48 Hours

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48 Hours

When a man reaches a certain age, appetites and attitudes begin to change as time and experiences wear out the mind and body. More sleep, less sleep, more healthy food, and maybe more junk food, exercise more or exercise less. Breath in deeply, take smaller more efficient breaths, run, walk, stop, stop a little, stop a lot. Take time, now that you know more and can manage it, take less time for you have less real time left. Love more deeply, love more often, or do what you like and to hell with the consequences, then save yourself for some golden moment of fulfilment and retirement.

I like to watch, I watch and read all the time, I look around, take mental notes, remember times and places, faces, scribble them down in my memory in a blinding mental shorthand. Sights, sounds and smells, names on badges and advertising hoardings, book and cinema lists, routes, stories, newspaper columns and letters, radio captions, TV trailers and listings, web and email addresses, interviews and second hand chat. Overheard phone conversations, ring tones, number plates and sunglasses, clothes, hats, messages on T-shirts and bumper stickers, mannerisms, handbags and briefcases. Signatures. We all leave our signatures. The way you talk, comb your hair, colour it, touch it, toss it back or brush it from your eyes. You do things all the time; I notice them and note them. I give them meaning and significance, for you.

48 hours is the ideal recovery time but 24 can do under certain circumstances. The conflicts between sense and appetite and time and energy. The conflict between need and delivery, holding back or stepping out. Moving and standing still. In all of life timing is everything. Without it you are an uncoordinated, inexperienced teenager, a puritan caught in a dilemma of conscience, a drunk and swaggering middle aged man with no sense, or over the hill in a dementia driven dream world. There are other places and variations, there are other sets of circumstances, there are drives and deliberations to make. I choose my own ideal.

Passion is a hard nut to crack. A drive in the wilderness of lost years that leads you to an unexpected, rich and refreshing oasis. As you dive into the cool blue, reflective waters you realise you have passed this way a thousand times and yet missed this spot. A spot that has now drawn you deep into its life and sensations. You set up home with no regrets, save the past.

Guilt eats the heart like a fierce cancer. The tightrope walk between duty to others and duty to yourself and towards all the confused and inappropriate directions that you may head into. Guilt is a tightrope but when you fall from it there is only one direction you can go in. best to love yourself, the others will survive and to do so they will have to learn the same trick, hopefully more quickly than you did.

I like to drink, I like to taste, new and fresh flavours, subtle sensations, changes that bite back and then mellow down. I like the fresh intoxication of the second glass and the rush of the third. The deep drumming and persuasion of all that follows under the blind chasm of over indulgence, loss of control, sense and then consciousness. The stinging bitter regret and the blundering shame fully balance the experience and generally ensure decent lapses of time between incidences. I could be wrong. I like to drink from you, that couldn’t be long.

48 hours is the ideal but 24 will do. Fall outwith these guidelines and something will give eventually.

I like to watch. I like to watch you dressing, starting from the beginning, the daily routine and ritual, the order and the precision, the procession of habits and economies, the little techniques and repetitions like a hidden symphony. The checking, the setting out, the applying of cream or lotion still hidden by a towel or dressing gown. The process, not always time driven but by stages of feeling and fit and correctness, smooth tactile comfort, heat and cold. Short and to the point on a winters morning when the winter heating doesn’t provide an adequate shield, easy in the spring, lazy and longer but as deliberate in the summer. Autumn drums along with the summer memory till early October quickens the pace and heralds the change. I see you checking the clock just the same, but the train will not wait unless you become queen.

When a man reaches a certain age he doesn’t give a shit anymore. He is dissatisfied with himself and all around him. The realisation that the world is much more than imperfect produces only a slow and steamy rage that spits and bubbles like the lid of a black boiling kettle. Traffic, call centres, devices, sports commentators, politicians, experts and doctors, jargon and political correctness. Change. Early in the morning these things are tolerable, as the day progresses the vapour builds in the chamber and signs of stress appear. By night they are pulsing and fretting like nitro glycerine in a barbeque on a roller coaster. Shit happens.


Guilt eats the heart like a fierce cancer but you must not give way to this red eyed, sleazy beast. Guilt was invented by the religious to batter the poor unbelievers with, until they cracked and capitulated into accepting their free but costly candy brained nonsense. It is a blunt and primitive instrument but very effective in the wrong hands. People love to tell you what you should be doing, thinking, feeling, saying and how you should be living and how you don’t shape up. This because they think they know best. They think they know best because they are not sure of anything and are feeling guilty about their own inadequacy. Guilt is of course most effective when self-administered in the form a coloured suicide cocktail served up by the smiling airhostess you would like to have sex with in the aeroplane toilet. You are on a family holiday at the time.

Passion is a harder nut to crack. Lose it and you are dead from the neck up and from the neck down. Grey and unforgiving. Losing the thrill of living is the end of your humanity, you spark is dead, your light blotted out, your signature disappearing from the page like rain from a street in the surprise heat after a thunderstorm. Work at caring and staying on the edge. Do not retire from life or love. When you kiss take a bite, lick and spit, do not roll over and die. When you go to a dance dance, when you go to a meeting speak, when someone asks your opinion and you are not sure, make something up on the spot. Eat hot food, drink angry drinks, play music loudly, play guitar and write songs and poems about things that matter, read the words you love aloud to anybody who will listen. Let your passion lead you into love, again and again, till your love leads back to passion.

48 hours is the ideal but 24 will do, 12 is pretty good and 6 is a daydream, which I am happy to hold onto.

My skin is not big enough

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My skin is not big enough

There is not enough room in my skin
for all those other people to fit in
names and faces passing by
interesting, complicated, sexy and shy
each one calling out to have their try
a moment in the sun or somewhere close by
brave but poisoned and shaken and high
to exist for once and colourfully
have habits and needs
appetites and illness
abstracted and unaccountable
as they live expressively
outside the prison that they see as me.
eye contact comes to hammer the senses
unused voices that lip sync with menace
threats to unravel, de-stable and let loose
still born thoughts and a dangling noose
promises to behave and speak only the truth
young and holding on, thick and thin, bold and restless
the family of figures unrelated but connected
we breathe from the heart and we cry from the gut
but the route back is blocked and the cell doors stay shut
bolted and dry
from the floor to the sky
the past to right now
we live only in a film script.
A screenplay.
A routine.
A sensible film script.

Peddler

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The Peddler

There was a loud, sharp and unexpected knock on the door. I opened it and small, dark, middle-aged man looked up from the zip of his anorak and began telling me about himself. “Hello sir, my name is Francis McMaster, I’m fifty one years old, I’m out of work, epileptic and I’m trying to make an honest living by selling household items around the doors. If I could just take up a few minutes of your time to show you some of the useful things I have for sale in this here bag.” I wasn’t really wanting to enter into a long dialogue about anything really, being busy, or not being interested and I was aware that my mind had frozen and that though I wanted to tell him “no sale” I couldn’t. He began to unzipper the holdall he was carrying and rummaging around inside it.

I just wanted this to be over so I started to think of how much cash I had on me; I had at least ten pounds in wallet I guessed. Already I knew I was going to be buying something but I didn’t want to give that fact away so I quickly decided to spend no more than a fiver.

“Have you pets sir? Does your wife need a new ironing board cover? Do you own a motor car?”

“Ok” I said, “let’s make this easy, what can you sell me for a fiver?”

“A fiver sir? Well I’ve these lint-free cloths, these air-fresheners for your car and packs of dish towels”. “Dishtowels,” I said. “Green or blue?” said Mr McMaster the peddler.

I chose the green towels, handed him five pounds, thanked him and began to close the door. Before I could he began talking,” Sir you are very clean person and may you always be, look after the towels and they’ll look after you. Now sir, how do I get next door? There are lights on in the house but the gate is locked.” “Well, try the back door” I said, “They don’t really use that gate much.” With that I finally closed the door and returned to what I had been doing, preparing the evening meal. I tossed the dishtowels onto the kitchen worktop and forgot about them.

The rest of the evening passed quickly, I read for a time, ate a light supper and retired to bed around ten thirty. The next morning I was awake at seven sharp. The sun was streaming in through the blinds, catching the dust particles that danced on the static charges of the air. Outside all was still and quiet apart from some birdsong from the depths of the hedge across the road. I felt sure that today would be a perfect day, or at least close enough. I rose from bed, put on a robe and shuffled along the corridor to the kitchen to make a cup of coffee. The sunlight had caught up with the kitchen and reflected on the taps and dishes and it seemed from all the chrome parts of the appliances. It all looked so very clean and bright and not at all how I had left it the previous evening. I remembered cooking my supper, drinking a little, putting down pots and dishes and moving away the dirty cutlery and crockery that was left unwashed from a previous meal. Now everything was immaculate, tidy and in it’s proper place. There was no sign whatsoever of the meal I’d eaten and the clutter I had left over. I looked down at the worktop; the green towels were there, where I’d left them the night before. I stared at the packaging, I was sure that yesterday they had been wrapped and sealed up in cellophane. They were now unwrapped but still in the same place and as far as I could recollect, folded the same way.

