My ISM problem

“A lump of chocolate now and then for the cancer, a drop of red wine now and then for the heart, a suck on a cigar occasionally for the inflamed nasal passages, a clove of garlic for the prevention strokes, a little aspirin for the blood, a brisk walk for the Alzheimer's, some regular sex for the endorphins, a bit of red meat for the brain cells, a plate of stir fried kale for the iron, a cup of tea for the early mornings and the regular check of the intermediate shaft bearing on the Porsche 997/998 2.7 to 3.8 engine. The one fitted between 98 to 2004. That is except for the 3.6i unit fitted to the Turbo and GT3, they of course use the 993 bottom end so there's no IMS problem. Lucky bastards. No one knows when or if the bearing will fail and Porsche don't seem to offer any reason or explanation. I find it a bit disconcerting that the fault can just occur without any warning. It's time bomb really, a cot death, that's the thing with physical and mechanical health...and well being. You just never really know. One day it goes 'click', one day that thing in your brain just goes 'click'.”

“So intermediate shaft failure is probable rather than inevitable, I don't know what's worse. It's like cot death or spontaneous combustion or something. Lightning strikes even. Some nights I don't sleep for thinking about it, I toss and turn, get the sweats, losing my mind, cancer and health and that IMS failure. I have nightmares about that pool of oil there under the car, I don't notice it (or maybe I ignore it) and try to drive away and there are all those costly consequences. Towed away by a yellow truck. Cancer or shaft failure? I'm shaking thinking about it, I'm disturbed, my eyes fill up and water, I get the shivers.”

“ There are solutions out there, they say the revised shaft and seal, that's the WPOZZZ99Z (6)S**** bit that works. I'm considering it but I've only clocked 46000 miles and the expense is just too much to consider what with all my regular medications and lifestyle costs. I'm keeping it together but it's a challenge. There are no official statistics, you'd think that there would be but no, it's all word of mouth and forum gossip. I don't know about that, those guys are all in California and you just never trust those things. Fly by night. I don't know if I want to set myself anymore challenges, not now; like trying to write a story when there's some other distraction, with a knife hanging over your head, naked, out in the worst weather, dressed as a woman, drunk and incapable, cornered by a mad dog, badly parked with people honking, tied to a lamppost, waiting on that pool of oil forming. What did the forum say again? The pencil keeps breaking and I keep trying to sharpening but it's soft and the lead is broken and the sharpener is blunt and I'm having ideas but I can't get them down, can't hold a single one.”

“In the workshop a job is underway, there is a flange bearing support bolted to the engine with three bolts, the flange is removed and you can see the threaded holes for the bolts. I wished someone could show me the bolt in the middle that shears off. So I could just see it for real, put my finger tip in that threaded hole. It's all in my imagination. What is the truth about the cars? I hear that 20% of Boxters don't make it past 100k without that catastrophic failure, then a £6k rebuild, a whole engine eaten up and shredded. Then again 80% are ok, that's good odds. Still it's those cursed bolts, the bolts fail and everything just falls apart. What if I have them? Maybe if I just keep the revs low, don't gun it, kid gloves and care, light right foot, tender loving care. I could stay well under 4000 revs if I had to, I could do it. Then consider the grip and gnaw of the tension that it would create. That's no way to live.”

“There's an old theory that Porsche know all about it. They build those engines on the cheap, or just cheaper, entry level engineering, Eastern European or Indian bolts, inferior alloy and so on. Wherever they source parts, who knows? Bet they don't make them in Stuttgart. That shiny factory is like a hospital. Beautiful but mean. Better than a hospital, hazy science fiction. Cost cutting or efficiency or carelessness or a plot for the benefit of the dealers. Decisions made in the board room, wood panelled walls, whispers and fine china, maybe a brandy, maybe a whisky, a nod in the right place, cool Germans, level headed, clinical. Well it is a hospital. So times are tough and it's all about pushing out the tin and money changing hands. Long term survival or a quick buck. Just enough quality in there to get them through the warranty period, after that you're on you own, living with the risk and the cost.”

“That's the buzz out on the forums, all the geeks and honest men, retelling their tales, posting pictures, ground up oily metal and unsmiley faces pasted to the jpeg. Their solutions, their after market additions, putting things right, solving those design faults that the so-called designers missed. Men in white coats looking through glasses, checking the bits against the drawings and nodding at each other. Nobody ever won the Nobel Prize for a reliable engine bearing, nobody. What were they all thinking? Now it's all repeated and played out and frankly I'm at my wits end and it's just a silly machine, a machine with a flaw. Like me, I might get that cancer or blood disease or some STD. All liable to breakdown, out of the blue, but I'm bombarded, all the time, tales of woe, early deaths and failures, diets and quick fixes, cures and snake oil, wrecks and wreckage on the highway. Plagues. No wonder I can't sleep. We are all broadcasting, all the time, all across the social networks and forums. We are all storytellers – that's how we make sense of our lives, but still it makes no sense.”

(“You know, I have another theory. Those blown engines, the intermediate shaft failure, the early and untimely deaths. Well it is just possible that those cars were not driven regularly, not exercised or stretched. Then you get deflection in the shaft from just sitting there, idle. Thermal expansion and cooling, it gets to the metal, gets into the metal. Slowly the tolerances get out of balance. Out of balance is never good. These cars were meant to be driven, their place isn't in showrooms or languishing as trophies and garage queens. It's the open road, whatever that means to you.”)

Losin' my religion

“Yeah it was a few years ago, I was a lot younger and I was a part of a cult down in Texas. They were all grim Presbyterian types, kinda skewed in their beliefs. Extreme and driven. They'd pick up and recruit homeless and vagabond types. They kept me there about two years, they were clever cock-suckers, they controlled my weight, held back food, kept us on a low protein diet. They made me work out in the garden most days, other times I was in the kitchen but they made sure none of us ate too much. They had regular lessons for us, morning, noon and night, brought us together for teaching and prayer. That was mostly them telling us what was wrong with us and how we were unrighteous and in need of grace and salvation. They used to speak from the Old Testament, they liked all that conquest and battlefield shit. They wanted to cleanse the country. They wanted a Old Testament solution I think. They seldom mentioned love or Jesus but you couldn't comment or criticise 'cos that wasn't on the programme. The programme was all about their control over us, that bombast of bullying, how they were right, how their reading of it was right and everybody else had it wrong.”

