Cream Cakes

Upon the sea’s horizon – a blue, cooler-than-before, but still-warmer-than-average morning at the tail-end of April – was a Thames Barge with taut-rigged sails calmly sliding from right to left. It was accompanied by the neat parades of the Gunfleet Windfarm turbines that did their best to remain visually fixed despite their involuntary conjuring-trick of moving along with the Barge in its fast decelerating wake.

Given free rein, one might have imagined a breakfast party on board. A honeymoon couple like Kate and William. Or a group of high-flying business-people trying to emulate various alternately loyal and disloyal permutations of Kate and William while travelling on this essentially working-class craft, bringing boredom nearer the edge...

Someone among them had brought along a box of cream cakes. Containing cream that was real fresh or clotted. In contrast, those synthetic, slightly sour, vaguely discoloured or metallic consistencies of the fillings in cream horns of a 1950s childhood in Lyons Corner Houses, where cakes were delivered on silver tiers along with infusions of best tea and a Max Jaffa ensemble of musicians, were a thing of the past. Today, all is authentic, even life itself. Any suspicion of imitation cream as well as imitation human behaviour would be concealed beneath various invisible layers of veneer. Even from where one stood on the promenade, one could just hear the shriek, as one munched on a cake that squirted cream into an eye, whether the eye was someone else’s or that of oneself. And, of course, there’s always one.

Here’s one for Kate. And a cake is raised as if in toast. And here’s one for William. And another cake raised this time as a clown might raise a cake in the shape of a custard pie poised upon the edge of slapstick. One for Harry. Another for Charles and Camilla as one. And a final one for Elizabeth and Philip, but this one is one of those double cream horns that someone at least recalls from the 1930s but no-one else can. Full of real cream. The past is full of real cream. Only the memories are synthetic and slightly bitter. If death can taste of anything at all.

Later, there is one abortive suffusion of sunset sparsely striated with charcoal-sketched oars of turning air. The Thames Barge finally slides into the side of the sea as its arcs of sail are blushing blood-coloured either from the promise of a distant dawn or from more royal squirts.

The Crimson King and the Dark Tower

III. The Crimson King and the Dark Tower

“Some moments are beyond imagination.”

For me the perfect pre-Epilogue, pre-Coda ending for this book. So perfect in fact, I wonder if I shall ever forget this experience as a dark journey of self-blame or always remember it as my personal triumphant End-World, End-Life crystallisation in reading literature over 60 years? Anything else I happen to read before I die merely its coda? [It is remarkable that a book of mine that I've had on the stocks for nearly two years now (a second collection of my stories) and originally prepared for a certain Ex Occidente Press at their request: as my sort of last bow: and I then suggested to them the overall title 'The Last Balcony' that suddenly came to me on a discussion forum here. But I later erased that book unilaterally, a fact that is on record in several places.] I wonder if all great books like ‘Dark Tower’ are designed to be highly personal, highly bespoke to each reader. Also like Proust’s ‘In Search of Lost Time‘. [Which is perhaps, now, in hindsight, resonant with my Weirdtongue Palaver blog ("EEEEEEEEEEEEEE! YOU! DON'T DARE MOCK ME! YOU DON'T DARE! EEEEEEEEEEEEE!") posted by me this morning on another subject.] And the ‘Lost Time’ in Roland’s last watch. And, meanwhile, Patrick’s pencil sketch being suffused now with a plucked or dry-twisted-out rose is, as an imagination-leap, almost too sublime to bear. And, meantime, again, today, on St George’s Day, I surely can’t pass over this unexpected quote in this chapter: “It’s his eyes, Roland thought. They were wide and terrible, the eyes of a dragon in human form.” (23 Apr 11 – another 90 minutes later)

All my reviews - of DARK TOWER by Stephen King

The Tet Breaks

The Dark Tower (vol VII) by Stephen King

Part Two

XII. The Tet Breaks

Publicly reviewing piecemeal in real-time one’s first reading of a fiction book is a special experience, making the reading even more significant. I have never read The Dark Tower books before (although I have read most of its Writer’s other fiction as it came out from ‘Carrie‘ onwards). I somehow never fancied reading DT, until realising I hadn’t done so and wondering why, having just admitted this fact on the official Stephen King internet forum a few months ago, after real-time reviewing ‘Full Dark, No Stars’. The act of having now created a duty to report back here upon each of my readings (usually of whole chapters) accentuates a certain soul in these books that pre-existed (Jungianly? By todash?) a consequently discovered ‘coincidental-kindred’ soul in myself. Indeed, the sadness of this particular chapter is enhanced (made even sadder) by this actively public real-time approach. And I can empathise with the book’s next journey to find its Writer – and to preserve the Beam that brought me to this chapter today for the first time. And I can also empathise with those who have been stopped in their tracks from sending out Wolves (quite innocently?) to bring back Calla children for sucking out their brains as part of a different process to stop that very process of bringing me each day (almost religiously) to these books. I can’t explain it. Whatever the case, I shall follow the Path that Sheemie’s brave, almost kamikaze, efforts created for transporting me (in more senses of that word than one) back to the Keystone World of Writing. Leaving any residual, selfishly-unpenitent Thunderclappers on their Tea Breaks. And, meantime, from that riddling-ridiculous to a sobbing-sublime, I can now ponder upon Susannah and her own terribly mournful mission. And, so, here I am telling you about it having just pondered it for the first time in the last hour or two when absorbing the words I’d never read before today. Makes it somehow an actual experience of life shared as well as lived, rather than a lonely experience of merely reading a book or kindle quietly in my study. (19 Apr 11 – another 2 hours later)

Notes from the Gingerbread House

The Dark Tower (Novel VII)



Part Two


VIII. Notes from the Gingerbread House



"It's a place outside of time, outside of reality. I know you understand a little bit about the function of the Dark Tower; you understand its unifying purpose. Well, think of Gingerbread House as a balcony on the Tower: when we come here, we're outside the Tower but still attached to the Tower."




I have, for me, some very important information to impart on a personal level and I trust you agree. This chapter ends with the significance of the Writer - of Stephen King or 'Stephen King' - and of saving him from his becoming roadkill before the Beams are Broken, i.e. to cut a long story short into words that probably don't convey the true sense of what you would gain by reading the long story itself. In any event, tied up with that (as it has been throughout all these books) is the persistence of no. 19 in various places, and in words and names. And I've just realised that my own full name DESMOND FRANCIS LEWIS on my birth certificate is made up of 19 letters! I can't explain what a striking revelation it has been in realising this today. Also, incidentally, my definitive collection of stories is THE LAST BALCONY, perhaps replete with relevant synchronicities and still semi-aborted fruition. And, so, I must don my 'thinking cap'......





