Loose decades

Decades & random pics.

In the fifties I was born but I don’t remember much and there are few photographs and the world was monochrome. People without memories can only recount what didn’t happen and that can be so tiresome. All I ever wanted was a straight story but the Masonic Lodge had signed me up for a career I knew nothing of, still they stalk me with that all-seeing eye, a pyramid and a burning scroll in their clenched fist. Austere.

In the sixties I was too young to care but I was aware that something or nothing was taking place; I was still growing in a damaged way. I gave way to the bully boys who told me which way to go as I crossed their bleak landscape. Education was not all it’s cracked up to be and people generally spoke from the side of their mouths. I was confused about sex and music because of a criminal lack of raw material and up to date text books. My first period was a disaster and there was nobody to run home crying to, potatoes and margarine, every day. I blame Fife Education and my Irish upbringing. Scratch a Fifer’s skin and you’ll find the flesh of a potato. I think that the Flintstones are some kind of tractor. Hallucinogenic.

In the seventies I grasped at lost causes, championed failures, cults and premonitions, I chopped down trees and buried the bodies of people I didn’t kill and none of the drugs ever worked. I hurt my friends, my family and myself, I listened to the wrong voices, and they prevailed. Grave illness was all around and the coal fires burned late into cigarette and macrobiotic evenings, relatives are dying but if you’re wise you won’t ask why. The smell of hospital lingers in my nostrils and I am the subject of new and fresh abuse, always welcome in the modern lifestyle. Are punks something to do with Munchkins, DC Comics and Top Cat? Everyday I fall in love with someone else and go home and write them a whole book before I fall into peaceful and blissful sleep that only underpins my recent awakening with its wonderful dreams. I had the potential to be beautiful but some spoken sentences, uttered idly but picked up by my radar-like hearing tore into that magic and killed it. At the cremation I remained controlled and composed. I reasoned that some parallel universe would allow the play out of the correct script because God is always available for parties and brief encounters at numerous omnipresent places and appointments. A complete waste of time some said. Desperado. Shotgun.

In the eighties I still could swing an axe but most of the time I aimed it at my own head. I drowned in the shallow end and swam on an ocean a thousand miles deep peeking below the surface from time to time. I didn’t like what I couldn’t see. I discovered garlic and wine and talk and when not to talk, I was singing but out of tune. I am cold and running down an endless grey motorway running out of fuel. A crisis in the wider world would be welcome as a respite from the chase and being the quarry. I have the blackest fingernails because I drove them in so deep at the time, I suck the dirt out but it does not shift; there is no decay in this universe, only the hardening of the concrete. Deep inside I acknowledge that for me, time must pass. I am sitting on a stool, dressed in black. There are cartoons all around that blur reality just a little. Brittle.

In the nineties I was numb, dumb and drunk, I stopped caring, I fell through the mist and landed in more mist, the mist was likely to strangle me, or so I thought. There were bolts and rivets everywhere, pining me down and holding me down. Everybody meant well (they said), but to this day I don’t really know what they meant. If I travel I get no where, if I stay at home the bills mount up, I give money away because it is a nuisance and what difference does any of it make because you can’t buy friends. My good works are noted by various well-spoken Caucasian angels, the text book type of course. To add to no troubles at all my Grandmother’s house is looted and eventually burns. I don’t cherish these particular memories. For a brief moment the world made no sense at all, as I recall. Morning, noon and night. Reptile.

Now it’s the last seven years and the universe is still a torn place, it’s a Bob Dylan lyric writhing in the realm of all great and forged incorrectness, it’s neither political nor animal, it’s the burned out anger that takes no more and rolls itself up. It’s all about expression and no substance. I’m sniffing out and searching for the substance but where? I am reminded of my animal past and grudgingly I embrace it. I become aware of the power of deceit and multiplication and the weakness of ownership and jumping to conclusions. The world is as it always was whatever you make of it. People are something else however. In conclusion you must find love, but it is well buried and you need a deep spade with a long handle. Everything we do is old. Desperate.

Today I can say that I am older and I am aware of the things I can do, the things I cannot and the things that I used to do that I cannot do any more. So what.

Queen of the New Year

She wanted politics, she wanted fuss,
She wanted that Saltire flag to fly all over us,
She promoted much debate; she’d divide and rule,
She brokered peace and war, nobodies’ fool.

She’s into finance and prudent stewardship,
She cracks the walnut’s shells, she cracks the whip,
She plays her cards right and works the widest room,
She spins; she moves and drugs you with that sweet perfume.

She’s the Queen of South Queensferry,
Princess of Aching Hearts,
Royal feet float down the Royal Mile,
Won’t see another like her, anywhere around these parts...

Grim truths

Getting to know myself

Like a ship approaching through a fog I am starting to appear. If this seems an odd statement then I guess it is and must be. The truth is I spent a number of years not being me, this was not easy, can never be easy and I’d not recommend it but strangely many people live their whole lives not being themselves and I, for a time was one of them. Of course even when nor being myself I still was myself but in a different way, a contrived and constructed way that fitted in with my surroundings at the time. Of course I knew all along I was not being true to myself but I some how accepted, for a time that this was not important. Anything for a quiet life. I have since learned a valuable lesson, all time is precious and being true to yourself is the most important thing you can do. You are whatever you are and the realisation and protection of that individual status is vital, I think.

So this moment of revelation should probably be marked by a list of “things I am (?) and things I like and things I stand for” but I can’t be bothered right now. Perhaps one of the main things about me is that I’m neither a list person nor some one who will ever achieve or be in a steady state. I quite like that; previously I would have been big on certainty, absolutes and principals. Now there is nothing I have to do at all with any of these things, except in moderation - wrong already! (Ok I know that they are necessary or if you happen to be running a country or something). So in closing , individually I’d always go for a more open and flexible strategy for life.

Grim truths

Age is a problem, aches and little odd creaks and cracks, tiredness and stilted vision also prevail (that’s actual eye sight and imagination). Seeing everything creative as a “job” when it should be so much more. There are still a million and one challenges to take on, the only limits are those self imposed ones – (this process is so uplifting) and I’m hurdling each barrier with vigour and some sharp pains around the shin area.

Top 10 almost

Book of lists.

Fairytale Management reserves the right to think the best and do the best (though sometimes fearing the worst and the excessive use of inappropriate brackets). So moving on from anything too creative and anything too much like a list here is an actual list that is of some practical use for list followers. The question is how will you read it? Will you read it all and absorb it? Will you quickly scan it and make a snap judgement on its value? Will you read the bold print only making the assumption that you know what is coming next? Will you read it and pick one or two points for action or follow up? You may of course not read it at all perhaps thinking you know better or you have a superior list already or you simply can’t be bothered. So here is something that is out there with all the other good advice in the world...”I have box of lemons and they all taste the same”.

10 things that make up a ten point list.

Stop taking so much notice of how you feel. How you feel is how you feel. It’ll pass soon. What you’re thinking is what you’re thinking. It’ll go too. Tell yourself that whatever you feel, you feel; whatever you think, you think. Since you can’t stop yourself thinking, or prevent emotions from arising in your mind, it makes no sense to be proud or ashamed of either. You didn’t cause them. Only your actions are directly under your control. They’re the only proper cause of pleasure or shame.

Let go of worrying. It often makes things worse. The more you think about something bad, the more likely it is to happen. When you’re hair-trigger primed to notice the first sign of trouble, you’ll surely find something close enough to convince yourself it’s come.

Ease up on the internal life commentary. If you want to be happy, stop telling yourself you’re miserable. People are always telling themselves how they feel, what they’re thinking, what others feel about them, what this or that event really means. Most of it’s imagination. The rest is equal parts lies and misunderstandings. You have only the most limited understanding of what others feel about you. Usually they’re no better informed on the subject; and they care about it far less than you do. You have no way of knowing what this or that event really means. Whatever you tell yourself will be make-believe.