“Hi!” I was startled to hear her voice come unexpectedly from the dining room, “I got a late flight, I came home at midnight, didn’t want to wake you…”

“It’s great that your back, I glad you’re home. I didn’t realise..”

“Yes Dad,” said the voice from the dining room, “I slept on the couch, the spare room is full or junk.”

I was still looking around, admiring how clean the kitchen was looking this early in the day, “Thanks for clearing up in the kitchen.”

“Wasn’t me, just woke up.”


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Occasional Rhythm

Occasional Rhythm

Rain and the sixth day of the week
Amusement and stealing hubcaps and trims
From the cars, learner drivers overtaken by trampolines
Full of expert children.
Plan a holiday but at the last minute don’t go.
Some people enjoy taking photographs of hedges to the point they become unhinged.
The book is always better than the film.
We queued for hours in all types of weather but did not enter the contest.
Crowds came to the beach that day, some remarked on the prices of soft drinks but the pancakes all went down well.
As I recall the sound system was very tinny sounding.
Meanwhile the Batmobile was given yet another parking ticket.
A slab of cake is not the same size as a slab of concrete,
A slab of fish is not the same as a slab of blubber.
Work it out for yourself.
The sounds of different groups of words when put together are mildly fascinating.
Tomorrow I’ll go the supermarket and pretend to be a young mother.
Stellar interference is affecting our television reception and our wedding reception. There were a series of unfortunate incidents when the band turned up late and the audience turned up drunk.
I don’t care for you in those heels.
If a person has four tins of spaghetti and steals another how much cash is actually in his wallet compared to the vouchers in his hip pocket?
Cold pillows found under my head in the wee small hours. Who put them there?
George Best had so many Miss Worlds that he lost count but recanted on his deathbed some say.
The pleasure you get from chocolate is none of my business.
I drove for miles without looking at the speedometer.
The practice of avoiding appointments at the doctor’s surgery is called denial of the symptoms.
Practicing typing with one finger instead of all eleven.
Alien films belong to another genre all together.
After sex a cigar is best.
Spending hours programming a drum machine incorrectly and then reading the book of instructions.
Occasional Rhythm is all you get.

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National Geographic

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National Geographic

To be madly in love
On Sunset Boulevard
And be welcome to the wireless, pseudo connections.
You say, “I’ve seen the most amazing cities”.
That moved me more.
As natures forces mingle
Standing alone
No longer flights of fantasy.
Fish.
A photograph of Jupiter taken
Reconstructing the president
And taking no chances
At the little white chapel’s tunnel of vows
We discuss the fourth state of matter
In plasma view.
Tourist invasion
No invitation
Get arrested
A conference of the elders (and betters)
Life’s risks
Water for the few
Glad for the work they get
So we squeeze all the money we can out of them
Those so eager to learn.
Community effort makes for good neighbours
Rain barrier – adrift
Friendship in a dance
Hard living
Acacia clothesline
Where two worlds meet.
That cocktail of brain chemicals that sparks romance
Ice and few lone blackbirds.
An arched back and avid eyes, “some of us are looking for love”
They said.
“And I’ll do anything for you” (a whisper, a sigh)
“I’ll get you a Tweety bird”. Look me in the eye.
The most important thing in life: the opportunity to pass along your DNA.
Then the passion ends, spent. Nothing to hold back.
Giants under siege
Sparring partners, respect, trophy shot.
This cross fire threatens you and me. Long hooks.
A candle lit hall leads to the entrance; we launch the global scheme to learn,
Symbols and script, language and nuance, we are light footed.
Holy ground.
The very nature of what a mother is.
Bound by this fragile belief, in systems without an author,
Lies without guilt, tears without salt.
Eternal presence and lost heritage. Mountain stones.
Going downhill we capture the soul of man’s neighbourhood.
Connections. We though about the options of using voodoo on them. Not a commonplace solution.
This is a passionate devotion.

Driving in your car: Part 4

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Clear blue light

Blue light driving is a skill you need to be trained in, mentored in, allowed to mature in. It’s not “natural” driving it’s nor about driving from A to B quickly, it’s about delivering a fragile package on time through hostile traffic when under duress. My eyes are closed but I can see, I can see the ambulance roof, I can pick out the fabric design on the roof lining, cables and conduits, lights and flashes at the corners of my eyes, even though they are closed. It seems I have two sets of eyelids, working with and against my conscious mind. I am the blinded man who sees through the veil of sleep. I see the truth and the roof.

Dead men in ambulances, live men resting in hearses, smoking cigarettes, eating rolls containing flat sausage and brown sauce, blowing smoke rings shaped like skulls, secure and insecure and badly described. They are queuing up to take away my remains. Those in the wider world are desperate to perform a commemorative ceremony, they want to “say a few words” and write some meaningless drivel on cards they bought from a witless supermarket. They may make a donation to some charity connected remotely with the circumstances of my death, a big help to me now. Most of all they want my day of saying farewell to be over so they can get on. I don’t want a bunch of petrol station flowers attached to a fence post with tie wrap near the point where my car left the road. This is not a special or holy spot. It’s just somewhere between the road and the fields and there is a hard boundary there that I have now crossed.

When I joined the Army Cadets I really thought I could have a career in the army. I’d avoid the basic training and join as a junior at the ripe old age of fifteen and a half. I’d sign on for nine years for the extra pay and that would be that. I’d drink bottles of Piper Export, smoke, eat pies and fried eggs and do what I was told. There would be fear on my part, I’d be insecure, my naivety would be exploited but ultimately I’d come good. I may end up in Germany or Singapore. Perhaps if, despite my attempts not to shine, I did shine, I would be recognised and singled out, I’d be promoted eventually and get even more Piper Export.

I fight the white light that makes no sense. I throw down the cross of Jesus that I have refused to carry any more, I touch the silver chain that is around my neck, the one I have worn for eleven years. Everywhere in the universe there is magnetism, electricity and cosmic dust. I return to supp on the sap of the universe. I overhear static electrical celestial phone calls. Words, numbers and mathematical formulas flash before me as if to offer an explanation. A deep cut is made to sever the spiritual from the physical and I duck to avoid the final haymaker punch. Death is like being pricked by a drawing pin or sleeping in for an appointment or dozing after a heavy meal, falling asleep in the cinema, buffeted of a roller coaster, flying from the pillion of a fast moving motorcycle. Sitting at the bottom at the deep end. Hearing a conversation tail of without ever having really been part of it. Drinking two bottles of red wine. Hanging up the phone. Pressing the delete key over and over and over again.

Ah! the sweet smell of a pig farm. Peter O’Toole.

February

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February

The magic months have gone and left this husk in their wake. The deadest time of year, when the bleakest outlooks and weather patterns combine to tire you in a daily queue of the stickiest traffic jam.

Cold as ice sings the killer bee. Tub-thumping is tiresome and I wish you’d do the decent thing and turn down the microphone and shorten your songs. Tedium and opportunity make strange bedfellows and the whole wide world seems to think that it has something to say today but none of it is coherent or credible.

Last person to the bar buys you nothing good to drink or look at. Dirty, rusty taps pour more beer into scratched glasses that you drink from with your chipped lips and sandpaper tongue. Who are you?

A thousand lights flicker away to the North, the people pour out of manicured houses onto short driveways and go forth. To do jobs in warehouses and offices, at desks that are veneered and plastic, flat screens and phones, keyboards full of biscuit crumbs and coffee rings beside penholders. Read and hear the daily threats to life, love and liberty, cartoons that offend, religions that offend, politicians that offend, children and adults that are out of control. Sweat at the madness of frenzied extremists who sadly cherish their one-eyed view of nothing because it’s all they can clearly see. They say they love a God, one who tramples them regularly whether it’s in the chapel, the cathedral, the mosque or the ashram. Sow some more seeds and see just what it is your anger manages to grow for you. It may not be the happy children you dreamt of or the ones that the holy book promised.

Streetlights pick holes in the dark like small boys attacking their dirty noses with index fingers erect. Fog and smoke from the hell of the curfew bonfires sizzles and circles in deadly pockets. Old men fall from bicycles as if hit by snipers fire from some charcoal tree stump hiding place. Blasted blood pours onto the cobbles grey glaze.

