It was some time after the anorexic girl's birthday party but still a little while before the general election that I went up to the hills to walk. In FACT it was probably only two or three or four days after the party, and I was walking off the effcts of drinking for a weekend, teaching myself to sweat and suffer and drink water and sweat again.
My plan was to take the path onto the low gorsy plateau, then the sheep path, the hare path, the unpath, and finally to sit in some cleft or other, sheltered and hungry, where I could unwrap a healthy lunch. But I had to take a diversion. The first tractor reared up over the brow of the hill, red and belligerent, and threatened to follow the track I was walking on, so I bore left to skirt the hill's base and climb from another angle. I have no problem SHARING the countryside, but I have an aversion to farmers. Farms are fine, but I can't deal with farmers.
Two birds flew up from a tall hedge of trees, or more likely from the field behind the trees. At first I thought they were pigeons, but their plumage was a map of dark and light: lapwings. A pair of starving lapwings, recent migrants. I heard the sound of an engine, too high-pitched to be a tractor, and thousands, tens of thousands of lapwings errupted over the hedge into the sky in a spiral column. I thought at first that it was the birds making the engine noise, but through the cloud of wings there appeared a WW1 biplane. Strung behind it like a liquid tail was a banner. The writing on the banner was Cyrillic, and I could make NO SENSE of it. Lapwings still poured into the air: many were chopped to pieces by the plane's propeller, bits of darkandwhite bird like torn newspaper floated back down to earth. I hid from the rain of broken bloodless creatures in the SHELTER of the hedge and remembered for the first time in years a recurring dream I had had as an adolescent in which a green sports car came towards me. In the car was a man in a suit with a megaphone who had shouted 'WHO WILL YOU VOTE FOR?' The car always ran me over before I could think of an answer.
There is a patch of trees cloaking a pond and beyond the patch there are no more fields only scant grass and gorse and sandstone stumps. I went through the trees with pheasantsounds keeping pace with me on each side, towards and old gate that I knew, but the gate was gone: there was only a barricade of briar, and the pheasantsounds followed me back to the field, and I had to skirt the wood. Here I escaped the second red tractor: a beast with mechanical appendages that looked like the stingers or ovipositors of some malevolent or motherly insect, mantid arms outstretched, bursting its coquelicot skin.
The wooden stakes that are USED as fenceposts are uprooted/deracine/entwurzelt, matchwood on the fields. They are giant retarded leadless pencils marking invisible crosses on the landscape.
Up on the gorseland there is a stone near to where the sick sheep go when their bones feel the need to shed their bag of skin and bleach in the sun. I sat down on the stone and removed from my bag a plastic bottle of vodka and lemonade I had painstakingly prepared. I drank and discovered that the drink had turned into water, so I drank some more to make sure and it was definitely a bottle of water like all the other bottles of water I had consumed that day (there were many) so I drank out of spite until the bottle was finished. I began to compose a letter on the back of a postcard showing a blazing white chalk figure gashed across a hillside. The letter was to te short girl I had met at the anorexic girl's party. There was not much space on the back of the postcard.
dear trudie my toesandankles still hurt from saturday I think the old Port has brought the old Gout back/I cant blame you fr this or anything though im sorry I acted the way i did and so shoud you be perhaps/perhaps you really didnt want to do anything as i didnt and if you were wineless and cold here with me now and with the sheepskeletons you wouldnt be asking me to jump your little bones or maybe.../I'm sorry/I'm sorry if you are hurt and sorry tht you are a catholic and a socialist/either one of these on its own i could deal with but not both/but as is often the case with catholics and socialists you do have great breasts/what am I saying
At this point I must have fallen asleep because in my mind was the vision of an open-topped car coming towards me at speed. The man in the car had a megaphone but it didn't seem to be working. I think he was saying 'What is it that you love,' or 'Where is it that you will go.' As with all dreams it could have been a meaningless amalgamation of the two. Anyway I couldn't answer because the car stopped and the man bundled me into the back seat and I woke up sweating because it is worse to be bound and gagged and thrown into a car than it is to be run over by one.