Take no notice of your inner critic. Judging yourself is pointless. Judging others is half-witted. Whatever you achieve, someone else will always do better. However bad you are, others are worse. Since you can tell neither what’s best nor what’s worst, how can you place yourself correctly between them? Judging others is foolish since you cannot know all the facts, cannot create a reliable or objective scale, have no means of knowing whether your criteria match anyone else’s, and cannot have more than a limited and extremely partial view of the other person. Who cares about your opinion anyway?

Give up on feeling guilty. Guilt changes nothing. It may make you feel you’re accepting responsibility, but it can’t produce anything new in your life. If you feel guilty about something you’ve done, either do something to put it right or accept you screwed up and try not to do so again. Then let it go. If you’re feeling guilty about what someone else did, see a psychiatrist. That’s insane.

Stop being concerned what the rest of the world says about you. Nasty people can’t make you mad. Nice people can’t make you happy. Events or people are simply events or people. They can’t make you anything. You have to do that for yourself. Whatever emotions arise in you as a result of external events, they’re powerless until you pick them up and decide to act on them. Besides, most people are far too busy thinking about themselves (and worry what you are, are thinking and saying about them) to be concerned about you.

Stop keeping score. Numbers are just numbers. They don’t have mystical powers. Because something is expressed as a number, a ratio or any other numerical pattern doesn’t mean it’s true. Plenty of lovingly calculated business indicators are irrelevant, gibberish, nonsensical, or just plain wrong. If you don’t understand it, or it’s telling you something bizarre, ignore it. There’s nothing scientific about relying on false data. Nor anything useful about charting your life by numbers that were silly in the first place.

Don’t be concerned that your life and career aren’t working out the way you planned. The closer you stick to any plan, the quicker you’ll go wrong. The world changes constantly. However carefully you analyzed the situation when you made the plan, if it’s more than a few days old, things will already be different. After a month, they’ll be very different. After a year, virtually nothing will be the same as it was when you started. Planning is only useful as a discipline to force people to think carefully about what they know and what they don’t. Once you start, throw the plan away and keep your eyes on reality.

Don’t let others use you to avoid being responsible for their own decisions. To hold yourself responsible for someone else’s success and happiness demeans them and proves you’ve lost the plot. It’s their life. They have to live it. You can’t do it for them; nor can you stop them from messing it up if they’re determined to do so. The job of a supervisor is to help and supervise. Only control-freaks and some others with a less serious mental disability fail to understand this.

Don’t worry about your personality. You don’t really have one. Personality, like ego, is a concept invented by your mind. It doesn’t exist in the real world. Personality is a word for the general impression that you give through your words and actions. If your personality isn’t likeable today, don’t worry. You can always change it, so long as you allow yourself to do so. What fixes someone’s personality in one place is a determined effort on their part—usually through continually telling themselves they’re this or that kind of person and acting on what they say. If you don’t like the way you are, make yourself different. You’re the only person who’s standing in your way.

Ok?

Ashes, the rain and I

Ashes, the rain and I.

Not as quick as I’d like to be, not so vigorous, knowing and understanding that my motor is running down but not accepting it. Oily fish and garlic might do the trick, beans pulses and rhetoric, saunas and brisk walks.

Having the appetite but not the stomach, having the desire but not the muscle. Rain blows in your face and the sun plays aging games and autographs your skin with the fine lines of experience.

Healing takes more time, scabs live a little longer on the dead skin, hacks and rubbed areas and abrasions, moles and spots to irritate and make a messy road map across your back.

Thin hair that doesn’t quick know how to behave despite its certificated age and is of no particular colour you’d recognise. White pepper and exposed patches from annoying patterns.

Having seen it all before you should know the script by now but are none the wiser. Ink stains masquerading as writings and signatures, dates and times and places where weeds grow well.

Peering into newspapers and books, all print is small print and the other drivers are all going too fast and taking risks I’d never take. You say.

Fiddling with things and packets that will neither open nor work. Designed and bar coded only to be sold, no real or actual use is ever intended. You’d have to be able to understand the instructions to do that.

Silly joyful giggles and looking back but finding things were not that funny and nobody really got the joke. What were we all laughing at in those black and white and mono days? The heads are down.

A thunderstorm breaks some where overhead and close by. I lay down, my face turned to the grey clouds and the white, bright rain. Water pounds my face and closed eyes, closed eyes remembering inside, the hurts are all healed now and the plots concluded and resolved. There was no conspiracy; there was no plan or twist. This is it, alone in the rain. The ashes. The way it should all be.

Box, smoke, mirrors.

Box clever

I pinched this mind boggler from Normal Lamont’s superb web pages (link via impossible songs if you will), all I can say, in the words of Graeme Mearnes (who you should know) is “Lock me up in your black and white box; we’ll stop the clocks tonight”.

Deep in the basement of a dusty university library in Edinburgh lies a small black box, roughly the size of two cigarette packets side by side, that churns out random numbers in an endless stream.
At first glance it is an unremarkable piece of equipment. Encased in metal, it contains at its heart a microchip no more complex than the ones found in modern pocket calculators.
But, according to a growing band of top scientists, this box has quite extraordinary powers. It is, they claim, the 'eye' of a machine that appears capable of peering into the future and predicting major world events.
The machine apparently sensed the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Centre four hours before they happened - but in the fevered mood of conspiracy theories of the time, the claims were swiftly knocked back by sceptics. But last December, it also appeared to forewarn of the Asian tsunami just before the deep sea earthquake that precipitated the epic tragedy.
Now, even the doubters are acknowledging that here is a small box with apparently inexplicable powers.
'It's Earth-shattering stuff,' says Dr Roger Nelson, emeritus researcher at Princeton University in the United States, who is heading the research project behind the 'black box' phenomenon.
'We're very early on in the process of trying to figure out what's going on here. At the moment we're stabbing in the dark.' Dr Nelson's investigations, called the Global Consciousness Project, were originally hosted by Princeton University and are centred on one of the most extraordinary experiments of all time. Its aim is to detect whether all of humanity shares a single subconscious mind that we can all tap into without realising.
And machines like the Edinburgh black box have thrown up a tantalising possibility: that scientists may have unwittingly discovered a way of predicting the future.
Although many would consider the project's aims to be little more than fools' gold, it has still attracted a roster of 75 respected scientists from 41 different nations. Researchers from Princeton - where Einstein spent much of his career - work alongside scientists from universities in Britain, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Germany. The project is also the most rigorous and longest-running investigation ever into the potential powers of the paranormal.
'Very often paranormal phenomena evaporate if you study them for long enough,' says physicist Dick Bierman of the University of Amsterdam. 'But this is not happening with the Global Consciousness Project. The effect is real. The only dispute is about what it means.' The project has its roots in the extraordinary work of Professor Robert Jahn of Princeton University during the late 1970s. He was one of the first modern scientists to take paranormal phenomena seriously. Intrigued by such things as telepathy, telekinesis - the supposed psychic power to move objects without the use of physical force - and extrasensory perception, he was determined to study the phenomena using the most up-to-date technology available.
One of these new technologies was a humble-looking black box known was a Random Event Generator (REG). This used computer technology to generate two numbers - a one and a zero - in a totally random sequence, rather like an electronic coin-flipper.
The pattern of ones and noughts - 'heads' and 'tails' as it were - could then be printed out as a graph. The laws of chance dictate that the generators should churn out equal numbers of ones and zeros - which would be represented by a nearly flat line on the graph. Any deviation from this equal number shows up as a gently rising curve.
During the late 1970s, Prof Jahn decided to investigate whether the power of human thought alone could interfere in some way with the machine's usual readings. He hauled strangers off the street and asked them to concentrate their minds on his number generator. In effect, he was asking them to try to make it flip more heads than tails.
It was a preposterous idea at the time. The results, however, were stunning and have never been satisfactorily explained.
Again and again, entirely ordinary people proved that their minds could influence the machine and produce significant fluctuations on the graph, 'forcing it' to produce unequal numbers of 'heads' or 'tails'.