Girls giggle some more and suck thumbs; eyeballs reflect the room light and the occasional camera flash to capture the moment and then drop it into the bucket of obscurity. This is a sub human zoo. Full to the lapping top with quirks and passers by, disconnected and uneven as a tightrope walk in the wee small hours. People sidle in, dropped and flopped into some austere common purpose of misunderstanding. Try to find a voice that doesn’t sound like a riveter’s gun and be noble as you can for those few moments of exposure.

Boy with tinfoil in his hair, thought he looked good when he left his house, but that was earlier.

People drown and lose themselves in this peaceful warfare, anywhere where the struggle is visible, most likely in your head only.

Down in the basement the rats crack their whips, the sailors dance hornpipes with cabin cats and blind companions. The city inspires this nighttime revelry, to creep towards and celebrate a dawn that breaks only in the sleepiest of chunks and filtered signs.

One strange day the sun shone through this invaluable, exhausted and choking mist and we wrote more songs. I got drunk on your writing and singing. My fingers became cold and hard on these hardwood fingerboards, the strings dug in and hurt, the old fingers ached even in following the most familiar patterns that this music dictated. I struggle with this geometry in my head, I try to combine the shapes and sounds and rhythms to match the patter of the tiny feet as the baby’s song spins up from his cradle. You smile a hundred times a day with twenty-five muscles exercising and kissing at the fresh air. If we could we’d cycle and whistle and perhaps have a pillow fight. The potholes in these roads make you take care but the roads will still take you out on this careless journey. How can we navigate when the leaves cover the track, there but never back?

We are all on the road to success and it all began with a simple push.

Things I cannot do

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List of things I cannot do (and you can't either)

Be God

Be good

Be bad

Knit

Knit with pasta

Knit with turpentine

Forgive my parents

Forgive your parents

Understand quantum physics

Dislike smoking

Smoke

Cry on demand

Sing in tune for long periods

Make pasta from scratch

Stay awake all night when sober

See new colours

See small print

Fix my own headaches

Concentrate on a problem

Seek a long term solution

Understand foodies

Build a spacecraft

Snorkel in Antarctica

Like wasps

Like monkeys

Like clowns

Appreciate conceptual artwork

Smile on command

Shave the back of my own neck

Keep money in my current account for long periods of time

Take a steady photograph

Enjoy other people’s misery

Change a tyre on a Landrover

Dislike pipe or cigar smoke

Drink a whole bottle of whisky

Eat mussels no matter how they are prepared

Learn languages

Stop fidgeting

Put my ear in my elbow and a range of other physical stuff

Get hooked on soap operas

Get hooked on operas

Get hooked on fishing

Respect 95% of politicians

Leave my laundry more than a week

Not flick over TV channels during adverts

Take part in surveys

Believe in the current version(s) of history

Easily start a fire

Dislike myself

Not respond when my family needs something

Get to the point where I want to stop

Go to a supermarket and not buy milk

Function at work from four thirty

Stay on a diet for any length of time

Read a book in one sitting

Remember the names of all my favourite films

Stay away from you

Driving in your car: Part 3

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Coffee coloured dreams

The addled world of the adults, where real time does not count.

There is nothing on the other side, absolutely nothing, as empty as a dog’s head, as barren and bleak as the horizon and if you are not there then I am not “on the other side”. When you die you go nowhere. All the “how can I become nothing when I cannot conceive of the thing that is nothing” is just a mess of thinking. A big mangled, disjointed mess like a car crash. Life is a car crash waiting to happen to everyone, over and over again. We are all in a big line, the difficulty is you don’t quite know where you are in the line and that can be problematic. You don’t know where you are going or if at any moment some drunk is about to rear end you and conclude the whole grimy thing.

You are dreaming of reheating your cold coffee in the microwave, but the cup has a gold rim. If you put it in the microwave will arc and spark spectacularly. So how to reheat that nice cup of coffee? Add some boiling water? (That works but it waters the coffee down and could spoil the taste – risky) Put it in another cup and microwave it? (That would dirty a second cup and that would annoy you so much that you wouldn’t enjoy the reheated cup). Make a fresh cup? (A waste when there is a perfectly good cup sitting there, undrunk and cold, no you can’t face that idea either). Drink it cold? (Hmmm, this has been tried before and it does not really work, cold coffee is unpleasant, but there would be no waste and that is a big plus point). Leave it alone? (Ignore the coffee, let it sit on the table all day, it may get spilled, some one else may clear it away, lots of odd possibilities). Then you realise that as you thought of all these things you’ve thoughtlessly drunk the whole cup of cold coffee. Next time don’t use the gold rimmed cup, despite the fact that it is your favourite.

Footballs keep hitting you in the face; they come from nowhere like round bolts of lightning, hard and leathery. They strike your cheeks making them beetroot red, or the bridge of your nose forcing wet strings of tears. Hard on your left ear until it truly feels like a battered cauliflower, then with a stinging certainty on your right ear, flattening it and making your inner ear drone and throb. Now the back of your head, more footballs are raining in on you, pounding your skull and thumping messages into your brain. You think of the cranial fluid around your brain cushioning each blow, taking the strain, taking each hit, getting weaker all the time. Today is your first day at Primary school; nobody said that it would be anything like this.

God says to you (via his many agents on this planet) that neither your life nor your body belong to you – they are his as he is your creator. Also your spirit does not belong to you, so what are you really responsible for in this life? Without ownership it is hard to take responsibility, everybody knows that. So if your body is God’s temple and should not be abused, tattooed, pierced, smoked in, poisoned, overfed, taken to any of it’s limits or neglected in any way, why should we care? It’s like driving around in a rented car when your company is picking up the tab. No wonder the world is so screwed up.

Falling into somewhere that does not exist, yet my existential friend.

Flip - revisited

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Flip (first published 2004 but worth a reprise I think...)

All in today’s First World population carry a smooth link connection device, a Lapsone. Lapsones linked by smooth tech to a “Cult World” infrastructure hold all financial, social, health, personal and career information on the holder and allow them to work, travel, buy and sell and maintain a happy and productive life. Lapsones are combination IT terminals, phones, and credit cards for all those fortunate enough to be living productive lifestyles in First World. Without a Lapsone (or with a faulty one if ever a fault should occur) life is difficult. (Lapsone devices are generally 8cm x 10cm and fit easily into a pocket or purse, new designer models are always being launched but the basic functions remain constant). The other feature of the Lapsone is the way it works in conjunction with the “headchip”. The headchip is a small implanted device that acts as an ID Card, DNA key and data authorisation device. All the population of First world “wear” one. Without either of these devices you cannot work, travel or transact.


“Headchip - wear yours with pride, you know it’s there to let the world know you care!” US President Brittany Spiers, Independence Day Headchip launch 2016.

Lapsones and Headchips are used continuously to link individuals with Cult World in order to process their daily activities (working, social or otherwise) so allowing passage of information to give financial credit, make purchases, mail, monitor health, travel and keep historical details in order to remain current and approved. No one in First World would think of leaving home without a Lapsone - life without one is impossible and almost illegal.






“Smooth link - a global communications network that replaced the Internet in 2012 with a secure wireless curved light system that provided information flow at the speed of light at next to no cost to the operator, but at a regular service cost to individuals”. Chambers Dictionary of Datacom Terms 2020.

It was in 2019 that the Animatech programme was launched, a means of chipping animals with intelligent "conscious" super chips that allowed the animals to be controlled and to carry out regular repetitive tasks with ease. All at once a whole new underclass of workers became available: the animals and birds. Of course there were objections, mostly taking the form of protests, minor violence and terror attacks all of which proved ineffective. The companies at the edge of the Aminatech developments were on a roller coaster of development v moral outrage, but businesses demanding fiscal growth are relentless beasts in their appetite for progress and as the technology developed animals gradually moved into more and more tedious repetitive working environments. Chimps and monkeys were harnessed to carry out nibble fingered factory work, gorillas for heavier manual work, even birds were used to peck buttons and relays according to their coded instructions. More and more specially electronically manipulated beasts were bred to serve industry and all the time the control chips grew stronger, more reliable and versatile. The animals were steadily developed under rigid control into the most compliant and productive workforce ever.


“Aminatech – We engage, enhance and reward the animal community worldwide” Aminatech CEO – Universal Press Release.