“I was pretty young and impressionable, I'd had a few bad breaks, I didn't feel too good about myself and so I was easy meat for these guys. I just didn't see it. I didn't see how they were controlling me, expecting things from me, the levels of obedience and what they liked to call grace. I just kept my head down, didn't argue, just got on with my work. Day in day out in that Texas heat. They fed us bread and vegetables, communal meals but they (the leadership) never ate to much with us. They ate later when they had their leaders meeting in the evening and we were working pretty much dawn till dusk. They ground me down I can tell you. I'm there, feeling like shit, they're telling me I need to change, what the fuck was that about? I looked at myself and it was true I wasn't much of a person, I had form and history but I couldn't figure how I was supposed to change. I just kept working and eating less stuff and I could feel myself withering away. They worked us hard, kept us busy and we were just too tired some days to think. There was no debate either. When they said bible study they meant they'd read a bit and then they'd tell you what that meant. I was usually that God was mad with us 'cos he loved us so much but we were a disappointment and though Jesus had come to redeem us we were still no making it. We had to work, to change (that word again).”

“I looked around and I looked at them and they were all in pretty good shape. All those leaders had cute wives, pickup trucks, clean blue jeans and leather boots, big black bible books and they didn't do much in the fields. Their hands were soft, they thumbed through those bibles and talked about it like that in itself was hard and worthwhile work. They wore spectacles when they read. They chose their words carefully, stressed service and servitude and faithfulness and that shit and they kept a eye on us all the time. They discouraged us forming little groups, they changed the rotas. I was pretty confused all the time and I felt increasingly disapproved of even though I was doing all the right things on the programme and keeping up with my duties.”

“Then one day I was working out on the Long Acre, we were nipping the tomato flowers and I was on a break, a water break. I was there just blowing out and the contractor who maintained the tractors (we had no mechanic for some time due to another little dispute) was fixing something and he stopped up and lit up a cigarette. Well I was there on the spot, hot and hungry and just feeling all shrivelled up inside and I saw him light that cigarette and I saw him suck in and blow out a big lungful of smoke. It looked so good. I stopped over and asked him for one please and I took the time of day. I was about halfway down that sweet smoke when I heard the foreman elder comin' and he was shouting and pointing and yellin' at me and the contractor. The contractor just looked and said that he was all too holy with a real big bug up his ass and too big a head for his hat but the foreman elder just came right up to me and he punched that half cigarette right out of my mouth and knocked me on my back in the dust. I stayed down there for about a minute. He was quoting the bible at me and talking about my body being a temple for the holy spirit. The contractor said this ain’t none of his business but he didn't care for the atmosphere around here. Lying there in that dust I had one sore chin and I had one or two crazy thoughts there in my head. Now there wasn't quite enough sugar in my blood to give me the speed of thought and action I once had but I still had something in there and I was feeling just a bit angry.”

“Time was moving slowly and I got up and looked at that guy. He was tall in his elder's jeans, clean and bright blue and he was looking right down his nose at me. He said something and referenced it all from Leviticus and nodded at me looking for an acknowledgement and agreement. By my left against the fence wire there was a loose piece of 2 by 4. I grabbed it and hit Mr Clean Jeans square across the jaw. He went down then like a pile of purple bricks. The contractor just said fuckin' good work boy and got back to his repair work. I was trembling though 'cos I knew I'd have hell to pay from those guys in the leadership. The foreman was rolling on the ground, both hands holding his chin, he was sobbing and writhing. I wanted to hit him again but I thought better of it. I thought about the rest of the leaders and I could see some of the gang heading cross to where I stood. I jumped the fence and ran across the potato field and down behind the water tower. I was struggling, this effort in the heat and in the state of shock I was in was too much. I vaulted the inner fence and now I was back at the compound.”

“I looked around and saw another of the elders comin' out the ranch house doorway. I just started to walk across to the cookhouse like everything was ok but I knew I was on the way out big time. When I got in there I just lit up every gas burner on the range and I threw towels and paper sacks and any shit I could find at that cooker. It was all in flames in seconds and by that I mean everything. I guess when he knocked that cigarette out of my mouth I snapped. I saw all that cunning and control, the lack of honesty and respect, all the cruelty and disregard embodied in that single act and I, despite my weakness, struck back in my own clumsy way. I was just standing up to the bullies and the hypocrites. I was also running out of the burning cookhouse and headed for anywhere but here.”

“There was a red pick up parked and half loaded with goods to sell at the farmer's market, vegetables and craft work. The keys were dangling in the ignition. I turned them, the engine growled and I was gone. Behind me somebody was clanging on the fire triangle as smoke billowed out all across the yard. People were shouting and I heard women screaming. Right then I didn't care nothin' for any of them, not even the other disciples like me and certainly not the elders and their dumb wives. I just thought I wanted those stupid bastards to learn a lesson and I hoped that even just for a few seconds they might consider that the wrath of their cruel and spiteful god was being wrung out all over them because of their ways and their sins and the disrespectful and casual indifference they showed towards their fellow man and people like me. Whatever the hell that might mean.”

“I was driving fast down the track towards the highway. I checked the mirror, the smoke was rising into the sky but there was nobody following me. I drove a little faster and the dust cloud grew and blew up behind the truck. When I finally hit the highway there were blue lights headed out towards the ranch. I couldn't see much expression behind their sunglasses but they ignored me as they went went on about their business. An hour later I was at the edge of town and I got my bearings. I stopped the pickup in a superstore car park and finding fifty bucks in the glove box took it and then threw the car keys down into a drain. Ten minutes later I'm blowin' the froth from a cold beer and getting ready to tuck into a double cheeseburger and fries. My head was clearer than it had been in years and the words, the prayers and the cruel controls of the cult were falling away from me like rotten fish scales. When the cheeseburger arrived I just whispered to myself a thank you Jesus for fuck all and bit into the juicy beef. I'd gotten my appetite for life back.”

Salt Peter

They called him “Salt Peter” because it had been his job to salt and so preserve the herring. He'd worked at the fish market up until it had closed a few years ago, he'd become a character there, not a popular one either. Salt Peter always had been a loner, his past was shady and once he'd settled in the town from wherever he came, he made few friends, he just salted fish and scared small children and stray cats and dogs. A short, thick set man, balding and hunched up he avoided conversation and socialising. He just cut and salted the fish and then packed them in tight in the oak barrels for shipment. His constant exposure to fish and salt had whitened and roughed up his skin, it was a peculiar and condition, hardly easy on the eye. The salt had not just affected his hands and arms but also the skin on his face and head, he was almost salted himself with dried up tear ducts and skin like a lizard but the whites of his eyes seemed extra glutinous and luminous, the pupils more watery and any hair or eye brow that remained was ginger crusted like the toasted skin of a kipper. Peter was slowly salting himself into becoming the local bogey-man. A reputation he did not deserve by any behaviour or action but had gained simply by his deteriorating look and chosen profession.