My full review of all THE DARK TOWER books by Stephen King linked from here: http://nullimmortalis.wordpress.com/2011/02/18/my-real-time-reviews-of-stephen-king-the-dark-tower-etc/

Taking the Ball

My latest chapter review of the gigantic 'Wizard and Glass'  by Stephen King



VII. Taking the Ball

If I could draw a crude basic eye here, I would, so as to serve as heading for this chapter’s review, a chapter concerning an ambush of our three sterling youths, and other characters fulfilling gradually their own ominous destinies, including Rhea’s: who uses the glass pink ball to watch a woman she torments through it by making that woman do her housework by getting on her hands and knees and licking into all the house’s corners with her tongue! And the author uses the book, this book, to picture tantamount the same thing: thus acting worse than Rhea: because he created Rhea. He effectively created the readers, too, by writing so damned well we cannot fail to read his work, we readers, who entice him, by our presence, to see things in his own version of a ’pink ball’ for us to see them later, readers who are effectively worse than the author by conspiring to make the events real by completing the circle of creativity, a circle that needs dependable readers or witnesses or pupils or, even, reciprocal teachers to make everything real by symbiosis, a circle representing - or soon becoming - a pink-veined eyeball. No wonder the Rheader desperately clings to the ball when others come to reclaim it. Who is the Wizard, him or us? (26 Mar 11 – three hours later)

Stubber

Claps of thunder, flaps of weather, flaps of leather, at the end of my tether. I sang to myself – out of the blue, without rhyme or reason: well, there was some sort of rhyme, but you know what I mean – as I sat on the top of the double-decker bus. I sat at the front, pretending that I was driving, holding the window safety-bar and pushing it in one direction or another but, I guess, I imagined it was a tiller of a canal-boat, because I pushed it to the left for the bus to turn right and pushed it to the right for the bus to turn left. Claps of thunder, flaps of weather, flaps of weather, at the end of my tether. Suddenly, the bus...

Before I tell you exactly what happened, let me reminiss for a while. On top of most buses in those olden days, there were signs saying things like “no spitting”, “no standing” etc. and on the back of each seat below a five-inch metal ratchment there was a sign saying “stubber”, although it acted both as a stubber and a serrated surface for red-headed lucifers. In view of that, you can assume there were no “no smoking” signs...

Also, there was a circular mirror-thing or porthole in the top right hand corner at the front. I often wondered what that was. Invariably, there were other passengers upstairs. Like today. I turned and flapped my tongue at them. I didn’t spit, though. I definitely didn’t spit, m’lord.

There was one particular man toward the back who bent forward in his seat and seemed to be rubbing the front of his forehead quite fast along the seat-back that was in front of him. Back and forth, it went. Flaps of this, flaps of that.

A few minutes later, I sensed something had happened behind me as I momentarily took my eye off the road ahead to check what that something was. A hubbub that was worthy of its name even though there was only one person who made this hubbub. The man’s head had burst into flame.

I pointed to a sign close to the ‘no spitting’ one. “No butting”, I read aloud offishushly. No butting, no cutting, no grubbing, no rubbing.

Meantime, the side of the bus had scraped sickeningly along the side of a warehouse wall. I blamed myself. But blame was irrelevant really. Blame is often a waste ‘in extreemiss’...

I thought of a demon barber stropping his blade along my tongue. And a train window that had a leather tongue inside. At least a train needn’t be driven by passengers. Trains had a man at the front to do that, a man with a huge face covering the whole front boiler. The last thing I think I thought was the circular mirror-thing in the top right hand corner of the bus's top-deck – with a single huge blinking eye filling it. Beady beady, greedy, greedy.

Suddenly, the sparks milling through the open side-window caught me alight. A pity I couldn’t spit on myself.


Epilogue: Heaven and Hell are situated on the same floor, not Heaven above and Hell below, as many seem to believe. So, for one of them you need to turn left to reach, the other right. But I did not know which was which. I hoped to strike lucky.
-----------------------------------------

written today and first published above

A Pallid Wave on Shores of Night by Adam S. Cantwell

A Pallid Wave on Shores of Night by Adam S. Cantwell (Passport Levant MMXI). http://www.exoccidente.com/index.html




CAVEAT: Spoilers are not intended but there may be inadvertent ones. You may wish (i) to take that risk and read my review before or during your own reading of the book, or (ii) to wait until you have finished reading it. In either case, I hope it gives a useful or interesting perspective.



All my real-time reviews are linked from here: http://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/



All my Ex Occidente Press (Passport Levant) real-time reviews here: http://nullimmortalis.wordpress.com/2010/09/24/ex-occidente-press-real-time-reviews/



This is a beautiful sewn hardcover book of 96 pages with stiff black dust-jacket bearing an exquisite angelic harp design (Decor by Erté) , silk ribbon, red endpapers and a frontispiece by Baron George Hoyningen-Huen (Agneta Fischer). The edition limited to 100 hand numbered copies. My copy is numbered 50 and possesses exceptionally aesthetic yet heavy-duty page paper.



The black board covers beneath the dust jacket bear the words -”This physical reality contains all the miracles.” Anton von Webern - on the front, and nothing else anywhere. This is intriguing to me especially if this refers to the Anton Webern who is a serialist composer with whose music I am obsessed (among much other classical and contemporary classical music). I need my ‘fix’ of Webern each day in order to exist. (9 Mar 11)



Moonpaths of the Departed

“…the attempt to evaluate the experience and the emotions it engendered for artistic or musical correlatives. I have turned worse horrors than this into Art, …”

Judging between the correlatives of this story’s data and that of Anton Webern in words that itch to coalesce like Gothic music or Lovecraftian Zannisms-by-Zemlinsky, we have here in this substantial weird story – to my utter delight – the real Webern as protagonist and narrator, pickled by séance and an ‘Oh Whistle’ flute, by a Baron and Baroness to produce the ultimate performance music from caves, cave-art and caves’ coalescence with an otherwise Gothic building in 1914 Austria or Slovenia (or Poland if the salt-mines I visited there are anything by which to judge in proximity to the inner-cathedral images here). ‘Three Pieces for Cello & Piano’. Weird Literature of the first water – with olms and other creaturifications (Lovecraftianisms otherwise honed by another Poe), “uncongenial and alien“, miasmic, and the writer’s fingers, the composer’s fingers, the Baroness’s fingers, I sense, all “plied unheard-of chords of claustrophobic hemitones; the cello picked a twisting path with whining harmonics, as if tunneling through a solid mass”. Yet this is not just a great Horror story (which it undoubtedly is), but one imbued with a sense of European Absurdity and serial flashmobs coming up from beneath the words to get part of the atonality of action. The induced madness is perhaps not in the protagonist, but in us, “the kind of avant-gardism that looks within, …” (9 Mar 11 – four hours later)



The Kuutar Concerto

“The rest of larcenous ensemble danced along the thread of the unfamilar music like slinkers on an icy walltop, …”

The beauty of reading a real book like this one is that one cannot do ‘find’ searches to check on something. The experience is at it is. Only re-reading will enhance or spoil that experience. These real-time reviews walk that tightrope. For example, was the Baroness in the previous story called ‘Europa’? Whatever the case, this story concerns another favourite composer of mine, Wagnerian yet Baxian, the Finnish Sibelius (a favourite yet so utterly different from Webern!), a composer who, before today, I previously knew only from his music. No ‘find’ searches for gestalts or leitmotifs in his precarious life, no emotions, inspirations, either. Here, as in the previous story, he is among “lizards pickled“, tempted into creativity of that inward avant-gardism (against his nature?) by life and its own temptations, drugged or ‘sexed’ or base-lined into genius (or just minor larceny?). A sort of ‘Death in Venice’ in reverse? And that that old-fashioned genius can exist within the threads of modernity, power lines, lines of modern fiction… This is a major work (I can tell already), one that tells me that “Music was a game they played with the truth, it was the tail of a kite, it was a shadow of an ever-changing ultimate that somehow held its shape in the mind, …” Myths and legends and “gods of Antiquity“ are only half the battle. One needs more to turn ‘Kalevala’ to ‘Kuutar’. (9 Mar 11 – another 3 hours later)


I now cannot exactly recall why I mentioned ‘serial flashmobs’ rising up in connection with this book’s first story. But they sort of did rise up in this second story’s first few pages! (9 Mar 11 – another 15 minutes later)




Symphony of Sirens

“Q: You fell asleep in your … vision?”

