Sunday, December 29, 2013

Vocative


VOCATIVE

 

MACHINE! MACHINE! MACHINE!

 

I WAS CALLED BY A NAME I DID NOT HAVE – BUT I KNEW I WAS THE ONE SO CALLED. I SENSED A CHURNING TRACTOR BEHIND ME, AS DRIVERLESS AS I WASN'T. ITS DEEP-RIDGED WHEELS WERE NO DOUBT TALLER THAN THE TOP OF MY ROOF-RACK ­YET THEIR TREADS SPUN UPON THE SOFT VERGES AS IF THEY WERE IN A FRICTIONLESS WORLD, RATHER THAN CUTTING THROUGH THE SUBSTANCE OF OUR GOOD EARTH. BUT, OF COURSE, OUR WORLD HAD MORE FRICTION THAN FICTION - AND MY DRIVER PUMPED FIERCELY AGAINST THE TENDER PRESSURE I HAD GIVEN HIM WITH MY PEDALS. THE VARIOUS TORQUES AND FUGUES OF MY WHEELS THUS TOOK US ROUND, A THREE-POINT TURN ON A SIXPENNY BIT, AS IT WERE - AND WE FACED THE TRACTOR. HOW NATURAL IT HAD BECOME TO REFER TO THE DRIVER AND MYSELF IN THE FIRST PERSON PLURAL JUST AS THE SIGHT OF THE TRACTOR (OR ITS ARTICULATES OF METAL THAT MADE THE MACHINE) FORCED US TO HOPE THE WORLD ITSELF WOULD NEVER STOP SPINNING - SINCE THINGS LIKE THAT TRACTOR WOULD MAKE A FINE OLD MESS OF PLOUGHING UP SPACE AND UNPEOPLING HEAVEN.

 

GIDDY-UP! GIDDY-UP! GIDDY-UP!

Nigel & Mary & The Vase


NIGEL & MARY & THE VASE

by DF Lewis

 

 

“The Playwright’s shy, gracious wife would have placed vases of flowers through the house, including the guest bedroom.

‘Flowers make people feel welcome. Like they’re wanted.’

 He was filling vases with water...”

from ‘Blonde’ by Joyce Carol Oates.

 

========================================

Scene: A large room, well-furnished in a retro-Fifties style, with a  panoramic window overlooking a distant airport beyond a sea of rooftops. Nigel and Mary are preparing vases of flowers in various strategic positions. They appear to be preparing for a large party, fancy-dressed as film stars, Nigel as Marlon Brando, Mary as Marilyn Monroe, in their heydays.  They have not yet started acting their parts.

 

Mary: They’ll all be here soon.  Flowers make people feel welcome. Like they’re wanted.

 

Nigel: I wonder who Joyce will come as?

 

M: She may not even remember.

 

N:  I often think of games we can play.  It’s no point just talking to some of them. They’re awfully boring people, even when playing their roles.  What games can we play?

 

M: I’m more concerned with getting everything else right.  Like the food... (she makes as if to depart off-stage).

 

N: Wait! A charter plane’s landing. That must be them.

 

M: That damned place is getting busier and busier. Traffic control must have the devil of a job.  And the planes since we’ve lived here seem to be getting bigger and more modern, as well as more frequent.  If we jump ahead, I reckon they’ll be having spaceships landing there, shuttles and rockets with cones and fins.  I often dream of things like that landing there.

 

N: Yes, I’ve noticed you tossing and turning lately.

 

M: Yes, dreams seem more than the sleep they fill.

 

N: That sounds like a quote! You’re not supposed to be Marilyn yet, Mary!

 

M: Ooooh, Meester President. (She laughs  and leaves for the kitchen)

 

N: (Noticing she had left but talking as if she were still present and as if to give excuse for performing a sort of  confessional soliloquy...). I think we are nearly ready. Just a few more flowers.  Any more gloxinia? What is this vase I see before me? (He picks up an as yet empty vase). What games we two play?  I know how we can pass the time when they all arrive.  Give out our guesses to the guests as to what sort of fish or sea-life each film star represents.  ‘Caught on the Waterfront’! That’s a good name for the game. If Joyce comes as Joan Crawford, I reckon she’ll play her like a shark. George as a raft.  (Laughs). Me? I’ll be a monkfish playing as if plugged up by fisherman’s bait.  You, Mary.  I reckon you’re Moby Dick.  Your big white body ever hunted through the dangerous seas of filmdom.  Yes, I’m really rather pleased with that vision of your film star .... what shall we call it? ... that symbol of you, Marilyn.