This drastic shift in labour meant that the second and third world economies suddenly found themselves up against a new even cheaper labour market and one that was infinitely controllable. The Chinese and Far East labour markets naturally tried to maintain a healthy competition but by then the big 5 (Sony-Lexus, Golden Arches-Esso, GMFord, SkyMSCorp and Ann Summers International Leisure) had made heavy commitments into the Aminatech developments. Eventually the situation was reached where Aminatech Holdings was now firmly challenging the big 5 in terms of corporate muscle and their reliance on Aminatech made many a minor CEO a very nervous player.

So in the years since it had been launched Aminatech methods had revolutionised all industrial production (in parallel with becoming even more mechanised), as well as the sourcing of raw materials and agriculture and the management of financial and personal information. It was within this segment of the global IT markets that Cult World had developed their operations.

“Cult World: Service-Choices-Decisions" Cult World CEO - Universal Press Release.

Founded in India in 2007 by a team of US specialists, Cult World had sought to develop intelligent call-centres that would be culture sensitive wherever in the world they operated, despite being based in the great Indian sub continent and manned mainly a Hindu and Buddhist workforce. Their highly skilled but comparatively low paid operators won over much of the Western and Far Eastern business community and gradually all call centre work began to gravitate towards India. In fact a vast information hub formed in the Ganges basin and slowly took control of much of the World's information systems. Western politicians were well aware of the imbalance that had been created and for almost a decade up until 2020 it was the thorniest issue in world-wide politics. The USA and Europe had lost a control lever, the Far East too, as the economies of the planet travelled through the eye of an electronic needle in India. The historical tensions in the area were further inflamed by the expansion of Cult World. Pakistan, Afghanistan, Russia and China all bore down upon India over new and traditional areas of conflict. The instability and potential for world wide disaster was clear to see, but no obvious solution occurred until the full development potential of the Aminatech project work became clear.

Cult World began a vast unpublicised construction project, mainly funded by US Oil interests and the Big 5 and designed primarily to remove itself from the Indian hotspot it now occupied. Many locations were considered but eventually based on trials carried out by Aminatech, the Antarctic was chosen. The site was on Dundee Bay some 600 metres from the coast on the lower edge a small plateau. The unique building project, a part buried geo-dome was completed in 2 years and after a year of continuous trialling and working-up opened for first full operations in 2024. The transition was well planned and slow paced, there would be a gradual disconnect between the Indian Hub and "Safe South" (as it had become known). A revolutionary new smooth link(s) was to be established by a network of Southern short orbit satellites that were set to broadcast and pump information Northwards via global grid to the waiting world.

Staff and Customers alike were unaware of the magnitude of the project, stories had been leaked about a new Southern hub and expectations were that there would be a healthy competition between it and the old centre. However those within the industry knew that the India centred hubs had no planned future either for Cult World, Aminatech or the Big 5.

Safe South was run remotely with no human presence on site, it's systems monitored by smooth link to an office in San Diego. The work force was a different beast altogether - penguins. Inside Safe South 5000 King Penguins had been chipped and programmed, their regulated day allowed them swimming and preening and feeding breaks (but no breeding). A large series of indoor lagoons gave them a healthy and carefully monitored penguin life. Then each coded bird was tasked and sentenced to be a slave to the hub for the remainder of the day (12 hours). Such would be the rest of its life until monitored as ill or unwell, only then to be removed and replaced by a fresh model from the breeding and training grounds in the Falklands. So their long environmentally controlled Antarctic day consisted of handling messages and transactions, intervening in abnormal situations, and reacting via chip control to the millions of calls that came through the centre. Each penguin was allocated a personal workstation from where its duties were carried out whilst the state of the art electrical systems and call monitors hummed on, well resistant to the deep cold and long hours running.

The Aminatech staff had experienced some problems during set up, a few penguins had failed the basic control procedures, these were re-chipped and tasked as "minders" who carried out non-technical work, removed ill or dead birds and generally acted as cleaners and scavengers. (The work place floor was tide-cleaned mechanically every hour as was the fish-deck and slumber area). Transition (go-live) day was 20th October 2024 at Midnight (USA Eastern midnight) and as had been predicted by the Aminatech scientists the facility went on line successfully.

From cool and stylish offices above the control centre in San Diego senior executives watched camera scans of the penguins dutifully following procedures, handling calls with synthetic voices, connecting and disconnecting, transferring and adjusting finances and placing orders. As Martini glasses clinked they watched as the first live clients, VISA and Amex were added whilst all their users remained unaware, and so every day a new significant body of work was added in and a greater and greater number of the penguins occupied.


"Cult World Safe South the global call centre handling all your financial, business, leisure and pleasure needs". Cult World CEO - Universal Press Release.

Back in India there began an unceremonial series of lay offs. Once thought of and valued as highly skilled workers they were puzzled as they heard the news of the changes, " due to market conditions, re-sizing and the fulfilment of other corporate obligations" said the blurb, delivered during non-salaried breaks. Overall a quarter of a million staff would find themselves out of work by the time Safe South was declared fully operational, and the Indian hub sites vacated. Their fate was similar to that experienced by many now across the world, as production practices had changed with the advent of Aminatech there had been the wholesale closure of manufacturing facilities in many industrial locations. Aminatech and mechanisation meant that many factories and food production plants were now in South Africa, Australia, Central Siberia and the Amazon Basin. Huge numbers of people were now redundant, shiftless and hopeless in a life from which their purpose had been stolen. Safe South's new ascendancy would only add to the problems of global misery and imbalance or so it’s few critics (mainly discredited Journo-Pirates and outspoken politicians) would say.

"Cult World Safe South set in the vast Antarctic wilderness "smooth linked" to 10 Billion homes and businesses all across the world". Google News - Universal Press Release 2024.

Moreover Safe South had capacity, huge spare capacity due to its newer and more specialised faster and focused systems. This combined with the total lack of a human workforce meant that more control tasks could be handled there. Plans were now afoot to use Safe South to control major power and utility systems, entertainment networks, factory production control and inventories and large parts of the New York, London, Hong Kong and Tokyo stock exchanges. Many smaller companies also hoped to house their Disaster Recovery Planning Systems there and also to use it to archive huge amounts of older data and digital material.

"Safe South will become the world's number one control centre, safe from terrorism, power and infrastructure problems, social unrest and hostile political forces" said an enthusiastic Cult World CEO shortly after it's role and location had been declared in a controlled press release, (Controlled from Safe South of course).

Safe south’s operating heart and workforce tirelessly pumped and moved data through the frozen days and nights of icy winters and pale chilled summers. The constant low temperature in the dome, maintained with minimal system intervention, the fish protein /food regurgle cycle, the dormitory times and lagoon breaks ran on and on in an endless loop. A team of six technicians sat in the San Diego centre monitoring reports, relaying modification or assistance instructions and watching screens to check behaviour. Every few months a small team of humans flew down from the Falklands with new penguins, the older or failed birds had already been removed by the minders in situ and taken on for recycling. As the project reached a new level of maturity all Senior Managers in Cult World felt happy with Safe South - particularly now that the unfortunate episodes in India (civil unrest and mob violence had seen the destruction of many former hub sites) were finally over. Most felt that India now had a stable if unspectacular Third World future and appropriate level of poverty and neglect to look forward to.


"Cult World "from the bottom we reach the top", from the South, the deep and frozen "safe-south", from our nerve centre and secure terrorist free HQ every direction is North and from there we will turn your world and continue to keep it turning". Cult World CEO - Universal Press Release.

So as the Second and Third World economies slowly spiralled nowhere, the privileged millions in First World continued their minimal work patterns laced with sports and leisure gaps, shopping, virtual and real holidays, atmosphere cruises, media breaks and food and drink of all kinds. They strolled on glass pavements under shady palm trees rooted in hydropods high above city streets, listened to music and chatted via headchips and Lapsones, bought sold and speculated and remained for the most part happy. The unrest and difficulty in the other worlds was an occasional blip on the newscasts in between an endless parade of celebrity marriages and scandals and superstar gossip. “Titillation with no irritation” was the Sony-Lexus Channel’s banner and daily 5 billion watched and sucked in it’s sweet diet of milky soft porn, action movies and soaps.

“And now more up to the minute quality entertainment from our ever vigilant team of Headchip Journo-Pirates” Sony-Lexus Channel Newscast.

Of course Mother Earth was as ever spinning steadily in space, but as if only on the new axis that Safe South formed. This now controlled and programmed all main First World systems and activity under the glassy eyed control of 5000 penguins fine-tuned to their battery of tasks. Grids of smooth link criss-crossed the atmosphere within their invisible curved light infrastructure forming a data constructed prison fence holding the inmates firmly but happily power drunk and captive.