According to all of the known laws of science, this should not have happened - but it did. And it kept on happening.
Dr Nelson, also working at Princeton University, then extended Prof Jahn's work by taking random number machines to group meditations, which were very popular in America at the time. Again, the results were eye-popping. The groups were collectively able to cause dramatic shifts in the patterns of numbers.
From then on, Dr Nelson was hooked.
Using the internet, he connected up 40 random event generators from all over the world to his laboratory computer in Princeton. These ran constantly, day in day out, generating millions of different pieces of data. Most of the time, the resulting graph on his computer looked more or less like a flat line.
But then on September 6, 1997, something quite extraordinary happened: the graph shot upwards, recording a sudden and massive shift in the number sequence as his machines around the world started reporting huge deviations from the norm. The day was of historic importance for another reason, too.
For it was the same day that an estimated one billion people around the world watched the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales at Westminster Abbey.
Dr Nelson was convinced that the two events must be related in some way.
Could he have detected a totally new phenomena? Could the concentrated emotional outpouring of millions of people be able to influence the output of his REGs. If so, how?
Dr Nelson was at a loss to explain it.
So, in 1998, he gathered together scientists from all over the world to analyse his findings. They, too, were stumped and resolved to extend and deepen the work of Prof Jahn and Dr Nelson. The Global Consciousness Project was born.
Since then, the project has expanded massively. A total of 65 Eggs (as the generators have been named) in 41 countries have now been recruited to act as the 'eyes' of the project.
And the results have been startling and inexplicable in equal measure.
For during the course of the experiment, the Eggs have 'sensed' a whole series of major world events as they were happening, from the Nato bombing of Yugoslavia to the Kursk submarine tragedy to America's hung election of 2000.
The Eggs also regularly detect huge global celebrations, such as New Year's Eve.
But the project threw up its greatest enigma on September 11, 2001.
As the world stood still and watched the horror of the terrorist attacks unfold across New York, something strange was happening to the Eggs.
Not only had they registered the attacks as they actually happened, but the characteristic shift in the pattern of numbers had begun four hours before the two planes even hit the Twin Towers.
They had, it appeared, detected that an event of historic importance was about to take place before the terrorists had even boarded their fateful flights. The implications, not least for the West's security services who constantly monitor electronic 'chatter', are clearly enormous.
'I knew then that we had a great deal of work ahead of us,' says Dr Nelson.
What could be happening? Was it a freak occurrence, perhaps?
Apparently not. For in the closing weeks of December last year, the machines went wild once more.
Twenty-four hours later, an earthquake deep beneath the Indian Ocean triggered the tsunami which devastated South-East Asia, and claimed the lives of an estimated quarter of a million people.
So could the Global Consciousness Project really be forecasting the future?
Cynics will quite rightly point out that there is always some global event that could be used to 'explain' the times when the Egg machines behaved erratically. After all, our world is full of wars, disasters and terrorist outrages, as well as the occasional global celebration. Are the scientists simply trying too hard to detect patterns in their raw data?
The team behind the project insist not. They claim that by using rigorous scientific techniques and powerful mathematics it is possible to exclude any such random connections.
'We're perfectly willing to discover that we've made mistakes,' says Dr Nelson. 'But we haven't been able to find any, and neither has anyone else.
Our data shows clearly that the chances of getting these results by fluke are one million to one against.
That's hugely significant.' But many remain sceptical.
Professor Chris French, a psychologist and noted sceptic at Goldsmiths College in London, says: 'The Global Consciousness Project has generated some very intriguing results that cannot be readily dismissed. I'm involved in similar work to see if we get the same results. We haven't managed to do so yet but it's only an early experiment. The jury's still out.' Strange as it may seem, though, there's nothing in the laws of physics that precludes the possibility of foreseeing the future.
It is possible - in theory - that time may not just move forwards but backwards, too. And if time ebbs and flows like the tides in the sea, it might just be possible to foretell major world events. We would, in effect, be 'remembering' things that had taken place in our future.
'There's plenty of evidence that time may run backwards,' says Prof Bierman at the University of Amsterdam.
'And if it's possible for it to happen in physics, then it can happen in our minds, too.' In other words, Prof Bierman believes that we are all capable of looking into the future, if only we could tap into the hidden power of our minds. And there is a tantalising body of evidence to support this theory.
Dr John Hartwell, working at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands, was the first to uncover evidence that people could sense the future. In the mid-1970s he hooked people up to hospital scanning machines so that he could study their brainwave patterns.
He began by showing them a sequence of provocative cartoon drawings.
When the pictures were shown, the machines registered the subject's brainwaves as they reacted strongly to the images before them. This was to be expected.
Far less easy to explain was the fact that in many cases, these dramatic patterns began to register a few seconds before each of the pictures were even flashed up.
It was as though Dr Hartwell's case studies were somehow seeing into the future, and detecting when the next shocking image would be shown next.
It was extraordinary - and seemingly inexplicable.
But it was to be another 15 years before anyone else took Dr Hartwell's work further when Dean Radin, a researcher working in America, connected people up to a machine that measured their skin's resistance to electricity. This is known to fluctuate in tandem with our moods - indeed, it's this principle that underlies many lie detectors.
Radin repeated Dr Hartwell's 'image response' experiments while measuring skin resistance. Again, people began reacting a few seconds before they were shown the provocative pictures. This was clearly impossible, or so he thought, so he kept on repeating the experiments. And he kept getting the same results.
'I didn't believe it either,' says Prof Bierman. 'So I also repeated the experiment myself and got the same results. I was shocked. After this I started to think more deeply about the nature of time.' To make matters even more intriguing, Prof Bierman says that other mainstream labs have now produced similar results but are yet to go public.
'They don't want to be ridiculed so they won't release their findings,' he says. 'So I'm trying to persuade all of them to release their results at the same time. That would at least spread the ridicule a little more thinly!' If Prof Bierman is right, though, then the experiments are no laughing matter.
They might help provide a solid scientific grounding for such strange phenomena as 'deja vu', intuition and a host of other curiosities that we have all experienced from time to time.
They may also open up a far more interesting possibility - that one day we might be able to enhance psychic powers using machines that can 'tune in' to our subconscious mind, machines like the little black box in Edinburgh.
Just as we have built mechanical engines to replace muscle power, could we one day build a device to enhance and interpret our hidden psychic abilities?
Dr Nelson is optimistic - but not for the short term. 'We may be able to predict that a major world event is going to happen. But we won't know exactly what will happen or where it's going to happen,' he says.
'Put it this way - we haven't yet got a machine we could sell to the CIA.'
But for Dr Nelson, talk of such psychic machines - with the potential to detect global catastrophes or terrorist outrages - is of far less importance than the implications of his work in terms of the human race.
For what his experiments appear to demonstrate is that while we may all operate as individuals, we also appear to share something far, far greater - a global consciousness. Some might call it the mind of God.
'We're taught to be individualistic monsters,' he says. 'We're driven by society to separate ourselves from each other. That's not right.
We may be connected together far more intimately than we realise.

The way we live

The way we live.

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Bored.

