Facepunk

A story I once wrote

A story I wrote about the ghost of Thelonious Monk (who the spell checker calls him felonious, it may stick) was built around a picture now reproduced on the skin of a drum. A tight drum skin for hammering or thumping, tapping or just running the brushes over. Soft and low. A painted drum skin showing a dead jazz man. A story about a ghost. New York and the pale forgetfulness of black and white images, drained away with tired music and rapturous journalism, drugs and scandal. Spinning dark disks that create a sound scape fashioned and released new to a waiting world via the latest hi-fi speakers of the day. Deals and contracts, cigarettes and taxis, they wear us down brother. People who talk piffle, pseudo and false, sincere and loving. You can never tell, all the eyes are dark now. Gone back to shadow. All stammered out, broken eloquence and waiting for the latest new wave. It's a tough life being a ghost.

Inspired by Herzog

The small matter of what you should do with the rest of your life assuming that you in a real rather than hypothetical position and one which warrants some study and a little reflection. 

a) Looking out of the window may help.
b) Drink sugary beverages to stimulate the lazy brain.
c) Try on a hat.
d) Google profound words on the Internet and see where their meaning lead you.
e) Hold your breath.
f) Engage a fellow soul in some like minded conversation.
g) Study insects, are they busy?
h) Prepare a dossier containing what you consider to be solid facts.
i) Share some cinematic experience, comment on the highs and lows.
j) You can assume that there is no number 10.

And so it was

And so I was that the body of the woman found floating face down in the lake was traced back to the incident in which the owner of the black sedan had discharged the shotgun into the air and so killed two geese and wounded the best cow belonging to the irritable old  farmer who had just succeeded in capturing the escaping lion that had been in hiding in the barn following the tragic collision between the circus train and the school bus which thankfully was empty (save for the now badly injured driver) as all the children had alighted in order to attend the annual bread-baking and hog-roasting picnic that took place down by the river where there had once been a sighting of a pike so huge that it was rumoured to have been able to slice a man in half so large were it's jaws and so evil was it's nature that it would from time to time and completely without warning attack the boats of the fishermen who dared to drift out onto the surface of the deep pond where it was also rumoured a great and wonderful treasure had once been lost as the result of poor seamanship and a sudden spell of unexpectedly bad weather that had raced across the surface of the water like the cork from a champagne bottle and caused every vessel to rock and roll and had even shattered and blown out the windows of the country club and bar down by the southern tip of the shore side where every so often young couples would gather in order to tie a blue or a green or maybe even a yellow ribbon around a tree trunk  that was covered in old pennies that had been placed there during the years of the plague by young children and superstitious old folks who had made wishes and from time to time dream all sorts of strange dreams about a future in which there were none of the troubles that currently dog us all because the land was lit brightly with constantly changing coloured lanterns instead of some poor and unreliable sun that might run out of energy any day and mind expanding drugs were free for all in the water supply and their constant consumption and embitterment created a state of perpetual happiness and hope which rained down upon one and all despite the fact that none of these things wee reflected in their daily lives because around here and I don't know if you've noticed this there always seemed to be a serious of serious crimes that were both committed and unsolved and when I say that I am of course referring to that poor woman who was found floating face down in the lake who was traced back to the incident in which the owner of the black sedan had discharged the shotgun into the air and so killed two geese and wounded the best cow belonging to the irritable old  farmer who had just succeeded in capturing the escaping lion that had been in hiding in the barn following the tragic collision between the circus train and the school bus which thankfully was empty (save for the now badly injured driver) as all the children had alighted in order to attend the annual bread-baking and hog-roasting picnic that took place down by the river where there had once been a sighting of a pike so huge that it was rumoured to have been able to slice a man in half so large were it's jaws and so evil was it's nature that it would from time to time and completely without warning attack the boats of the fishermen who dared to drift out onto the surface of the deep pond where it was also rumoured a great and wonderful treasure had once been lost as the result of poor seamanship and a sudden spell of unexpectedly bad weather that had raced across the surface of the water like the cork from a champagne bottle and caused every vessel to rock and roll and had even shattered and blown out the windows of the country club and bar down by the southern tip of the shore side where every so often young couples would gather in order to tie a blue or a green or maybe even a yellow ribbon around a tree trunk  that was covered in old pennies that had been placed there during the years of the plague by young children and superstitious old folks who had made wishes and from time to time dream all sorts of strange dreams about a future in which there were none of the troubles that currently dog us all because the land was lit brightly with constantly changing coloured lanterns instead of some poor and unreliable sun that might run out of energy any day and mind expanding drugs were free for all in the water supply and their constant consumption and embitterment created a state of perpetual happiness and hope which rained down upon one and all despite the fact that none of these things wee reflected in their daily lives because around here and I don't know if you've noticed this there always seemed to be a serious of serious crimes that were both committed and unsolved and when I say that I am of course referring to that poor woman who was found floating face down in the lake who was...