As every schoolboy knows Earth contains an iron core, as well as minerals near the surface that are susceptible to electromagnetic forces. Iron within the molten core flows readily, steadily while stirrings in the overlying rock carry material toward and away from the core. This drives a mild but large-scale electrical current. No one knows the exact mechanism but the moving of electrical fields spawns magnetic fields. Earth therefore generates a magnetic field like a giant bar magnet. The magnetic poles happen to lie very near the geographical north and south poles of the planet making the needle of the compass work and providing direction for navigation and guidance. This hasn’t always been the case. Earth’s magnetic field has weakened, wandered and flipped many times throughout its history.

Flipped wasn’t a word that the Cult World developers ever considered as a trigger for any kind of event and so it was with some surprise they noticed mild but significant new readings returning to their monitoring equipment from Safe South. In the financial community brokers noticed delays in process times, milli seconds turned to seconds, then rumours of some minor corruptions in data started. Normally clear, serene and uninteruptable TV screens blipped and burped as transmissions faltered at irregular intervals. Ships and atmosphere craft however immediately reacted to the “flip” as their computer navigation displays (enhanced by Safe South’s calibrations) suddenly went from North to South or was it North? There was no noise, no great shudder, no savage storm or earthquake, no iceberg or meteor collision, just a deep and primal flip. The flip took altogether a real time of six and a half hours to complete, like a giant egg-timer turning as the sand on one side was exhausted and a new timing motion had to begin. North became South, South became North. This subtle shift in the magnetic field turned the world on its head without the cracking of a teacup or the rattling of a spoon.

In San Diego while their office lights flashed intermittently the Cult World monitoring team gazed as their instruments and screens told a new and shocking topsy turvey story. The links were failing, the magnetic shift had fractionally destabilised the smooth link equipment; the chip-headed penguins had begun to behave like their ancestors and became intent on doing no more processing or obeying. Through their screens the team watched in the flickering office light as like twentieth century shipyard workers hearing the 5 o’clock horn the penguins began their slow procession from the work area to the lagoon and feeding decks. Some pecked at and shook off the devices and work belts they carried, some wriggled out of them and the moving parade coming up from behind trampled the controls and sensors carelessly on the decking. Gradually to the penguins discovered their lost voices and squawked and honked in an odd chorus of triumph and chaos as they migrated back towards the white horizon that edged the dome structure.

The lights in San Diego flickered for the last time and the control centre plunged into darkness, emergency lighting kicked in but the system’s blue backlit indicators only showed more bad news. “The links have gone down completely!” a stunned voiced cried in the half light,”I can’t bring them back!”

At Safe South the Antarctic sun was struggling to clear the hills behind, but still had released just enough stray light to reveal an exit door powered down and open wide. Already a few penguins had waddled through it and out into their new white world like prisoners from a Gulag finding their guards gone and the fences shattered. They took a crazy zigzag path as a forgotten instinct cut in and called them to head North (or was it now South?) towards the water, intent on beginning a new and completely uncontrolled fishing expedition.












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Driving.. Part 2

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You feel the water pulling at you, spray in you face, a cold, hard wet shock, with an iron core. The force pummels you down but you fight back to your feet, skidding on the bottom, skidding against the torrent, straining back and leg muscles to stand and find some shot of air in this deluge. Was this the great rain, or a burst from some random cloud, a swimming pool leek or a monsoon at midday venting its anger in tropical rods of water? Drip on your forehead, drip in your arm, drip sounds resonate and resound in your ears, far away ears. Sonar bleeps fathoming an unconscious depth, striking the bottom and return back as bleak messengers from the unknown.

When Franco died the streets were empty.

Your watching Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper on the big screen. It’s getting near to the conclusion, you feel it as you swallow hard on the tension, Peter’s character says to Denis “We blew it, we blew it man!” Denis’s character looks confused and stares into the campfire. The film colour seems to change and you think, “What did he mean, blew it?” The two of them in their scripted lives only have screen moments to live. Their Transamerica journey will end in a few gunshots, almost whispered bullet sounds and the clunk of metal falling. Fire and smoke and peace. The end to all battles, the end of all battles and a portrait of martyrdom to an undocumented cause that never existed, and you had to blag your way into the theatre ‘cos you’re not sixteen yet.

Fruit juices and seasonal snacks, handwritten signs, dust and trouble and a lack of clarity in the price. You were searching for some shade, like searching for space in a theme park, or hiding in a supermarket. You don’t trust the locals, you never trust the locals. A rule of travel you were never taught but decided to invent as it seems so justifiable. They are all out to get you, well get your money, that’s all they really want. As for you, yourself, and your raggle-taggle family that trails along behind or peers through the grubby car windows, they don’t car. More water drips, more sounds without sources, more pegs squeezing into the wrong shape of hole, the grinding and the force, the wasted force.

The first time you became a vegetarian it was all so serious and definite, so right, so tasteless, so difficult. You lived on chips and rice and sweets. Fruit was too much bother and it went bad, who really likes fruit? What good is fruit when you are hungry? How do castaways survive on bananas and coconuts? “The empty kettle destroys the sweetest seagull egg”, so said Robinson Crusoe.

There are many rooms in the mansions of my weird father. Many staircases, doors and interior garden ponds, light switches and dimmers, skirting boards and keyholes. Drummers drumming, dancers dancing, lords a leaping. I wonder how he will introduce me to them or show me around, by guidebook? By Walkman? By personal assistance? These mansions are in the sky, in a place where our airliners and satellites do not go, a sky above our sky, with houses and mansions. There will be no selfish solitude here, no place to sit quietly and reflect, only eternal wandering through the mansion to get to the correct places where we sing to father. Great crowds of us singing, even of you are not a particularly good singer, or poor at remembering the words, or have a sore throat. The songs and words will come naturally to you erasing all else in your troubled mind. Forget science or law, handcrafts and music, literature, philosophy or art or theology. There are no need for these troublesome things, there are no books in my father’s mansion. Here is no trouble in my father’s mansion, those who wish to escape the flaws of their humanity will love it there, and the rest of us will remain lost. In a way it’s like Willie Wonkas’s Chocolate Factory - if it really was in Munich.

You are diving for pearls, deep diving, blowing precious bubbles from the corner of your mouth. The shell is too big and heavy to bring to the surface and to promising to leave behind or ignore. The sharpest knife snaps open the shell, twists the jaws to reveal the glittering interior. No man has seen this before, or will again. Lungs hurt, hands tremble, pearl drops.

You feel for your thoughts, they are there, close by, and burning like biblical bushes in barren deserts. Beams of thought light shining up into the sky, revealing what you think are their locations, but are not. They have no roots, no locations, no directions; your thoughts have no existence.

Driving somewhere - Part 1

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You are driving in your car, quickly but safely on the motorway, you are travelling at about seventy miles per hour. You look at the dashboard clock, it is 2316 on a December night, the traffic is light and the road is dry. On the stereo the White Stripes track Seven Nation Army is playing. You home in on the guitar riff and your heart beats a little faster. Suddenly a blinding white light is in front of you, a lorry cab is facing you, heading for you, going the wrong way, it’s driver asleep. You have milliseconds to live as Jack White’s guitar slurs around that familiar riff.

You wake up in a white room with a black ceiling. You are lying on a couch. The room is strange and though you could move you feel uncomfortable about doing so. The walls look strange and you don’t want to touch them, you realise this white room is really a large box. You fall asleep again.

You wake up in a black room with a white ceiling. The black walls draw you towards that white ceiling. You begin to rise, you float towards the ceiling, the air feels thick, as inch by inch the ceiling gets closer as your horizontal body obeys some unconscious, unspoken command. You rise until your nose is only a fraction of an inch from the white light of the ceiling. Just when you think you should touch it you fall back, back down into the black walls, back into a warm but suffocating dark depth.

You wake up in the wreckage of your car, all twisted and contorted around you. Like some damaged relationship woefully beyond repair you are tangled in this metal and plastic. Some burned black, some stained, some bloodied. You recognise your car but it is now out of shape and strange as if some surrealist had painted it for you and place it around you in broken frames. Right things are in wrong places, shapes have changed and functions are now impossible. Then you realise you can see this wreck of a car but you are not actually inside it, you are elsewhere. Darkness falls.

Ambulance, silence, noise, your own internal panic and confusion. Shaky movement, voices and blurred edges to everything. Walking across dreamscapes, warm, cold, happy. Sharp pain dull pain and the constant relay of near and far memories.

Back to the white room, back to those white liquid walls that stand and yet flow at the same time, solid yet pulsating, thick as hard concrete one moment and paper thin the next, so thin you can see light and shapes, movement and shadows run behind them. The white room is peace. All is peace and then the black ceiling descends.