Tuesday, 27 April 2010
Wednesday, 23 December 2009
An Exploration
Duller even than hypnosis, this,
the sky bulging with its charity
of snow. The crested, toothpaste-
topped houses are mountains
a team of dogs could not traverse,
or waves that have drowned kittens
and preserved mammoths. I think
about the warmth of pubs, and twinkling
Christmas songs, and the polar explorer
whose ring finger became a frozen
blood-sausage and snapped off,
about how he was miles away
in a room as warm as your loaf-
headed house before he noticed
the pain of a phantom thaw, the dumb,
numb sleep of a bit of himself
left behind in the linelessness of snow.
the sky bulging with its charity
of snow. The crested, toothpaste-
topped houses are mountains
a team of dogs could not traverse,
or waves that have drowned kittens
and preserved mammoths. I think
about the warmth of pubs, and twinkling
Christmas songs, and the polar explorer
whose ring finger became a frozen
blood-sausage and snapped off,
about how he was miles away
in a room as warm as your loaf-
headed house before he noticed
the pain of a phantom thaw, the dumb,
numb sleep of a bit of himself
left behind in the linelessness of snow.
Tuesday, 1 December 2009
She Still Collects the Eggs; He is Lucky
A man came to dry out the kitchen with something that looked like an industrial vacuum cleaner. It was easier said than done. The boy (let's call him that despite or because of the fact that he was twenty-two, only three years younger than the man with the vacuum cleaner) made two cups of tea and watched the water as it slowly left the kitchen floor by way of a fragile and papery pump. Watched the accident disappear. The girl was not there.
The boy caught the man's attention and mouthed the word sugar at him. He wondered if he had managed to convey a question mark.
The man nodded elaborately and raised two fingers. A peace sign. The boy put two sugars in the man's tea and two in his own.
The boy listened to the gurgled sounds in the pump where water commingled with air. Subterranean sounds. The man had one arm on the draining board. He drank the tea before it could cool. His stance was nonchalant and slouching. He was looking out of the window into the back garden and not at the tools of his trade.
He shouted, You've got some chickens out there.
The boy was thinking about that morning. He had come downstairs and his kitchen was flooded. Pavlov floating happily in his basket. Not howling.
He did not want to shout above the sound of the sputtering pump but neither did he want to appear rude. He said, Yes, we've got three hens. My missus likes eggs. He regretted using the word missus.
He remembered panicking, shouting upstairs to the girl, We're flooded, come down quickly. She had said, You'll have to deal with it. Call someone out. I'm late for work as it is. At first he had not known who to call. The fire brigade perhaps.
He watched the hens. They both watched the hens. Two of them plucked gravel from the ground in the outside run. The third was out of sight in the coop.
They sat down in the upstairs study where it was dry and the boy turned on the battery-operated radio. The living room was still damp. Bin liners on the floor. Out of sight the pump did its muscular work. News of a snooker match on the radio. On top of the blank television set was a small framed photograph of the boy and the girl on the outside deck of a ferry to or from Dublin or Dun Laoghaire two summers before. He had forgotten who had taken it.
He said, It was good of you to come at such short notice. You must be busy.
He had no idea why the he though the man would be busy. He thought about the last words the girl had said before she went left for work. Don't let him do a half-arsed job, and don't give him any money until we know it's been sorted out.
The man talked about snooker, and betting.
An idea came to the boy. Not a good idea, he thought. Yes, a good idea in its own way, I suppose. He went down to the kitchen and got two cans of lager from the fridge, which was still cold despite the electricty being turned off. He tiptoed on the still-wet floor.
He said, You want one of these?
The man said, You know what, I will. It's not often I get the chance to sit down on the job.
The man opened his can. It had a picture of a bear on it. They talked about whatever was on the radio, called each other mate once or twice. The boy looked at the photo on top of the television. Pavlov, shut in the spare room, barked. The girl looked happy. It must have been taken on the way out and not the way back. He thought he was lucky. They still had sex. Sometimes he thought of that picture, or of other pictures, while they were doing it. Pictures of her smiling. She still liked to collect the eggs every morning. No, not every morning, because the hens weren't that reliable, but whenever she could. To the extent that he no longer liked the omelettes she made. He had been lucky in Ireland. She had returned with him over the flat sea, although he was sure there were no photographs of that return journey.
He drank from his can, which was yellow.
He was still lucky. He had told her things she had never meant to find out in Ireland. It must have been the drink. That was where he had really started hitting it. Where they had really started hitting it. Or was it afterwards? He had been forgiven, in a sense. He thought about the duality of forgiveness, or the infinity. He felt betrayed by her forgiveness, although he thought he probably had no right. Downstairs the pipe slurped and sucked.
