned had I not got cold feet and walked away from the sale at the last minute of the last second of the eleventh hour. The sight provoked mixed feelings as I rolled by in the less well designed, less stylish, much more common but nonetheless still moving along the motorway Volvo.

The faded beauty of those silver wings

The Moma leather and the little things

Carabinieri blue or racing red

Stylistic pictures in your head

As silky smooth as Sophia Loren

Soft suspension that clings tight through the bend

But there's this broken cam-belt true love cant fix

Bent valves and steam as the oil and water mix

So I'm glad I dodged the 166.

Nice Kitty

There really should be a question mark after this, a bit disappointing.

193 and counting

So here comes the very necessary, patronising bit, that piece that you have to include, that irritating passage, badly over written and cliched that (has too many thats in it) exhausts the readers, perplexes the audience and alienate anybody with any common sense or normal level of intelligence. Anyway despite knowing all that you persist, you add these sledgehammer phrases and terms and allow the whole passage the opportunity to shrink and sink without trace. That's the conundrum, knowing and seeing the fundamental weakness in your technique and work and being unable to change it, so trapped in your own thought processes and ways of working that you cant escape. It's a life sentence and a treadmill, a piano headed up a mountainside and you're the one pushing it, inevitable...that's what he thought and believed until she walked into his life.

When he first saw her it was like some fuzzy moment, a shot taken through a special lens, there was blurring, there was mystery, he wanted to wipe his eyes, clear the glass. Slowly the haze cleared, that fog and mist and visual clutter, those indistinct images sharpened up, he was escaping from himself. She was the exit, it seemed.

She made his eyes hurt, it was like that, he wanted to stare and never stop. It was intense, like a burn. She was perfect, a perfect problem, mouth, hair, face and then that expression, that thing, that glint in here eyes, like a smile and a twinkle and all the cliches floating together in some wonderful construction that transcended any normal experience. It was almost religious and it was certainly mystical in it's highest, most magical manifestation. “Love”, he thought, “if this is love then it is truly mystical...and we've not even had any sex yet.”

“I took your picture with that old black and white camera, well the film was black and white, you were about to turn away and I called your name, you were separated from the others, they'd gone on but you'd stayed back. We hadn't had the conversation and I was just muddling along, fiddling with the camera, hoping for an opportunity or a snap and then the moment came. It was like that and then over, but I knew it would stay with me forever. I has, even it this, today is the end of forever, which it may well be.”

Ends of Fragment

“I am obsessed with colour,” she whispered, “I am obsessed with colour,” she said, then she repeated, “I am obsessed with colour, it means so much, so...colourful...so...full of colour, fantastic, I want my world to be colourful all the time, everything, bright and cheery.” She thought in colour or so she thought, she though her coloured thoughts were the brightest thoughts, thoughts that were dazzling, unsubstantial in content but dazzling in colour. Colours banging against one another within her stated boundaries of chaos, fabrics, patterns, designs. She likes the phrase “eye popping”, she wanted everything to be eye-popping, like a 60's shop window, an explosion in a paint factory, an explosion in a panty factory, an artistic explosion, of any kind. No room for mixed feelings whatsoever.

“Everybody is disturbed in some way, everybody is working on some instinctive level, a level of reaction, a level where you are reacting, reacting to the stream, to the great stream, the constant stream of colours that are just like punching you in the face. Everyday, every waking hour, like you're thinking god's own thoughts, mad coloured thoughts, again outside the boundaries. I still love looking in shop windows though, not so bothered about going in, not shopping, just looking at the colours in their compositions, set up, just there to be looked at, that's their purpose. Is that some higher purpose, to be their outside, nose against the window, looking, staring, taking it all in al the colours. That's what I like doing best, me, alone.”

She thought about her clothes, her style, her package and scrabbled contents of bits and bops and tops and bottoms and eyes and nails and shoes that made her up. Hair and skin and flesh tones scrubbed over and away and replaced with the colours, the tones, the rainbows and the heat. The red heat of colour, the blue heat of colour, the yellow heat, the green heat, those hot heats, the burn, the burning sensation in the retina, turning inwards, hitting the brain, blurred at the edges, the enormous waterfall of colour, flowing one to another over edges, hedges, windows, shop windows, back to those windows, displays, shops and the random colours. Things put in there by stupid girls and thin men, placed as if on purpose, for effect but creating, for her another effect altogether. Other effects, in the mind, in the heart, when the colour truly hits the spot.

“In twenty years time, there will be more colour, more. The sun will burn more brightly, turning up those colours, amplifying them, making them pulse in the cerebral way, pulse like a pulse, steady and rhythmic, colours that pulsed and danced. Much more than average, more than average, always more than average is so much more than average,” or so she thought.