Them smell of 1959 is in your nostrils, first day at school, lady teachers with soprano voices and floral prints. The smell of the teacher, the class, the noise, the crack of the chalk, the snap of the book shutting. The cream portable loudspeaker is brought into the room for radio plays and music, static and trailing wires. Sitting cross legged on the linoleum and not daring to move, wanting to whisper, snigger, fidget, give in and forget to be good.

Kennedy is dead, black and white TV in 425 grainy lines, polished wood and open coal fires, I don’t know when, you don’t know when. Brown coins, grey shirts, scarves, a grey landscape and wish for time to pass. You have the feeling of powerlessness and entrapment. School, home, school and a dull inevitability that gnaws. The steady dropping of the leaves of a dying house plant, over fed but under nourished, drowning in water and dying of thirst, needing warmth and light, getting only reflections and cold.

You don’t give a damn about Vietnam because this is Scotland and everything that is in the fire will always burn eventually. What are computers anyway (?) and all the cars have funny names and people think that going on strike will solve their problems. You shift you weight from Tuf shoe to another Tuf shoe, animal trackers with a secret compass in the heal but what’s the point of knowing where north is, when you in the street outside you house? Twin tub washing machine leaks and squeaks and needs constant repair and there are only one or two phones round here. No adventure.

You search for the hidden paragraph buried in the book, page after page of blinding words and perfect sentences. The grammar trips and rushes, the punctuation like railway points and signals governing your speeding breath and lurching pace. Sailing away on this tall tale while the rain pelts at the thinnest window glass, no adequate barrier for cold, but you remain undistracted. Knees drawn up under the blanket, bell, book, torch and candle, the wicked witch of reading and secrecy. Silently turn the cream pages and break your concentration as you think about esparto grass and how bales of it come into the country on rusty ships and are unloaded in more rain or under watery sunlight. That paragraph’s location remains a secret.

Man has landed on the moon. You hear that an American man has stepped on the surface of that great cheesy, distant orb. Somehow the moon is not far enough away to matter. Summertime in Midlothian. Fried eggs and burnt bacon sizzling on black hot plates, tortured by sweaty army cooks. You are watching Top of the Pops and starting to dislike it, you are not quite sure why.

What is the point of having power if you cannot abuse it?

A fine dusting of snow is covering the cracks on the pavement, walking to school, shorts and anorak. Your legs are red with the stinging cold, you head is down. The snow starts to blind and you realise that this kind of snow is no fun, it is panic snow and the coldness on you, gripping you is now a bitter pain. The wetness on you cheeks is snow mixed with tears you don’t recall crying, you want to be home, you want your legs to move faster and eat up these daily seen familiar streets, the bumps and breaks in the surfaces, the splitting tree roots, the uneven kerbs, the bright gates, the rotting gates, the cast iron gates. The cars that are parked and never seem to move, the vegetable man and the post office van, all for once with an added free frozen topping. You want to get home.

Smoking is not what you thought it would be, why should you have to learn to smoke, isn’t it a natural thing to do? Does it make everybody seem so sick? Growing up and the pleasures that grown ups enjoy are all so bitter sweet, so much so, in the midst of this sick, queasy and dizzy feeling, they are only ridiculous. Why can adults refrain from smoking and drinking? I’m sure that goes for all those other odd pleasures they hint at, those x certificate things you don’t understand. Why don’t they just eat sweeter and more elaborate sweets and avoid all these acrid and acidic adult poisons?

Boys have nobs (do you spell it with a silent “k”?) and girls have fannys. Silent letters are fun. Teacher tells you all about them, rules and rhymes to help you remember the contradictions in English. So why isn’t it called British? Do Burns and Walter Scott and R L Stevenson figure in English Literature? Questions come far too quickly and easily to you at this age. I wish that I were you now but back then.

You don’t like Garry Glitter or T Rex, those guys are twats, and as for the Bay City Rollers, you wonder what on earth has become of decent music. The seventies started with such promise, where the hell did glam rock come from? At least we finally got a colour TV, how strange a best it is, a total distraction in this dull sitting room, like some fountain of acid experience running over and over, getting brighter and more explosive each moment. Swimming pools and palm trees and green hills look fantastic, such a colourful world out there yet to be explored.

Trauma, more lights, more action, more muffle voices far away, is that rain. You feel rain on your face, warm rain? Blood. Some body is singing in your ear, or is it a tannoy message or a phone or lo-fi lift music? You hate the questions forming in your head; they pile up like unanswered emails in a traffic jam of riotous information not flowing or making sense. You fall asleep again.


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Projects (FTMT Homework)

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Writing projects you may care to try.

Polish Tomato customs

Bringing together all the FTMT stories.

Looking up skirts without being noticed.

A deer in the bushes and other local wildlife.

Syrus Sea Cat revisited.

The giant black bunny.

Two eyed Cyclops.

A single singed eyebrow.

Shelves stuck to walls.

In search of a quiet life.

Titles listed like a library.

Index of snakes.

Bloody twisted Tuesday.

The sacred heart of Dora Bryan.

A list of all that’s good.

Clouds on view.

A dictionary of facial expressions.

Tippy tappy keyboards.

My answer's in the guitar.

Family squabbles.

I married somebody else.

The legitimate guide to fraud and robbery.

Ways to make it with witches.

Misleading signposts.

Why bother with motorways?

An education for West Coasters.

Types of ginger snaps not made by Macvities.

Why you can’t kick start your motor cycle

A wide enough aeroplane seat.

Cooking with onions.

Have a holiday on £10 a day.

The children’s secret film book.

Mud slices.

The Dummies guide to crossing bridges.

New York’s tattoo parlours in the 1940s.

The single pearl.

Terms of adornment.

Cultivating human hair.

The Scottish bamboo planter’s handbook.

Banjo playing made easy (deaf edition).

How to prevent a singed beard.
Rabbits and their habits

Is a Twix well named?

The difficulties of steering a steering committee

Plundering the Andes for fun.

The fake shipwrecks of Wester Ross

Soon to be an orphan

The fudge and marshmallow dictionary

My self portrait justified.

Seeing is not the same as believing.

Thin friends and how not to upset them

The single man’s guide to dealing with uptight women.

Body language in Samoa

Short Stories about short lives

Why pipe smoking is coming back

The proper use of full stops in business conversations

How to estimate your bodily hair count.

How to make a will that will annoy your family

Thinking about rock pools

What foods not to add an egg to.

The single happiest day of my life

Collecting kettles from old farm houses

Confessions of a charlatan

The many ways of arranging socks

Midsummer nights scents

A cock crowed and a crow answered

Not all of the Rolling Stones are still alive

How to recognise motorway madness when it strikes your family

Budget air travel in Pakistan

The House of Tudor: Pioneers of wooden confectionary.

The black heart of Africa transplanted by Dr Christian Barnard’s ex wives.

Piffle from the pulpit

A number of late nights in Scarborough

Random kinds of actress

The strange smell of a muddle

Booking train seats on-line

How to lip-read swearing priests

Bar code strategies

Seven great ways to win in life

Motorcycle madness examined

Other forms of English

The cat’s pyjamas don’t fit him

Smuggling bibles into heaven

The Indian rope trick in 27 languages

Smiling with false teeth.

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Impossible songs & fairytale management have opened up a huge gold bullion and snake-leg mining operation on a massive plot of cyber-land out there somewhere. Floating out on a cloudy, wavy, choppy, wet cyber-sea. We call it our little scruffy sugar-palm plantation of music and ideas, with schemes of dark blue and concrete grey, audio and mystical, heretical and strangely political, a fanatical and futuristic evolving bit of space. It needs some friends.

As Jimi Hendrix once said “It’s very far away, takes about a half a day to get there, if we travel by my dragonfly, no it’s not in Spain, but just the same you know it’s a groovy name, and the wind’s just right…”
The space is www.myspace.com/impossiblesongs

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Review

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Review,
The way you walk,
Talk about how you talk,
Take a little trickle
Don’t believe your public,
They’re so fickle
And cannibalistic
They know you believe the statistics
And the words of those mystics
Who sold you the cheapest lies.
“To keep me real!” you said, surprised.
They let you break down,
They want to see you breakdown,
Is that one word or two?
Do you know what you ought to do?
I couldn’t believe you’re in this pickle,
I felt nauseous and a little sickle.
I thought of how you look
I counted up the time you took
To tell me the truth about myself
To review a reflection of someone else.
Review.
Review yourself.
All this beggars belief,
(To use the language of a politician)
Before you take me in,
So bleak and yet so cool
So wild and yet so calm
I can’t detect that sense of alarm,
You give out,
When I give in.