When the pipe had done its work the man hauled it dripping over his shoulder with the adroitness of a sailor and said, That's all I can do for now.
The ground floor was still too damp to be lived in but at least there was no standing water. The boy said, You don't fancy another can before you go?
The man said, No, thanks. Busy afternoon ahead.
The boy caught the man's attention and mouthed the word sugar at him. He wondered if he had managed to convey a question mark.
The man nodded elaborately and raised two fingers. A peace sign. The boy put two sugars in the man's tea and two in his own.
The boy listened to the gurgled sounds in the pump where water commingled with air. Subterranean sounds. The man had one arm on the draining board. He drank the tea before it could cool. His stance was nonchalant and slouching. He was looking out of the window into the back garden and not at the tools of his trade.
He shouted, You've got some chickens out there.
The boy was thinking about that morning. He had come downstairs and his kitchen was flooded. Pavlov floating happily in his basket. Not howling.
He did not want to shout above the sound of the sputtering pump but neither did he want to appear rude. He said, Yes, we've got three hens. My missus likes eggs. He regretted using the word missus.
He remembered panicking, shouting upstairs to the girl, We're flooded, come down quickly. She had said, You'll have to deal with it. Call someone out. I'm late for work as it is. At first he had not known who to call. The fire brigade perhaps.
He watched the hens. They both watched the hens. Two of them plucked gravel from the ground in the outside run. The third was out of sight in the coop.
They sat down in the upstairs study where it was dry and the boy turned on the battery-operated radio. The living room was still damp. Bin liners on the floor. Out of sight the pump did its muscular work. News of a snooker match on the radio. On top of the blank television set was a small framed photograph of the boy and the girl on the outside deck of a ferry to or from Dublin or Dun Laoghaire two summers before. He had forgotten who had taken it.
He said, It was good of you to come at such short notice. You must be busy.
He had no idea why the he though the man would be busy. He thought about the last words the girl had said before she went left for work. Don't let him do a half-arsed job, and don't give him any money until we know it's been sorted out.
The man talked about snooker, and betting.
An idea came to the boy. Not a good idea, he thought. Yes, a good idea in its own way, I suppose. He went down to the kitchen and got two cans of lager from the fridge, which was still cold despite the electricty being turned off. He tiptoed on the still-wet floor.
He said, You want one of these?
The man said, You know what, I will. It's not often I get the chance to sit down on the job.
The man opened his can. It had a picture of a bear on it. They talked about whatever was on the radio, called each other mate once or twice. The boy looked at the photo on top of the television. Pavlov, shut in the spare room, barked. The girl looked happy. It must have been taken on the way out and not the way back. He thought he was lucky. They still had sex. Sometimes he thought of that picture, or of other pictures, while they were doing it. Pictures of her smiling. She still liked to collect the eggs every morning. No, not every morning, because the hens weren't that reliable, but whenever she could. To the extent that he no longer liked the omelettes she made. He had been lucky in Ireland. She had returned with him over the flat sea, although he was sure there were no photographs of that return journey.
He drank from his can, which was yellow.
He was still lucky. He had told her things she had never meant to find out in Ireland. It must have been the drink. That was where he had really started hitting it. Where they had really started hitting it. Or was it afterwards? He had been forgiven, in a sense. He thought about the duality of forgiveness, or the infinity. He felt betrayed by her forgiveness, although he thought he probably had no right. Downstairs the pipe slurped and sucked.
When the pipe had done its work the man hauled it dripping over his shoulder with the adroitness of a sailor and said, That's all I can do for now.
The ground floor was still too damp to be lived in but at least there was no standing water. The boy said, You don't fancy another can before you go?
The man said, No, thanks. Busy afternoon ahead.
Friday, 21 August 2009
House
'Pelvic floor: thirty-four.'
Nobody shouts out the word 'house.'
'Prince Harry: fifty-five.'
Nobody.
Old Miss does a little cackle, wipes the cackle-dribble off his bare knee and says, 'I'm a lucky boy. It's my lucky day.'
'Shut up, cunt-rot. Outdoor latrine: seventeen.'
Nobody.
'Saint Augustine: seventeen.'
'You done that one.'
'An' I'll do it again you godless gob of spunk.'
The Caller adjusts his headgear: he is wearing a pristine white apiarist's suit. The Old People are getting restless. The Caller calls.