I’m not bored; I have many things to do, places to go,
Cupboards to explore and drawers of papers to sort,
Music to mix and balances to calculate.
Clothes to iron and fold and put away and wear (eventually).
I have grass to cut, shelves to put up and fences to erect.
I have nose hair to clip, coffee to drink and phone calls to make.
My windscreen washer fluid is a little low and my inbox is filling up.
I have a number of DVDs I’ve never seen and a good film is on Film 4 right now.
I need to wipe the fridge and feed the cat and redo the thing I did incorrectly with the drawers.
Clean and hoover (a little).
I have to put up a sign and make screw holes.
I have things to measure and then I’ll make a list.
I have to try that recipe but I need to set a date for you to come around.
My nails need to be clipped and I’ve that thing to superglue.
My phone needs charged and there is an article I’ve got to write and a review.
I’ve got to check my performance indicators, take my vitamins and then text arrangements for the weekend.
I need to get a birthday card and some washing powder.
The flat pack we bought from IKEA needs to be returned but I’ve got that other one to build.
There are weeds I need to strim and a few folk I need to visit before the meeting, just in case.
I have to put a comment on there and make sure I reset my alarm.
I have to put my feet up.

Tricky little job at the chippy

Beatrice at the counter & some fish and chips that were made earlier.

Friday Nights:

It is a tricky job to slit the cellophane on a still living pizza with a modeling knife. Jeremy could easily do it if Beatrice actually did it for him. It was at times like this that their eyes met, over the counter, the sink and across the great vat of oil that is like the Middle East of Moray. “Fishers Fish Bar” is what I wish we had called this bloody place instead of “Jeremy Fishers’”” says Jeremy with too many inverted commas. Well you can’t always get what you want can you?

When it is hot in a fish bar it is very hot, condensation pours, fans whiz, expelairs suck and swinging doors breathe in gulps of cold night air and release chunks of fried flavours into empty streets. Salt n sauce, salt n vinegar, closing time at the pub, a coach load of football fans, old ladies on a jaunt, white stretched limos full of country girls in shiny black dresses and stilettos all getting oil on their artificial nails. Customers are a rare and strange breed, almost human at times say the friendly fascists.

Everywhere in the village there are villagers, hungry for tea and dreams of Camberwick Green and Trumpton and being made of sponge rubber. Jeremy feeds the reckless, feckless dreams and deep fries the past. They return to bungalows at length but without height. Some park cars in driveways or with up to two wheels upon the pavement. Homes without a proper post code.

If you put your nose into the fish freezer or the haggis cupboard chiller it gets cold, red at the end and numb. Jeremy likes that feeling and enjoys taking stock, even when he doesn’t have to, even when he knows all is well and that the supplies are in. The cold nose thing is a treat and measure.

If you ever drive through Wipeourasses and I expect you will, these words will come back to you, you will stop, you will buy, you will enjoy. The rich fare of the JF establishment and its garish soft drink selection straight from the lemonade factory in Buckie via the cash and carry awaits even the most casual of visitors. Sleep well / eat well.

Jeremy Fisher

Jeremy Fishers’ is a fish and chip shop situated in rural Aberdeenshire in a small Lego built town called Wipeourasses. Kurt Cobain was born but a few doors away. The speed limit is a little over thirty five, Jeremy is about 38. He may have spoken in class at one time. Jeremy’s secret recipe for deep fried pizza was also well known as the blinking neon sign proclaimed to all passers by and those who chose to observe the speed limit. The signs themselves were wind powered but worked quite well in flat calm, on days of hysteria they worked really well. The fathers of Wipeourasses were also puzzled that their small town remained small but were glad that Jeremy’s shop was in some people’s eyes successful. Cars would stop in town, particularly on Saturday evenings and Friday afternoon, the occupants would get out, or maybe only the driver and they or he or she would enter the fast food bar. Inside a wide range of tasty, tempting foodstuffs were on display, some behind glass, and some in fridges and described on white boards and some in plastic dustbins. All in all and enthralling experience for the hungry and reasonably well off.

Every day the place was ignited by a single spark from the spark gun that sparked the gas burner that ignited the fryer. “Like the space shuttle taking off” said a local who had recently seem footage of a NASA launch on “Good Morning Scotland” on the radio (810 medium wave), (81000 Mexican wave). A precise program of events was always being planned but no quite arrived at and so it goes that Jamie Oliver had never even heard of the place. The Mars Bars were however not battered until required as per the hand written recipe book.

Promotion

Nothing really to do with the fine art of Fairytale Management and all it's complex, quirky and misunderstood processes. I just like this photograph. It was taken by Norman Lamont at last years FerryStock II. An event we ran in order to a) promote the local arts festival and b) promote ourselves.

Jack the Knife

Winter wonderland

A lorry jack knifed on the A9
With a cargo of cigarettes rolled in a factory in Russia
Virginia slim pickings for Highlanders and the displaced of Indo-China
90 degrees in the winter road way, cut by a jack knife
And some thing else to explain to the wife
This is Jack and this is your life.
So the cars queued and the blue lights flashed
Bright hi-viz jackets and a quiz
About what you did wrong.
Too fast, too greedy
Too much, too needy
And the driver swore to himself and thought about what might happen next
To him and his vehicle and his load
90 degree turn around in winter on the grey and slippery road.

A lonely place

Lonely Place

Men fight over land only to be buried in it or to have their ashes scattered over it. Men fight over ideas as if they were measurable and meaningful only for those ideas to be misunderstood, written down and then burned on bonfires. Men make laws to control situations only to find that they never did really understand the situation in the first place. People go out for a drink after work to chat and make friends and climb social and business ladders and each one appreciates the pretence and the posturing and then they all go home alone. Lonely people put advertisements in the paper or on the web so that they can meet other lonely people, then they will at least share their loneliness with some one else. Confused people go to churches or join religious or political groups looking for answers. Some answers are satisfactory; some not so, some require a certain suspension of belief or rational thought. Some call for a commitment that is heavy and unreasonable but some people take this on gladly, for they have found a reason. Some people learn to Salsa and have fun, these people are quite lucky. Some people make a cup of coffee, light up a cigar and blow smoke into a clear sky while their internal processes and thought connections rest and recuperate. These things are sent to try us.

Hello...

Greater expectations of a gold, silver and diamond digger.

Sweet potato and chicken curry.
Pinot Grigio
Working your way through a fat city.
Taking in a flight to Dublin.
Trouble in.

Walk talk cigar, big cock.
Stroll around the block.
Make it and shake it.
Stepping into how it feels.
Red high heels.

Sweet and sour expectations.
Indifferent vibrations.
The wealth and sweat of the nations.
Here comes a vague opportunity.
Give it to me.

Cheese grater expectations.
Garlic bread revelations.
Bleak house of Oliver pasta twist.
Show what you could resist.
The pain that didn’t quite exist.

Cat photo

Vegetarian Manifesto

The animals were created and named and like the fresh clay and crumb and butterscotch that they were formed from, craved a free life. They fled the confines of swirling imagination to inhabit this wide, green world. Crawling, running, flying, creeping, swimming, burrowing, trotting and slithering to it’s ends and beginnings. Some tasted good, some tasted bad, some were poison, some wriggled too much, some needed a good deal of seasoning, some needed a jar of Uncle Ben’s. So creation rung it’s earnest bell loudly across the land and bonfires were duly lit to celebrate. Barbeques were the next big invention as well as sharp things to cut logs. Women and few men grew to love their fur coats, however fish scale coats and ant-skin shoes never caught on, but fashion is a fickle and petulant mistress, mark my words.

By the time the sons of Adam had opened their first restaurant a buzz was beginning. At first the bees were blamed but as it turned out it was other people from over the hills that nobody had ever bothered to tell the brothers about. As the first to benefit from a customer charter, these good people enjoyed the fine wine and fresh meats the brothers had killed and prepared. No one around the table ever dreamed that they were sitting in the spot that would one day be Poland. The early geographers were of course only learning the basics of their trade at this point.