 

M: (Returning with a plate of nibbles). What’s that you saying, Nigel?

 

N: Just rehearsing a game.

 

M: What game?

 

N: A fish game.  Comparing fish and sea creatures with film stars.

 

M: Sounds silly to me.  By the way, do you remember Monkey’s Walk?

 

N: That’s a bit of a ‘non sequitur’, isn’t it?

 

M: Not really.  It was sort of like catching fish. We first met along Monkey’s Walk, of course.  Each Sunday morning, young people would promenade along Monkey’s Walk simply to meet up.  Many marriages started from walking along Monkey’s Walk on a Sunday morning.  They don’t do that any more.  They don’t need to cuddle in the back rows of cinemas, either.  Kids these days don’t need excuses.  They just pair off as soon as look at each other. 

 

N: Its real name wasn’t Monkey’s Walk, was it?  Why did we kids call it Monkey’s Walk? I can’t remember.

 

M: A sort of tradition.  It went back years.

 

N: Mmmm.

 

M: I think your fish game is a bit silly. 

 

(It is darkening outside the window. The flashing lights intermittently bloom and lessen as each plane takes off or lands).

 

N: I bet Clive will come as Robert Mitchum. Dodie as Bette Davis.

 

M: Can’t think of fish for them.  ....  Have you finished the vases?  Why are you holding that empty one?

 

N: Hmmm. A bass and a rayfish?

 

M: Do you mean a crayfish?

 

N: You know, Mary, you used the word ‘cuddle’ just then.  I like that word.  Seems just right for Marilyn to use, but you’re not Marilyn yet, are you? ... I think I need one of those cuddles now.  Before the others come.

 

M: What, here? You’ll need to pull the blinds.

 

N: It’s more exciting here than in the bedroom. (He pulls the blinds).

 

M: Wait till I’ve done this vase. (She takes it from Nigel). Well, I don’t know, I think we’ve used up all the flowers.  I’ll have to put this one back in the cupboard. 

 

(They pull together, the vase between them, and cuddle standing up. A huge flash abruptly comes from behind the blinds, followed by an enormous roar).

CURTAIN

 

=========================================

 

"She was so earnest, saying, 'It's so scary, how a scene with actual people just goes on and on? Like on a bus? What's to stop it?' And, that wistful little-girl look in her face. 'D'you ever think how hard it is to figure what people mean when probably they don't mean anything? Not like a script. Or that the point of something happening is when probably there's no point, it just "happened"? Like the weather?' [...] ... like they were two kids together in this predicament maybe fifteen years old somehow waking up married. In that instant her body seemed to him not a woman's beautiful voluptuous body but a responsibility they jointly shared, like a giant baby."

From ‘Blonde’ by Joyce Carol Oates

Misfortune


Misfortune

 

There are quirks and misalignments of nature – mismatches of mind and muscle – lumps of gristle erupting from the unlikeliest of mental and biological processes – with various unsightly excrescences – all by-passing that one optimum moment of non-existence.

The furtherance of such motivational blobs of existence has an inverse ratio to he geometric progression of such theoretically untenable creatures actually re-creating themselves.

And that would lead me to hypothesise that people are their own mistakes, if I had the misfortune of possessing a bodily and mental existence of my own which could thus hypnothesise.

Saturday, December 28, 2013

Smart Suit Day

If, indeed, I could explain the day itself, nestling as it seemed between Monday and Tuesday, I'd be a normal man - or a more normal man, able to return, in his smart suit, to his 9 to 5 office job. I was due in North London for a business meeting, one of the few that I'm now asked to attend - in contrast to a few years ago when there were many more, all over England ... but for some reason, there's not so much call these days for me to make visits outside the office. Being early (as was my wont) and not knowing the area at all well, I decided to rest my weary bones in Highgate Wood quite close to the venue of the meeting. 

This wood turned out to be a delightful green oasis of towering trees and twittering birds in the midst of relentless roads and gaping undergrounds - and as I settled down upon a bench, I could still hear the traffic on Muswell Hill Road ... a noise like some outraged (or outrageous) God muttering at my escape from his jurisdiction. 