'A girt big pair o'Bristols: number three. The number three, anybody?'
Nobody.
'Old Miss has got a girt big pair of Bristols alright,' says Sir James Hollyoak. ''Specially since he had his dick cut off.'
'He's just a fat fucker,' says the Au Pair, jealous.
'I'll have none of that language, slut. Cheese and chive: thirty-five.'
Nobody.
The Au Pair gets up off the floor and removes her underwear, as if to prove a point. Old Miss gurgles as if he has vomit in his throat. The Au Pair sniffs her briefs and folds them into an equilateral triangle. The Caller, ever-patient, lift his mask and sets to work with a toothpick. He removes and savours a fibrous scrap of Bressingham duck breast.
The Au Pair pleads to the dimness of the room. 'Swap cards with me, swap cards with me, I haven't got any numbers yet.'
'I'll swap cards with you if you let me put my balls in your mouth for twenty-five minutes.' This is probably Sir James' proposition.
'Twenty minutes.'
'Twenty-three.'
'Twenty-two, starting now.'
'How do you know she won't bite 'em off?' The voice comes from the back of the room and almost certainly belongs to Jacques Derrida.
'Because she knows I might have AIDS in my blood. She may be a whore but she's not totally stupid.'
'Attila the Hun: twenty-one,' calls the Caller.
'Just my age,' says the Au Pair.
'You can't get AIDS from drinking bollocks-blood, any fucking idiot knows that. She'll bite 'em off, I tell you. Don't do it man.'
'She won't bite 'em off. She sucks bals all the time and I've never seen her bite any off. It wouldn't be worth her while. She wouldn't be able to swap cards with me.'
'Hey, did you hear me? When he said 'Attila the Hun: twenty-one,' I said 'Just my age.' It could mean that I am twenty-one or it could mean that I'm as old as Attila the Hun, whoever he is.'
'Shut up, slut,' says Derrida. 'We're talking about you, not to you.'
'In any case, she couldn't bite them off if she tried. She's got no teeth. She'd be there all day. That's why I like putting my balls in her mouth, not yours. It's the gums I like, see.'
'You're a pervert, man.'
'You can talk, Frenchy.'
Jacques Derrida blinks slowly and says, 'I do not like racism. We should not have to tolerate it in a place like this. All day long I listen to you vulgar bastards talk about balls and cunts and how much you hate the French. Well let me tell you I hate the English and I hate the Irish and I don't care which you are.' He throws his bingo card to the floor and says, 'In the absence of anything resembling a glove, consider that an invitation to duel, you spastic peasant.'
'I'll think about it,' says Hollyoak. 'In the meantime I've only got eighteen minutes left and the balls are not yet in the mouth. You'll have to wait, Pushkin. I've got my priorities.'
'Jailbait: number eight,' calls the Caller.
Hollyoak with his balls poised by the Au Pair's mouth shouts, 'House.'
'Go to hell, Hollyoak, you lying prick. You do that every time. You haven't even got your card.'
Derrida recedes. Old Miss rubs himself against a wall.
The Caller removes his headgear completely.
'That, ladies and gentlemen, is the end of this evening's entertainment. It looks like we have another rollover. That means each and every one of you shitbags has to stay here until next time.'
He leaves the room and locks the door behind him. Once outside, he flicks a switch and the room he has just left is flooded with a calming blue light and once more the Old People, at least the ones with eyes, can see each other.
Nobody shouts out the word 'house.'
'Prince Harry: fifty-five.'
Nobody.
Old Miss does a little cackle, wipes the cackle-dribble off his bare knee and says, 'I'm a lucky boy. It's my lucky day.'
'Shut up, cunt-rot. Outdoor latrine: seventeen.'
Nobody.
'Saint Augustine: seventeen.'
'You done that one.'
'An' I'll do it again you godless gob of spunk.'
The Caller adjusts his headgear: he is wearing a pristine white apiarist's suit. The Old People are getting restless. The Caller calls.
'A girt big pair o'Bristols: number three. The number three, anybody?'
Nobody.
'Old Miss has got a girt big pair of Bristols alright,' says Sir James Hollyoak. ''Specially since he had his dick cut off.'
'He's just a fat fucker,' says the Au Pair, jealous.
'I'll have none of that language, slut. Cheese and chive: thirty-five.'
Nobody.