I’m not sure but once the first meat course was eaten, it seems that a fellow from Nod decided that a dish of salad would be nice, as an alternative to the goose and pineapple curry. Of course the fresh salad, plucked from the slopes of the slowly forming Himalayas and washed in icy waterfalls was a roaring success, especially as it was served upon a marvellous crocodile skin platter. The diners were lost for words and the brothers never looked back.

It was the kangaroo god who first wrote down this tale, as a warning, a lesson and a piece of romantic food and drink fiction. If a god had to start writing about anything it might as well be food – most other topics are a bit tedious. So keep the masses well fed and a little in debt and they are far less likely to man the barricades or hit the cobbles. Why only the other century a hot-dog stand in East Berlin was closed down due to public health concerns and other various but unproven complaints about cooked meats and hard bread rolls. Nothing to do with a cat photo either.

Keeping Mum

Mum

I’ve stopped trying to figure when things first went wrong
When the rails were ripped up and trains stopped running
When the holidays still happened but passed me by
When the wars ended but replayed on in a endless loop
When the tiny becomes huge and the valuable is squandered.

So you’re stuck in 1939 or in the Empire Hotel or somewhere
A world so small you have to crawl to get around
Those Sunday school picnics and crowded harbours
Scrapping and watching and seeing the passages of time.

Exhibitions viewed dimly through wire rimmed glasses
And no sense of worth because of their education
Systems that were corrupt but better than nothing
No sense of loss or ever real expectation.

Inside a hollow place of butcher’s boys and loaves and bicycles
Living in a village and trapped in a bottle.
The blame’s in the name and the crushing thumbs
Of elders and betters and ministers and nuns.

How can you not know that a few miles away other things were happening?
Farmers were working sixteen hour days; coal miners were black and trapped
Mills ground down men and machines, hot rivets popped and cracked
Journalists with Brylcream and cigarettes tried to capture it all in their best learned English, with ink.
Starched politicians of the hour blinked at brown box cameras and blind, foggy lenses.

No work or mixing or anything for over fifty years
A growing disconnection and a deepening illusion
Here come the home helps and carers
Here comes the doctor, the nurse and pall-bearers.

The shock of the new washes over you
The shock of the new magnifies you
The shame of the past cripples you
The tiny fragments of steel live in you.

Blind Faith

As tall as a young god

The kangaroo god is puzzled today. In a letter written in 1969 a young student from London, England, has drawn together a powerful case for saying that the hitherto unreleased "Gospel According to Barnabus le Shark" is in fact an early version of the second side of the Beatles LP Abbey Road. Barnabus le Shark it seems has written credible versions of “She came in thru the bathroom window” and “Carry that weight” that can now both be dated back to the first century AD. Quite how the drumming of Ringo Starr and the guitar work of L’Angelo de Mysterioso can be recognised I’m not sure. I strikes me as a very similar set of circumstances to those highlighted by Wee Willie Harris in 1964. He claimed to have written the “Heartbreaker” guitar solo on Led Zeppelin II following a vision, a good telling off and an envelope he’d received from the Angel Gabriel. The kangaroo god remains puzzled by all these heavy matters. Knowing everything and seeing everything is all very well but age-induced memory loss can cause the fudging of certain issues and the blurring of visionary boundaries.

The young girl featured on the Blind Faith album cover was causing yet another dilemma for kangaroo god today. Was she really discovered in a taxi or was she an evil spirit released to savagely undermine the album cover design culture and the newly emerging rocket and star ship science of the late sixties? Another question that perplexed nearly everybody on the team was “who had been the tallest member of Blind Faith?” Not really a pub quiz favourite but a profound question none the less,
(The answer is or may be below*).

The Cinderellas were, by now fed up with the lack of progress being made and fully expected a new initiative to begin. Indeed there were plans to get them hitched but unfortunately no budget or proper allocation of funds had been made. This led to a number of handsome princes heading over to Russia with a view to obtaining their own princess who would, without the burden of finding a costly dowry, be more readily available . The course of true love seldom runs smoothly or so much out of steam.

When Western culture meets Eastern culture it is common practice for men to build a canal.

*Ginger Baker.

The Queue for God

A dispute over forever

As usual I’m trying to get kangaroo god to listen to me and provide advice. Today of all days, he’s on some state visit to a neighbouring heaven, shaking hands, drinking ambrosia and opening old people’s homes. The minister, never usually friendly towards me, has agreed that I can wait in an anti-room and read magazines and talk to the others in the queue until he returns.

The magazines were not very interesting; their main subject matter was about hobbies and celebrities in heaven. The administration had a real enough situation here, living forever and staying “on message” was altogether a problem. The early Cinderellas had been fine, they were few in number, knew one another and pretty much towed the party line. However a few hundred years ago a more argumentative and feisty group had entered. Whilst they participated in all the basic chants, dances, worshiping and candle-lighting things they did them with a less than perfect attitude. Some said that they had become bored with their duties and were, despite their exhaulted position looking for a little more to do. It seems that early on, perhaps in a moment of weakness, kangaroo god had promised them some responsibilities. They wanted to rule over something, they wanted a little more power.

In response the kangaroo god had increased the worship schedules to take up the slack within the day and introduced religious hobbies as a diversion and a means of control. It worked with some but others, a small minority, felt they were not being fully utilised or actualised in their promised roles. This group would complain about always being expected to peer down into hell to watch friends and relatives squirming and in pain when they could be controlling them, they’d also moan about the clothing allowance and the climate. Kangaroo god was fed up with them. “Why on earth do they take things so literally? I didn’t promise all that stuff did I?”

I busied myself with the magazines while the Cinderellas bickered on amongst themselves about what seemed to me to be trivial matters, candlesticks, hair, make-up, torture and purgatory. I was naturally much more concerned about the entropy of the universe, sun spots and the great Australian volcano. I had made up a list of substantial things for urgent action.

Of course when the big cheese returned from the neighbours he was in no mood to talk about anything, it turned out he had a headache and the gifts he’d been given were, as he put it “total, thoughtless, glitzy crap”. His office door slammed and I slid the magazine down from in front of my face and placed it neatly in the rack. Some of the Cinderellas were very upset; some were in tears, others puffed out their cheeks in a red and pink rage. A few handsome princes arrived but really it was beyond their limited abilities to do anything. We’d all have to wait till tomorrow, which in the scale of forever isn’t really so bad, it’s just a shame that the Cinderellas had managed to lose all concept of time when they signed up for heaven.

I shuffled out of the office and down the pale corridor, their cries ringing in my ears. Funny how despite planned and apparent peace, harmony and perfection, just getting a little undivided attention can cause so much of an atmosphere and disquiet.

Lifeboat

Impossible Songs

Lifeboat

She sails over the deep sea.
She sails over me.
A drowning man.
A weight of lead on me and too shaky to stand.

Her boat is like a silver dart across the waves.
The blue menace holds her above the swirls below,
The watery caves, the wake of slaves,
The dead and the pirates, the lost who seek land locked graves.

She sails over me, a drowning man once more.
Lost and crashing, looking out but unsure,
Until I stand with her, stretching my toes in the sand,
On some safe shore.

Hold on to your songs

Hold on to your Songs

Words of wisdom from the contained and the contrite.
The magic pull of garden centres does not last long.
Wine and cigarettes are an unhealthy combination.
Take a twist and you may bust, or win.
Sleeping in movie theatres is never good.
Watering down glue to spread it further.
Lottery tickets burning in a fire.
Noodles, poor men's or other wise.