The day was Monday. I'm certain the day was Monday ... except. an hour later, after I emerged from the secret garden (for that was how my mind had idealised this retreat) and following my typically apposite arrival for the meeting, I was informed by an officious receptionist that I had missed the meeting by one whole day. Indeed, once upon a time, there was a wood in the middle of a city which, for a specific day each year, had a sabbatical from time. It was forced to have this Awayday, since life in the city was otherwise unbearable. Thus, God allowed the wood's spirit-of-place to become an annual oasis of non-existence, where not even trees nor birds could disturb the peace let alone His own self-confessed grumbling attentions to its natural processes. 

Unlike death, which is probably the longest holiday of all, this day-break into nothingness could spruce up the trees and woodland paths, harmonise the birdsong and remove the litter which the local council had missed. Death, on the other hand, being the mother and father of a day-off, served very little purpose in itself, only encouraging those who believed in reincarnation to come out of the woodshed and prance about in smart birthday suits. Which is why, I suppose, they put me away. It wasn't because I was 24 hours late for the meeting, nor even for my strident shouts of "Blessed Be The Traffic And Its Wardens" - but the fact that I didn't have a stitch on (or in) ... even my wristwatch having disappeared (and my fingernails). All I can do is look forward to a sabbatical from madness, I suppose. 

The Teapot Moved (2)

When the teapot moved not once but twice, you realise that the first time it moved could not have been as imaginary as you had originally imagined, given the evidence of the second time.  You have often been in situations with inanimate things moving where there is no obvious cause for the effect. All to do with mirrors, lights, angles, tiredness. Nothing supernatural or psychokinetic. Only you watching.  But when it happens out of the blue, you often take a double-take.  Did it really move?  Probably not. It would take a ruler to measure any give or take in the situation.  But if it moves as a result of you looking at it, even without you consciously willing it to move, it becomes obvious that there are strange happenings abroad.  The darkness settled in early, despite the clocks going forward an hour the day before.  You wonder if it's a clotted cloud formation, rather than the leading edge of night's blanket being used to make your bed, tucking you in as comfortably as possible so that premature sleep might explain any subsequent dreaming.  And, surely, you thought, the act of seeing the teapot move on the tea-table before the dream started would surely make you wonder if you were dreaming that you were awake.  The window was now blacker than if you had painted the glass with an opaque gloss stolen from a dead person's cupboard.  Night was never that dark, was it?  The bulb hanging from the kitchen ceiling didn't even swing. It was stock still. But it was dimming faster than the sun must have done in the last few minutes.  Dimming, however, was not a movement as such; dimming was never as strange as an object like a teapot budging of its own volition. The stewed remains within settled into a coagulation of leaves and black space. There were exactly one thousand tealeaves and you wonder who had taken the trouble to count them into the teapot before pouring over the scalding water. It needed other eyes to see what was happening inside the pot, as yours were busy watching events from outside. One single abrupt jolt, and the first movement was complete.  You only now needed  with the requisite suspense  to await the second movement ... except you were unaware that there was due to be a second movement, especially as you thought you had merely imagined the first one.  You decided it was time for bed. You pray a thousand prayers to a God addressed as thou or thy or thee.  You must have assessed the passing of time differently from its reality.  And if time is misjudged, you were unsure that the time correcting itself might cause objects to move, as if you had moved the teapot during the period of time that had now been blocked or short-circuited so as abruptly to change dusk into night.  You were now found to be in your bedroom, not the kitchen, pulling back the blanket ready for your body to be finally laid to rest.  Steeped in sleep, infused with dream, cosied by darkness, motionlessly reaching out for a silent prayer that you ached to pray but couldn't. Wedged in by a sodden mass of dead insects which, even beyond a dream's unreason, were still alive and eager to become your single-minded stew of consciousness - a spout for a thousand thoughts or a thousand thous. Dead ... until I moved.
THE TEAPOT MOVED

The stranger wondered if the rest of the hotels users thought he was a stranger.  The rooms were of a style suitable to the passing trade so in fact all the guests should have been strangers.  This particular stranger was no different.  One never considers oneself to be a stranger. All the others were strangers, surely. The others were real strangers inasmuch as they were not only strangers to each other but, strangely, to themselves. 

The stranger was without a name, although he could remember signing the guest register at the reception desk earlier in the day.  Now being nameless was not a good sign.  Perhaps he was a stranger, after all. Just like the rest of them: sitting solitary in his bedroom: dependant on room service and the entertainment from the TV and the use of en suite facilities and the trouser press.