Amazing stuff. Don’t know where to start or end. Firstly, thank you for providing a story about a composer I’ve never heard of before, although I do love the Symphony No 3 of his apparent teacher, Glier (for me, Glière). Aptly, perhaps, for this book, I see this story as a coda. I always do. Last stories in collections are invariably codas, whether the author intends or not. This one has Swiftian land on clouds (cf: the earlier caves), as told by a Q & A session between the composer as A and a woman (who turns out to have a name that perhaps answers one of my earlier questions above) as Q, following an incident on a plane. A bit LOST-like, too. It is my Klaxon City. It is a wistful jiggling with my own trip to Moscow last September. It is my potential de-coda of all the book’s previous themes of avant-gardism and Aesthetics. It’s simply wonderful. As is the whole book. [And who thought I would ever have the surprised pleasure of reading a Lovecraftian story narrated by Anton Webern?]

“Soon I overcame my fear and walked from wingtip to wingtip.” (9 Mar 11 – another hour later)



END

Amerika - by Karim Ghahwagi

‘Amerika’ by Karim Ghahwagi (Passport Levant MMXI). http://www.exoccidente.com/index.html




CAVEAT: Spoilers are not intended but there may be inadvertent ones. You may wish (i) to take that risk and read my review before or during your own reading of the book, or (ii) to wait until you have finished reading it. In either case, I hope it gives a useful or interesting perspective.



All my real-time reviews are linked from here: http://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/



All my Ex Occidente Press (Passport Levant) real-time reviews here: http://nullimmortalis.wordpress.com/2010/09/24/ex-occidente-press-real-time-reviews/




AMERIKA is a beautiful sewn hardcover book of 64 pages with stiff red dust-jacket bearing an outline of a cat, silk ribbon, endpapers and a full-colour frontispiece by Armand Henrion (Self Portrait, Clown with Monocle). The edition limited to 100 hand numbered copies. My copy is numbered 50 and possesses exceptionally aesthetic yet heavy-duty page paper. The red board covers beneath the dust jacket bear the word ‘Meow!’ on the front, and nothing else anywhere.


Pages 9 – 38


“You cannot write a sequel of The Master and Margarita! You were supposed to write a travel book about Malta!”

Two parallel scenes in an effective Absurdist mode, with some character names as names of countries leading to a Bulgakovian*-Swiftian tendency towards the Land of Lacuna (my words, not the book’s) – concerning much that is obstreperous as well as geographically laconic. I can imagine it, so far, as a stage play where I’m watching from the wings rather than the auditorium. (*I am cheating there a bit as the quote at the start of the book is from Bulgakov). (8 Mar 11)



Pages 38 – 63




Obstreperous, maybe, but in this section, “this is preposterous!”



,,,”A cartography of bewilderment”.



For me, this ends on a very personal note, and those in the know will know why (and this, rest assured, is not a spoiler for ‘Amerika’, and indeed nothing can spoil it): “How can there be a room there? It appears to be suspended beyond the outer wall of the building.”



There are anthropomorphic matters, also, that remind me of incidents in the Cern Zoo.



Above all, it is something you will either love or hate. I loved it. Its satiric-absurdism is spot on. I dare not tell you more about it, because then I would be creating spoilers. Especially about the cat. And a door like a door from King’s ‘The Dark Tower’ (something I’m coincidentally real-time reviewing at the moment).



If you want to live in a Magritte painting and its hinterland, then you will love this novellarette. (8 Mar 11 – another 3 hours later)



END



BTW, the word ‘novellarette’ has never been used before, according to Google.

My Last Balcony Collection

Some people have written to me showing some confusion as to the status of my LAST BALCONY collection.




Yes, it’s looking for a publisher. The contents (quite large) are shown here: http://nullimmortalis.wordpress.com/2010/09/30/the-last-balcony-list-of-contents/ including two new novellas, that were written on public blogs, but now removed.

The stories listed are currently on the Weirdmonger Wheel but can be removed from it if the book goes ahead and some were previously published in print.

SD Tullis and Slawek Wielhorski originally helped me choose some of the above contents list.

It was originally accepted by Ex Occidente Press more than a year ago but I withdrew it from them in September 2010 because they had then put a finite time on their publishing company’s life and there had already been some missed deadlines about the timing of LAST BALCONY…and I thought their ethos had changed and I wanted them to have more scope in publishing their style of books (which I thought Last Balcony now didn’t fit).

I see LB as my definitive collection. ‘Weirdmonger’ (Prime Books 2003) – that doesn’t duplicate anything in LB – is now irretrievably out of print.

I shall treat offers of publication, if any, on their merits.

Thanks for your interest.



PS: I am still enjoying Ex Occidente Press books and my RTRs of them are linked from here; http://nullimmortalis.wordpress.com/2010/09/24/ex-occidente-press-real-time-reviews/

My Most Recent Real-Time Reviews

Linked from: http://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/




(21 Jan 11): BFS Journal (Winter 2010) – My Real-Time Review


(24 Jan 11): War With The Newts – by Karel Capek


(24 Jan 11): The Dark Tower – The Gunslinger by Stephen King


(25 Jan 11): I Wonder What Human Flesh Tastes Like by Justin Isis


(1 Feb 11): The Dark Tower – The Drawing of the Three by Stephen King


(7 Feb 11): Holiday – by M. Rickert


(11 Feb 11): THE DRACULA PAPERS: Book I: The Scholar’s Tale by Reggie Oliver

Mr Can

Mr Can is a character in the fiction of Thomas Ligotti.

The Conspiracy Against Nobody.

Brandishing Knives (2)

They said I couldn’t make sense of playing cards. I didn’t have the mentality. A man without patience. Indeed, I faced them out and went even further. I said that I did not believe in playing cards, in the same way as many people said they didn’t believe in fairies.


It seemed to me, I told them, that to believe in cards you needed a good memory for detail. I’ve seen people with hands of cards visibly memorising what had already passed through their own and the hands of others. By thus memorising double-headed pictures or simply spotted ones, you should, in theory, diminish the odds, increase the chances or simply feel more confident with the knowledge of the history of the game so far – and confidence is often half the battle in life, not only in card games. Confidence, as provided by knowledge, was of more value than the actual knowledge, it seemed to me.

As I didn’t have that sort of memory, I found it easy to forget even the possibility of playing-cards existing as tangible objects. In fact, I began to see them as figments of imagination while I watched other people pretending to be shuffling them, dealing them face down, fanning them out in their hands, finally playing each card face up into whatever patterns of chance or skill that they were persuading themselves were pre-occupying them as players. Persuading each other, too, as a form of mass self-hypnotism. But not persuading me, the objective bystander.

Indeed, I did actually see them as not fanning out playing-cards in their hands at all – but more as brandishing knives. So, were these oblong knife-blades without handles that I saw in their hands? No, not really, but real cutlery knives splayed like the fans that old-fashioned ladies used to wield in sweeping motions to dissipate their hot flushes.

On one occasion, as I watched a particularly intense version of poker, they suddenly realised that the pack lacked one of the jacks.

“I have the jack,” I said with a confident smile. I had earlier sneaked it from the pack to boost my own strength of belief, wind up the cut of my jib as the once doubter now turned dealer.