Pasta, chicken, pasta, mushrooms, pasta, cheese, pasta, onions.
A rain torn sky hiding the brightest star.
Red sails in the sunset.
Hot chocolate cake melting behind the microwave door.
The North Pole is the warmest place in the world.
What happens when the ink finally runs out?
I don’t much feel like dancing.
Capturing fallen leaves in a frame so they survive the winter.
Time for reflection.
Pondering the angst and problems of a chosen level of anominity.
The white space that collides with the grey matter.
You can manage knowledge and you can’t knowledge manage, or can you?
Podcasts are catching on but maturity takes time.
Writing a critical review then leaving in a spelling mistake.
Deciding what half of my brain to use today.
The quick, the dead and the pedestrian.
Hearing about odd exploits in Saudi Arabia.
Is it possible to overdo the salad part of the meal?
Daydreaming in the classroom and then waking up.
Fairytales revised and doing the revision.

6th November

Fish oil and false tears.
Justifying the great Christmas spend.
Long emails and replies.
A strange story from the west.
Toasting cheese and ham but in opposite ways.
Not hitting the bottle.
Deciding that inspiration comes from the oddest places sometimes.
An early breakfast and then back to bed.
Not topping up the windscreen water fluid.
Eating 27 grapes and 2 bananas.
Having a telephone conversation with a tailor in Eastbourne about a tuxedo.
Laughing at photos on the web.
Letting someone borrow a DVD.
An un-ironed shirt.
Practising some songs and forgetting the chords.
Dipping your finger in warm Dettol.
Watching Reporting Scotland.
Ripping one of our own CDs back into mp3 files.
Thinking about yesterday’s football match in Kirkliston.
The cat climbing into the wine rack.
Not getting a letter from my solicitor.
Ice cream and maple syrup.
Telling somebody to put their Pot Noodle into the microwave.
Francis Vincent Zappa.
Feeling a bit panicked and mildly shocked.
The Royal Tenenbaums.
The natural history of Wiltshire.
A good cat comes in at 22:13.
A serious chat about the next few months.
Deciding to go to Henley on Thames and making the arrangements.
Talking to people who are the same age as I am.
Having a strange dream about Wales or something.
Discussing the BBC’s attraction to Gaelic programming.
People queuing up to go register with the dentist.
Text messages.
Thinking that a really good time is just up ahead.
Applying for a job.
Not reviewing anything on Garageband.
Trying to think of a witty remark built around a Scottish soap title.
Johnny Beattie’s 80th birthday party attended by various celebs.
Looking at the wedding page in the Courier.
Channel 4 News Republican v Democrat coverage: Priceless.
Singing.
Trying not to gloat over the misery of others.
Avoiding shops of any kind all day.
Thinking about ghosts.

After done click here

Darker visions

There are living souls out there
So I am led to believe
Evidence and signs
Cracks in irregular lines
Holding to the certainty
That there is no such thing...as certainty.

To air I do not dare

Air kisses

Bop Bop ooh yeah

Bop Bop ooh yeah

Bop Bop ooh yeah

Bop Bop ooh yeah

Air kisses in the USA

Air kisses in the USA

Air kisses in the USA

Air kisses in the USA

There is no easy way

To say I love you today

There is no easy way

Just air kisses in the USA

Bop Bop ooh yeah

Bop Bop ooh yeah

Bop Bop ooh yeah

Bop Bop ooh yeah

Air kisses in the USA

Air kisses in the USA

Air kisses in the USA

Air kisses in the USA.

Modern History

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The emancipation of the witch or modern history.

The year is 2027, with the demise of conventional religion, discredited in the great Mediterranean War of 2021 and the fall of Rome an unpleasant spiritual vacuum was created. The authorities (on all sides) gazed into this vacuum and decided that an appropriate filling was required, for the common good of all the people. A way to explain, calm, resolve, solve and focus the heightened sense of purposelessness that now seemed to dog each human life in the heartlands of Europe and Asia was needed.

As there was no emperor these days, or one who could decide things properly anyway, a competition was devised and run to help decide on what the best solution might be, answers had to be submitted by text, email or on a postcard to:

“Things to fill the vacuum” c/o The Founding Fathers, Room 202, The Former Vatican City, Rome, Italy (as was).

The suggestions went something like this, in no particular order:

Cream Cheese
More vacuum
Different kinds of vacuum
A black hole
Pulp fiction
Rain
Fog
Herds of screaming, howling animals
Frogs and 6 other plagues
Alien beings
Orchestral music
Figures of speech
Sand
Lonely people whistling nervously
Landfill
Fizzy lemonade
Old kind of ideas
Books from charity shops
Flotsam and jetsam
Lost keys and old mobile phones
Abstract theories
Home baking
Various Simpson’s episodes
Odd socks from Chinese laundry baskets
Sweet potatoes and chives
Millions of tons of cement
A single red balloon
Football fans of all sorts
Overheard conversations
False nipples
Some other old ideas about what god might look like
Left over Happy Meals
A big asteroid
Smoke
Actual air
Vacuum cleaners
Reformed religion
Classic cars
Meditation
Glen Millar melodies
Witchcraft
Tupperware items
Torn up newspapers
Princess Diana memorabilia
Niagara Falls
Broken DVD players that you could easily repair
Trampolines
Carbon Monoxide
Civil Servants
Cash
Junk mail
The remains of Indian take aways.

The list went on and on, I’ve chosen to list just a few of the better suggestions. In the end however there was only one winner and that was Witchcraft.

At first this choice was not popular in all quarters and a number of dissidents and priests who complained to the authorities had to be executed, unfortunately. Some socialist radicals also wrote strongly worded letters to their socialist newspapers but thankfully things settled down once their reporter style note pads were confiscated and their coach suffered a puncture. Cyber complaints were more difficult to control, one large website “www.No! To the hated witchy thing!” ran for 65 days until it was shut down by removing the plug. Over a million hits were recorded and comments passed.

So it was witchcraft or nothing. A pan-Europe vote was taken and in the Middle East a number of oil rich sheiks had a meeting with some bearded clerics. The people finally spoke in one clear voice through these diverse yet complimentary mediums and the resounding answer was “Nothing”. “The people have spoken” was the headline in many newspapers but strangely not the day after the vote, it came a little later in fact.

At first it seemed like a bad day for witchcraft and many activists were clearly, visibly disappointed at the rebuff they had suffered. There is however no such thing as bad publicity of any kind. While “Nothing” became a very successful religion and vacuum filler throughout most of these parts and some others, Witchcraft flourished in new and unexpected areas such as: The Royal Family, the Army, the financial services area, Albania (as was), in many ships and oil tankers, on coasts, on islands and in dark and spooky houses and homes. Old people embraced Witchcraft also and many of then grew fine warts and extra large tomatoes in season. All things seemed fine and in an perfect, edgy kind of balance until the cold hard winter of 2029 descended...

No Game

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Laughing at your God?
Mocking your Prophet?
Calling him names?
Saying you’re insane?
Trying to unpick history
Trail the bloody legacy
Massaging facts and memory
Along this sorry road.
Things that were ever misunderstood
Can’t just be left to gain
A little mutual respect
Everything you want, you want to direct
And trample in some Holy name.

So how we accommodate?
Share this strange planet
Or get along at all.
Any way we play
It seems it’s got to be your ball,
Your nice round ball,
Or there is no game at all.

Viva Maria

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Yeah, Viva Maria and all that stuff...

The Last Days of August

Sitting under the porch in the watery sun
Feeling like Steve McQueen, his life’s work done
Feeling my age creeping through to my bones
Staring at the grass, staring alone.

These are the last days and less time to breathe
I should take more care, I should eat more greens
I should gather together all the smithereens
I should take all the advice from the lessons I should’ve learned
And put it all somewhere, somewhere useful, somewhere outside my head.
Put things in their proper place, instead of thinking them,
Spit out the words instead of drinking them,
And lay me down, untidy
Like a bed unmade, or song unplayed
Like a sentence delayed, some garment frayed.