Cat food omelette #2

I seem to have gone on for most of July and much of August, the long summer months in some sort of denial of writing or producing or creating anything other than those bad, half formed early morning ideas you get (or the drunken ones you get and quickly forget). Yes that is how it has been, unforgivable and reprehensible...but fun, followed by those three pretentious and hopefully meaningful full stops. You see I've been away, in France, in England, here and there. I've been lazy too and too lazy, obstinate, preoccupied and busy with things that are counter productive. The stats have all of course gone haywire, history has repeated and I've slept away the rain, fog and misty days in a haze of, well just about nothing. Excuse me please.

Obvious things from elsewhere  that I cannot fathom No1: 

"If you really want your life to make sense, your bathroom to smell sweet, to be free from pungent human  odours and to deeply relax and revive all those lost souls who may from time to time pass through then don't hold back. Don't restrain yourself, invent and improvise. Cast away the preconceived ideas about cats, cat food, egg poisoning, candles and extraneous shit like that. There is a bright and enlightening future out there, way beyond September 18th, the blue horizon, the general erection and existential mind games. Dip your Yankee Candle Coconut Cake in an empty feline food container and by whatever sane and safe means you can muster let it burn...real slow and strong. The universe can wait, around here we play long games."

Ramblin'

Burning the midnight lamp. Actually the one thirty lamp, midnight was a long time ago. Here's what the wee, small hours look and feel like. All is blurred at the edges, unfocused and grey. The head feels blocked up, the mind is swimming in the treacle of semi-solid thought. Ideas are stuck in some other far away place and it's all about minor diversions and running down the cruel face of the clock. This is the no man's land of time. No sleep is allowed or permissible, I'm on watch, programmed and committed to stay awake for the ringing of a phone, the blip of some unexpected message or email, a flash of approaching car lights in the dark that might shake or rattle my mind from it's low level of activity.

Night time is tough. You sense the heavy sleep everyone else is enjoying, their distant rollings and snoring. The comfort you are deprived. Sitting in a half, artificial light, looking across and seeing only dark shapes. Keeping alert and staying awake. I could get up out of the chair, make coffee, return and sip it slowly. Elevate that most mundane of things into some special, lone pleasure, an exaggerated high, sipping warm water with a coffee flavour. Somehow that might help the time to pass and might colour and enhance these stalling thought processes. Well it might but I cant be bothered. That's the strange thing, the reach for even a tiny spec of pleasure hardly seems worth it. The effort will own drain the feeble battery and rewards will be fleeing and by the time I sit down again gone. I wont bother.

Neither will I explore the news websites that at this time sit in some nether region between today's and yesterday's news. Reports die back, writers might reflect or review in these lonely hours but they will not publish until their audience starts to stir. The early stories of celebrity clubbers or attacks or sensational tit bits must wait until the phones and devices click alive. The wait until the readers are in a fit state to gawp at the stories and be bemused and enticed by the nearby adverts and product messages. This isn't the time, the sleepers are flat, alone, in pairs, otherwise, asleep and dreaming only of their next moment of exploitation and driven direction.

That poor stream of near drivel killed fifteen minutes, they'll never return nor will I miss them or call them back. They are night time moments. Cheap and devoid of value, passed over by sunny days and bright chattering times, woozy intense pleasures, intimate and coloured couplings and blurs. Here's the time when time really comes alive, when life is lived and not observed as some dead beast or passing cloud. Life is day and light, death is the dark, still and dreamlessly enduring. My time comes with the sunrise. Here's man's natural state, set in crispy breakfast and shining orange juice moments and spectrums that split and rejoin as the rays of a new day pass across and through glass and curtains to warm the world. Those times are a whole night time away. That's the dull dark for you, a pale shadow of life, a secret time when deals are done in the subconscious and the great mystery of who we might be and what thoughts we file and keep or discard swirl in the deep places. We shut these moments away and hide in our sleep. Only I seem to be offering up some temporary and short lived resistance but sleep knows that wont last, it never does. I will capitulate, my head will drop and the ground will rush towards me. 