Each of the players turned to me, their concentrated masks of confidence becoming blatant trumps of emotion...

... then abruptly swishing out their uncounted aces-of-spades from sheaths disguised as sleeves or sleeves disguised as sheaths. The croupier was to come a cropper, it seemed.

Or a headless head.

Or just another fairy.

Brandishing Knives

It all started when Steve walked along the sea front. The sparse but geometrically lined-up township of wind turbines four miles off-shore slowly twirled ... “as if the sea were brandishing knives,” he thought.

Not that he dreamed up such trenchantly poetic turns of phrase every day of his life. But today’s theme was indeed poetic verse, it seemed. He bought a birthday card for a loved one in a shop, a very expensive card with the usual embossed flowery front and, yes, at a cursory glance, the expected floridly sentimental verse inside upon stiff expensive paper. He took the card to the counter and winced when he heard the price. He felt surprised by the price, but he shouldn’t have been - judging by the number of times he had been thus surprised in the past. Hardly any change from a fiver. And not even a smile from the lady assistant. Still, he did receive a flimsy bag in which to carry it home!

On the return trip, a few of the wind turbine blades had stopped turning and Steve assumed that phenomenon indicated some form of piecemeal servicing or overhaul. However, he once read a set of Fanblade Fables by a local poet and, reading between the lines, there were all manner of possible reasons for a turbine to stop turning, most of which reasons were quite fanciful. But Steve couldn’t be fanciful if he tried. Most days.

He met Susan on the way back. He had been meeting Susan by regular chance on his trip along the sea front between his home and the town for several years now. They had a friendly chat and then went on their way. Not much was imparted other than weathered small-talk. Tired clichés of living. There was no mileage for relationship or even a well-turned story to be derived from their meetings. No gossip now – and no gossip in the future. Everything was fixed within Steve’s immediate state of living. Even the future held no secrets. Or so he felt. Or so he simply knew. There are people like that. A walking status-quo.

Steve arrived home. He needed to post the card or it would be late arriving for the loved one’s birthday. As he went to sign it, he unintentionally caught a few lines of the internal verse, caught them within some method of automatic reading-sense: a variety of sixth sense that derived from a blend of the other more regular five senses. He blanched. 

He now read the verse in conscious detail. It was full of hate and spite. He did not dare reproduce it for any future memory. Hence its omission from being recorded here. But it was simply horrible.

Furthermore, did he really credit his subsequent re-examination of the card’s front cover? On the surface, full of love and sumptuous design, involving flowers garlanding an idyllic template for a country cottage. Looking closely, perhaps, he discerned that the flowers’ petals were indeed tiny knife-blades. Or perhaps he didn’t. Whatever the case, he ripped it up and threw it in the waste-bin.

A waste-bin that contained forever the litter of lost memories, lost souls, lost lives, lost loves...

Meantime, the turbines are turning forever in fitful stops and starts, as if the very sea is expressing itself in human terms. Talking to us for real? Or merely making the motions? Gently rocking all over the world?



written today and first published here

Cry Lie Sigh Die

“Can I have a pen?”

“Why?”

“I want to write some verse with just four lines, all with a single rhyme, ending with words like cry lie sigh and die.”

“That’s a peculiar thing suddenly to want to do. Hmmm, here’s a pen in my jacket. Do you mind if I use your loo?”

“Yes, it’s upstairs, the first door on the left. Thanks for this pen.”

“My pleasure.”

There was a sound on the stair, the voice ceasing as its owner headed towards the loo.

The new owner of the pen sucked its end – judging by the sound – and started to write. In the silence, the scratching of the nib was louder than it should have been. The distant noise of the loo being flushed above was the only disruption to any concentration of thought. There was, for quite a while, no sign of anyone returning to the room. Only a pen falling to the paper as whoever guided it gave up writing.

No-one could be bothered to look over anyone else’s shoulder – as the well-scored lines of verse blotted within the growing darkness, but soon to fade even further. In any event, the pen had settled diagonally across the lines, concealing some of the words, given the context not otherwise filling them in. The loo had long since ceased even the most imperceptible of hisses before the water-hammer in the pipes clunked. Allowing only silence as the final victor.

As in an imagined old cinema, a light from an usherette’s torch – a strong beam filled with ancient cigarette smoke – approached tentatively from the door to the table where the pen still sat diagonally across the verse it had written. The oblong mirror on the wall began to grey out like some past image of a cinema screen coming to fitful life – a silent uncoloured-in cockerel crowing ... and the 1953 Coronation, equally in silence, taking its dreary masquerade.

With the usherette having completed the showing of any late-comers to the vacant seats, the flickering screen revealed the lines of verse, as completed by the memory of those who had watched the newsreel back when everything seemed too easily forgettable in colour yet forever memorable in black and white.

Mouthing the words meticulously:

Let we people cry
Let you others lie:
Let sadness sigh
That deaths don’t die.

Time has its own force of austerity. The only sound is the loo flushing again.

But there was a fifth line non-construable from context. A line about William and Kate Middleton, perhaps, in some soon-to-be-forgotten, never-to-be-recorded, barely reachable future.

Then, in darkness, the pen rolled to the floor with its own unexpected clunk.

Don’t ask me why.

The Symphonies of Sir Malcolm Arnold

THE SYMPHONIES OF ARNOLD by DF Lewis

These notes were first disseminated on a discussion forum in 2002.


Just listened again to Malcolm Arnold's First Symphony.



First movt: Opening cross between a Havergal Brian Symphony and Prokoviev's Scythian Suite ... gradually slowing into film music for innocent Nineteen-Fifties English countrified plot ... with Waltonesque ending.



2nd Movt: Slow music with Morse code ... focussed by typical Arnoldian sharp percussion ... and Chinese gong ... leading into a Nineteen-Sixties Hammer horror film theme



3rd Movt: Much brass -- dare I say almost with Ivesian competing brass bands ... Scythian Suite again ... various woodwind instruments gossipping with each other ... chirpy, jaunty ... Waltonesque ending again.



Does not seem to cohere beyond a stirring soundfest of brass and percussion. Probably not his best symphony.





Malcolm Arnold's Second Symphony ssems to strive for some expression of the British Soul … I generally dislike Programme music, as it imposes its narrative will upon mine. But here I'm in control, as I impose my own narrative will upon this delightflly pure yet schizophrenic music. It doesn't know whether it's Eric Coates or Stravinsky.



First Movt: Gentle. Homely. An old film matinee. On the Home Front. Workers whistling while they work



Second Movt: There is relaxation as they enjoy a jaunty evening. Well earned, in hard times.



Third Mvt: This long slow unwinding of the day's activity leads into night. Nothing sinister. No nightmares, despite the times. But upon gradually waking at dawn – amid moments of Mahler – a worrying knowledge floods back, yet regaining calm …



Fourth Movt: Uplifting. This is not part of the narrative will, but some spiritual indefinable culmination. Simple. Stops just short of `British Light Music', but with all its ingredients. There is a brassy and percussive edge that prevents too simple a solution. The story has been told. We are left with just the music. A happy ending.