For you I’ll allow a glimpse into my soul,
See, hear and feed and then nudge the controls,
Staying and playing when our energies return
When these times pass to memory, a beginning will come....
Viva Maria. Viva Maria.

My Town

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My Town

I don’t park my car anymore; I don’t visit the DIY store
I don’t walk to the paper shop, I don’t go when the sign says stop.

My town looks so grey to me,
No place to raise a family
No peace to ever let us be,
You won’t be coming around,
In my town.

The horses slid on the cobbled streets
The hungry found something good to eat
Some business grew and success repeats
But, you won’t be coming around,
In my town.

I don’t read the daily news; don’t hear the gossip or street corner views,
I don’t drink in those bars or clubs, I don’t try I just give it up.
I don’t park my car anymore; I don’t visit the DIY store

I don’t walk to the paper shop, I don’t go when the sign says stop.

I won’t go when the sign says stop
I can’t go when the sign says stop
You can’t go when the sign says stop

Worry

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Things not to worry about:

The church being behind you.

Any kind of artistic rejection.

The weather – it always happens.

People thinking that you are invisible.

Car exhaust fumes from the car in front entering your car.

Scottish religious fundamentalists – that’s a real joke.

River beds if they are murky.

Athlete’s foot – no one died of it.

Enjoying fish fingers.

Where the cat may be on a cold night.

What you will ultimately achieve in your life.

Spots

Having odd bits of paper in your pocket.

Eating regularly – get out of that crippling habit.

Liking music that other people don’t.

Having a torch with decent batteries in it always at hand.

Burning your finger tips on candles.

Eating chocolate from the fridge.

Disturbing your neighbours (don’t make a habit though...)

Other peoples ignorance – is that your fault?

Knowing the correct time.

Whether or not a bus will come.

Everything in your life having to make some kind of sense.

Drinking the last bottle of wine, the one your were saving for a rainy day.

(Above applies to all “rainy day” based thinking).

Blogging and getting dumb, unhelpful comments, who cares?

Two faced, po faced Christian types.

Stuff on the other side of the world.

Whether or not there are 8, 9 or 10 planets.

Not reading those recommended books or seeing those films.

Not agreeing with reviews in the List, Q, empire or whatever.

Picking your nose, you can’t reach your brain from there.

Getting old(er), not so bad really.

Having bad, anti social little habits, (gum, dogs, cigars etc.)

Being rubbish at darts.

Not understanding chess or HTML.

The Scottish Nationalists ever winning anything substantial.

Avoiding apples, because they never taste as good as they look.

Being born too late / too early.

Being hit by a meteor.

Losing a tooth.

The meaning of biblical passages.

The American government.

That one day all the things you love will be lost to you.

Understanding other people’s over inflated views on things.

Not getting ecstatic over Italian food.

Spending a few hours doing nothing in particular.

Taking a risk with something.

Handling snakes.

Whether to save or spend.

How your bum actually looks.

Being engulfed by some kind of natural disaster.

Keeping up with soap operas.

Starting to write a novel and actually finishing it.

Getting the right size of T shirt.

Eating crisps straight from a bag.

Wearing odd socks now and again.

Brushing your teeth too fiercely.

Walking along a road.

Watching a subtitled film and keeping up with the action.

How many hits your website may be getting.

Having a scuff on your shoe.

Life in general.

Moods

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Moods

Swing and play
I’ll be alright some day
Wait and see how I feel
If this feeling is real.

You try to escape me
When I attempt a catch
You’re here then you’ve moved on
As the opposites attract.

Sit at the South Pole
I climb to the North
Stare back at the mirror
For all that you’re worth.

Here comes the thunder
There goes the rain
The lightning that strikes me
When you try to explain
I try to explain, I let you complain
I read and remember
The moods in the game.

Moon

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Moon

She flies over fields
Skipping the trees
Falling into shadows
Does as she pleases.
The moon is a woman
Bright and curved
High and unreachable
Hated and loved.
What we see is part
The dark stays a secret
Bright hides an answer
And covers the weakness.
Here is your sailboat
Now on dry land
Safe from the journey
As gravity planned.
We are the earthbound
We watch you cast spells
She says she’s a woman
But who can ever tell?

Housework

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Housework

Heidi Hi was half Chinese, half Dutch and half the age her mother had been when she died. Heidi lived with her gardener partner Walter Blomfield, one hundred percent Dutch, in the gardener’s cottage on a grand country estate deep in the Range Rover heart of Scotland. “Holland, where we come from, is a very flat country” said Heidi “very flat and not very dusty, in Holland we have little in the way of dust. Our wonderful hard wooden floors show only muddy marks and clumps of fluff and there is seldom a household dust problem”. In Scotland, Heidi had encountered a surprising amount of dust that she could not explain. She had also noticed a great deal of dust in Lisbon during a short stay there when Walter worked for the Prison Service. “The Portuguese know nothing about chimneys,” she would say. “They simply don’t know how to build them, we had to show them, but still there was a lot of dust”. They had also stayed in Paraguay for six months but hadn’t really been aware of dust problems there particularly. “The equator and our proximity to it may be to blame”, said Heidi. “It could also be the rainy season or the amount of magnetism generated by the ancient tram cars that sizzled and sparked past the windows of our apartment, we cannot be sure.” She thought that excess magnetism should keep dust suspended in the air, not allowing it to settle and preventing from being a problem, except of course for the difficulties raised by breathing it in.

When Walter went to work and Heidi had the house to herself, she could think about her own routines, start on her housework whenever she liked and of course tackle the dust. It was eight thirty and he had just left to spend the day working on the restoration of the walled garden that flanked the great house. “Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme” sang Heidi as she combed her spiked and tousled blond hair. She then began to wonder what the first book ever to have been written on a typewriter was, and then what had been the first book to have been written on a word processor or a laptop. She stopped the thinking for a moment and made herself some green tea. It was going to be another long day but she would sit down and map out a plan.

She picked up some scrap bits of A4 and doodled on them with a brown fibre pen; she drew clouds, birds and flower heads. Then she wrote in the blobs that were the clouds, lists of tasks and things to do, shopping to buy, clothes she needed to fix, things to remember. There was a housework cloud, a Tesco cloud, and a lunch cloud. The clothes cloud was still empty, she preferred not to think of sewing or ironing or mending. There should have been a friends cloud but she hated even having to draw that one, that and the going out cloud. The edges of the clouds grew a darker brown as she struggled to find appropriate fillers. They stared back at her like angry empty sandwiches denied their spoonfuls of coronation chicken or tuna mayonnaise. The hot tea was the best thing about this little process.

Once she had finished her tea she gathered up her tools and began to search for dust. She had her vacuum cleaner, her dustpan and brush, her aerosol cleaner, a duster, an anti static wiper and a feather duster. Most days the dust appeared firstly by Walter’s side of the bed, then the toilet, then to the shower cubicle, then back to the bedroom, into the wardrobe and by the chest of drawers and then down stairs towards the kitchen. The stairway could be particularly bad; it had an old heavily patterned carpet that Heidi did not like and many elaborate pieces of woodwork and cornicing on the walls, banisters and doorframes. The kitchen was dusty from the stove to the fridge, to the cupboards then to the hall and then out to the back door. The tracks of Walter’s pre-work morning routine was marked by his boot dust trail every day.

Walter was quiet most of the time and tired the rest of the time. He had black fingernails from soil and oil and manual toil. He seldom touched her in a way she appreciated, when he did she thought mostly of the dirt ground between the flesh and the nails, tainting and colouring the skin, caking the cracks and scrapes in his hard working nails. His touch, once an electric arc of pleasure was now something of a familiar numbing pain; she gripped the handle on the vacuum cleaner, fingers coiling round it and dragged it along behind her like a stubborn child. A slight cruel shiver ran down her spine, the feeling almost made her want to squeal. There was a glint in her eye nobody would ever see.