He hadnt taken advantage of room service as yet but he continued to inspect the tray of free goodies alwaysleft by good hotels for weary strangers with which to refresh themselves.  A few individualised bags ofinfusable tea or coffee. Scattered tabs of milk or sugar. Wrapped gingernut biscuits. Strangely, for such a set of freebies, a bone china teapot was set upon the tray: to be used for steeping rather than just a teacup directly open-mouthed for a tea-bags dunking. An electric kettle was already full of water.  He wondered how long it had been stagnating there.  He could see the only source for water was from the sinks cold tap in the bathroom.  Strangely, despite travelling all day with few comfort-stops, he had not yet been forced to use the bathrooms facilities.  He shouldnt have been surprised.  Only true strangers would be unaccustomed to the relative strength of their own bladders.

The red glow of an advertising sign just outside his rooms window was relentlessly pulsing.  Strangely, thewindow possessed usable shutters rather than curtains. Strange for England. He stood up and stared down at the citys main-street. Despite it being the rush hour, there was very little traffic along it.  Only an odd taxiturned up outside the hotel with guests: more strangers, no doubt.  He shrugged.  He was determined not to slip into being a stranger himself.  It would be all too easy to become someone elses stranger, a person who simply shuffled about a hotel bedroom at a loose end, listening for others behaving similarly, given thesufficient thinness of the walls between them

He returned his attention to the tray of freebies.  He had already given a cursory glance at the room service menu, but he was always reluctant to use it. It always made him feel self-conscious and slightly awkward.  He never knew what to do with the dirty plates after he had eaten.  Whether to give a tip or not.  Despite having plenty of money, he always resented paying through the nose simply for a waiter to bring the food to his room.  Neveralwayshe couldnt possibly be a stranger to be able to use such words about his general behaviour and feelings.  That rather satisfied him. Maybe he would venture downstairs later to see if he could find the hoteldining-room.  There was no reason, of course, why he would not be able to find it.  But there was always a doubt.

He then heard the stranger next door shuffling about.  Having been sitting on the bed, the stranger next door was probably visiting the en suite bathroom.  The TV next door could not be heard through the wall, so it was probably still switched off.  Possibly for fear of accidentally igniting the Porn channel rather than the News one. The former made him feel dirty.

Dirty reminded him. He needed freshening up in the bathroom.  he hoped it would also be full of freebies.  But nothing was really free, was it?  Room rates always included overheads.

When he returned, the trayful of freebies was glowing more readily in the onset of dusk from outside whilethe advertising pulse continued but at a slower shutter speed. He suddenly saw that the teapot had been moved.  Never had the stranger been so frightened before.


 
When the teapot moved not once but twice, you realise that the first time it moved could not have been as imaginary as you had originally imagined, given the evidence of the second time.  You have often been in situations with inanimate things moving where there is no obvious cause for the effect. All to do with mirrors, lights, angles, tiredness. Nothing supernatural or psychokinetic. Only you watching.  But when it happens out of the blue, you often take a double-take.  Did it really move?  Probably not. It would take a ruler to measure any give or take in the situation.  But if it moves as a result of you looking at it, even without you consciously willing it to move, it becomes obvious that there are strange happenings abroad.  The darkness settled in early, despite the clocks going forward an hour the day before.  You wonder if it's a clotted cloud formation, rather than the leading edge of night's blanket being used to make your bed, tucking you in as comfortably as possible so that premature sleep might explain any subsequent dreaming.  And, surely, you thought, the act of seeing the teapot move on the tea-table before the dream started would surely make you wonder if you were dreaming that you were awake.  The window was now blacker than if you had painted the glass with an opaque gloss stolen from a dead person's cupboard.  Night was never that dark, was it?  The bulb hanging from the kitchen ceiling didn't even swing. It was stock still. But it was dimming faster than the sun must have done in the last few minutes.  Dimming, however, was not a movement as such; dimming was never as strange as an object like a teapot budging of its own volition. The stewed remains within settled into a coagulation of leaves and black space. There were exactly one thousand tealeaves and you wonder who had taken the trouble to count them into the teapot before pouring over the scalding water. It needed other eyes to see what was happening inside the pot, as yours were busy watching events from outside. One single abrupt jolt, and the first movement was complete.  You only now needed  with the requisite suspense  to await the second movement ... except you were unaware that there was due to be a second movement, especially as you thought you had merely imagined the first one.  You decided it was time for bed. You pray a thousand prayers to a God addressed as thou or thy or thee.  You must have assessed the passing of time differently from its reality.  And if time is misjudged, you were unsure that the time correcting itself might cause objects to move, as if you had moved the teapot during the period of time that had now been blocked or short-circuited so as abruptly to change dusk into night.  You were now found to be in your bedroom, not the kitchen, pulling back the blanket ready for your body to be finally laid to rest.  Steeped in sleep, infused with dream, cosied by darkness, motionlessly reaching out for a silent prayer that you ached to pray but couldn't. Wedged in by a sodden mass of dead insects which, even beyond a dream's unreason, were still alive and eager to become your single-minded stew of consciousness - a spout for a thousand thoughts or a thousand thous. Dead ... until I moved.



