David Hadley's Blog, page 207

Parking Problems

Then, of course, we didn't really know what to do with it. After all, when was the last time you were visited by an alien?

I mean, obviously we had the problem of finding somewhere to park his/her/its vehicle. After all, this is rather a quiet suburban street where one of the major preoccupations of everyone is complaining about some of the neighbours parking their cars in the wrong places and causing inconvenience to the rest of us. So you can imagine the number of problems that an interplanetary craft would cause.

Luckily, however, when the problem was explained to him/her/it (it did - once we got to know each other a bit better – show us its genitals, in the interests of science, obviously, but even that left us none the wiser) helpfully park it in orbit around the moon for the duration of its visit. That was, we all agreed later, something of rather a good idea and we are seriously considering bringing it up at the next local council meeting when they discuss the town centre and its interminable traffic problems.

Although, admittedly, it will be a long way to walk to get to your car, especially when carrying shopping, as Earth technology currently lacks the remote parking and manoeuvring technology that the alien used to park its ship. However, we feel that is a mere detail that willing minds could soon overcome.

Teach Me Not to Care

'You bastard!'

It isn't easy to look up in terrified guilty shock while a naked woman is sitting on your face, but Pete tried it. His physical reaction to the sound of Helena's voice threw the woman off him. She landed in an untidy heap on the far side of the bed - luckily for her the far side, away from Helena.

Pete had discovered by then that Helena had a habit of throwing things. She was usually and dangerously accurate too.

'I… I… I….' Pete instinctively shielded his genitals with his hands and crossed his thighs.

'Who the fuck is the little tart?' Helena yelled. 'She looks like that bitch who did the make-up for the album cover!'

The woman down by the bed peeped over the side, like a nervous sentry in a trench.

'Sharon? No, it isn't her. This is Cindy, her sister.' Pete didn't know why he said it, but the pedantry felt like a small victory. He pulled back the sheets from the bottom of the bed, revealing another woman curled up in as tight a ball as she could manage. 'This is Sharon. And she is not a tart.' Pete almost gave in to the urge to stand up and gather the sisters to his side like some Victorian gentleman protecting the virtue of his daughters. He could feel a self-justificatory anger growing inside him at the way Helena had destroyed their innocent afternoon idyll. 'Or a bitch.'

Helena stood there, her mouth opening and closing slowly, but making no sound. Not attempting to throw anything, or shout or scream, just seemingly stunned, shell-shocked and defeated, she turned and strode out of the bedroom.

A moment later, the front door slammed. The sisters began to gather their clothes, avoiding eye contact with Pete. He lit a cigarette.

'You don't have to go.' It was a half-hearted gesture.

'I think we do,' Sharon said. 'Things like this don't work when they get too real.'

Pete sat, watching the sisters dressing. It was suddenly as impersonal as a changing room. He felt ridiculous, sitting there - still with half a hard-on - while the sisters brushed their hair and straightened sleeves and hems.

They were ready to go finally. They looked at each other, then at Pete.

'Well,' Cindy said.

'I'm… we…. ' Sharon glanced at Cindy before turning back to Pete. 'We… we're… sorry. We only meant to have a bit of fun - that's all.' She shrugged helplessly. Sharon took a step towards him, paused, and then changed her mind. She turned and left the room.

Pete looked up at Cindy. She smiled and shrugged. 'I….' Then she turned and left.

Pete must have sat there for a while. It was dark when he finally came back from wherever his mind had wandered. He could see her silhouette in the doorway. He didn't know how long she had been standing there.

'You are a bastard.'

'Yes, I know.'

'I ought to walk out. Fuck off. Leave you and never come back.' She walked towards him. 'I'm going to regret doing this. Not now, later.' She walked right up to Pete, bent down and kissed him, deeply.

She pushed Pete back onto the bed. Her clothes felt rough on his naked skin.

'I'm sor….'

'Don't try to apologise,' she said. 'We both know you don't mean it.'