Heidi stopped by the hall mirror and gazed into her reflection. Dark Chinese eyes, slight slant and a look that came from her Chinese father, also there was her a small eastern mouth and pointy chin. She studied her flat Dutch nose, red cheeks and mousey blonde hair, genetic gifts from her Dutch mother. She touched her nose, pulled at the tip and tried to stretch it to make it longer and sharper, to reshape it’s annoying flatness. For a few seconds she admired her new profile and then let go as her flat nose sprang back into shape. For the meantime she blanked out the look of her hair. Now back to the dust and disappointment of discovering more.

She sniffed at the house air, she sucked and pulled in housey air and allowed it to resonate around the inside of her nostrils, she imaged dust, visible as if in a wind tunnel, circulating and spiralling in her nasal cavities. “Too much dust in this house and much of it living in my flat as a wardrobe door nose!” She sneezed into a Kleenex tissue four times, encouraging each extra spasm and then closely inspected the matter caught in the fresh tissue like a fisherman inspecting a newly surfaced net for the catch. “Pollen, mainly pollen, but also many microbes, tiny unwelcome visitors invading my house”.

The cleaning routine began as she folded the tissue and placed it in her apron pocket. She tapped the folded bulge and reached again for the waiting vacuum cleaner. It was a red “Henry”, not the best or the most stylish, a workhorse really but effective. She selected the small pointy tool head, inserted into the waiting chrome pipe and switched on. She felt a hum of physical excitement as Henry’s song of collection began to be sung by his whirling motor. She inserted the nozzle like some surgical implement into nooks, crannies, crevasses, along skirting board tops, behind sleeping appliances and white goods and deep into the floorboard cracks.

“Very little of our modern dust originates on this earth, 97.5% of dust is true cosmic dust, space debris and particles driven across the universe, blasted for light years and over billions of miles by great magnetic winds and the pull of mighty stars and planets. Then sieved, strained and pummelled through the pressures and heat of our outer atmospheric layers, down through extremes of heat and cold, through cloud and rain and lightning strikes, hurricanes and storms until it settles on earth in the homes of homo sapiens.” Heidi liked to think of these words, words her mother had taught her many years ago as the two of them cleaned their farmhouse kitchen, a kitchen thick with agitated dust, gathered from all corners of the universe but still running. Her mother was cremated now and resided in a jar at the bottom of the wardrobe. Her silent soul allowed the screwed lid to remain precisely in place as it stubbornly refused to soar. Dust to dust, ashes to ashes.

Almost freed from the tyranny of the hall mirror she lapsed back into thinking about her hair. Her thoughts were turning an unhappy colour. Heidi though her hair was not quite right, (she thought some more and flicked her tongue across her top lip), not coloured in the places it should be, not thick where it should be. It had outgrown its last unplanned cut. One in a series of cuts and styles that had led to this unfortunate point, as all styles seem to, where the hair is not right. Now her eyes saw two things, the predictable gathering of the dust and the irritating reflection of hair that was not what it should be. For dust there was instant, quick hoovering and removing solutions, dust could be dealt with, albeit effort was required. Hair was different; there never would be any quick solution to the feeling of bad hair. The continued, disciplined and pointed pursuit of dust might just numb those hairstyle thoughts however. Lose yourself in a muddle of cleaning, a flap of dusting, a sniff of dust gathering. She looked down and around, scanning the room.

She picked up a single short hair from the floor, idle against the skirting board. Blond is the colour of dust, blond is the colour of this internal vacancy, blond is the colour of domestic slavery, and blond is the colour of blond hair that needs more vibrant blond colouring and some frantic, white hot cutting. Her hair, the dust, the atoms that made them both up seemed almost visible, spinning in the sunlight as the bright morning invaded her routine. These moments of focused clarity, this pure thought only came in unexpected, unpredictable spasms, like an athlete’s high, a rush gleaned from a special achievement, the perfect rapport of a musician or and artist with an instrument or a brush. They were gone before they could be fully savoured, like a dirty and forbidden dream.

Heidi had an itch. Heidi’s eyes glazed and her concentration on cleaning, seeing the details in the dust and the patterns and geometry in her housework broke. Heidi’s hands were feeling itchy; she stopped her hoovering, right there at the foot of the stairs. She put down the appliance and returned to the kitchen, opened a pine fronted cupboard and reached in for the bottle of hand cream. It had a white plastic push down applicator top; she liked its shape and how it felt. With the flat of her hand she pushed down on the top and squeezed a great glob of pink perfumed viscosity onto her left palm. She slapped her right palm against it and squashed the lotion into her hands with a circular motion working it into each crease and pore. Her eyes were now closed almost painfully tight, her mouth a straight line of concentration, some sweat was now visible on her brow and she was warming up. She rubbed her hands together more and more allowing the heat to build. The hand cream oozed between her fingers and ran to the tips; she was almost tempted to lick them but resisted and rubbed more. She rubbed fifty times, then another fifty times, rubbing with all her strength. As she rubbed more and applied more lotion, she began to stagger, her ankles seemed to disagree with her vertical stance, they closed like pliers, shutting at an odd angle. Her hands were melting together as she stepped backwards and sideways. Her elbow knocked over a plant, her heel skiffed the waste paper bin as she kept on moving around, oblivious of her surroundings. Worlds made of internal dust; sunlight and rainbows were orbiting and spinning endlessly inside her head. She felt herself to be in the middle of her own brain but still aware of the external need to rub more and more in order to continue to heighten the experience. Finally as she looked deeper inwards, she began seeing everything that mattered to her as smaller and finer than ever, from the tiny to the microscopic in this new and bright personal cosmos.

Then with the hardened auto-mechanical movement of a fifties sci-fi robot Heidi stopped the rubbing and allowed her hands to part and she stared at her palms. They were hot, red and seemed larger than life and dazzling and bright to her. Sensing that there was now no way of rescuing herself she slapped her hot hands against the inside of her thighs and resumed the rubbing but now grinding against the fabric of her skirt and through to the skin. She was trembling and she was almost dropping to her knees, fifty to five hundred was the count, mad figures running parallel with the rhythms she was making. Then behind her the tapestry cushion couch suddenly opened up its welcoming arms like a mother at the playground gates and she fell backwards. Five hundred to…

At six thirty Walter came home. He parked the white VW pickup in the usual place casually stubbing out his cigarette butt in the ashtray as he slipped the keys from the ignition. Over the wall and across the fields a dog barked and close by two pheasants careered past the garden hedge clucking and squawking, obviously agitated by his arrival. The sun was still warm on the courtyard flagstones and Walter was distracted by the thought of taking a cold beer from the fridge as he slammed the pickup cab door shut. He walked across the yard and opened the kitchen door, looking in he saw there were loose papers on the table, dirty teacups, breakfast dishes, the hoover and assorted cleaning materials on the floor in the hall. Nothing appeared to have been done all day. “Heidi?” he cried.

Heidi was lying on the couch in a foetal like position, a towel across her head; she appeared to be fast asleep and at peace with the wide world. Only partly hidden by the towelling shroud a glimmer of a smile could be seen running across her face. “Hard day?” Walter whispered and laughed, a little unsure of what he should be saying. “You said that we would have an early night tonight.”

Heidi opened her eyes, cleared her throat and grinned, looking at Walter close up and squarely in the face “I have had such a fantastic day”, she began to giggle a little, strangely amused by her own words and the sound her voice made, “ I have discovered that if you rub enough, all of the dust just disappears.”