I sat up beside the teapot. It had been placed there by a servant and Id been told to let it stand for a few minutes.  Steep? Infuse? Draw? Brew?  No, stand was the word I was sure I heard the girl in the pinafore say as she plumped the teapot down on my bedside table  rather rudely, I thought, in hindsight.  
  
And now I noticed shed forgotten to leave the tea-strainer with the cup, saucer and teaspoon.  I called out: "Strainer!" in my long drawn-out high-pitched voice which Im sure the servants found irritating, but I had not told the servant girl to forget something, had I?  Indeed I wondered if she had forgot it at all but deliberately didnt bring it.  Again: “Strainer!”
  
It was then I noticed the teapot moved.  Only slightly but clearly enough.  I was staggered. I stared at it to make sure I was not mistaken, willing it to move back to where it had moved from, in an illogical hope for its previous standing as the status quo. I might then have been able to imagine it had not moved at all. 
  
A teapot moving of its own volition was certainly an anxiety that a bedridden person like me would find difficult to cope with.  It was best I did not believe it at all.  “Strainer!” I shouted again, in an attempt to cloud my misperceptions with a recognisable routine rather than to elicit the missing strainer.  This was not the first time that the strainer had been forgotten.
  
“Stop your whining!” the teapot suddenly said with a righteous gurgle of its innards. 
  
“Pardon?”  I said automatically, thinking that the servant must have returned with a different voice.
  
“Just stop your whining. The stew Ive got inside me today doesnt need straining.  Get on with the pour!”
  
I was more upset by its distasteful reference to stew than by the fact the teapot was talking to me at all. This represented more of a certain settling into a customary mindset of denial, I suspect, when I now look back at the events.  I had also forgotten that the servant girl had forgotten the dunking-biscuits.
  
Was there a ghost inside the teapot  a ghost capable of moving it as well as speaking for it?  This was not a question that occurred to me at the time.  Only since.
  
I put the eiderdown over my head, hoping to blot out not only this single segment of time encompassing the teapot incident but also the whole of reality itself now and forever.
  
But the voice persisted: “Ive got good quality stuff inside today and the longer you leave it the more it will stew.”
  
My head re-appeared over the top of the eiderdown like a bedraggled puppet or worried clown. It was easy to imagine myself as this downbeat figure through lack of any mirror in my room.  Only the tiny curved bowl of the teaspoon gave any chance of a reflected image.
  
The spout of the teapot waved in the air like a tiny snake with, I imagined, a certain wild desperation to perform its duty of pouring: its only reason for existence.
  
I hastened to do its business. I cant now understand what possessed me.  I picked up the teapot.  At least it could not now move of its own volition without me feeling it wriggling or twitching in my hand.  I thought that pouring out tea  a generally tasteful art-form of upper class people like me  would expunge any remnant of uncouthness in the creature that I had earlier considered as out of my control.  Civilisation is all to do with control.  Taste and good breeding, too.
  
But instead of a golden shaft of healthy infusion, the spout exuded a syrupy blood-like substance into the teacup.  I heard myself cackling with uncontrollable delight.  I snatched up the teaspoon in haste.  But it dropped to the floor.  My head wagged from side to side like a funfair target and shouted: “Dunk it!”
  
I had obviously let things stand too long. Theyre still standing now: waiting for hindsight to kick in  or waiting for a dream strainer.