I read about a car that had been driven over a cliff; reported by a foreign tourist it said. There was a person onboard, the driver I presume. It sailed over the cliff, two hundred feet down, onto rocks, crashing into the sea. The emergency services were duly called and could make little of it. The tide was rising and quickly covered the wreckage. There was somebody inside, dead and still in that crushed metal space, battered and drowned by their deliberate act. Over the edge and into the uncaring waves, broken and rattled to pieces. Birds wheeled around, would be rescuers stood and watched but were powerless. Some soul moved way across a thousand boundaries in that anonymous act. Pressed the pedal and kept the eyes closed, all over in seconds with the silence of the drop and thud of the rocky, watery impact. The untold story, assumed and made up in the many minds that come running and stand on the edge of some other's tragic decision. When the conditions are right a boat will launch or a helicopter will fly. Brave men will investigate and prod at the bear facts for some explanation. Records will be searched and phone calls made, visits will take place. In the deep cold of the night or dawn's chilly beginning someone will hear and feel the bitter shock. The car, the cliff, the sea and the dead moment, all together in the look and the words of a stranger on the doorstep. That is the end of that.

I back away from this line of thinking, I cant explain why I retained that story and not a thousand others, old news about attacks and rockets, dull politicians, breaking scandals, diseases and sporting moments, always the sporting moments. They rise like some strange scum and breed and entice. We, bereft of other ideas take them on, the results and performances and give them a meaning they cannot deserve. Sponsors pay out and gloat, the public chew and spit and the performances build and fade, like art exhibitions or birthdays, paperbacks and background music, over and spent before you know it. Here in the slow cold of the early morning it makes little sense and that it makes little sense hardly matters. That, seems to be the way of most things, not making sense at all. That and seeing the battery fall to 89%, hardly cause for panic but maybe a signal to take some kind of break. It's only July after all.

So there's this whole unthinkable thing, somebody doing something so wrong for them, so out of character. You couldn't explain it or see it coming, it was a terrible shock, a surprise. The person who took their life, who tore themselves away, driving over the cliff and down to answer their calling for oblivion. They did that and we never knew it was in them. It was a black dog, grinning and slobbering their in the passenger seat, stupid and excited as only a dog can be. Then tilted and pushed apart by the forces as they sailed into space, that person and all their black dog or burdens and common experiences, prisoners of gravity like me and you and everybody, unclipping the seat belt and pushing back the feeble puffs of the airbags. Futile explosions in the high speed drop, quick and deadly, over in a crumpled flash. It was all so predictable and all so unexpected and the sleep never came and the time passed more quickly than I'd have believed. So I awoke without ever having been asleep, I felt indestructible, confident and bright; like Margaret Thatcher.

It seems now that I was desperate to fill the space, I'd have said anything, any bullshit, just to get me in there. There to the end of the piece. I scratch my head and wonder what it is I must do, wonder what it is I don't have, wonder where I might get it and how once I get it how I might use it. So I'm this outsider who because of numerous flaws and defects, lack of drive or lack of...a long list of things cannot get the breaks, cannot work or function. I'm stuck in the limbo of obscurity and nothingness. A lifetime tourist, somewhere on the bus but not making an impact, not creating an impression, fodder but not substantial fodder. Here and looked over but not quite registering, here but not quite here. Little do they know how desperate I am, or was, to fill that white, clean and irritating space. The place that I laid some claim to (or so I said), the space that other people chose but didn't quite get to. It was always out of reach. So I stand by as the waters lap around my feet, as the the tide slowly rises. I look down and witness the floating and the moving, bubbles and froth. The white space is still there, the space is attractive, enticing even but the cool, clean water is better for me. Really you just need to get out and do something.