“Whatever this is it isn't art, whatever it is, it's not what it is, it can't be just because you say it is, things can't just be what you say they are just because you say they are, that's what your parents would say, say things that are always about must or have to. So I'm not really bothered about art, I'm not really bothered about anything except taking in those colours, sucking them in, taking them in, stealing them like they were things you could shop lift or something, found things that have been claimed, found so that they suddenly start to matter, then they just turn to colour, colours I have found. I like to find colours, I like that feeling of shock and surprise and then embarrassment. Embarrassed by colours and their effect, overwhelming. More colours to play with. That's what I want.” She puffed a cigarette, the ash was hanging long on the burning tip, long, ready to drop, drop on the carpet, drop and stain, a grey stain. Not coloured.

Little tiny stitches, in fabric, little tiny holes, cuts and thread, like punctuation marks, stops, starts and pauses inside your head, gaps in the neurons, spaces between, important spaces between the heroic gaps, gaps that can be filled with colour, buttons, jewels, more bits, more detail, colour catching light catching spectrum bending, making the colour come alive, “I am obsessed with colour,” she whispered. “I remain there, I remain in the colour, that is where I am.”

Viva Maria

Ok, he thought, she's not beautiful in the traditional way, neither is she ugly pretty, she's something else, really something else and he couldn't put a finger to it or quite find the word. Her clothes were well chosen, intelligently you would say, her grooming and make up just right; he wanted to touch that hair, feel it. She was attractive and fascinating, maybe that was it, maybe it was the fascination that she engendered just in bucket loads, she was no model but she was fascinating. He couldn't stop thinking about her. That's where it gets a man, when he can't lose a woman in his thoughts. She kept on invading them and he was chasing her in them but chasing her through a maze, her back to her. She wasn't running fast or sprinting or sweating, she was just ahead of him, all the time. Out of touch, out of reach, elusive, but he had to catch her.

She was a regular visitor to another department in the building, he watched her come and go from his office, he looked for a pattern in times, he planned to bump into her in the foyer or the corridor or in the lift, get a few words in, say hello and take it from there. He had seen her now about a dozen times in the past few weeks, a couple of times quite close, no wedding ring, no companions hanging about. He'd made a few discreet enquiries with reception and with a couple of girls across the office. Not much was known about her but she always came and went alone. She was working for a consultancy, advising on a project, something to do with financial structures, she was in demand by all accounts. Good, she'll keep on coming back. His feelings were...err...galvanising.

It was on a Wednesday that she next arrived, she was driving a silver Golf, he saw her down across the car park making her way in across the car park. It was drizzling, she was wearing a tan mac and holding one of those transparent umbrellas. We watched her weave around the cars, down the block paved path, under the entrance canopy and into reception out of sight. He could've watched her move like that all day. He gave a cough, nodded across to a colleague and pointed towards the door. “Water!”

By the time he'd got down to reception the swing doors leading to accounts and the financial directors office were swinging closed. Missed her. He smiled at the glum receptionist and point to the door, she nodded, “missed her.” He gulped, turned on his heels and headed through the doors towards finance. He was blinking and felt a hot sweat across his back, perhaps he would catch up, perhaps she'd be waiting on one of the couches or at the cooler or something. He was headed down the corridor, all the doors were closed, nobody in sight. The corridor ended with two fire doors and led into an open office full of workstations, headsets and at the far end partitioned private offices. He had momentum now, he kept going, this was the maze, this was the daydream coming true, this was the chase, this was blurring at the edges but hot, purposeful and focused right there at the molten centre. A man searching for a mate, quarry, a prize, a tilt, a chance, an opportunity. “Winners make their chances and winners take their chances”, said an inner voice. The voice overpowered any office noise, chatter or hellos that were swirling around, he was travelling with a purpose.

Ahead was the door of the financial directors office, it was closed. He could hear voices. Not now, he couldn't go in now. He was stuck like a bloodhound that couldn't follow the scent across the water. Stuck. He stood for a few seconds mentally marking the boundary of his territory and headed back to his desk, a bit more slowly this time. As his thoughts settled he felt good, he had acted and taken a sensible course of action in not bursting into the meeting to say...what? Now he knew where she was, knew she'd be here most likely all, she's on his turf and he can wait, at least wait till four or five or whenever she leaves. Today he will hover, he will bide time and then he will act.

His idea, when it arrived seemed simple. Get to the car park and park close to or next to her but the silver Golf was in a visitor’s space along way from his parking spot. He needed to get in there, into that space, parallel parked. At about three thirty he made a lame excuse about his reading glasses being in the car and left the office. He walked lowly past her parked vehicle, no spaces close by yet. Ok, there's time, I can do this, I'll get my car over here and loiter until a space comes up.

Two hours later he's hoped out of eight spaces and is two cars away from the Golf, there is sweat building on his brow and he needs to pee, to eat and to drink. The radio is driving him crazy, he punches the wheel, still she does not appear. In the building office lights are slowly going out, more staff and visitors have left, now there are more spaces than cars. Her's still sits there, stubbornly defiant. It's dulling over and the rain has returned. He wakes up in the dark, he's cold, really does need to pee now and the dashboard clock says 01:30. Bugger.