The Au Pair gets up off the floor and removes her underwear, as if to prove a point. Old Miss gurgles as if he has vomit in his throat. The Au Pair sniffs her briefs and folds them into an equilateral triangle. The Caller, ever-patient, lift his mask and sets to work with a toothpick. He removes and savours a fibrous scrap of Bressingham duck breast.
The Au Pair pleads to the dimness of the room. 'Swap cards with me, swap cards with me, I haven't got any numbers yet.'
'I'll swap cards with you if you let me put my balls in your mouth for twenty-five minutes.' This is probably Sir James' proposition.
'Twenty minutes.'
'Twenty-three.'
'Twenty-two, starting now.'
'How do you know she won't bite 'em off?' The voice comes from the back of the room and almost certainly belongs to Jacques Derrida.
'Because she knows I might have AIDS in my blood. She may be a whore but she's not totally stupid.'
'Attila the Hun: twenty-one,' calls the Caller.
'Just my age,' says the Au Pair.
'You can't get AIDS from drinking bollocks-blood, any fucking idiot knows that. She'll bite 'em off, I tell you. Don't do it man.'
'She won't bite 'em off. She sucks bals all the time and I've never seen her bite any off. It wouldn't be worth her while. She wouldn't be able to swap cards with me.'
'Hey, did you hear me? When he said 'Attila the Hun: twenty-one,' I said 'Just my age.' It could mean that I am twenty-one or it could mean that I'm as old as Attila the Hun, whoever he is.'
'Shut up, slut,' says Derrida. 'We're talking about you, not to you.'
'In any case, she couldn't bite them off if she tried. She's got no teeth. She'd be there all day. That's why I like putting my balls in her mouth, not yours. It's the gums I like, see.'
'You're a pervert, man.'
'You can talk, Frenchy.'
Jacques Derrida blinks slowly and says, 'I do not like racism. We should not have to tolerate it in a place like this. All day long I listen to you vulgar bastards talk about balls and cunts and how much you hate the French. Well let me tell you I hate the English and I hate the Irish and I don't care which you are.' He throws his bingo card to the floor and says, 'In the absence of anything resembling a glove, consider that an invitation to duel, you spastic peasant.'
'I'll think about it,' says Hollyoak. 'In the meantime I've only got eighteen minutes left and the balls are not yet in the mouth. You'll have to wait, Pushkin. I've got my priorities.'
'Jailbait: number eight,' calls the Caller.
Hollyoak with his balls poised by the Au Pair's mouth shouts, 'House.'
'Go to hell, Hollyoak, you lying prick. You do that every time. You haven't even got your card.'
Derrida recedes. Old Miss rubs himself against a wall.
The Caller removes his headgear completely.
'That, ladies and gentlemen, is the end of this evening's entertainment. It looks like we have another rollover. That means each and every one of you shitbags has to stay here until next time.'
He leaves the room and locks the door behind him. Once outside, he flicks a switch and the room he has just left is flooded with a calming blue light and once more the Old People, at least the ones with eyes, can see each other.
Friday, 7 August 2009
First Thing
A sorry story: he woke without knowing
he had woken, still in the wide mouth
of a dream about a childless female friend
who was babysitting, at the end
of her tether. Their home town was a crater
full of smaller craters and fenced off
like a building site or an archaeological dig.
He saw two men by the fence,
they could have been friends of his,
or they were following her. Nobody
was tunnelling underneath, and when he woke
it was not like coming out of a tunnel,
it was more like dying after the war
had ended. He had no hard-on: sorry
because of this and because he went
downstairs to cook breakfast
and put his head in the cave of the oven, just
for a second or two, to see how it would feel.
he had woken, still in the wide mouth
of a dream about a childless female friend
who was babysitting, at the end
of her tether. Their home town was a crater
full of smaller craters and fenced off
like a building site or an archaeological dig.
He saw two men by the fence,
they could have been friends of his,
or they were following her. Nobody
was tunnelling underneath, and when he woke
it was not like coming out of a tunnel,
it was more like dying after the war
had ended. He had no hard-on: sorry
because of this and because he went
downstairs to cook breakfast
and put his head in the cave of the oven, just
for a second or two, to see how it would feel.