When I met him, I saw straightaway that he was full of story.  It was as if he existed simply for the benefit of story.  No point in describing him, as that would take away from the story. And he did tell me story after story, when we sat together, draining a bottomless teapot.  
  
And before I forget, there is not much point in describing me, either. 
  
I was only there to listen.  And, well, to drain tea. 
  
One story that still sticks in my mind (literally) was one he told of when he was employed as a chauffeur in Paris.  Well, I assume it was about him.  But whether it was him or not, it was only a story, after all. 
  
  
  
  
“I had been without work for several weeks, and was coming to the end of my money in the last cafe under the last Parisian sky of (what now seemed to be) my last sojourn in the city drinking the last cup of tea that perhaps I would ever drink in France.  The French frowned on tea, but I managed to find where they brewed it best.  I preferred it to any other sort of drink.  So it was with mixed feelings that I accepted a job that entailed driving a car and drinking something other than tea. But I would now be able to stay in Paris a little longer.  The man had sat down opposite me at my table as I drained the dregs of my cup on that (what had seemed to be) my last day in Paris. It was like Fate.  I was to drive a Princess.  Why me?  Well, he said it had to be me.  I fitted the story.  But I must drink alcohol quite a bit of the time, he insisted.  That was part of the job.  I shrugged.  I didnt mind drinking alcohol so that I could later afford to drink tea in Parisian cafes.  Sitting pensively in Parisian cafes drinking tea gave me inspiration, led me to all sorts of creative thought for my next story.  So, to cut a long story short, I allowed myself to take to heavier drinking while driving the Princess to fashion shops and to cafes where in fact she drank tea, I noticed.  I didnt much like the company she sometimes kept.  I also turned a blind eye to the baggage she carried. I am not one for gossip.  Only story-telling. Well, on the big day, I needed to drink several hard drinks before taking the Princess on a trip that, unlike the previous trips, was more of a mystery tour. I can tell you that, even with alcohol in my veins, I am still a very good driver.  So when our car managed to crash in the road tunnel, it was not that I lost control for no reason, but I suddenly saw a little girl bowling a hoop across the road in the tunnel, and I swerved to miss her...” 
  
  
  
I put my teacup down and stared at him.  
  
“A hoop?” I said. 
  
“Not really,” he said with a smile, “that was only part of the story.” 
  
And I blinked.  He was no longer sitting opposite me.  I must have been drinking tea with myself.  The little girl in the tunnel, perhaps, was the ghost of the Princess; a happy creature that wished shed never meet a Prince.  But then without such a meeting, of course, shed not have been a Princess at all or, if that were the case, even the ghost of a Princess.  I poured another cup from the bottomless teapot and stared into the darkening Parisian sky.  A faint circle of stars like a distant UFO slowly wheeled behind the clouds. 





Friday, December 27, 2013

TREAD LIGHTLY (2)

“Kids sleeping in his kennel, so tread lightly, as you wont want to wake him up.”

I looked askance at the woman who had spoken to me. Her purple jodhpurs had put me off her even before I had heard the hoity-toity voice.

“Is he dangerous, then?” I asked tentatively, expecting the woman herself to bite me!  You know owners can get very uppity about other people making critical implications about their pets.  This woman was probably no exception.  

Id better explain. I was a professional plumber  a scarce breed in those days  and I had been called in to fix something pipe-ish on this womans property.  (By the way, I am not a professional plumber any more, but thats another story).

“Kids not dangerous, I simply dont want him woken, thank you,” she announced with some pre-emptive waves of the hand.

What a silly name for a dog, I thought.  Kid!

I looked warily into the kennel as I passed it  and I seemed to sense a huge bulk that literally seethed and humped with dangerous pre-waking symptoms. It seemed also to give off old yellow-smelling steam.  Kid was no kid.

So, did I tread lightly?  I sure did. One part of me wanted just to scarper. Plumbers were indeed thin on the ground.  I could get a better customer simply anywhere.  Could she get another plumber at short notice? Probably not.  But another part of me thought I could not risk retreating past Kid without having done the job.  So I plumped on towards the outhouse where the woman told me the pipe-ish problem awaited a so-called working-mans attention.  I saw myself as a man with professional skills.  She saw me as a navvy, Im pretty sure.  I bet she would never have guessed I later retrained as a Solicitor.

You will have guessed (by what Ive already told you) that  whatever else happened  I must have escaped Kids clutches to live another day. Well, half true.  And if half true, your assumption is also half false.  Stands to reason.  