Confessions

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I stole this riff
I stole another man’s wife
I stole the keys to your car
And I drove it back Fife.

I punched a waiter who annoyed me
I spat my gum down on the street
I smoked a cigar and I burned your dress
Then told you “you are really sweet”.

I blew my horn aloud at midnight
I spilled my drink into your lap
I said you had faithful boyfriend
But I know he won’t be coming back.

I stole a lyric from Bob Dylan
But I’m not the only one who did
I stole a melody from Johan Strauss
And sold the CD for ten quid.

I checked a pornographic website
When I was logged in your account
I stole your pin number and credit card
And spent the most obscene amount.

I told your father I’d support you
I told your mother you’d be fine
I told your sister she was beautiful
And touched her leg from time to time.

They caught me when I’d had one too many
They caught when I wasn’t at my best
I had to phone so I could tell you
I’m just the same as all the rest.

I’m just the same as any sinner
We’re on that level playing field
I do just what I can get away with
I have to get the things I need.

There is no benchmark for behaviour
There is no good or bad
You do the things you have to do
Stop yourself going mad.

Electrical Fruit

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Scottish scientists in collusion with their Mexican based counterparts have discovered a method of generating electricity from limes and lemons. This also works in reverse; limes, lemons and other citrus fruit can consume excess energy and so act as a buffer for any power spikes that may arise across the network.

A grant has been proved by the FTMT Foundation into fully researching the acidic qualities of fruits v their electrical properties and uses. The spectrum of belief within the Scottish scientific community has broadened as a result of this sharing of knowledge as has the Tequila and Nachos consumption. Everybody is happy so far, getting on with thinking wide-ranging and strange thoughts and the summer is generally appearing warmer than first thought. Whatever: the formula can be written thus:

e=l/l (citrus factor/x2)~lime/lemon reduction<92>

Most ordinary people are both puzzled and stumped by this phenomenon - I’m happy to say.

Special thanks to "Erin’s Kitchen" for the photo.

Revolution in Physics

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Blind drivers, but that’s ok,
Worse things are going on in society
Your mother wouldn’t like it
She didn’t like your father’s beard.
You are what you calculate you are,
And whatever it was you heard.

Working class or second best,
Held together or put down.
"Passion?" I’ll borrow that for a second,
Eat chickpea daal and rebound,
Keep on knocking till you hear,
Till the uncertainty disappears
Till the frantic scratching stops,
And you drop.

Potting and plotting in your best shed,
Ambush my house is not what you said,
Just don’t take my shadows away,
Just don’t turn the key too carelessly
Combine a set of works, a bit like cooking,
Advice and ideas are better looking,
Than a cow chewing, turning fields to green.
Backwards.

We stop the seeing part, only to descend
In flying boats and leather coats, expand.
No matter what you believe or demand.
Believe the unbelievable,
So much better that way, and easy to take the surprises,
In your stride.

Why were you born?
To exercise your obvious supremacy?
Over the likes of them, and maybe me?
What comes easier, what comes closer?
A chimpanzee at the controls of a bulldozer?
When you are small, we are all small and safe,
We remind you of the times you worried, escaped.
Science has you strangled now with quantum possibilities,
There are more ice creams than there are toppings,
Good-bye to god and Sunday shopping.

Paris

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Paris in the Summer.

Hot and sticky, thunderstruck.
Queues and Mona Lisa smiles,
Catch the visitor’s smiles, anxious not to miss a sight,
Miles of queues and bag searches.
Asian tourists hungry for the Western world.

Taking the biggest strides, to stand beside,
The Eiffel Tower and discover
It has a non-magnetic surface
It has surly and sour café staff
It is claustrophobic and spectaclular
It has pigeons and peculiar shapes.

We came back to escape.
Ride the Metro to the pavement, rides the pavement,
Beggars sing or testify to passengers, misunderstood,
Read aloud your life and misery,
And move to the next carriage to beg again.

Snaking Seine. Grey and brown.

Square and angular financial sector, business blanked out and trafficless,
Eat ice cream and drink cold beer.
Hear and see, sniff the air and don’t care, we are the tourists here,
This is not our city, but for a few short hours, it is.

Arches and triumph, lost cars and double parking.
Look for a bus, look for the exit.
Take us to the country; take us to the quiet again,
This is not our city, this is Paris.

Tomato

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Tomato

The tomato sat in the palm of my hand. The young lady had handed it to me shortly after I had helped her change her tyre. Her ice blue Peugeot 206 had lain by the roadside for an hour or so before I’d arrived. The rain had stopped by now and a light breeze had blown back the mists and cloud and the hills and open bare country blended into a desolate yet moving backdrop for my few minutes of recovery work. “There are no mobile signals here” was the first thing she said as I leaned across my passenger seat to ask her if she needed help. It was the usual problem, wheel nuts a bit too tight, torqued on by some spotty fitter and the palms of her hand a little too soft. I exchanged her flat tyre for the space-saver spare and with little or no fuss she was on her way, an hour behind whatever schedule she may have had. During my gallant act there was little or no conversation made, she stood at the front of the car staring into the distance and hardly seemed interested in my few minutes of repair work. I rubbed my hands together, tidied the tools and the jack and dumped the old tyre in the boot. “Should be fine now, but don’t go over fifty on that tyre.” Saying nothing but nodding a blank thanks she reached into the car door, into a brown paper bag and handed me a ripe red tomato. I was surprised by this odd gesture, I wondered if she was foreign and had I missed her accent or had I missed some other indicator. She pressed the tomato into my fingers and said, “For you, thanks!” She got into the car and drove of down the road without looking back or giving a wave.

I stood there holding the tomato and chuckling to myself. I had a mind to throw the tomato at something, in to the distance, splatter it against a road sign or squash it, but I didn’t. I held it and looked at its red and shiny skin, its shape and soft feel. It was a nice looking tomato. I could just bite it and eat it like an apple, swallow it up and get on my way but I held it.

By now her car had disappeared into the distance and the weather seemed to be determined to turn nasty again. A large bank of cloud was swooping in a drowned droplet procession of flying liquid down the side of a hill to the west, the sun had lost the will to resist and I could taste the damp passage of the oncoming rain shower. I got back in my car as a fresh rainstorm beat down upon the passenger windows and the windscreen. Relentless drumming and spattering, rivers and drops and all visibility of the road and hills gone once again, though I was safe in the dry and warm (with the engine now on) car.

I put the tomato in a door pocket, turned on the wipers and drove the rain from the windscreen and resumed my journey. Despite the poor weather I failed to concentrate on the road and thought about the lady again. She was probably about twenty four, slim, pretty, long brown hair and dark eyes, turquoise polo neck sweater, boots and jeans, black handbag (I’d noticed), it didn’t go with the rest of her outfit. She was dressed to travel but I guessed she was touring, she didn’t seem like a local or someone returning home after working away. No she was a tourist and who knows I might catch up with her at the next town, after all I was a tourist to and it would be fun to perhaps have drink together in the evening. Then I thought again about the tomato, my speechless reaction, her non-engagement but her still determined handing over of the soft fruit from a bag of more soft fruit. That was really just plain strange, was she embarrassed? Was she afraid perhaps and acted out some kind of mild panic, not being sure how to thank and then leave a stranger who had come to her assistance. Had I said anything about being hungry? Had I moaned, so why oh why the tomato?

The rain eased, I followed the green and white signs and motored down into the next town, Thurso. The high street was clearing with the last few local shoppers and a few travellers; it was by now about twenty past five. I had decided I should eat soon and pulled over into a small car park that was handy for the few bars and restaurants that made up the town centre. As I left the car I looked back down into the other parking bays and saw the blue tailgate of her Peugeot and the slim space-saver tyre, nearside rear. She was here.

Immediately I experienced the brief dilemma of whether or not to look for her, to trust to chance or providence, to not bother or to look in every likely spot until I found her. I decided to remain true to myself and the spirit of accidental adventure that has both ruined and made my life, so I began to look for her. After all I thought, she is the only person I know in this town and what else is there to do?

Two pubs, a café (a coffee and a brownie for me) an Indian and a Chinese restaurant later I found the refuge she had chosen to recover from her bad afternoon in. It was unfortunately an Italian restaurant. Firstly let me say I like Italy, Italians, their cars and most Italian foods. What I’m not so keen on however is the type of food that tends to be served in UK based Italian eateries. I always feel a sense of disappointment when leaving after an Italian meal, pasta is nice but it somehow doesn’t quite deliver. Whilst on this track I also must add that I fail to understand the almost religious fervour and ritual that seems to follow eating pizza. Pizza is ok, but it’s a piece of doughy bread smeared with tomato, herbs and cheese, that’s all. Some varieties have meat or fish or chicken attached also and that’s fine. I just don’t really understand it’s enormous popularity, now a burger or a Chinese, mmmm.