Normal love

Somebody says “you've lost weight,” and you're not quite sure if it's a compliment or an accusation. Then your wife hears the comment and looks across accusingly, as if she knew all along about some dark secret. How seriously ill you really are, how you are in denial and refuse to get a check up and so acknowledge your terrible condition. Then of course it may be a compliment, you've been working out, cycling and taking the stairs, eating less crap, respecting your body an so on. Who would ever believe such things? So the statement hangs there, floating in some twilight place, unable to be taken forward but still living and breathing in a hopeless state of purgatory. The lost weight that cannot quite be explained by your current known lifestyle choices. Will anything be said about better fitting, better quality clothes, your posture or demeanour, the fact that your just sitting up straight and smiling? I don't know. 

“You've lost weight” becomes a criminal sentence, a judgement on your behaviour and habits because clearly they make no sense because right now, in this room, nobody can quite align your physical appearance with the person that they thought you were. You are a misfit and a fraud, some shadowy figure who has dealt in some black and Devilish secret deal and rendered yourself, just for the moment, just in this instant, as a thinner, falser, less passable version of yourself. Perhaps, in the light of this you should just go ahead with new and radical looks; get those neck and face tattoos, shave your head, get piercings, have that gender reassignment surgery you always promised yourself in later life, have a tummy tuck or a gastric band, become a heroin addict, join UKIP, an irritating lung removed or getting a nose job. 

All of these might be more acceptable than appearing to be a little more slender which, a result has propelled you out there into deep and misunderstood space and into oblivion. Am I any thinner? To be honest I don't know, I don't even know what weight I should be. If I look at myself in the mirror out the shower I look the same. I have a paunch, I have a gut, a small one anyway and nothing to worry about. I just eat carefully and I do take a mix of regular and occasional vigorous exercise and I fidget but I'm fine, I'm OK, I suffer an innate and unshakable sense of my own strength and well being. I refuse to be ill, overweight or underweight. I make these choices but avoid all the factual baggage, all the reality, notes and regimes. I am a pillar of self awareness and luck, genetic error and some kind of ongoing applied judgement. All these things work, they come together. They work for me.  

So I'm me, fat or thin me, normal, plump or skinny me. You see it's all in the eye of the beholder and those beholder's eyes do often play tricks and the tricks are complicated by the tongue and the brain and the emotions and drivers that compete and criticise and compliment. People are looking, people are looking out for me and you all the time. They see us in our layers and out of them. They want to see how you're measuring up or if you're not and that's fine but as for me, well I'm moving. I'm moving very quickly in my own personal path, I've established a trajectory, a calculation I made, verified and acted upon. Now I'm accelerating, shifting through the spaces high above, across and through all the words and well meant or casual and cruel observations. It's confusing at times and lonely but it's a direction.

Murder

I may have murdered a man on Google Street View, outside of a stranger's home, on a street I don’t quite know, as unfamiliar cars passed by and fellow pedestrians ignored us; but it was done in broad daylight. All unfamiliar except for the all seeing eye of the Google VW Beetle with all that revolving apparatus on the roof. There am I, a media star. Blood on my hands and blood on the street, we left a deep pool I had to step over or was that just a trick of the light? Perhaps there's a footprint. Incriminating evidence, circumstances and complicated data gathering equipment. Perhaps it's all just make believe but who believes in make believe? The street they seem to believe they own, all public space is gobbled up and shared, a view now captured along with me and my victim. Rendered and spun into a mix of the truth, the unrecognisable and the day itself. The hour, minute and second with digital timestamp. My motives remain unrecorded, they can't get inside my head, yet. My crime, a sorry sight that will live on in countless viewings and scattered, fiddling searches, on phones and screens. Most likely largely ignored or just filed under those WTF comments. “Some dead guy.” “Some other guy standing.” “It looks fake to me.” “He looks guilty.” “I'm sure he did it.” “Oh, I heard about this.” “It made the Daily Mail and Reddit.” “What business was it they were promoting?” “Where is that place anyway?” “Next shot will have a dog on skateboard or some party goer struggling home wearing a horse's head and no pants.” “I'm not sorry for him.” “Set up.”

It was a sunny day then, when they stole my image and hijacked my soul in that drive-by way that is neither being witness or following a conscience. Just the relentless capturing of locations and details with no intervention or judgement calls. There's no reverse key or rewind. Why edit out the shit anyway? Why bother about what's there? It is what it is, we made a cosmic tattoo that loops around the sun and everything else in 365 days but never gets dizzy. Perhaps I should hide behind a tree or a rubbish bin. Turn and walk in the opposite direction. Pull my shirt over my head. When the officers of the law come in a month's time what will they find? I hid the body, I put whee only a drone would find it and they're not ready yet. We still have some use for the humans. They can search, they can film and of course they can just get on and kill one another. That's all very uncivilised, just what we hoped for.