Third Symphony

First Movt:Opens as if it had already started some minutes before. An old car moving towards its nemesis at the `Psycho' Motel. But we divert towards a divertissement of a jolly brass band concert in the park. (the car moves on without us, all its sinister motives gone0. But the symphony's recurring relentless `motif' remains. Again, some of this music reminds me of the bland stuff of the 1950's BBC Light Programme – yet with undercurrents of vision (often happy, sometimes thoughtful, seldom terrifying … but never say never…) The composer is writing pure music, unaware of his own inner narrative drive towards a story from sound. All the characters are in black &white, but you know that, beneath the skin, lurks real colour waiting to be activated. Brass and bass hover ever on the *brink* of a typical never-ending Glass moto mobile…



2nd Movt:Lush strings begin an interlude of tense quietness … where it is important not to have thoughts. Just let the music flow over you. If there are thoughts (the woodwind's audit of their own conversational trails), then they are soon forgotten like dreams upon waking. The relentless motif returns intermittently from the first movement, reminding you (within sleep) of what you did during the day. I keep trying to compare Arnold to other composers' music. Maybe Walton, Prokoviev, Mahler … but I can't hear Sibelius or Nielsen (as some have claimed). The climax of this movement is Mahlerine decadence relieved by…



3rd Movt.:A jolly tongue-twister. A merry-go-round. A joke. A card trick. A farewell. Someone's making fun of us for taking the preceding movements so seriously … mocking our attempts to make musical comparisons. `Colour' is a musical term & here it wells up finally, following the early Elizabethan (Elizabeth I) monochrome … as if music's equivalent of black & white TV transmogrifies into 24 hour multi-channelled cable TV colour… Still thoughtful, though, still old-fashioned despite its premonitions of modernity. Almost fateful. Serious at heart. Despite the peccadilloes. Ibert with a penchant for beautiful English wenches. Or back to the `Psycho' Motel?? Then the stirring climax where you can make your own interpretation of happiness or tragedy: and this climax amazingly sounds like Holst's Mars!!!!







Fourth Symphony

1st Movt: Music that could have been written for West Side story interposed with a chirpy melody almost from the old BBC Light Programme's Music While You Work.



2nd Movt: Chirpiness continues but more subdued and almost in the vein of Honegger. More potential depth, as if on the brink of something dark or noble, but tantalisingly not quite reaching it. The chirpy melody is a disguise for some pent-up emotion which is not quite expressed.



3rd Movt: George Butterworth type melody leading into a greater lushness which could easily have been the backing for a Frank Sinatra song or a blues singer. Slinky … sexy. 4 a.m. in the morning.



4th Movt: Jolly extravaganza of an ending, with a dark and noble coda, but still essentially uplifting. Ibert crossed with Bernstein. There is an element though here of something that I have learned is uniquely Arnold: a headlong cinematic motion decorated with tunes, often laced with Latin-American rhythms and spiced with the cross-currents of Ivesian marches.I have now listened closely to the first 4 Arnold symphonies (out of 9) – and thoroughly enjoyed the experience. They seem music for music's sake, with no pretensions towards a more organic, self-conscious art – just pure joy in pure music. Arnold winking at you as if to say he's chosen all the tunes and themes and movements whimsically. He knows he's good at this and is not ashamed to be unpretentious, whilst proud. Whimsical, capricious, albeit with echoes and re-echoes of recurring themes and styles, but not to tie the listener to a strict structure, but simply for the sake of friendliness in familiarity and recognition. I see all that purely in the music. I have read no sleeve notes.







Fifth Symphony

1st Movt.

After an opening that sounds as if it should be as famous as Beethoven's 5th, the toing and froing of a tiny seesaw as children play distantly. A lot of tinkling and clashing ever in Arnold – here no exception. The children's optimistic future downplayed for the grimmer fears that the present moment directs upon it … as they start running and skipping across the hills. They're evidently playing truant … as they are temporarily arrested by some forcefield of the Authorities with instruments growing louder and clashier. But now the children are more thoughtful … the age of innocence almost over. Here is a sense of my own 1960 (when this symphony was written). Followed by jerkier, more bellicose music – a march of the puppet soldiers. Ends quieter. This movt reacts against any attempt to name composers with which to compare it. Pure Arnold.



2nd Movt

A beautiful Mahlerine theme – often reminiscent of that emotional territory within Mahler's 5th symph adagio. Then brassy effects brings this contemplation to a brutal interruption … until, falling back into the contemplative, perhaps darker aspects, yet sprinkled with more tinkles. Time to regroup before adulthood finally kicks in. The Mahlerine theme returns in even more sedate beauty and poignancy, before the movt ends.



3rd Movt

A delightful, jaunty music with much percussion – the classic Arnold cheeky chirp tune. Wonderful! No need to dress it up with life's story. It is pure, uncluttered. Not even a stage or development. It just is. A sabbatical from the cruel cuts of existence.



4th Movt

Skewed fanfares (reminiscent of Tippett) lead to the re-onset of life – with courageous marching undercurrents, that reminded me of Arnold's Bridge Over the River Kwai theme music. Tympanic calls to duty. Essentially optimistic, despite intermittent themes on the strings which have a sort of fear inbuilt beneath the cascading fanfares of hope. Then ambiguous thumps and tauter crescendoes lead to a satisfying climax, repeating the Mahlerine theme from the 2nd movt. More purposeful, now, though. Pointing a finger towards the dangerous future as if to say, go, thee, hence, young man, do not fear.







Sixth Symphony

1st Movt.

Flutes give birth to a paradoxically sinister jauntiness – Christmassy in its mix of thoughtless joy and eerie tales around the roaring fire. I think Arnold here (as elsewhere) owes a lot to Honegger's symphonies. Or vice versa? With a Tippett edge. Then a Blind Man's Buff game at an ancient children's Christmas party – one that ends in tears of joy as well as of sadness. Only a premonition of the big day to come as trawled from Charles Dickens. Idealism of oldfashionedness.



2nd Movt.

Peaceful Nirvana. Music that reminds me of George Benjamin's Ringed By The Flat Horizon and Henri Dutilleux's Mystère de L'Instant. Can we imagine the birth of something? Repeated trumpet theme is almost joyful as it wells from the unspoken sad silence of the night. The birth of a Saviour … or a Santa …? The clip clopping jauntiness of reindeer intervenes with a chirpy dialogue between the woodwind. Toys are coming to life. Presents being packed in some cold store of the North. Drums beckon tin soldiers to march. And dolls blink open their eyes. All is ready, primed…But night is slow to surrender as the giant sleigh leaves its lair to negotiate the flat horizons… Children sleep on… fitfully.



3rd Movt.

Now it's Christmas Day. The trumpet theme renews its sway as everybody rises with hope and excitement. They know in their hearts that life holds disappointments galore, but today all that will be pushed aside.Children das hither and thither, their blindfolds of night abruptly removed. Parents warn of getting beyond themselves. It's far too early for grown-ups! But nothing can resist the onward impulse of Yuletide … despite the undercurrents of world events that are never far away. The main recurring them reminds me of jazz – and Gershwin – and aptly Benjamin Britten's Young Person's Guide. The children are willing to accept the gifts Santa brought and pretend to believe in him. Next year there'll be no Santa, they know. They dare not even think about God, in case He vanishes, too. Thoughtless joy prevails to the end.





Sir Malcolm Arnold’s 7th Symphony – op 113

(only two more to go!)