“The most important of all movements are your bowel movements,” said Mrs Macsween. She was taking in an automatic stream of consciousness way to Peter. Peter was concentrating on slitting the fish and rubbing salt. “If your bowel movements are irregular or difficult then you need treatment, you need freedom. It's all in the diet and of course the clothing. Your bowels need space and relaxation of operate and if you fail to allow them that then there can be dire consequences, almost too terrible to consider. The bowel is the key to good help in fact if you think about your system it's all like a long hollow tube running through you with the bowel there, at the very end finally doing all that last minute processing to keep you going. That's why it pays to be regular and that's, as I say, down to good diet and relaxation. Are you getting this Peter?” Mrs Macsween was a widow. Her late husband had expired in a domestic episode when crushed under the cast iron end of a Victorian bed frame, it had been a tragic accident that sent shockwaves across the cobbles and through the small town. The drunken funeral took place on a grey December day, the stormiest one anybody could remember. Since that day she had formed a tempestuous on and off relationship with the slow witted but compliant Peter. The local gossips had a bean feast.

Peter looked down at his fish and continued working. “I pride myself on my strenuous and robust regime,” continued Mrs Macsween, “It's a combination of planning and discipline and that’s key to keeping a balance, a regular balance and don't be afraid to check yourself, don't ignore the details, you need to be aware of what is right and normal in your body, how it operates, look out for signs and of course regularity and constituency are a large part of that. I'm not going to talk about smell because that is quite unseemly but it's still worth considering, it's a factor. You need to take all the factors into account. That's important, know the normal and keep the rhythm, times and things. You know you should follow my advice, a man your age, there are health problems that you're storing up and your posture wont be helping”. Peter grunted and looked away. Mrs Macsween was talking automatically, like a expert at a symposium, lecturing and describing, oblivious to the audience, their response, their interest. She ploughed on through with her topic – taking the right kind of care of the bowels. “Anyway”, she was almost finished now, “ it'll soon be time for lunch, where will you be taking be?” I'm not sure if Peter quite knew what he was doing but he quickly drew out his knife and sliced into Mrs Macsween like she was a wriggling fish. Then he applied the salt, then he put her into a barrel and shipped her along with another prepared consignment. I don't quite know where her final destination was and as for Peter...well nobody ever knew. All they found was a small white pile of Potassium Nitrate on the preserving room floor.

Repetition

Her hand was deep in the inside of the handbag, the cold silk lining caressing her wrist on the way down but she hardly noticed that. She was touching that single pearl earring, rubbing it between her thumb and forefinger. The hard shining pearl, there in the dark innards of her bag, hidden, known only by her. It was a faintly erotic and compulsive act that, as the rhythm grew, she could not stop. It fed some hunger and she did not want to stop. there was this clockwork, inner compulsion, a deal she had made with herself to carry on, to continue. She looked out there, across the street, out into space, away from her immediate surroundings whilst deep inside that bag she still rubbed on that pearl. Over and over and warmer and warmer the finger tip heat grew though the pearl stubbornly stayed as cold as it could, as if the bag was some icy deep freeze impervious to her touch. She liked that thought and held onto it as the pearl kept on rolling between her fingers. Like a mantra for the sense of touch. The strange inner warmth and peaceful assurance that comes with the comfort of repetition, the comfort of repetition, hypnotic, like a pearl, rolling between the fingers.

You can say what you like about sex, it's always on the human or animal mind in the same way that god is. Sex is a silly, simple little word for a complex world of feelings and circumstances, always on the loose, tasty sweet and sour, stewing up nasty little storms, brewing up clouds and imagined outcomes. Set and unset situations, holding tight and letting go. Functions and looks and far away strangers, awkward and untouchable, rolling it all between the fingers, rolling it and never quite letting it go. She was thinking how in the city everyday she could rub against too many to find that sense of sex but she had found that now and it was all too big. It had to be reduced and distilled down to something much smaller and easier to handle. Tight and private, like the pearl in the handbag, a very personal pleasure, a very private moment, a point of focus stretched to the limit and then enhanced by the applied constant comfort in the repetition of that touch.

On the Silk Roadway

So this is pretty much as it was told to me: “It seemed like a pretty stupid idea but he felt compelled to carry it out. It was a growing, throbbing kind of obsession. A feeling that he needed to capture, hold, sustain. Even if it was only a temporary fix it would be better than doing nothing. That was the thought and he was driven now to carry it out. He was uncomfortable in the shop, that in itself was ironic considering that it was a distinct discomfort that he wished upon himself. He braced himself and awkwardly wandered into the lingerie department and there was confronted by a baffling selection of ladies tummy and hips control pants. The sizes were of course a foreign language as were the shapes. He stared and tried to aid eye contact with the other shoppers, all of whom were obviously female. He took a silent deep breath, selected three odd sized pairs, all in black and headed to the check out. Of course nobody really took any notice of him or his choices of garment. Each female shopper remaining indifferent and detached in their own personal bubble. The girl at the check out hardly said anything but as he handed over the cash his heart was pumping and his palms and forehead sweating with unfamiliar and almost painful embarrassment. He relaxed visibly as the pants were stuffed into a green bag and effectively disguised as ordinary and insignificant shopping, as if anybody cared. Soon he would be home.

So what was the point? Why tight pants? Why the obsession? Harry had asked himself those questions many times and there never was a proper or sensible answer. That block of feeling couldn't be shifted, that notion of not quite right, that horrible sweated out heat and pressure, the gnawing and unfathomable need, one that stood against all that's normal or acceptable. The notion of being cursed. Harry wanted to be castrated and that was a pretty tough little fact to share. Right now he couldn't figure how that might happen but he just wanted to feel how it might feel. That was why he was wearing the too tight control pants right now (one pair had done the trick). They were tightly compressing his parts right now and though it was not the real thing it felt like...progress towards that imagined, elusive and unknowable state. He thought of himself as gelding, a horse, cut to become more manageable, more compliant, a better kind of horse all round. That was a part of it but Harry couldn't really get to the core of what he wanted or needed other than that he desperately had to have that big cut done.

Here in Doncaster his ideas were safely buried in the most private of places, his own churning head. Maybe in California or Thailand it would've been different, there might have been contacts , expressions, outlets, help lines and darkened rooms where there was discussion. Here he was a plain call centre worker, a voice and keyboard click, insurance advice and sales. On and off he switched himself but then in the spare, hungry moments the obsession arose again and again until it seemed like the only thing that mattered. It seemed that until he'd been done, cut and mutilated he'd feel incomplete, if that made any kind of sense. Like a man who wanted to lose an arm or a leg or an ear, surgically removed or pickled or buried at the bottom of the sea. How can a physically complete man man feel incomplete until he is physically incomplete? That paradox haunted him, troubled and tortured him and drove him. The tight pants produced a feeling, a temporary fix, a stop but there was no resolution here. Something else had to happen. Something that was real.

So Harry kept himself lost himself in daydreams and fantasy, he found cushions of comfort in here, worlds where boundaries had blurred and possibilities were stretched. There were days when it was all straight forward heterosexual sex that was there, calm and predominant, possible without the balls and the spray but all accepted just as a quirk. Mechanically smooth and easy, he imagined. Clean and free from care for both the partners. Harry did worry what any woman would really think, how would she react? Turn on or turn off? There were lots of tastes out there. He stepped across the deconstructed after sex small talk as if it was an alley covered in broken glass. It was a bizarre conversation that he'd design and savour. His justification, his longing, his past experience, the tough road that had turned him this way, it could perhaps be understood. There was maybe a tiny part of a female fascination to exploit, an acceptance, a desire to try and experiment, to feel out the freakish performance. It would be one time only and then never again, so he thought, and there was a strange comfort in that.