'But I do love you.'

Her sigh seemed loud in the darkness. 'You really believe that, don't you?'

'Yes. Yes, I do.'

'No, you don't love me. You don't love anyone or anything. That is half, more than half, the attraction.'

'What is?'

Helena was silent for a moment or two as she slipped her clothes off. 'You don't let anything get close, do you? Even now, at a time like this, I get the feeling that you are not here on this bed with me. I see you over there, in the corner watching. This is probably going to be another one of your bloody songs.'

'But… so why did you come back then?'

'I don't know. Maybe part of it is seeing if I can break through to that place where you live.' She sat up. 'Maybe it is envy. Maybe I want to see the world as you do. Maybe that is why I chose the camera. It puts distance between me and the world - separates me from it. When I look at things through the viewfinder, they are not so close. I can't touch them, they can't touch, get at me. I feel safe. Maybe I want you to teach me how not to care.'

[An extract from Dance on Fire by David Hadley]

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Old-Fashioned

And so it came, suddenly, out of the sky like a... like a... like a great big fiery wombat... No, not a wombat.. what's that thing a bit like a wombat, but it's made out of rock and can flatten a whole forest to buggery?

No, not an overweight politician....

Not the mother-in-law, either. Especially not in this politically-correct climate we now find ourselves in, where mother-in-law jokes are regarded as... well, as a bit old-fashioned.

Although, nothing looks so out-of-date as someone sneering at something they regard as old-fashioned.

Of course, though, if you are the sort of person who wants to sport fashionable attitudes and adopt all the current fashionable causes and attitudes then you will – almost by definition – find those of us who feel no need to be in with the in-crowd as some sort of wombat... No, not wombat, what is that thing where you live in a cave and wear a terribly unethical and probably ecologically unsustainable fur loincloth.

No, not a politician, that other thing that shows unreconstructed attitudes and outdated social mores?

TV sports programme presenter... yes, that's it.

What Remains of Memory

What remains in these places after we are gone? Will our ghosts haunt these tangled sheets that we leave behind in this anonymous room, looking for a home? Will the memory of how our bodies met, skin against skin, echo back to taunt every lonely traveller who follows us to this room.

Perhaps in some other reality that lies at angles to this one we never leave this room at all, but remain here entangled with each other forever.

You and I have lives that do not meet, except for these few hours we spend in this room that lies apart, outside, our lives. They used to be our real lives until we met and carved out this separate place, this new life that is now to each of us far more real than those other lives we haunt as ghosts of our former selves.

It is as though those former lives are lost to us now, out of reach, beyond touch. We pass through them, like ghosts pass through walls , in order to be here together. We know too that when these times are over, we must go back to those lives. Then, when we do, it will be as ghosts haunting them until we can come back to this small room and be alive and real again.

Putting It In Her Mouth

Of course, it was totally and completely her idea to put it in her mouth. Perhaps I could have suggested some other way for her to win the award, but I was otherwise engaged at the time.

Well, at least the donkey was pleased, which is more than I can say for the market trader who sold her the cricket bat in the first place. However, many of us called as witnesses for the prosecution did agree that it was what you come to expect, given the state of the education system in this country these days.

That, and the way some people wantonly display their begonias in the most lurid manner, far beyond what would be considered decent in other European countries.

Anyway, so she had the ping-pong ball and a pair of fur-lined mittens, so we thought we were well-prepared for all eventualities, but these days you do not expect such things as half-day closing, not any more. So you can see that she could at least plead some form of provocation, and having said that, the carpet fitter was not the sort of person who you would normally expect to discover hiding in the bushes next to the canal tow-path, especially during such inclement weather.

After all that, though, she was relieved when they dropped all the charges after agreeing the bribe she offered was more that satisfactory, that is if she promised to put it back in her mouth for each of them in turn.