1. Allegro Energico. Almost atonal opening laced with a darkish Copland. The secret of Arnold music, for me, is that it ably fits with your own current mood, whatever your mood happens to be. Hence, perhaps, my Christmassy take here on Arnold 6 (in contrast to Ivan’s opposing take). Here we have Ibert’s quirkiness (his Divertissement was coincidentally on Radio 3 early this morning) … followed by the filmic rhythms of Bernard Hermann, imbued with elements of Penderecki, Messiaen, Walton and the Scythian Prokoviev. None of this can disguise, though, the beautiful melodies of dance and song that often report for duty.



2. Andante con moto. Non descript movement. Often, ‘non descript’ is the aptest description! Deeply contemplative. Haunting. Jazzy feel now and again. Time passing. There is even the sound of a clock. Paradoxically, timelessness, too. The quiet centre of the world (Cf. TS Eliot’s 4 Quartets). Spoilt, perhaps, by too much astringency towards the end. Echoes of Messiaen’s Et Exspecto Resurrectionem…



3. Allegro. An atonal regrouping of the first movement. More dark Copland. My own mood, today, perhaps matches this darkness, hence Arnold’s chameleon qualities complementing such a feeling in myself. Another day, this essay on Arnold 7, may have been quite different. The trumpet brays Webernly. Yet, overall, there is an inescapable charm of melody winning through, attaining such charm despite the thick and thin of its other ingredients. The charm is stronger as a result. Through adversity, truth wins. The truth of melody out of unmelodiousness. And then some chirpy momentary Irish jig interlude. Thankfully back to dark Copland after the chiming percussion. At least we do not end besotted with beauty. Though beauty has nevertheless entered us.







Eighth Symphony of Sir Malcolm Arnold



1st Movt: Allegro

Thrilling start: a pomp & circumstance leading into a very familiar Arnoldian tune, simultaneously plaintive and cheeky; yet with West Side Story-like outbursts intervening and tympani effects reminding one of Shostakovich. The tune is remiscent of the hymn “We Who Valiant Be” (title?) … and ‘valiant’ is a good word for Arnold’s lively symphonies before the Ninth. A ragbag of tunes, moods and musical styles, if that is not too demeaning an expression. Superficial and charming. Then deep and pensive, even outwardly atonal. All run through with valiant Britishness.



2nd Movt: Andantino

Almost uniformly contemplative, reminsicent of Arvo Part or the quieter, pastoral Vaughan Williams. It is perhaps strange that some of his earlier symphonies caused me to tell the ‘story’ that was evoked in my mind – or scenes. Now the music seems more abstract, more a patchwork of moods, rather than representations. Arnold’s slower movements now (as he grows older?) seem more visionary than scenic. An indescribable spirituality. This is an effective contrast to the first movemen. A dramatic burst towards the end of this movement disrupts the contemplativeness of the music that (he surely must have felt) had literally composed itself. Arnold always needs the last word.



3rd. Movt: Vivace

A jolly jape. A rollercoaster of a ride. Arnold is truly back in control of his own music and takes us with him with a wave and a smile. Yet imbued with an element of something darker within the forward motion. Despite our misgivings, we wave back and smile. Even Arnold, surely, at this stage, could not have predicted the valiant emergence of his last symphony, the uncomfortable Ninth. The question is: can a composer’s music be affected in hindsight by what we know of his subsequent work? Is development necessarily chronological/linear? Strange what questions good music makes us ponder.





9th Symphony



1st movement: Vivace.

I thought ‘vivace’ meant vivacious! But this is far from vivacious, in that sense. It has a gentle wistfulness, with a recrrent melody that is almost trying to fight off the perceived weakness of wishy-washy mysticism. Mysticism’s power is felt, though, throughout this most wonderful symphony of symphonies. Parts of this movement reminds me of Scriabin’s music. And Glass. Also echoes of a Brahms orchestral serenade and Dvorak’s 6th symphony. Also, at one point a brass instrument (trumpet?) intervenes. A Heavenly trump. Almost a Hellish one.



2nd Movt: Allegretto.

Can he be serious? Allegretto? What’s that mean? Slow woodwind opening leads to an enduring mellow wistfulness. There is an unheard pent-up power there, though, instinctively sensed. As if the music is trying to damp down some fire of unwanted emotion. A beautiful theme on the trumpet is plaintive, poignant. Leading to the seat of the fire---



3rd Movt: Giubiloso

Jubilant? Yes. But with undercurrents of not *wanting* to be jubilant. As if it is undignified. This time there are definite Philip Glass-like effects scattered throughout – with brazen fanfares (like the skewed ones in an earlier symphony). There is the sporadic trickling of woodwind but this is not enough to staunch te flames. Arnold seems afraid of his own trademark jaunty flighty flirting frolicsomeness. He needs to be serious. But the music itself is utonomous and will not allow him. This work should be nicknamed the Uncomfortable Symphony.



4th Movt: Lento

Longest movement by far. Mahlerine, of course. Goes without saying. Like the last Movement of Mahler’s 9th. Defies description. Everything is resolved, if with some inferred pain. Not with optimism, not with pessimism, but with a neutral ineffable beauty. Sad, yes. Uplifting, too. As only the greatest art can accomplish, it marries two opposing emotions as a seamless whole. The discomfort of age reconciled.

The Best So Far

“’Batter me a kipper!’ is the best so far,” the old man wheezed to another old man.

“The best what so far?”

“The best catchphrase.”

“Catchphrase?”

“Yes, my brother’s starting a career in good old-fashioned stand-up comedy – and he wanted some ideas for catchphrases, like Bruce Forsyth’s ‘Nice to see you, to see you Nice’”.

“Batter me a kipper? Better than butter me a kipper, I guess. But I don’t think much of it. How about ‘Cold chips, Missus?’?”

“’Cold chips, Missus?’? That’s rubbish!”

Just by the coincidence of childhood Christenings, the two old men sitting on a park bench, chatting away, were called Bill and Ben. The sun was late setting – the first day after having turned the clocks forward for British Summer Time. However, the trees became grey swags shaking in the March wind – because the cloud cover was now too thick for the late sun to penetrate. Bill shivered. Ben knew it was Bill himself, not Bill’s brother, that Bill was talking about. Bill simply didn’t want to admit to having ideas of starting a new career at this advanced stage of his life, especially one that involved being a comic like Tommy Cooper or Bob Hope.

There was silence for a while as the gloom caught up with itself and eventually doubled as darkness.

Bill muttered: “The best so far” – as if listening for a catchphrase suggestion from God Himself.

“Yes, the best so far,” Ben replied, as if hearing God for real.

That park bench was in a park in the city. The whole city was now a huge dissipation of light-pollution. Younger people were emerging and moving along the streets intent on nights out. Everything they said to each other seemed to be a series of catchphrases, some in jargon or some text / slang speak. They had little time for old men like Bill and Ben.

A young couple – Mary and Midge by name – were heading, hand in hand, towards a Night Club called ‘The Juice Islands’. A great name for such an establishment, even if one of questionable relevance. Indeed, nobody questioned the existence of a place called ‘The Juice Islands’. In these young people’s short lives, it seemed as if it had existed under that name forever.

Quite often, ‘The Juice Islands’ organised stand-up comedy shows rather than dances, with budding comics testing out their skills with a live audience.

Mary and Midge were going to such a show tonight, although Mary preferred dancing.

Midge told Mary that some famous comics had started their careers at ‘The Juice Islands’. And who knows but tonight there might be seen the birth of a future legend of entertainment.

Meanwhile, upon the park bench, Bill and Ben’s shadows had been left behind to remind others that there were such things as ghosts. The owners of the shadows had departed to their one-room bedsits where there were too many shadows already – shadows that fed off the behaviour of any people too mean to light the lights ... or, paradoxically, too generous to the rest of us by over-rationing themselves under the threat of global warming.