Some fantasies went too far; overcome and tied up by Amazons or the fanatical wives of Nazi officers, six foot six, dark hair and eyes, wielding knives and razors, handcuffs and silk scarves, determined to set the world straight on their twisted man hating terms. He was overcome, bound and knocked unconscious. They screamed themselves into a tribal, primitive and hateful frenzy. All shadows and shapes and dancing around. Then at the climax they ritually castrated him with their terrible razors and threw his balls out of the cabin window where they were devoured by hungry Alsation dogs. That played in his head in a endless loop somedays, oddly Technicolored but bloodless and painless. He sensed his own eyes spinning in his head as those images trolled on past. Like a woozy alcoholic nightmare played out in slow motion that turned back on itself in a loop of replay and time slip. Those Amazon's had their revenge time and time again, on the top of a bus, at the call centre desk, in queues and lines and checkouts, in a quiet bar and in the darkest nights. Hot and dirty and played out to the last reel but never truly consummated. It was a life, a kind of life and maybe, most of the time no kind of life when a slow uncontrollable torture runs on and on in the background all the time.

Harry grimaced, pressed himself to try to catch the version of normal that he'd chosen for himself. His daily rituals and compressed body parts mirroring his compressed aspirations. He took to the internet, drew in garbage, digested it, the faux researching was skimmed but kept disconnected. There were others out there, crazy groupings, cults and madmen. It was impossible to fathom it and Harry didn't trust anybody with his secret. It was all to too crowded here in his head, too precious and personal, too painful. Then there were the rare days of denial and forgetfulness. The castration passed away like some grey cloud, his head cleared and he functioned, for moments there were blue skies and pedestrian thoughts. Sports or politics, colours and food and pretty women. These days were few and fewer and Harry sensed a precipice edge before him. Here he was again, sucked into the narrow neck at the middle of the egg timer and then swamped and overcome and ready to fall. He looked at the phone, he pondered mental health help lines, doctor appointments, opening up to a stranger. Not possible, too costly was all he could think.

He browsed knifes and surgical implements on line, he looked at the procedures, medical reasonings, illness and injury, it was all stretched pink flesh and gory detail. That would all pass however as he journeyed through that pain and some sense of pleasant grief (he imagined) until he was set right into his own personal, ideal perfection. Existing in the secret shadow as the conflicted yet vigorous rare human gelding. For somebody special he would form up to be that desirable curiosity and unique experience. He contrived more disguised and improbable solutions and he began to build yet another more dangerous dream. He cloaked himself in ideas and drew up the details, like planning a gym or diet regime that built a perfect body. A one off, shit or bust opportunity. All the risk was his but the outcome could give him his desire. In fiction and in the red tops there always was a willing German surgeon or scientist somewhere who would rescue the tortured soul. He wondered if maybe somebody, somewhere had built a machine...

It was about a year after the pants purchasing outing when the headline and newspaper story caught Harry's eye. “Mystery man found dead on the street was a Mozambique refugee who had fallen from an aircraft landing at Heathrow.” He read the awful details and then noticed, down below that in a black and white tab box his eye was led to another. “Ex-Soviet scientists fix pervs with 'snap you later' ball burster technique”. The article told how a Russian scientist now residing in Switzerland was selling a tiny, self contained castration device to “clients” in the Far East. This one-time use machine, no bigger than a two cigarette packs apparently snapped on and then snapped off and simultaneously stapled, cauterized and sanitized the wound. You then disposed of the whole thing. It was soon to be available for sale on line for use in wider veterinary applications, mainly goats and dogs.

Harry filled in the application form very carefully, the delivery address and the price, 55 Euros plus delivery. Of course he'd lied about most of his credentials and was pretending to be a goat breeder curious to try the device. He clicked the order button and off it went. A week later the carton arrived complete with French, German and Flemish instructions only – no English for some reason. Harry's fingers trembled as he handled the small shiny surgical device. There was the red switch, two settings, a battery compartment (three AAAs) and most tantalisingly of all the opening. It was still all innocent enough looking, no obvious blades or teeth or sharp edges, just an aperture about the size of a cigarette pack and that red switch. Nervously Harry tried to read the instructions. He studied the diagrams and he explored the details and a film clip on their web site. It all seemed straightforward enough.”

Truly I don't quite know what happened next. I was told that Harry did try to use the device and whatever the out come lived to tell the tale...but simply chose not to tell. It just might be that when he got to the point, all systems go, ready to get that (?) thing, achieve that seemingly unattainable state, press the red button, something else kicked in, some other instinct. I don't know for sure. I do know that Harry quit his job at the call centre and headed east, back packing towards the Silk Road searching for a Buddhist teacher, or so some said. An odd thing for a guy his age to do but then again he was pretty odd anyway.

Confused by God

Today there were many things I didn't do. I could try to list them and examine the reasons why, in these areas I failed to...well do anything. Missed opportunities, some with good reasons, others down to laziness, forgetfulness, willfulness maybe. So those things were not done and now they are now there in an imaginary pile, somewhere close by. Of course that's only today's pile, there's also yesterday's pile and the day before and so on. There's a whole mountain of my undone things out there. Then there's your pile and yours. And God sees them all.

So, anyway one day God was out walking, looking around, checking on how things were going in the world. No big surprises, lots of fucked up things. As usual his chosen people, the Jews were whinging and playing up, the Christians and followers of Islam were quite prickly, various other cults and types too, but so were the Arabs, so were the European tribes, the Chinese, the Africans and Asians were also at it. The USA and South America were a confusing blur. It was all quite dispiriting. Then there were endless media and political debates and disagreements, business deals and trickery, downright criminality and here and there (and more prevalent than you might think) pure evil. God tended to get annoyed with the pure evil stuff. It operated and succeeded at all levels, from the school playgrounds to boardrooms to torture cells and in bedrooms and battlefields. There was a lot of it about.

The trouble was that God couldn't really get to grips with all this stuff. A long time ago he'd cut a deal and declared himself to be... well out of it. He'd agreed with himself (a very powerful thing to do) that he wouldn't interfere. He'd just observe from a distance and that observation would go on for a while until (and he couldn't quite remember all the details) a few significant events occurred and those, in the right order, would act as a trigger for him to go into action and wind things up. So every day he wondered around looking at all the major and petty wars, all the crimes and accidents, all the sparks and fires and then did sweet nothing about them.