I should tell you all about my motive, what led me here. Those events, those unlikely circumstances, what he did to deserve it. What he said and stole. What I lost and didn't have. Why they drove me here and made me do it. Why I hurt so much, my humiliation, my loss. I heard the words inside my head, I couldn't do anything to stop it. They just kept talking and then it clicked on me. Almost an innocent man, almost but for one rash action, almost innocent. That camera isn't good enough to catch the pain etched on my face like laser surgery, no lines or signs. And that black, dense mass in my heart is outside of the spectrum of the polished lens. A heart that colour isn't even a colour. That's what we murders know that the rest of you don't. How fucking black it all is and how badly represented we all feel by ourselves. Even when we're stuck out there, hung up in a real estate display or on the edge of a pamphlet photo. The walking ghost of Street View dispatches another body to the other place where even the www wont easily reach.

There's no sensation of speed, travel or movement. We freeze in the pane, on your screen, caught in the act. Static in a sickly acceptance that petty crime will come along, repeat and, despite the politician's good words and the promises of funding, won't go. So let's just record the footprints on the sound stage, the scenery and the back lot landscapes. They'll easily mask all that social disquiet, the rumblings.  Let the bad behaviour play and turn viral, it doesn't matter so long as you can find your way out, or the plumber, or that rental bargain and as for the story of the murder? Well that just happens in other people's families and other peoples lives. Doesn't it?

Life before death

“We have almost no consideration for profit and that is probably why we are highly profitable. You can put that theory right into your corporate pipe and then smoke it. Some. In fact it's not even a fuckn' theory, it's a fact and that's why I've a Maserati parked outside the building doorway right now and for all I know I may have left the key in the ignition and the motor running. Why don't you go out and just grab yourself a free ride and see how far you can get? And while your doing that I'll have another glass of this fine French Brandy or maybe suck on a Cuban cigar. You see that's rock and roll and that's money.”

“ The thing about art is that it doesn't really exist, it's just stuff brought together, or other stuff taken apart and then along comes somebody and stands it up. Well once it's standing up, there in the public domain you have three choices really. You can ignore it, walk by and just deny it's there altogether, show it an unmeasured level of indifference. It'll fade away, into the background, some geeks might like it, there will income, low rents and crumbs from providers, recycling values, that's about it. Obscurity has it's appeal but it doesn't make you any real money.”

“You can hate it, throw things at it, criticize it, burn it down, run it out of town as the most dangerous thing you every seen, you could just say it's just a piece of talentless shit. There's a lot of it about. You might, if you've got some history get valuable publicity and that's ok, most likely you'll just be seen as a bad investment and then you'll be ostracised. Believe me to be ignored is worse than anything, worse than bullying or violence, but that's where you end. I reckon you get three chances, blow all three, they hate you three times in a row, three turkeys, three strikes and you're so far out you're not even in the same country anymore. That bad. End of that story.”

“But the third way is that for some inexplicable reason (or not) you really like it and they like it, it's brilliant. It's special and unique and work of certain genius and what's more it may well have some commercial value. It's worth money. Who'd have thought that the dumb ass idea of yours mister/miss writer, artist, poet, musician etc. would be worth something? Next thing you know big boys like Apple or Samsung or Ford or Exon want to give you support in your venture, use your sweet image, your sound, your association, you can smile all the way up there on the media free ride. They just come along and shovel you right up like you landed on the street from the ass of a horse and now they want to sprinkle you amongst the roses where they think you'll do them some good.”

“So what have you got to show me?” I sat down in front of his desk, laid back a bit on the chair and put both of my feet on his desktop edge and smiled. He grinned back and nodded. I grinned wider. We were going somewhere now. I took an envelope from my inside pocket, removed my feet from the desk and adopted a more gracious position as I handed it to him. He smiled and ripped it open. There was a folded note inside and a memory stick. The stick fell as he tore the envelope and landed on the desktop with a clatter.