Upon the stage at ‘The Juice Islands’, there stumbled into view – amid only a little applause – an old man.

“Batter me a kipper!” he said tentatively into the microphone, as if nervous of its power to pick up his voice too loudly.

Midge stared at Mary and shrugged. They ambled off together. They jigged up and down mindlessly in the corner shadows, along with a few others, to the lost stridency of silence.

The old man left stage left. His act tonight had been his best chance to utilise the hour his world had skipped.

He was certain he had been the best so far.

“Yes, the best so far,” he whispered to himself, the phrase catching in his throat ... as the lights went out.


--------------
Written today and first published above.

A Silent One

“It was very much like being mad, only it was worse because one was aware of it.”


- from ‘The Secret Sharer’ by Joseph Conrad.


I


I was on a coach, surrounded by several other people, one who apparently was my wife of 40 years’ standing. I was in the window-seat – silent.


I wasn’t always silent, but usually silent. I called myself ‘a silent one’ because I was generally silent except when stirred into conversation for the sake of social ease or the obtaining of life’s necessaries or pleasures.


The coach was travelling to Russia via various countries and I should now get to the nub of the situation by saying it was a holiday trip. That much I gathered. The coach group stayed in pre-booked hotels in various cities. However, I sensed that everyone else was there for my benefit, creating this situation just for me, while pretending that they were independent of me, in fact strangers to me – all on their own holiday trip rather than acting as a backdrop for the only real holiday trip: mine.


The only ‘non-stranger’ (in inverted commas) was my supposed wife of 40 years’ standing. The other people – as the days went by – became less and less as strangers as we mingled at mealtimes and at communal tours of various sites of interest. The two drivers of the coach (who took it in turns to drive or to do paperwork to cross various borders or to serve drinks as the coach travelled along through much tedious scenery as well as interesting cityscapes) became very ‘familiar’, in all senses of that word.


How I had gathered that this was all a set-up – just for me – remained a mystery for the early part of the journey but like the co-passengers and the drivers becoming gradually ‘familiar’, the mystery clarified itself – equally gradually – into a distinct mystery, then a known quantity, finally something that I could consider to be a certainty of fact.


I noticed surreptitious glances between the eyes of various passengers as if sizing me up, laughing behind their faces, keeping up the pretence with obvious pleasure. My so-called wife kept a very steady role and I must say she was the best actress of them all.


I often wondered if the whole world outside the coach was in on the act. Many of the roads in Poland had coloured panels to protect houses from sight of the traffic or from its noise. But as I sat in the coach I wondered if it were the houses we needed protection from – or at least me needing protection from the knowledge that all outside the coach was one-dimensional, even the tiny orange bus balanced on the horizon. But that was too fanciful even for me. So I began wondering how long I had been ‘a silent one’ – so-called – this centre of attention who everyone tiptoed around in apparent ignorance of my specialness while all the time scrutinising my every move, even my slightest tic.


I seemed to remember – deep somewhere in my mind – that once upon a time I was full of chatter, completely at my social ease with everyone while serious facts as well as ‘small talk’ tripped over my tongue. I even remembered my name in those times – Barge.


I remembered little else since I had become ‘a silent one’. My so-called wife was the only person I recognised from those early misty times – presumably Mrs Barge. Perhaps I shall never know, never remember, never become ‘me’. Never again.


At that point in my thoughts, the coach reached the border with the Russian Federation at Belarus. According to the coach’s Sat Nav display there was nothing beyond the border – either the Sat Nav system didn’t work beyond the border or there was some other significance. Time would tell. Although I didn’t say much, there was a lot of excitement within me about the trip and what would befall us beyond the ex-Iron Curtain.


Often I felt I needed to assert my character. I did say things from time to time just to be polite – but I tried to plough my own furrow of silent motivation. Despite this and the other passengers’ studied nonchalance about me, I did feel them nudging me in certain directions when they saw me moving in a direction that they did not want me to take. These nudges were not at all apparent but I was certain they were there. My so-called wife’s nudges were more direct, more obvious, and I swam with their tide.


II


As we left the Russian Federation, I suddenly looked at the passenger who was more silent than the rest. Quite anti-social I thought. I am, of course, what people call an alpha male, and I was the undisputed alpha male on this coach trip and he was, by contrast, the omega male.


The rest of the passengers called me the Daddy of the group. They didn’t really call him anything at all, although his wife told me he was Barge and she was Mrs Barge. And, as his own wife did, the coach’s drivers also called him Barge, not Mr Barge, not whatever his first name was. The Russian guide – called Violetta – who told jokes on the coach’s tannoy during boring parts of the journey had often referred to a stock character in her stories, one called Barge – and we all wondered if she was ridiculing him on purpose.


Now that we had left Russia, Barge was even more silent, as if we had all sucked in the residual parts of his personality. We noticed that his wife talked to him less and less which probably pleased him – because much of what she addressed to him were complaints or nags. Or so we noticed.


By the way, as alpha male, I was spokesman for the group, hence the ‘we’ that I have adopted in these notes. However, I decided one day, at one of the coach’s comfort-stops, to secretly share a few words with Barge when I saw him alone near the foreign toilets waiting for Mrs Barge. He stood looking absentmindedly into a shop window containing Russian Doll souvenirs.


This all happened before the coach left Russia, but I’m only remembering it now for the first time. I must say it felt like talking to another version of myself, someone I might have become given other circumstances of life. He must have been unutterably shy. I am quite the opposite, as proved by me being the Daddy of the passenger group. The two drivers, of course, were in ultimate control, but they were only alpha males by virtue of their job. They probably only acted bossy, because they were paid to do so.


“Enjoying the holiday?” I asked Barge.


He nodded and, breaking his silence, said: “Yes, but it’s a bit like hard work having to leave each hotel with the suitcases packed each morning so very early.”


That was an enormous speech for Barge, needless to say. Surprised, I merely nudged him on the arm and passed on, leaving him to wait for his wife.


Being an alpha male, I don’t normally see the subtle expressions of other people. I cannot empathise. All I can think of are my own needs and how to satisfy my longing to control other people not only for my own benefit but also, it has to be said, for their benefit. So, I surprised myself when I began to notice gradual changes in Barge – a self-confessed ‘silent one’ – as the coach trip progressed. Every time he said something, his head grew slightly larger. You might laugh but I became convinced of this. In hindsight, I probably had an obsession with Barge – and with his slowly expanding head. Not only that, but the skin on his face gradually became pastier, until one day I imagined it would be white and pulpy. My theory was wrong, however. Alpha males are not always right and I have since ceased to be an alpha male as a result of this realisation. Barge taught me a lot even if he didn’t do this on purpose. Even when he was silent for days on end, his head still grew slightly larger, his skin slightly pastier. The speed of this process was therefore nothing to do with his relative silence. Silence did not seem able to control it either way. I determined to have a quiet word with Mrs Barge, in case she hadn’t noticed this process, fearful as I was that Barge was suffering an illness. An illness abroad is an illness doubled.


She did not seem to understand, however.


III


By the time we reached Helsinki, I had gradually become so worried about Barge that it was affecting me unduly – causing me to be silent, too, for long periods of anxiety. And as you will not be surprised to learn, there is no such thing as a silent one who is also an alpha male.