At first he'd been indifferent, people fought and quarrelled but that was about it. They believed in magic and other things, they dabbled and did some bad things but it was all on a small enough scales not to make much of a difference. Time passed, he continued with his walks and every day, degree by degree, as history unfolded and people got”clever” it all just became close to intolerable.

“I'm just pissed with all of this,” said God. “The world is an unholy mess, everybody does stupid things, they don't learn from their mistakes and frankly all the religious types are the worst. What are those people thinking and why do they always have silly hats and ridiculous costumes and what's with all the singing and chanting and praying? Do they really think I get off on that and that I'm actually listening to all that drivel? Just because I can be everywhere that doesn’t mean I'm open to listen to every banal utterance, no matter how sincere and well meant it may be. Give me a break!”

So there I was thinking of my pile of ignored and outstanding things and how God might well regard it. A complete set of royally troublesome thoughts really and I'm still inadvertently bothering a beleaguered and confused God. Meanwhile God's still out there, walking and observing, occasionally counting up things, secretly wanting to swat the human flies that circle around him screaming for attention like drunken beggars and, with a patience that can only be described as divine or crazy still managing to ignore the clamour.

“Those people think I really love them, they think it's OK to do whatever, behave appallingly and that in some magnanimous way I'll just forgive them all and they'll go to heaven. I've no idea how that idea came about. They're all mortal, they're human beings, they're one up from apes, they're all going to croak sooner or later and then it's curtains but do they believe that? They've bought into a myth and fairy tale that says they'll live on in spirit someplace in the ether. Well I don't remember ever saying anything about that...or did I? I forget sometimes and they just never shut up.” God wheeled away from the clamour, hands behind his back and began to whistle some Mozart, he whistled and smiled. “That kid knew a thing or two, I'm actually quite proud of him but as usual it all went wrong for him. Nice tunes though.” He walked on and then stopped and thought a little, “I'm not really happy with the three score and ten, I think I'll do something about that...”

The Speaker

The speaker clenched his hands together and summed up, “...It's all the time. I feel like I should be doing something else, even when I first wake up I'm conscious of the fact (?) that I'm not optimising myself, not making the most of all of my energy. That sparks a crazy guilt, not squeezing enough out of the lemon, holding back, failing to multi task. It manifests itself in funny little ways; making coffee and a snack but supping the coffee and biting into the biscuit before sitting down (to read a book), worst case the biscuit is swallowed before I leave one room and get into another. It's like I've lost sight of everything and at the same time I can see everything and I'm deliberately trying to consume it, there on that spot. A simple target achieved is not enough, I question it's difficultly and it's validity. If there is spare time left then I've miscalculated something, not taken enough on board, not really tried. I don't want any of you to ever feel that same way.”

The speaker then stepped back from the microphone, got some distance between himself and the podium and open up his palms to the audience and slowly raised his arms. A ruffle of applause began and grew and built as his arms lifted. In the auditorium some folks were on their feet, some shouting now, flashes popped like silent machine guns, whistles blew off like stray grenades, more applause, more shouting. The speaker stepped a little further and began to turn away, ready to leave the stage. By now the audience were generating a huge sound that was reverberating around the hall. The evening appeared to have been a success.

The speaker gave a final wave and acknowledgement of the wall of praise and wheeled away to the left ready to depart the stage. In the flash of a strobe a single shot rang out, the sound cut across the din of the crowd as if a bullet had hit each individual, there was a stunned moment. People looked around and then gasped as they caught the big screen image and then translated that with the action of the stage. There was a whirl of blurting activity. People running and reacting, lights turning from stage lights to search lights, buzzing and gnawing into the confusion.

The speaker had been hit. A steady head shot. There was no miss or mistake, no time for reaction or recoil. The man fell where he had stood seconds before, falling like a felled tree and now spread across the stage floor. The big screen suddenly blanked as the security people began their reaction. The audience cried and surged forward. A stock message was broadcast but in the fountain of noise no one heard or reacted, limp and impotent advice that fell into a great chasm of enforced grim silence that was roaring in from the exits. A life was over, the night was over, some other dream was over.

The speaker lay where he fell. A crowd of officials were now around. Police and security personnel were swarming in the aisles, slowly building on their reactive template. The crowd were overcome by the first act were now coming to terms with the presence of a gunman in the theatre. A gunman who could be anywhere, anyone. There was a panic as they laid siege to the exits. The police tried to hold, aware of the haemorrhaging of witnesses, evidence and suspects but it was all happening too fast. And there may be more shooting. The commander quickly chose to evacuate and they threw the doors wide, each body tense against the unseen bullet, the shove, the finger on the shoulder. Heroes and villains blurred into a surge of moving panic like hungry locusts crossing and consuming a field.

The speaker was dead. His assistant was lying across the warm body screaming, she saw his face as he fell, she had been ready with the towel and the water. Another assistant was talking loudly into her ear, she was oblivious in her fresh pain. Now everything had changed. A hi-viz man who appeared to be a doctor was holding the dead head, shaking and shouting but the speaker was gone. Outside the limo engines were still running, the doors unlocked, he was only a few steps away from the safety of the wide open spaces of the outside world. A flurry of microphones cracked the stage cordon, there were fist fights. Questions and anger. The gunman was invisibly gone, nothing, it was too late for a lockdown now. There never had been a plan for this. Frustrated police combed what areas they could, reinforcements arrived, heavy duty detectives and more from the press contingent. A few arrests were made, petty crimes and silly violence, all on the fringes. About forty minutes after the incident, the hall clear, the body photographed and moved a statement was made.

“The Speaker was assassinated here tonight at 2205, it is my sad and unfortunate duty to tell you this. He was killed instantly by a single gunshot. It is believed that the gunman is still somewhere in the area and our officers are actively looking for that person or persons as I speak. I'm sure I speak for all who were here tonight and all devotees of the Speaker when I say that our search for his assailant will be vigorously pursued, a simple target achieved is not enough, I question it's difficultly and it's validity. If there is spare time left then I've miscalculated something, not taken enough on board, not really tried. I don't want any of you to ever feel that same way.” In the flash of a strobe a single shot rang out.

There she was

There she was again, sitting in that horrid mirror place, looking back and smirking over the top of a pair of tortoiseshell reading glasses. She didn't say a word, she never did. Apparently her style today was like some bubbly oyster coloured flapper of a lost thing, the dress was almost inappropriate with it's details and flounces, the cardigan shapeless and loose, the tights were dark and glossy and the shoes were...all wrong really. She'd been left behind after the party, shoulders exposed to a spotlight and fingers still tapping to an internal jazz heartbeat. There was this mish mash of jewellery, picked out in the dark and applied like blind make up, by necessity without design but it created some chunky special stay away effect. Maybe that buried smirk was really some kind of a knowing smile, disguised, either way it was hard to hold the ambiguous gaze for too long. Like putting your finger into a candle flame or touching your forearm against the edge of a hot oven, that inevitable sharp pain would come and then the scarring. It could last for weeks. That was the effect she had; if you were weak enough to acknowledge the coming of the pain. A lazy blond Medusa machine.