Wednesday, 5 August 2009
A Detective Story
I went into a noisy cafe where the seating was cramped and the clientele gratuitously ugly, bourgeois and complacent. There were many children. It was not the ideal place to conduct a murder investigation. Or indeed to begin writing a short story. This, however, is what I did. I began to write a short story about a moderately-respected police officer. A plain-clothes detective already descending from the dubious zenith of middle age. This gentleman - I believe I called him Inspector de Bleca - had a decent if not unblemished record and liked to think of himself as a homicide expert. Every homicide, he said, can be solved. Easily solved too, if you know what you are looking for. There is no perfect murder, he told himself and his colleagues on an almost weekly basis. But as you know, if you say the same thing too many times it becomes unbelievable or meaningless. This came to be the case with de Bleca's mantra. There is no such thing as the perfect murder, he said, but what his ears heard was something completely different, something that was indecipherable, uncanny and foreign. When his colleagues repeated it back to him it just sounded plain ridiculous. Over time he was beset by a suspicion that expanded like damp wood - a suspicion that every murder was the perfect murder and no murder was could ever be solved fully. The problem gnawed at him, as they say, and he began to lose sleep and weight. His eyes grew redder and blacker. He found an old hipflask that a great-grandfather or great-uncle had used in some small country's war of independence, and he put it to good use. All the usual actions of a man, possibly lonely, in the grip of a crisis. And like any man in the grip of a crisis, when the the solution came it was like a meteorite. He realised that he had to become, as it were, a scientist. He had to test his assumptions in a purely scientific manner. It was obvious. The only way to find an example of a homicide that would define or defy his idea of the perfect murder was to commit the murder himself. The mode of logic that had taken hold in him when the meteorite had hit told him that no man could ever possibly solve a murder that he himself had knowingly committed. This was perhaps not the answer that he had initially wanted, but he had to have proof either way. And if he were to solve the case, then of course he would be hailed as the greatest homicde detective that ever drew breath. Science dictated that his victim or subject be chosen randomly. He picked a street blindly from his local phone book and killed the first person he saw going into a house on that street. The subject was a young man who worked as an assistant in a local museum, but that fact is superfluous to the story, as is the method of execution which, it hardly needs to be said, was clean, silent and professional. How could it have been otherwise? De Bleca carried out the first part of his experiment at two thirty on a Tuesday afternoon in September on the anniversary of the 1973 coup d'etat in Chile and the 2001 attack on New York's World Trade Centre, a fact that wholly escaped his notice. The murder soon came to the attention of the police force for which he worked and naturally (it was a condition of his experiment) he insisted on taking up the case, despite the fact that he was due to take his annual leave. As you would expect, he threw himself into the investigation of the murdered museum assistant as if his life depended on it, which, in a way, it did. He worked harder than he had done since he was thirty-five. He devoted more thought, time and effort into the case than into any he had previously solved. He tried to put to the back of his mind the financial costs that were undoubtedly being incurred by his beloved police force in his name. But nevertheless the answers, somewhat predictably, eluded him. None of the facts in the case added up. Worryingly, there seemed to be no motive whatsoever. When, after months of wasted time and man power, his superiors told him to call it a day, he demured with a disappointment that was soon replaced by an inexplicably increasing sense of pride. I would like to continue but it is impossible. Mr de Bleca has ordered an Americano above the noise of children, finished writing in a notebook and placed himself under arrest.