I have taken my own working-class brand of verbal expression into the World of Jurisprudence, but I am now slightly better spoken simply by virtue of there being a higher class of folk with which I now mix.  Thats my way of explaining to you why all this seems to be half basic working-mans chitchat and half sophisticated description worthy of any old posh book.  

But not exactly half of what I say is pure basic chitchat, while the other half is pure posh talk.  It's more a mixture of both.  A hybrid that probably when I come to think of it  doesnt sit well on the page.

I mended the pipe-ish thing.  It didnt need much to do.  Just a teeny-weeny leak that I gummed up with plumbers tape.  And I did remember to tread lightly on my way back past Kids kennel.  And he did not wake up.  I over-charged the woman, because ... well, I simply didnt like her hoity-toity voice.  Id hate to think I over-charged her simply for the money.

But I had not trod lightly enough.  Because that night I had a dream of Kid waking up as I trod lightly past his kennel.  You cant tread lightly in dreams. But thats enough about dreams.  Dreams have no place in what I have to tell you.  Dreams are fads and fancies that some of us simply use to spice up the style of telling things, by diverting truth into fiction. Dreams are mere chimeras.  They simply bend reality in the direction theywant it to go, rather than in the way reality wants itself to go, by its own default, towards a predetermined end. 

Forget the dream, then, forget the image of Kid as a huge looming yappy monster of doggish form, eager to maul me with its furry fondles.

 The dream was leaking sheer doggedness within a great spurting force of yellow-eyed sleep ... despite all my efforts to wake up from it, to staunch its canine flows. The question is: did I ever wake up from it? 

Today, I sit at my desk in the Solicitors Office, idly fingering tangled ribbons of plumbers tape. I then let my nicotine fingers lightly walk through Yellow Pages seeking a good professional shrink. Far and few between. My secretary smiles as she sits typing nearby.  Unaccountably, she wears purple jodhpurs.
SNAIL TRAIL (2)  by DF Lewis

Coco was in the library before any of his companions had a chance even to take off their coats in the hall.  He was led by the smell of foxing.  He remembered exactly why they had been invited  to catalogue the largest collection of books outside the ownership of the State or of the Royal Family. Yet the house was worth a few gasps, the others thought, before getting down to work.  No delay for Coco, however, as he chose his own carrel in an alcove between the works of Dick and Dickens.

Sir Arthur Mezanthus was in charge of the cataloguing party together with his even more famous sister Amy Ewbank (writer of childrens stories for those untutored in her works) - yet Coco was really the practical bibliographic brain upon whom they depended.  The group was renowned as shock troops in book-collecting circles: ready to pounce on any dusty lines of disordered spines.  There were emergencies, for example, when a library-owner suddenly died and his or her creditors were poised to sell off all the possessions at short notice.  That was when Sir Arthur and his cohorts usually received a surreptitious sniff of a collections potential for a book recovery ambush … and here they were today, scouring even the smallest rooms of the house for hidden tomes.  By now, Amy had flounced into the library, slightly annoyed that Coco was already ensconced there before she had the chance to survey the scope of the task. Arthur and a few others (including dowager twins) were still opening broom-cupboards elsewhere in the large rambling house, leaving any spectacle of the core collection (usually in a room called library but not always) until last.  Savouring the anticipation.

“I see youve bagged your carrel,” said Amy, and she put her bag on one of the reading-tables.  She stared at him as if she snubbed his very presence.

“Therere plenty more,” answered Coco, pointing towards a set of private study areas  admittedly more like box-pews in an ancient church than carrels  and he slipped his feet from his shoes, as if settling in for the duration.  Not only had the pungent aroma of old books been able to lead him here before all the others but it also filled him with an old-fashioned delight: with visions of fiction he was yet to read: but he kept that to himself: he was mocked enough already for some of his more clownish antics when on a literary campaign such as the one unfolding today: foxed and signed with unreadable inscriptions.

Not only that aforementioned aroma, then, but also a trail of insects or even larger creatures that often beset books with nibbling and silver sticky trails.  The threading of the corridors had been rather Hansel-and-Gretel, but he could not yet imagine having refreshment  quite yet. Peppering of crumbs that would help them find the kitchen. They would need to pick straws, in any event, to choose who was to rustle up cakes and tea  and he did not want to abandon his carrel so early in the day, short of any unexpected call of nature involving a rethink.