She was sitting back in the chair now, maybe ready to suck a pen, touch a typewriter key or light some illicit cigarette, perhaps she'd swig English gin and shake the noisy ice cubes in your face, you never knew. Was that not the kind of thing that modern writers did these days? Somehow her elbows seemed extra important, as if grappling as alien metaphors for harvesting machines or just pointing things that signed and threatened the casual observer to stay out of the way. Some respectful space was needed here or you'll get yourself poked. Her eyes still followed and there was no easy escape. The drama stained and sticky pupils were dark and beady with a muted centre, in behind those glasses, unflattering but practical. At some point everything gets distilled down to the unflattering and practical, it you let yourself go or get that far down the road. Her hair was piled up and held against it's will by two dark clips, like some forgotten hedge that had been teased and tousled into temporary submission, she'd get round to taming it some time, in some chrome and plastic parlour, maybe best done with somebody else's hands. She was that ex-Southern Belle type, spoiled, whatever that had come to mean. Her heart was anchored down home on the dreary plantation, perhaps just down in the plantation but if she was sweating for it in there you couldn't tell. She knew how to hold in her own heat.

An informed observer might have said that inside her, there was something stirring, a hungry itch, a big dirty sensation, a struggling, writhing thing that wanted and waited for the release factor of a public exposition. For a moment it wanted to live and catapult a strange alter-author out across this dumb universe into a sky full of fizzy fireworks and sparklers and squeezed up and compressed feeling. Then when those feelings grew too hot and out of control they could be pissed out back into a bucket of ice cold water. That guilty freeze and the vivid torture held up in a submissive cocktail of remorse and displayed in a polite state of less than fully conscious and less than stone dead. That was the ultimate goal, to meet up with those informed eyes, see through them into a golden and unattainable life beyond, hold it all in the mouth, swirl and then spit it all back out in a mess across the world. Not pleasant or civilised really but then we are such complex, depraved and forever suckling animals...and it just may be that she is the queen.

Screwfix

For the first half of his life James had collected screws and fasteners, from wherever they landed, half used, pulled from some wall or fixing, James picked them up. Sometimes they were the new, extra screws that came with products but were superfluous and unnecessary. The screws were stored away in the work boxes, sometimes roughly categorised, sometimes just thrown on top of other materials and so left to find their own level in the hotch potch of tools and redundant items. From time to time James would search for one or two to fix a shelf or a door hinge or carry out some other repair. More screws went into those boxes than ever came out.

Then came the day that James had a thought, in fact he had series of thoughts, one after the other. They tumbled into his mind, crashing into each other, splintering like glass or broken bottles. It wasn't painful nor shocking, just unusual, an unusual event and it made James stop. James had come across a screw, there, on the pavement outside of his house, he'd picked it up and was about to put it into his pocket and then it would be tossed into the tool boxes until, some day it was required.

James held back on putting it into his pocket, he looked at the screw, he held it up between his thumb and index finger. It was a wood screw, an inch and quarter, soft with a cross countersunk head and made from some cheap almost but not quite brass alloy. James had seen this type of screw many times before and he knew he had many squirrelled away in his useful boxes. His confused thoughts began to clear, like a Blackpool beach at six o'clock. He looked at the screw and thought; “Along with all the other screws, nails, fasteners and bits and bops I have, how or when will I ever use you, you little inch and quarter screw?” The screw didn't answer. James just rotated it between his thumb and finger, looking at the thread and head and knowing, for the first time, that it was unlikely that this screw would be put to any useful use by him, ever.

Holding that thought James put the screw into his pocket and went back inside the house. He took off his shoes put on slippers and opened up the cupboard under the stair. There were his DIY boxes of odd bits, he pulled them out into the better daylight of the hall and looked at them. Their contents stared back as dumb as just the random sweepings of an ironmonger's floor, a life's flotsam and collected junk. Suddenly it seemed a sad and pointless collection; odd brackets, packets of raw-plugs, bits of wire, half used rolls of tape, misshaped pieces of doweling, washers, panel pins, picture and cup hooks, dirty and slightly bent nails, roofing bolts and nyloc nuts, torn strips of sandpaper and screws (all shapes and sizes). James regarded them all, a big iron, timber and plastic puddle of discarded and unused, never to be used useful things. All useless in this current, slowly revolving version of James' world.

James then had a pantomime script thought, “maybe if I can't use all this clutter and crap somebody else could.” He pondered the practicalities versus the impracticalities. Nobody would really want this and surely almost every household carried a similar amount of accumulated junk somewhere in it's soft underbelly languishing there as everywhere else. Mountains of screws, washers and panel pins, rising up in great suburban heaps, waiting on a day of user fulfilment that would never come. So there was that and then there was James' own life, running down and useless, like the boxes of screws. Running down and useless.

James put the boxes away and closed the cupboard door. It was early evening, the sunlight was a copper glowing thing that played and strayed across blinds and furniture. The room was warm and peaceful. James drew himself a large golden glass of whisky and sat in the big chair. The sun made him squint for a few seconds and then bathed him. He looked at the family photographs on the mantlepiece. The light was good, just had God had made it and thought and reflected on it, some time ago, they say. James supped the whisky and allowed it to work it's earthy and alcoholic magic, a soothing and a primal spirit, perhaps some distilled rival to God's warm and deadly sunshine, for surely he had not created alcohol; that was man's doing (or wrong doing). James floated away, his life was more than halfway over, passed the marked milestone towards some three score and ten. He was nearly sixty and in those boxes there were at least another fifty years worth of household repair materials. Time was being cruelly measured in the mundane, in the consumable, in the petty and the irrelevant. No big event, no bridge to build, no flood to recover from, no hurricane or earthquake to rebuild after, just tinkering stuff, just stuff that you tinker with, that's all that's left.

In the future everybody may be famous for fifteen minutes but nobody will care how that picture was hung, if that shelf was straight or how well the carpet edges were held down. Details don't last. There will be none of that, maybe only a great explosion or a meteor driven dust storm, then a long and fitful sleep. The end, however unlikely will come from and inhabit someone's imagination, it could even be James'. James thought that was unlikely.

When you were a child did you watch and remember all the people who'd pass by outside your house? The important looking gents and ladies, the workers and labourers, postmen, policemen or nearby neighbours, kids headed for school, dog walkers and once in a while a mysterious stranger. People you saw everyday but never knew. Today, through some wilful mist you can still picture their faces, see their clothes and style of walking, hear their voices, even though you never spoke. Where are they now? James though hard about this and how he couldn't quite recapture the view, it was a dull picture with muted sound, it was the past, measured out in those trivial and nondescript events. It had meant something then, now it was just a mental exercise in recalling a travelogue that went to nowhere. James took another sip of his whisky. “Getting old is just something that everybody does, it's not an illness or a weakness. It's just a collection of things, picked up, some used, some stored, some discarded and the judgements you make on the usefulness of these things are all pretty much meaningless – in the grand scheme of things.”