“It's all you really need,” I said. “This is the work you've waited on. Push it forward the right way, bearing in mind profit isn't everything and...we'll make a tidy sum.” I sat back and produced my most winning, confident smile yet. Or so I thought. Ideas have value, even bad ideas, even good ideas badly executed and if he thought that it was all some kind of saleable art then I wasn't going to argue. We'll be dead a long time while the others discuss, write books and film documentaries about  wether or not it all was what we said it was. History isn't a bother to me, I'm content to help make it happen  because I know I won't have to live through it. That's some one else’s' problem.

“Damian Hirst designs a block of apartments, condos, whatever you want to call it, it's a holistic art and lifestyle project. We build it in Los Angeles, that's the first. He designs them inside and out, nobody can change things once they've signed up to our management scheme but they are there, living, breathing, sleeping and fucking in an appreciating artwork that's their home. Their piece of action, their share of the prestige, their investment or pension plan or whatever. Then we build another block in Miami, in Paris or in London, in Sydney. Wherever, but up to a limit...and we control all the business, all the ins and outs, all the transactions and all the media interest. The money will be coming out of all our ears. You need to phone this number.”

He read the note and put the stick into a laptop then dialled the number. I zoned out, my part was over for now. I stood and looked out of the window. I was in a dream. So I watched as the light began to dim, the sky was changing, the clouds running and stumbling, fading into the east as quickly as they were replenished from the west taken back up to some other bulbous, fattened place of fury. Soon the heavy air released the rain and the ground breathed in. I wanted to run out and get myself wet, soak my shirt, stick out my tongue and hold my head back. Do a kind of chicken dance to celebrate another day of rain. I smiled inside myself, I chose not to give anything away. Tomorrow would do, that's a different day and more my day. This day is too damp, too heavy for a show of emotion or uncontrolled happiness. This was all about art after all.

Dark Materials

"I like it in the dark. It stays dark for long periods, now the power has been cut, now the candles are burning low and petering out. Here I am, in a misty, musty gloom, fed up with politicians and people saying one thing and thinking another, doing one thing and believing another, voting for things they neither understand nor believe and stuck in systems and set ups that have been proven to fail time and time again. So now I'm here, where I've always been, in a grey place. I look down at my hands, rough and dirty, fingernails broken, grim and dirt in them, pitted and grained. I rub the dry palms together, wearing through the skin, the hard working skin, the tough and worn skin. The hands of a worker. Now I'm at rest, sitting on a wooden box, staring into the dark and thinking dark thoughts with clear edges. It's the clear edges that define the problem, finding and setting limits. Mine are moving, I'm on a journey, I'm an explorer.

My eyes have become accustomed to the light, I see further but not far. My horizon is limited, I pace around the interior of the house, now the world is bigger but never big. I never wanted a big world. All I wanted was enough of a world to explore. One without people and disturbance and those mas of ideas that come through the letterbox on flyers, pamphlets, propaganda, news sheets and circular letters. I see them and the complex systems they purport to represent, the ideas they push, the interaction they call for but these things I ignore. I ignore then like the knocks on the door, the silent pushes on the dumb doorbell, the voices, pointed and filtered through the letterbox. That split little portal into daylight, bright stabs that lead outside to cash machines and buses, trampled leaves and rainy conversations. The occasional twilight run to the corner shop, foraging supplies and holding up activity. Maybe searching  further afield to replenish tools and materials, skip diving or picking things up. I need the memory the outside to dig out the inside. Digging out the inside and putting it outside. I always found places, places are everywhere if you only look.

Then there's my downward trajectory. My return to the swamp and the evolutionary source, into the black and crawling, crawling through the chambers and constructions. Deconstructing and breaking through. I have this idea of where I'm going, this ideal that forms in my head, my progression down into the bowels and the source. Chasing drips and rivers, breathing bad air, foul and reeking, hot and sticky like some escaping prisoner, unsure of the root to some final freedom. That was what I wanted, that's what I'm still trying to find down there. 

Now I'm in a rest period. My note book and pencil lines define the day. Tear up the time into manageable bundles, into pieces of work and pieces of rest, pieces of reflection and pieces of sleep. I defy the world in this with my energy and hygiene, with my grand design and my scheme, my solitude and silence and my grim determination. You could say that I was living the dream, my dream, perhaps your nightmare, perhaps your curious indulgence. In this project my superiority is clear, my attack is to the underbelly, the bottom to the top, sailing in my muddy sea, caked in the hard waves and beyond the fickle weather. I am no slave but I work as if enslaved. That's all part of the twist and the pleasure. 