By now, Sir Arthur himself had puffed and bellowed as he found them in the library.  He was hard of hearing unless you got on his right side.

****
A number of Sir Arthurs party were later lounging in the drawing-room.  The dowager twins had been unlucky enough to be find themselves on kitchen dut the strange thing being that this was invariably the case on every book foray in which they had been involved.  Coco had abandoned his carrel and sat in an armchair throwing a ball from hand to hand.  He had been brilliant in organising the days cataloguing and so deserved a little recreation, he thought.  This was relaxing. Even more relaxing, paradoxically, when he threw another ball into the physical calculation.  Then another.  Till he was literally juggling.  Each ball a ricochet of thoughts.  One book, he recalled, he had found quite unfathomable, its condition almost mulched beyond recognition as a book; yet the signature stared out at him on a particularly integral space on one page:  it was opposite the barely readable title of the book:  DO DROODS DREAM OF ANGELFISH?  The supposed signature was stained purple ink veining into the vexed texture of the text of an apparent introduction or preamble.  It may even have been the prologue of the novel itself.  And Coco was sure it was a novel despite suspicions of non-fiction in the illustrations and pressed flowers..  Squashed bodies of flies did not help the scrutiny. If every book had been like this one, the cataloguing would have lasted months.  

The cake and teas were brought in by the dowagers.  A rich array of choice pastries on silver tiers more like candelabra than culinary devices.  The tea infused in a giant samovar, filling the air with a new aroma of dusty streets in modern Samarkand.  A few manicured sandwiches, and these would indeed be easy to digest with the rind removed from the fillings.  Sir Arthur was now ensconced in an armchair and was already munching noisily.  Amy, his sister, was subconsciously abridging the whole scene ready for children to read.  She did not risk her own digestion on foreign food even at the best of times.  She did not know where it would lead.  So why be led?  A birds appetite needed little sustenance. And she had solitary midnight feasts in her own bedroom in honour of her schooldays.  Crisps and crinkly-sounding toffee wraps and dandelion & burdock.  That was enough to keep her going.  There was very little money in cataloguing the tomes of the dead.  So she treated it like a hobby.  She had plenty of Royalties from the pocket money of her young readers.  Sir Arthur was her agent, so he shared the pickings, too.  Most of her fans however were now dead.  Dead to anything but Harry Potter.  Diminishing returns.  Yet they hardly noticed.  Too busy in strange forgotten libraries countrywide to realise that tomorrow would be the last time their bank manager would be polite to them.  Royalties were dying, too, in old Paris tunnels or the back of coaches on the way to yet another Coronation. One long run with Elizabeth but now all was staccato: ricochets of personality juggling their own motives to become the next reality prince. Harrys son Edwin was next in line.  Hard to imagine what a parlous state the monarchy had reached.  Chimney children with black faces as if the past had gone full circle and become the present again.

Coco gulped down his tea, eschewing the cake and sandwiches, determined to return to the library and reclaim his carrel. Which he did. But it all now looked rather forlorn.  In the morning, even his own solitude had been up-beat.  Now he longed for the others to return to grace the long dark wet afternoon with at least a smattering of repartee.  He stared at the book he had left cataloguing.  This was not the mulched book of Drood, as he had actually skipped that one in disgust.  No, the book now under scrutiny was one which was stickier than his own fingers from the cream cake he had picked up but thrown away after looking more closely at it.  It was about a circus. And there was an illustration which would haunt his dreams forevermore.  Huge snails circling the inside of the ring and a ringmaster in the centre with a whip as if he were controlling elephants.  They left a silver trail in their wake.  Coco could even hear the baying of the crowd and the distant roars from the menagerie; large-maned faces mooning at him.  In the roof of the shadowy big top, a trapeze artist tried to maintain his or her purchase on the spinning tricks of body and soul, fearful of dropping towards the safety-net beneath wherein a giant spider awaited the trapezes body with chittering glee.  He slammed the book with a shuddering thump: throwing dust into his own face and sticking to his make-up.

He preferred hot chocolate to tea.  He would tell the dowagers later.  He continued in a desultory fashion to sift the books one by one; as they came off the shelf, half-expecting the others in the party to arrive at any moment, to relieve him.  He was however the bit Amy had abridged.  And he wept black tears.  Hed left no crumbs.  In  fact, he had no crumbs to leave.