Last October story

The marks of Cain when he was unable.

It began with two arguments, one about old movies and one about the sell by and use by dates on supermarket produce. Avril Cain tended to take a traditional line on both topics and Fred Cain was getting a bit fed up with that. The arguments lacked flair and flavour he thought, sometimes their exchanges were far from being even proper arguments. There was shouting, steam and contradictions but not the depth and content that the subjects demanded. Fred was frustrated, Avril didn't really care. Their arguments were also fuelled by alcohol much of the time, that certainly took them way of track and into other, irrelevant and destructive areas.

“Kirk Douglas's best film has to be “Lonely are the Brave”, it's a watershed movie, a magnificent statement about the end of the old west and how it engages, or rather fails to engage with the 20^th century and it's values. It's his best most complete role and it's all in black and white, perfect!” Fred trotted on for a while as Avril held his gaze obviously considering her response, “one word,” she said, “Spartacus!” I rest my case. The discussion fizzled for a while as Douglas's films were further compared with those of Burt Lancaster. “The Swimmer!” Shouted Fred. “Trapeze” Replied Avril. The steam dissipated as no clear conclusion was ever going to be arrived at. They slept off their differences and dreamt of other sub plots and criticisms.

“This pot of yogurt is three days past the sell by date, I am putting it in the bin.” Avril kicked the pedal and plopped the container in. Fred jumped to his feet, his hand quickly in the bin like an excavator claw and he pulled the pot out in triumph. “I'll be having it, no worries.” Avril was clearing out the back on the fridge. “Sausages! And look at this cold meat, these salad leaves and the cottage cheese. You'll kill us all with your stupid antics, you can't eat this, the kids can't eat it, it's all out of date.” “No it isn't,said Fred, well it is but it's fine, there's a safety factor, that's what they do, the manufacturers, they want you do buy more, you know about all the marketing and the conspiracies, trust me.” “Idiot!”

Through the day and into the evening they were still at it, they'd moved onto Roxy Music's albums and the best value brand of toilet rolls. There never seemed to be common ground as they raged at one another over the trivial and vital. Next morning, they had diligently and awkwardly mulled over the novels of John Steinbeck with no agreement. Following a practical lull in the proceedings Jack was coming back from his shower, Avril was sorting out her hair. The arguments had quietened as they prepared for the day but there was an uncomfortable but familiar tension in the air.

From out the deep blue dysfunction Jack began to criticise Avril's car, “Volvo? What are they all about?” There was no proper argument or methodical construction in what he was saying, it was just sound and fury. Avril was working with the heated curling tongs she used every day, concentrating, she allowed Jack to carry on, now he was criticising the colour of the car. Avril wasn't biting. “It's just like a big, stupid, puffy handbag, all restraints and cotton wool and it's gold!” Avril turned round quickly, inside it was as if some elastic band had snapped, some brake had failed, some retaining wall had crashed down and was thrown open. In her hand the tongs suddenly grew from grey and black plastic into some great medieval sword of power and vengeance. They were still plugged in and fiercely hot, wide open like the mouth of a wolf. She hurled a blow at Jack, the tongs following through. The roaring jaws of the burning wolf caught him squarely across each temple.

For a few seconds the room went mad around them. Jack was screaming like a wounded animal caught in a forest fire, Avril was screaming in a hysterical moment of mind snapping release and spent inner agony. Jack fell onto the bed clinging to his face, the scorching tongs still searing either side of his head. There was noise and babble. No argument, just confusion as all the air I the room seemed to be on fire. Then Avril ran out onto the landing, already she was drawing lines between actions and consequences, she was running from the scene of a terrible accident, that was that. In a blurred whoosh of panic and abandonment she was out of the house. Jack's face was burning, his heart was pounding, then it was stopping. The blinding pain just too much...all too much. Tick tock tick...

When the police arrived the fire had extinguished himself. Jack lay face up on the bed, smoke still dancing above his head like a black halo on the bedroom ceiling. He was a dead thing now, head charred black and marked, a heart as still as a broken and unwound clock. He policeman was careful to touch nothing, not to disturb the evidence at the scene, nothing could be done. Jack Cain bore the mark of Avril Cain, those angry burns across his head. The end result of years of pointless quarrels and debate, the outworking of the tension and their life time mismatch. Marked in life, marked in death. They found Avril about an hour later. The gold Volvo wrapped around a motorway parapet, dead and broken. Dangling in the ignition was a key fob marked with the logo of ISSA, “International Society for Argumentation”.

The Fight

By some grassy knoll.

I remember the first time I got into a fight and got myself  a royal beating up. I was just about a teenager, I’d avoided fighting and as I got closer to the start of the fight I realised I didn’t know how to fight, not properly anyway. I knew how to wrestle, how to grapple, how to pull somebody over. None of that was really fighting or brawling, it was toy fighting. It was also likely to be ineffective but I knew none of this. Now I was facing up to the real thing, man to man, boy to boy, with clenched fists that were soon to be transformed into wild punches.

My strategy was formed as we strode towards the battlefield, a patch of ground down by the burn,  by a grassy knoll, all well flattened by previous fights. My strategy involved not really punching more back to grappling, like a Saturday afternoon wrestler, I would grapple my enemy to the ground as quickly and expertly as Spiderman  v the Green Goblin in issue #39. A small crowd had gathered, they could smell the blood already, they were eager for the spectacle, some action, some pain. I could also smell the blood, my own, fearfully boiling inside my pumping heart. I could feel it but I couldn’t give in to the wobbly and crippling doubt, the doubt that was churning, the doubt I had towards my grapple and punch capability. I wondered if I was a coward, if I should run. Somehow that didn’t matter, people were shouting, my supporters and the others. All boys there, no girls, that was good. I didn’t know why, it seemed useful.

My adversary arrived, bigger than me, a lot bigger. Maybe I was shrinking. He looked like he knew how to punch and punch ugly. Things were happening fast. The crowd, all of about a dozen spotty youths formed a circle. This was the ring, the bulls eye, the place were all the bad blows landed, were the victor would stand and the loser would lay and there would be blood. There were hands on my back, they pushed me around, the voices grew louder, hateful, excited, hungry again. There was no escape, no air, no sky, no air, nothing but the fight. It was all about the fight and it had begun.

Seconds were spilt, I had been looking him in the eye, trying to growl, I’d jumped at him, he’d punched my head. That was a shock, a violent shock. The world quickly went from vertical to horizon tall. I was falling sideways but still on my feet. That was what a proper punch felt like, hot and hard but all too fast to feel any pain. No pain, that was a relief, the feeling lasted a split second. Then there was a numb embarrassment. I’d been hit, I was going down like a burning Spitfire. Then I was up again, I’d bounced. Now I had to grapple, get to the neck, strangle this giant bastard, this punching machine.  I had his neck, the crowd roared, he swung me as my grip tightened, this was almost good. I wanted to punch but it wasn’t there, not even a slap. A slap would be mocked I imagined, stick with the neck pressure, stick with the plan.