Next morning he arrives a little late, the Golf is gone, strange cars occupy all the visitors spaces, the world has turned; things have moved on. He goes up to the office, sits at his desk and picks up a mail and new appointment from his manager. “please see me when you come in.” He shuffles over to the other side of the office, his manager gestures for him to come in and sit down. “Last night's CCTV is quite interesting, the security company forwarded me a link, can you tell me what's going on here?” He explains, not in detail that he's taken a shine to this woman, maybe gone about it the wrong way, sorry for any confusion created...and so on. The manager grins, “maybe I can help you a little on this one, she's in to audit some project team, with us for about another week, her name is Maria Bennet, I think, don't know much more, the girls in supplies were giggling about her, I overheard a bit of it.”

That night he drove home, she hadn't been into the office today so today seemed extra empty. He thought he needed to find some phrase, some term to hold onto to describe the feeling. It was as if humiliation was orbiting around the planet of frustration where he lived in a house called inadequate doing a job called futile working for a firm named uncaring whilst living a life called empty. Then his phone rang, the number was withheld.

“Hello?” “ Hi, my name is Maria...”.

Well that's that

Just sold the Cougar on Gumtree.  It was inevitable that it should go and come the day it went pretty quickly. Clean, dirty and gone into the March mist. Irreplaceable but that's just what happens, life goes on.

Losing track of things

An inventory of shirts, in the wrong place.

It's quite important to me to that I don't lose track of things. I like to know, with a fair degree of certainty where things are. I like the secure feeling I get when I can experience a strong sense of “everything in it's proper place”. I'm anxious if I'm unsure where something is or if I perceive it to be in the wrong place, whatever you take from that. None of this means I'm well organised or that my possessions and assets are in any kind of obvious order. Quite the contrary, I'm not really sure that much of the methodology that I employ to organise my life would stand up to real scrutiny. So this whole “placing” of things is quite subjective and indeed based around feelings and the interpretation of the moment. What items do I value? What should be in it's proper place? Well I suppose that I could produce a list of the premier divisions of items that I would place high up there in my life inventory, it would look something like this I guess:

Wallet – in my pocket (upper jacket or rear trouser) or on the stand by the hall, (the wallet contents of course represent a lower level of inventory direction), subsets of bank and credit cards, receipts, cash, driving licence and so on. Also two unclaimed jackpot winning lottery tickets that I rather like holding onto until the last minute.

Keys – almost all on the one main ring, in my pocket (lower jacket or coat) or on the hall stand.

Mobile phone – pocket (upper jacket or coat), on hall stand, windowsill at work, on the piano charging or on bedside cabinet at night.

i.Pad 6 – under the bed.

Passport – pocket (jacket upper) or bedside cabinet.

Prehistoric shark's teeth – in shark's skull above fireplace.

Guitars – in cases upstairs or one (currently in use) downstairs on stand. 1 x Ex-Hendrix (white) Strat in garage.

Robert Burns unpublished works, papers and out-takes – Stationary cupboard, dining room.

Birth certificate – bedside cabinet.

Time machine – De Lorean in garage under tarpaulin.

Sawn-off shotgun – boot of car under spare tyre, cartridges in bathroom cupboard.

Inter-dimension keys – x-ray proof box under dining room floorboards.

Serum of eternal life – bathroom cabinet (next to the Ibuprofen).

Spare organs (fully serviceable) – bottom section of the kitchen freezer.

Spare organs (repairable) – Cryogenic Crypt #2, Roslyn.

Evidence of anti-Christ – Archive Crypt #2, Roslyn.

Photographs and transcripts of alien conversations (3 x copies) – Apple Macbook (downloads folder), safety deposit box in RBS Gogar and also at the rear of the secret cave.

Plectrums – dining room cupboard, bedside cabinet, acoustic guitar cases.

Heart of Robert the Bruce – wooden casket under hallway floorboards.

Cuff links – leather box by bedside.

Diamond as big as the Ritz – New Mexico.

Tins of Mackerel (in oil) – upper kitchen cupboard.

Swiss Army Knife – in hall stand.

Cat's prawns – top drawer of freezer.

Cat's luxury prawns – top drawer of freezer.

Batmobile (1965 model) – rear of garage.

Diary – briefcase, back section.

Spare keys – briefcase, rear pocket.

Da Vinci sketches (originals) – top shelf, dining room cupboard.

Da Vinci sketches (apprentice copies) – cardboard box, laundry cupboard.

Da Vinci sketches (modern copies c/w interpretation) – other cardboard box, laundry cupboard.

Belvita Breakfast Biscuit supply – lower (small) kitchen cupboard and left hand office drawer (bottom).

Cuppa Soup - left hand office drawer (top front).

I think that does it, there may of course be more bits and pieces out there but now that I've made up this list I'm pretty sure I've got the main things accounted for. I find that quite reassuring.