Tuesday, 4 August 2009
Notes on the Existence of Myself, by Sir James Wilson Vincent Savile
I am Jimmy Savile. My life has never been turned upside-down by slow inevitable death, or death that comes quickly and unexpectedly, by love that hits you like a sound wave or by unfathomable, creeping depression. I suppose you'd say I'm average in that respect, average to the point of boredom, but there are things that have happened in my life, in my sphere of existence, that are worthy of note. So think of these words, if you like, as notes on my existence. But before I go on, let me tell you a quick story. I used to have a rotweiler called Blue, but he died. He died quite young, in fact. I don't know how long they're supposed to live for but I'm sure it's more than six years. Anyway, I recently replaced him with a young doberman. When Blue was still alive I had a sign up on my window that said Blue Lives Here and a picture of him looking slightly cheeky but also quite scary. So when I got the doberman I decided to do the same for him. I put up a sign with his name on it: Evander Lives Here, but I didn't have any pictures of him except one as a puppy that the breeder gave me but I decided not to use because eight week old dobermans (or dobermen?) are considerably less formidible than fully-grown ones. So, to get to the point, I put the sign up without a picture to start with. It soon crossed my mind that people seeing the sign might not realise at first that Evander was a dog, and that, for a fleeting second, someone might get the idea that I am living in some kind of non-sexual union with the boxer Evander Holyfield, like Brian May lives with that girl who used to be in EastEnders. This struck me as funny and interesting and I made a point of observing peoples' reactions to the new sign. (Let me say at this point that my dog Evander was of course named after the boxer, whom I admire greatly in a strictly non-sexual way.) Well, you'll never guess what happened. The next day I saw my postman and the very first thing he said to me was 'Hey, Sir Jimmy,' (he always calls me Sir Jimmy. Polite lad.) 'Hey, you'd better be careful, people are starting to talk about you and Mr Holyfield.' He said it with a bit of a wink so as I could be sure he was only joking. So there you go. Proof of the strange and beautiful ways people think. And proof that great minds think alike. My postman is a genius. Anyway, that's the end of that little story. Back to the point. Physically, I'm not an old man. Not your typical elderly gent, by any stretch of the imagination. I was middle aged when Flock of Seagulls released their debut single and I feel no older than that now. I'm still a patron of the Highland Games. Look it up if you don't believe me; it's on Wikipedia. The tracksuit ain't for show. But I realise that people will look at me and see the silver hair and think it's grey, will look at me and think, He can't have that long left. I know otherwise. I know I've got a good few years left in this body. But the mind, that's another matter altogether, the mind. Who knows when that could go. I'm as sharp as a lemon at the moment but tomorrow I could wake up mad. You never know with the mind. I've seen it happen so often, especially in my line of work: the pressure gets to you. So to get to the point, that's why I'm witing this: to get down on paper, before I go mad, some of the important things in my life, some of the little, life-changing things that maybe you don't know about. And maybe you don't want to. But in all fairness, this isn't about you, is it? My life has been all about helping other people, and I just want to set the record straight. I may seem like a saint, but I'm no better than anyone else really. I'm just as selfish as any human - though humans aren't really that selfish compared with other animals. I've told a lie or two. I've played some songs on primetime radio slots when I knew full well that they were too sexually explicit for some of my listeners. I've never hit a woman, though I thought about it once: she spelt my surname with two Ls and when I explained her error she still would not believe me. I really wanted to smack her, but in the end I just told her to look it up on Wikipedia. It's a marvellous tool, that Wikipedia. Type in anyone's name and it'll tell you all you need to know about them, even if they're not that famous like Edwin Collins or Federico Garcia Lorca. Want to know the difference between a hacksaw and a coping saw? Wikipedia's your man. But that's beside the point, unless you're planning on doing some marquetry, in which case, good luck to you. Now I'm going to talk, or rather write, about myself - why is it that writers always say they are talking when really they are writing, and are the least talkative people on earth? I'll tell you a story about a writer, and it's also a story about me, so it chimes in nicely with what I'm trying to say, or what I'm trying to write. If there is anything to be learned from this story it is that you should never be a writer if you don't want to lose your mind. When I was growing up there was a kid in my school who used to write poetry. He was a big fan of Shelley and that other one, the queer chap. Well once upon a time, this kiddie, William something, came home and found his mother hanging in the stairwell for no apparent reason. William was understandably upset, but seemed to get over it pretty quickly. His dad, on the other hand, lost the plot. Started pissing it away down his local boozer, and ran out of money. He had to move himself and his sons from their nice suburban house to one of the back-to-back terraced houses we had in Leeds back then. I used to have to walk past the place on my way to school. To start with William used to join me. Then, to put it plainly, he got into poems in a big way, like his old man got into the booze. He got a bit more mental every day, then one morning I found him at the end of the row of houses walking repeatedly into the brick wall where the gap would have been if the houses hadn't been back-to-back. His forehead and his nose were all cut up. When I asked him what he was up to he said he was trying to reclaim space, something like that. Now you'll be expecting some kind of poetic resolution to this story, or something Freudian, something to do with wombs and his dead mother. But there was no resolution. I was too scared or shocked to stay with him so I carried on walking and never saw him again. I guess they carted him off and put him wherever they put mental kids in those days. Whatever, it didn't seem to put his dad off his stride. I don't think he even missed a darts match. Now, you'll excuse me if I cut this narrative short. I think Evander just shat himself on the kitchen floor. You can't blame him, he's still only a pup, really. But I will come back to this. There are still plenty of important things I need to say before I'm finished.
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