Of course I’d failed to realise that he could still  punch, even with me hanging there. The sideways missile hit my cheek, pushed in my eye, I felt more numb embarrassment, that was possibly better than pain. I grip failed, I was spinning. Maybe this was pain but I chose to call it something else, hot face, busted flush, crash damage, bad feeling. I was on the ground, on all fours moving backwards towards the ring’s edge, the limit, the boundary of the battlefield. I stood up, he got one more good punch and I fell down. The boys shouted, a ring of nasty noise, I was now tasting blood in my mouth. I was aware of the sky and the grass.

The crowd parted like the Red Sea as he walked away. There had been swearing and stupid taunts. None of that hurt, not like the punches. I felt my face, it felt too big for my head. My skin was burning, my heart pounded worse than every. I was sick and dizzy. A few friends gathered around. They said I’d done OK, I’d fought well but he was just too big, too good.  I spat some blood and spittle onto the grass, no teeth, that was lucky. I wanted to sit there and touch my face, feel if it was OK, put it all back together, smooth the odd lumps I was now feeling. Just to lie back on some cloudy couch and smear my own face with butter like and old wives tale. At least I wasn’t crying and I could see, no tears, no blindness or spots or whizzing planets orbiting my head. Just the dull thud of landed punches echoing around me, resonating in the newly forming bruises and lumps.

My mates walked ahead, the pack leading a wounded fighter home. I walked a dizzy shameful walk, the glory hunter  home from the hill with nothing to show but the bruises, a gory hunter. The victor was already back in the playground, he’d moved onto something else. As I entered the school gate people looked, I saw the shock in their faces. Children don’t mind staring, don’t mind pointing and whispering. I knew I didn’t look good, I was trembling now but I was going to stay in control. I don’t remember going to the toilet or washing my face. I didn’t get cleaned up, no seconds towelled me down, wiped my sweat or whispered in my ear “You’re OK!” I just got those horrible looks.

I sat at the back of the class, torn and troubled, I let the time go. Maybe that was when I learned that adult trick, let the time go. Breathe like Buddha. The time will pass and sure enough it did. By about three thirty pain was creeping into my consciousness, real pain. All the adrenalin and vigour were seeping away, slowly like spilt milk running through cracks in the floorboards. None of the teachers said anything, they looked away, another kid in a stupid fight but still standing so it was OK.

I rode home on the bus, I joked about the fight, I made light but I was hurting. A good sleep tonight and I’d be fine. The wounds would heal like a  Fife sunburn, red as the Daily Record today, gone in the sink drain tomorrow and everybody would move on. I got home and my mum saw my face, then I saw my face for the  first time in the bathroom mirror. It was a Frankenstein moment. The person reflected, that bashed comic strip face in the mirror wasn’t me. All pink and red and black and blue like a newly born  monster. I studied the damage, tried to fit the marks with the blows but none of it made sense. I had a new fresh, ugly face. I’d be wearing this to school tomorrow and more ritual humiliation would follow. I lay on the bed like a dog and wished I could lick myself like a dog, lick that  wounded face all better. Nobody was going to kiss this better. Mum padded upstairs and  asked if I was alright. “Fine” I said. The words not really mattering.  Inside myself  I moaned a bit. I though about God and dead pets. This was true and agile teenage misery and the black realisation of it’s pain and ongoing out working. Then there were flashbacks, each one worse than the next. I steadied myself and tried to reflect, I was not much good at fighting. In summary I could see that  the main problem was that I had no idea how to defend myself. I hadn’t understood the part that defence played in fighting, now I did.

Maybe I ate my tea, maybe I drank something, maybe splashed my face. Maybe plastered Zinc and Caster Oil, white magic that fixed everything in our tiny family.  I don’t really remember. Maybe I went downstairs and watched “Till Death us do Part” or “The Saint” or “Tom & Jerry”. Maybe I slept for a thousand years or read  books about the exploring the moon or living with wolves. I grew into the pain, I absorbed it, sucked it all up and made it my own personal property. Then I slept a dripping, topsy turvy sleep and escaped from this dreadful chunk of reality.

Next day, next time, I was back at school, awkward on the bus with a huge black eye. My sore face against the glass, hidden from the passing world.  I existed as a brief  talking point and conversation piece then like yesterday’s newspapers was passed over, not really all that interesting to anyone. Today’s another day and there’s another  fight at lunch break, today, down by the burn. More combatants, more blood and drama. I’ll be going. Who knows what I’ll see, I’m hoping for  a spectacle, there will be a winner and a loser and  maybe at the end  of it I’ll know that I’m not alone.

Cheese in the Middle East

The road to Damascus and the Middle East Cheese Process.

I had a dream - I am a traveller in space and time. I seek the closeness of the truth, it's intangibly, here and there, some non-specific place on this winding ribbon of road. The broken hearted trail that runs along the desert ridges and valleys between Jerusalem and Damascus. I carry my tools and I make or break things on the journey. Slowly I dig myself in, I make repairs, impromptu, necessary, sometimes life saving as I burrow into your psyche. Sweating and keeping the highway open, clear and as straight as the complex terrain will allow. Pruning the signs so they can all be read and a consistent message taken; the only way for peace on earth they say. But this is the road that comes out of a place of enlightenment and then takes the trail of assumed wisdom and Pagan Voodoo, out of the way to very the heathen and non-believers that must be saved, all full of precious argument and principle.

The sun beats down on my bare head, on the back of my neck. Fighter jets fly low, some baffled helicopter gun ships on patrol, some Russian tank hulks lie dead off road, burned out by the desert. Thuds from far away and unexplained explosions. Borders, poles and wire, men with trucks and no company. Soldiers shoulder their arms, make nervous checks, blow dust from the weapon's breaches, rub in oil, smiles flicker across their faces. Peasants, beat up peddlers, Gypsy-like caravan people, donkeys, Toyota Land Cruisers and battered Mercedes pass me by. Drivers hidden by designer sunglasses, glowering in the reflected heat handing out bottles of Highland Spring water, bottled in the cellars of the Houses of Parliament, five Bucks each.

Once an angel came here and blinded a man just to get his attention, as if being an angel isn't enough to make an impact  - or so the story goes. To you it may sound far fetched but a lot of good people believed it at the time. I'm told that there's a weathered blue plaque on a mud wall at the petrol station. Commemoration is important, better than respect. I hear that the man took it badly and became bitter and sued the wider world and then wrote a best seller. So I just sit here in the dust and dirt, my advice ready for you, if and when you come. You can get me on my mobile though, did I mention the mast conveniently sited over there by the minefield?