So you have me, you see me, but you don't. One day they'll bring me out in a coffin, or dirty like a dead dog from the gutter on an ambulance stretcher. Glenn Miller or Count Basie will play in the background as the neighbours look on, nodding and saying “well I never”, or just whispering, hands across their treacherous mouths. That was always what they did. My body, now dead with dirty nails and blood dried across my forehead covered in a sheet or zipped in a bag like a blitz victim or a battlefield casualty. It will all be seen as as some kind of unexplained, inexplicable mystery. One for the files and the college courses and a para or two in the Daily Mail. Then whisked away down the damp streets for the autonomy and ambiguity of the morgue and the final fire. Where might they scatter me or bury me deep? I should write down my wishes. Of course I wont care and I don’t care, my soul has passed on, ranging back and forth but mostly down, down in those tunnels. Care is for the weak and the living.

Your houses will slowly crumble, your streets they crack and subside. Doors no longer fit and windows wont close. The gutters leak and there are cracks, slim and unnoticed then great and yawning. Then the masonry starts to fall, trees bend and old people trip on the pavement cracks and the distorted kerbs. I did it all. I built my empire, my tunnel kingdom, under your home, your English castles. I tore away God's good earth with my bare hands and stolen shovels. I propped it up with rotten timber and broken furniture. An earthquake sitting inside a time bomb. A challenge for all the fine engineers with their degrees and their concrete pouring techniques. We'll see how quickly and how costly it is to fill my underground honeycomb. There will be blood and money, for miles in all directions. North, south, east and west. You see I am that thing...

I am that modern phenomenon, recognised, the weirdo, that thing you dread. You up there, paying your stupid mortgage every month, struggling to cope, keeping the faith and walking in the light. I was there, under your very feet, under your kitchen and living room, digging away beneath your possessions, your investments and all you hold dear. The subliminal secret warrior and terrorist staring up through the cracks in the floorboard. The dirty old bogeyman looking up your wife's skirt and giggling at your stupid little conversations. I was so inferior I just had to explore and travel the full spectrum to turn out so superior. As you shall all see. Meet me, see my handiwork, fifty years effort, sweat and hard labour for  the Mole Man of De Beauvoir Town."

Angel of the white Audi

And it came to pass that the Angel of the Lord appeared to me in a fiery and unexpected dream. I woke startled and a bit sweaty and confused. The angel had the head of a fox, the eyes of a cucumber, the ears of a buffalo, the heart and stomach of a feeble woman and a voice like silvery running water flowing down the golden valley of bronze dreams beside the iron town of the wooden woods next to the lake of pure crystal glass rendered by Disney's best. Then the angel spoke and I heard a voice that was like blue milk and Krispy-Kreme donuts mixed up in a blender with added jam, clotted cream and strawberries laced with fine brandy and some solid and sharp, dark chocolate chips. 

As I heard the sweet voice booming out like the horn of an angry Italian motor scooter I fell to my knees and cried, “Lord I am not worthy of these sights and sounds or the rather unusual smell that I'm getting a bit of a hint of. Yes I'm not worthy to bathe in this strangely eerie supernatural light and the whole wing flapping thing that's going on there in the back ground. In a nutshell I'm back to saying I'm not particularly worthy. Have you considered nipping out, down the street and checking if there are any more worthy types; I 'd suggest you try the bigger houses, there's probably a better class of person in there. I say that based on all the social politics and red top journalism that I've been subjected to in my short and so far uneventful life, nothing to do with any of your ideas or pronouncements...Lord.”

The Angel of the Lord just looked at me, I sensed a bit of disappointment as he placed his finger onto his lips as if to indicate that I should at this point shut up, so I did. He stepped forward and cleared his throat. I swallowed heavily and stepped back, kind of of trying to acknowledge the angel's obvious need for a bit of decent space in which to work. Ahem. Space to perform is important, you have to own it.

“You.” he was addressing me, that was clear, the other people, the classy ones were not going to get this message, just me. “I have a message for you and for all mankind (in a way). A message from the fictional heart of the universe or the virtual and vague Ancient of Days. A message that has been there since quite early on in the dawn of time, before breakfast anyway and that solemn and serious message is for your ears alone.”