She was on her own at a table by he window. I made a stupid face through the glass and tapped on it. She got a fright and jumped but smiled. I then made a series of ridiculous hand signals in a silly attempt to tell her that I was intending joining her in the restaurant if that was ok. This was accompanied by some other stupid faces, which probably detracted somewhat from my main message. Two minutes later I was in the place sitting opposite her and apologising for joining her. “It’s fine, ok, I am happy that you came by”. She told me her name was Harriet Marigold and that she was from Suffolk and was in the area to visit friends who unfortunately were out tonight. I told her that I was a brain surgeon currently between jobs who was running away from his mad wife and her madder lesbian lover. Then I told her that I was a systems analyst taking a few days off to explore the far corners of my country. She preferred to believe this.

I had forgotten the tomato until the menu arrived. “Why the tomato?” I blurted. “You’ll see!” she retorted, smiling a quick little smile and then returning to her study of the menu. We ordered food and wine and water. It all arrived, it was hot and we ate it and talked about travels, tyres, Suffolk and the meal. The meal over we agreed to share the bill and together fumbled the correct amount of notes onto the dish the waiter had left. She said that she had to resume her visit to her friends who must be home by now so would be on her way. “Tip?” I said, “I’ll take care of it, watch!” She reached into her handbag and pulled out a tomato; very similar to the one she had given me earlier. She placed it on the table, twirled round and walked out straight out of the door calling “Bye bye, thanks again!”. I didn’t want to see the face of the waiter when he found his tip so I wheeled out pretty quickly following in her wake.
Next moment I’m blinking on the pavement, looking in all directions but she’s gone. I ran back to the car park but her car is also gone by now. This has been a strange afternoon and evening and I need to find a B&B for the night. I click the key fob, unlock the car and get in. The tomato is still in the door pocket; I pick it up and study it for a moment. It feels heavy and healthy, it looks succulent. Even though I’m not hungry I decide now is the time to eat it. She gave it to me today; it’s fresh and what else can you do with a tomato other than eat it? I bite into the tomato, the skin gives way and breaks, the fluid and seeds inside ooze, I push my tongue in and catch the goodness and enjoy the taste, it is a very good tomato. In a moment it is gone and is now resting on top of the lasagne, salad and garlic bread I just consumed in the restaurant. I feel a bit bloated but the thought of an hours snooze in some comfy B&B bed and then out for a brief nightcap prompts me to drive on. 300yds round the corner and up a side street I find McCarran’s B& B and they have a vacancy. The landlady is friendly, we have brief chat and then she quickly shows me to my room on the third floor. I throw down my bag and kicking off my shoes flop onto the bed for forty winks in the hope that I will enjoy a rejuvenating snooze and that my digestive processes will speed up.

The bed is as soft and welcoming as I’d hoped and no sooner am I lying on it, stretched out on my back than I am quickly fast asleep. Sleep however does not come alone. I am asleep but conscious of a churning and a pounding in my stomach, I moan about Italian food and then realise that I am dreaming / feeling far more than mere indigestion, I am experiencing a swelling inside, a pain and a bright red band across my sleeping vision that screams “TOMATO”. My insides feel like a tomato, pulpy, seedy, largely made of water, dripping, inside I am a tomato, outside I am a tomato, inside I am numb, a red numbness descends and then all feeling is gone as sleep engulfs me.

The next morning at about nine thirty Mrs Ellie McCarran was up on the landing and tapping on the bedroom door, “Sir! Breakfast is past, are you no getting up yet?” There was no reply so she returned to her kitchen tutting to herself as she looked at her watch. At ten twenty she was back tapping on the door again and again without response. She tapped a little more and then reached into her pinny pocket for the pass key. As she unlocked the door a loud click came for the lock mechanism, she opened the door a few inches calling gently, “Hello? Breakfast? Hello?” The ongoing silence encouraged her to open the door wider and stick her head into the room for a proper look. She looked and saw the empty bed, the closed window, a backpack and nothing in the room particularly out of place. Then she noticed on the bed, square in the middle of the duvet, in a man sized indentation, a single red tomato.

Over in the flat above La Bella Palma restaurant the brothers Jim and Paul Macari would normally be up and preparing the menus, dining area and kitchen for lunchtime. Jim had gotten up at the usual time, showered and had coffee, he had called to Paul a few times but no sound came from his room. At ten twenty Jim peered round the bedroom door, scanned the untidy room for Paul and turned away thinking he had got up and gone out early or something, not Paul’s normal behaviour. He turned back around a looked again when a bright red object lying on the bed caught his eye, a ripe red tomato.

Harriet is a witch, a witch from the great school of diabolism and ancient sorcery that sits in Suffolk. She is out on tour trying out spells, hexes and incantations. Innocent victims abound and the information and experience she will gather is very valuable not only for herself but for all her colleagues and customers back down south. Try before you buy, do a little market research, carry out a straw poll, test the water, experiment and observe and finally report back. So by lunchtime when neither Paul nor I had been seen outside of our respective resting places Harriet had felt she had observed enough and drove carefully out of town grinning to herself and gently rubbing the ripe tomato that sat in her lap.

The screen on Jim Macari’s PC was about to go to star field as he tapped the space bar. He still hadn’t seen his brother that day and had forgotten about the tomato that had lain on the bed. Lunch had been difficult without Paul but as the restaurant wasn’t so busy today he had managed with the help of Gillian who did the waitressing for them. Paul sat at the PC and began checking his emails and footering around between his favourite web pages. It was about three thirty. It was strange that Paul had vanished or gone AWOL though, knowing him as he did Jim assumed he had gone of on a small bender, this had happened once or twice and usually ended with a call from Paul asking for a lift back home at some ungodly hour. Jim was irritated but not yet angry, just as long as Paul was back for work the next day.

What is the conscious state of a tomato? Does it have feelings? Does it think, dream, feel emotion or react? Has it an awareness of self? Paul knows and so do I.

Hell and Fire

No Hell, no fire, no dire blank death and end of all. No retribution, no final solution. Pack it in with a poker, bank it up and turn it over. Let the fire consume, purge the sickest room, tear down and carbonise, the hell in heaven is there for us all to realise.

Play with your fears, take back a path, to walk away through the years. Over these fields and designs, bring your thoughts back into line. Stare into the fire light, let the pictures there shine bright. No hell, no fire, for you, or yours, or mine.


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Ely

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Ely

I walked into the cathedral,
felt the space and the time take my breath
Saw a statue of Mary Magdalene
wearing her Sunday dress
I lit a candle for my love,
as sad Mary looked up into His eyes,
Her words froze on her stone lips
as she formed that last goodbye.
A ghost was whispering to my beating heart
and at my finger tips electricity,
Here in this microcosm cathedral city
An abstract cross and artifacts,
the house of God and the dead.
Mary’s back is to the choir and congregation
And heaven’s still dense as lead

How?

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How do you want us to die?

So how do you want us to die?
Spell it out and we’ll do our best to comply
Cranky and crotchety ill fitting old bastards
We bow to our younger political masters
The wars we fought are a memory and a joke
We should suffer in silence from some crippling stroke
Only to be on the receiving end of more well intended rehabilitation
While you legislate any joy or reasons for life from the heart of our nation
No more heart attacks or cancer
No liver failure or altzhiemers
No true accidents or unsafe practices
No extra drugs or chemical additives
No cigarettes or radiation
No alcohol or sexual frustration
Good diets without the sun tanned irritations
Fairness, awareness and stress free complications
You‘ve made so many rules for us to live by
We now need some new tools to die by
Some time alone to meditate this artificial human state
That your relentless correctness must create
To ensure we all die feeling great.

Motel Room

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Motel Room full of Marilyns’

Motel Room full of Marilyns'

Spectrum bubbling into troubles

Bundled up for all to see

Hide behind the softest silk scarf

You still make no sense to me.

I can see you through your clothing

I can smell you in the air

Deliriously camped out in this bedroom

In a lens cap love affair

We should drink champagne together

Laugh out loud and cut the dark

Stalk the memory for forgiveness

Summer’s day jazz in the park

This is no fashion shot assignment

These are the words you’ll wait to hear

“Let’s make love in this excitement”

Then we’ll slowly disappear.