How the River Flows

As the time passes and as this river flows on by, the days are marked by how the river flows. Sometimes it is full and heavy; the waters churned muddy brown as the river hurries by eager to get on, needing to get to the sea. Then there are the slow days when the river seems uninterested in going anywhere, happy to spend the day with you, letting time pass with no real need to be anywhere at all. Then there are the hot dry days when the river seems hardly here at all, as though it has grown tired of the same routine and gone off elsewhere, just leaving the barest memory of its passing, the dry banks either side of it.

The days here are like the river too, matching its moods: frantic days, slow days and days that hardly seem to be here at all and leave no trace on the memory. She – when she was here - was like the river too, with her wild days and her calm days, days filled with all the possibilities and days when even walking down to see the river's mood seemed too much for her.

Now she is gone, there is a drought and all I have are her absences to remember her by, the marks of her passing by she left on the landscape of my life, like that dry, cracked ground over which the river used to run before it all dried up and she went away.

Extravagantly Over-Choreographed Mornings

Typical, isn't it?

The way you step out of the house first thing in the morning and there you see what seems like several hundred people including local council employees such as bin-men and road-sweepers along with meter readers, water company employees, doctors and nurses from the NHS and rank upon rank of people employed in several other various public service occupations. Usually you normally only see them engaged in their jobs, or out on strike.

However, this morning they seem to be performing an elaborate dance routine that takes up the whole width of your road with some of them even spilling out across the adjacent gardens.

So, you presume, it must be Wednesday then.

Of course, what the choreographers and other such organisers of these events never seem to take account of is the fact that some people – such as yourself – have an urgent need to get to the newsagent, which entails worming your way through the terpsichorean maelstrom in order to purchase your morning newspaper.

Once, just once, you think as you decline the offer of a dance partnering yet another nurse, it would be nice if people could just go about their daily routines without making such a song and dance out if it.

Still, though, when you eventually do get to the newsagent, you have to admit it was rather a catchy tune.

The Pickle-Recognition Wall Chart

 

Obviously, by now you should all have received your official government-issued and EU-mandated Pickle-Recognition wall chart which must – by EU law – be displayed in every room where there is a possibility of unrecognised pickles being dispensed.

It is claimed, mainly by EU bureaucrats, that this will lead to a far greater efficiency at meal times throughout the EU and will streamline the currently haphazard snack-time experience throughout the EU. Those same Eurocrats are also confidently discussing the future introduction of a common EU-wide evening snack experience, possibly featuring the pickled onion, although not without some initial resistance from the French.

However, despite, some of the more obvious benefits of a Europe-wide standard of pickle recognition, especially at, say, summer buffets where hesitation in front of the pickled beetroot and pickled cabbage can sometimes cause complete buffet-wide gridlock, many in Europe feel that this is just another case of the European parliament having too much time on its hands and just desperately searching around for more things it can legislate on, solely in order to justify its own existence.

On the other hand, though, those of you torn between the picked onion, the piccalilli and the sweet pickle when contemplating what would be the ideal accompaniment for your pork pie, say during,a particularly griping late-night film, will – quite possibly – be grateful for any advice, even if it does come from the EU – that will help you make up your mind before the advert-break is over.

Wrapped and Tangled

Where there is no time the moments hang heavy in the air, making it thick, dense, like some tropical atmosphere that makes it hard to breathe and every movement becomes a struggle as much against the self and its torpor as with the weight and heat of the air.

Each of us lies defeated back on these tangled sheets, struggling back to some semblance of normal breathing, our bodies barely touching as though the earlier closeness when it seemed they had become one single writhing form on this anonymous bed has separated them again into two distinct beings as if that closeness violated some force meant to keep bodies apart.

Already those few moments before are escaping from us. We turn to wrap ourselves around each other once again, knowing that soon time will begin again and we will have to separate even further to walk away back into our own very separate lives. Lives where we live almost as two entirely different beings and where the times we share here, where time itself stays outside the door, are never acknowledged or mentioned, merely remembered when there is no-one else around to notice we are travelling away from that moment into another far different place and time.