I'm getting it now, for once it's all down to me, the chosen one, the vessel, the reliable recipient of this vital, divine message. This is no time to screw up so I'd better listen quite carefully. Check: eyes engaged. Check: not about to wander into some day dream. Check: not bursting for a pee or anything. Check: nothing distracting stuck in my teeth and no trapped wind that's making me feel a bit uncomfortable. “Ok.” I say. “Good to go with the whole message thing, thank you, your highness.”

“Fine,” began the angel, breathing in and nodding deliberately, “here is my grave and most serious message to you, listen up. Ahem. It has been noticed by the most omnipotent and very clever God of the entire universe that you are driving around in a rather shabby looking Volvo that does neither your public or self image any good. To be honest (and that is something that God does like to work on and also to emphasise in conversation) it looks like shit and so do you. Nobody is going to take you seriously driving around in that thing like some old git headed for his allotment. You are doing yourself down and your poor wife is at her wits end with the pain and embarrassment of having to ride shotgun in that heap. OK, I know you'll say that it's pretty reliable and that you've just had the timing belt done and shit like that but...that's just not good enough. You need an upgrade. Badly.”

“Lord, I know I've sinned and fucked up a bit, but I though that, for the sake of the planet (your planet?) I was kind of helping by a) not being greedy, b) not being materialistic and c) getting good value for money So that's me being thrifty, by running the old bean into the deck on a tight budget. Are you telling me that my humble and unassuming strategy for personal transport isn't what you'd wish it to be?” The angel breathed deeply, forcing a sigh and rolling his eyes, (didn't expect that really, as they are immortal and stuff like that. How does breathing work for angels in space and time and flying up high? Rolling the eyes in an over dramatic way is also a bit gay really).

“Look, I'm just delivering a pretty clear and simple message. It's my job and I'm not here to counsel you on the daft and complicated ideas you have rolling around in your head like a set of broken ball bearings needing a good grinding, a shot of grease and sorted out into their correct sizes with a pair of rusty tweezers. The Lord has spoken; well he is now via me and I am relaying his message and his message to you, squint built little minion and unloveable lump is...get yourself a white Audi. Like the one that one of those blessed Pope fellows might buy himself if he was an ordinary bloke or a salesman or something.” At that shattering news I fell to my knees. Limp and shattered.

“But Lord/Angel/Supreme Being, I cannot do such a thing. The white Audi is evil incarnate (or so I have been taught but the leaders, elders and betters of the Church of the Broken Hearted and Mother Mary Doll). A great grinning, extravagant (but classy and reliable) form of transport that only the devil himself or a close member of his family might ever drive upon the public highway. Think of the panic, despair and fear that the sight of a white  Audi in a rear view mirror has upon a poor, hapless and dimwitted Volvo driver such as I?” I allowed the tears to flow and went with them, down, out and into my own familiar  and dark place of comfort and solitude. A safe place or so it seemed. I rolled on the floor and ended, after a few spasms in the foetal position,eyes closed tight.

“Enough of the self pity and self deprecation. Get yourself a backbone and a bank-loan, get yourself a purpose and point. Do not however get yourself a porpoise and a joint. God never tells his flock of human and disobedient dummies stuff like that, no. Just get a white Audi and have done with it. Search Auto Trader now within a radius of no more than 20 miles and be prepared to pay no more than £4k. Oh, and  make sure that if it's done more than 70,000, which it certainly will have done at that money, that it's got a recently renewed timing belt. Trade only no private sales and make sure they throw in a bit of warranty. No dogs please and try to get a non-smoker. Thus says the Lord.”

“Ok, got that.”

Grandfather

"So a few days after my grandfather died we discovered this old, unrestored Maserati in his garage. I'm not sure if we'll ever know the true story, all the paperwork is missing, we just have the raw car. Dates back to the mid sixties said a neighbour but he'd never seen it run, so he said. We believe that.When I say we I guess I mean me, my sister isn't really bothered about it but because of the way his estate has been split we know 50% each. Maybe I should work out a trade, maybe. I was considering poison but that's a bit extreme and we get along pretty well. I think I'll do the right thing and offer her $500 for her share, that and the coffee maker and the enamel pin badges that look like they came from the Far East. That should do it. Anybody know a good mechanic around here?"