I cannot remember the exact circumstances of the coach trip’s ending. It sort of tailed off in Calais before we crossed the Channel. I said goodbye to Barge and Mrs Barge after tipping the two drivers. We exchanged details as many coach holiday friendships do in the normally unfulfilled future promises about keeping in contact, unfulfilled even with the relative ease of emailing.


Barge did not have an email but he gave me his real address, and I gave him mine. Mrs Barge and I looked at each other, knowing that this would be the last time we would see each other. Thus is life.


But time has bends and corners that life itself doesn’t. That’s the only way I can explain it, much like a coach trip of the mind. So, a few years later, I visited – on impulse – the Barge address while being in the area, I forget why. Imagine my surprise that she had married one of those coach drivers from the Russian trip, one who had by now retired from conducting such trips. He was still full of himself, all mouth and trousers. If I had once been an alpha male, he was – and still is, I guess – a being I could never hope to become. A man with no chink in his armour at all. All smiles and confidence. I didn’t stay long. I don’t think either of them remembered me from the trip – but they were polite enough when I showed them photos of the coach group on holiday all those expanding years before. I noticed my own face was half-concealed by other faces.


Before leaving, I pointed to Barge's face in one of the photos – a silent one, a rare breed with whom I now empathised rather than sneered at. Mrs Barge nonchalantly pointed to an armchair in the corner which was in half-darkness and as if looking upon it stirred whatever it contained into non-silence, I heard a slight pulping noise and saw the very wide shape of whiteness: a face without features.


I left silently, my mind tongue-tied by unpronounceable Russian letters.

Barge

I joined the Book Club although I had never ever read a book since school. You may wonder why. Well, you’ll probably guess that there was a girl involved, one who went to the Book Club. I fancied her, fancied her desperately. I knew her at work. We had chatted inconsequentially at the drinks machine as the plastic cups clattered down one by one, each followed by a defiant hiss of steaming liquid. One day, she told me about the Book Club. She evidently thought I looked bookish – or rather she fancied me as I fancied her. Well, so I hoped. She just used the Book Club as a catalyst for our future relationship. I jumped at the bait with enthusiasm, but then immediately regretted it when she told me that I needed to read an actual book – a very large one as it turned out with tiny print and an unattractive cover that I had to buy in WH Smiths – it was titled BARGE – and I needed to talk about it, she told me, with the other members of the Book Club.

Well, I did read it religiously. It taught me long words like ‘catalyst’ and ‘judicious’. I gave up all my favourite TV programmes. And, surprised as I am to report this, I actually enjoyed it. I never understood the significance of the title, though. Anyway, this was the first time ever I had enjoyed any book.

I expect you will guess, by my tone, how the plot now turns – because, predictably, when I arrived at the Book Club (fat book in hand), the girl who had invited me was nowhere to be seen. I never saw her again at work, either. And, incidentally, they replaced the drinks machine with a tea-lady pushing an urn on a trolley. I now have a nostalgia for drinks machines.

I have a nostalgia, too, for TV programmes because, soon afterwards, they did away with TV sets and replaced them with large wirelesses, ones with glowing consoles and wickerwork speakers. Oh for the good old days of big black plasma screen on the wall.

A lot came from reading that book it seemed. And I generally became an avid reader as I listened to Mantovani music on the crackly wireless. Eventually, I married the tea-lady. She looked much younger without her overall. And we lived happily ever after – like the ending of that first book I’d read since school.

I never returned to the Book Club because they started using Ipads and Kindles instead of real books.

One day, I did think I saw the girl who had first invited me to the Book Club – in the distance, sitting on a park bench. She was much older, but I could tell it was her. As I got closer I found her reading a real book and sipping a drink from a plastic cup. She half-smiled. I was never sure if she recognised me. I went off to WH Smiths – but it was shut. So I returned home to the wife who was knitting in the corner of our silent candlelit sitting-room. Somehow her dress was kept nicer by the judicious use of her old overall.

Life continues to go by outside the window.

==============
Written yesterday (slightly amended today) as a speed-writing exercise at the Clacton Writer's Group

Twilight

Twilight

posted Friday, 18 June 2010
TWILIGHT

The piece of paper had one word on it: Twilight.

It happened in a busy pub while I was standing at the bar trying to make myself be seen by the barman. I generally have trouble getting drinks at bars – it’s as if I am invisible.

Anyway, that evening, I managed finally to catch the barman’s eye with the first few words of my order spoken out loud already a few times: “A pint of Extra Cold Guinness...” and, as this happened, I felt someone touch my hand (the one not holding out the ten pound note pleadingly to the barman), then placing there, as I instinctively took it, a piece of paper. I sensed it was a woman but I did not see her as she vanished into the hubbub behind me.

“...and a glass of Twilight, please, “ I confirmed.

“Ice and lemon?” immediately retorted the barman.

I returned to the table, reserved with a bag and two coats, and placed both drinks in position. I sat down in one of the seats and suddenly took the opportunity to inspect the piece of paper whereby I confirmed a presumption of what was written on it.

“Someone just passed me a piece of paper at the bar,” I told Susan as she returned from the Ladies. She had evidently risked leaving our table and belongings unattended but, in my present mood, I was averse to complaining. In fact, it had not crossed my mind at all. Hindsight was wonderful.

“What’s on it?”

“Nothing. It’s completely blank.”

“What’s this drink? It’s not a Pepsi.”

I scrutinised the wine-glass shaped glass containing a liquid that seemed to give off its own light, a dull glow from amid a dark centre. A centre as dark as my Guinness, if not darker. It was like no drink I had seen before.

“Well, it certainly doesn't seem like a Pepsi,” I agreed, scratching my head. “Try it.”

“You try it,” said Susan.

I picked it up and took a sip. There was no taste at all, indeed no relative temperature to gauge how cold it was. If a drink could be completely bland, this was it. A warm sensation however hit my stomach –

“Hmm, it’s strangely not unpleasant. Try it.” Then I remembered that Susan never drank from glasses that others had used – even me. Me the person she often kissed. “Well, shall I get you a Pepsi?”

She nodded. I visited the bar again and undertook the whole procedure of catching the barman’s eye. This time it was even busier and I felt even more invisible. Less or more invisible seemed a strange way to put it, but my mind must have been slightly off-kilter. That drink - despite its lack of taste - must have carried a kick. One sip and I was anybody’s. Just another outstretched hand, this time with a five pound note in it, pleading for attention – for some acknowledgement that I was there. Tears falling down the cheeks with no salt in them...

I turned to seek re-assurance from Susan. She wasn’t there. Caught short again, no doubt.

I looked down at my hand. The five pound note held out in it was completely blank.

('Twilight' was speed-written at the Clacton writer's group last night and typed out above with slight revisions today)

The Merest Creak

The Merest Creak

posted Monday, 3 November 2008
Published 'Wearwolf' 1993





Feeling knackered, the saviour clambered on board and went the rest of the way in the boat. Eventually on land again, he was brought to a paralytic man lying on a stretcher-bed. “Your sins are forgiven,” announced the saviour. “Rise and take up your bed.” The man rose with a satisfying sigh and the merest creak of bone - walking off, without bothering to take up his bed. The saviour was spitting mad, shouting for the man to come back and take up the bed, but the wretch merely wagged his finger at the saviour and bounded away. As it would have been a pity for unmitigated anger to become the only shortcoming in the path towards Divinity, the saviour calmed down ... then deciding to use the abandoned bed for a long snooze.