Richard Butchins's Blog: Angels stand corrected... - Posts Tagged "canal"
Extract No.1
This is the first extract from my book. It's a short one, after all this is a blog post and I don't want TL:DR to come up...ever.
Enjoy, next one on Friday.
I like the walk along the canal, water is soothing for some reason; even the fetid liquid that squats in the Regent’s Canal is soothing, despite its empty beer cans, tyres and trash. Why is that? The peace offered by bodies of water – perhaps it’s the idea of another world, silent, dark and cold, containing life totally different from us – the strange nature of its substance, both solid and liquid. Life-giving and life-removing, it creates borders and separates us from each other. I think it’s that, and the life-giving nature of water, which is deeply embedded in our souls. We recognise its power and, in an unknowing way, we worship it – it has power over us – we cannot live without it or in it, we cannot tame it or control it. It has us we do not have it. Is that why I love being close to water? Sometimes, on the rare occasions I get to be by the sea, I feel a powerful urge to walk into it and drown, to let it close over my body and remove me from the world. I have heard that drowning is a peaceful way to die.
Enjoy, next one on Friday.
I like the walk along the canal, water is soothing for some reason; even the fetid liquid that squats in the Regent’s Canal is soothing, despite its empty beer cans, tyres and trash. Why is that? The peace offered by bodies of water – perhaps it’s the idea of another world, silent, dark and cold, containing life totally different from us – the strange nature of its substance, both solid and liquid. Life-giving and life-removing, it creates borders and separates us from each other. I think it’s that, and the life-giving nature of water, which is deeply embedded in our souls. We recognise its power and, in an unknowing way, we worship it – it has power over us – we cannot live without it or in it, we cannot tame it or control it. It has us we do not have it. Is that why I love being close to water? Sometimes, on the rare occasions I get to be by the sea, I feel a powerful urge to walk into it and drown, to let it close over my body and remove me from the world. I have heard that drowning is a peaceful way to die.
A swim in the canal......
Here's another short passage from my novel Pavement - currently there's a few copies available on a giveaway. In couple of days a bit more....stuff.
He doesn’t cry out, the impact of the cold water has taken his breath away.
He’s trying to swim and find the edge of the canal; he ends up over at the far side where there is just a sheer wall rising out of the water. He claws at the wall with both hands, trying, in vain, to get a grip on the wet slimy stone.
I watch.
He flails about, sinking under the water because of the weight of his waterlogged clothes and boots. He’s now in the middle of the canal, eyes wide with panic, cheeks puffing in and out, hair plastered across his face, which seems pale blue in the sickly neon glow from the strip in the roof of the tunnel. His hand outstretched, he sinks again and then emerges nearer to me on the concrete lip of the canal side. Still clawing, he manages to get one hand over the edge of the concrete. I grasp it and he grips my hand. Once I’ve lifted it free of the edge, I reverse my pull into a push and shove him back into the water. For good measure, I pick up length of wood, which is floating in the water, and push it into his back, thrusting him under the water. He kicks like a dying frog and I push harder. Some bubbles break the surface and one of his hands flaps as if beckoning me to join him. And then he’s still.
Pavement thoughts of serial killer
He doesn’t cry out, the impact of the cold water has taken his breath away.
He’s trying to swim and find the edge of the canal; he ends up over at the far side where there is just a sheer wall rising out of the water. He claws at the wall with both hands, trying, in vain, to get a grip on the wet slimy stone.
I watch.
He flails about, sinking under the water because of the weight of his waterlogged clothes and boots. He’s now in the middle of the canal, eyes wide with panic, cheeks puffing in and out, hair plastered across his face, which seems pale blue in the sickly neon glow from the strip in the roof of the tunnel. His hand outstretched, he sinks again and then emerges nearer to me on the concrete lip of the canal side. Still clawing, he manages to get one hand over the edge of the concrete. I grasp it and he grips my hand. Once I’ve lifted it free of the edge, I reverse my pull into a push and shove him back into the water. For good measure, I pick up length of wood, which is floating in the water, and push it into his back, thrusting him under the water. He kicks like a dying frog and I push harder. Some bubbles break the surface and one of his hands flaps as if beckoning me to join him. And then he’s still.
Pavement thoughts of serial killer
A tiny bit of book.....
it's all true......perhaps
The sun glints off the dirty green water. It’s not deep, maybe five or six feet at best, perhaps less. It had been cleared of most of its underwater junk in the 1980s and it’s usable.
There are basins where narrowboats are permanently parked up with people living on them, a fantasy of a bohemian travelling life complete with broadband and satellite communications, never far from the upmarket restaurants, bars and clubs of the city. The grimy warehouses of the past have been removed and replaced by luxury new-build apartments or reconditioned into slick, feel poor, live rich, lo-fi, hi-tech, media villages.
Nothing is left of the industry that caused the canal to come into existence in the first place. The tall new white buildings alongside the canal are topped with penthouse apartments that gaze down at the old canal.Through the floor-to- ceiling glass windows, I can see little people, like figures on a wedding cake.
I snake along the path, nobody noticing me. I hug the walls and dart under the bridges. I am not in a hurry. It’s just the way I walk: fast, urgent and with purpose, even though I have none.
The sun glints off the dirty green water. It’s not deep, maybe five or six feet at best, perhaps less. It had been cleared of most of its underwater junk in the 1980s and it’s usable.
There are basins where narrowboats are permanently parked up with people living on them, a fantasy of a bohemian travelling life complete with broadband and satellite communications, never far from the upmarket restaurants, bars and clubs of the city. The grimy warehouses of the past have been removed and replaced by luxury new-build apartments or reconditioned into slick, feel poor, live rich, lo-fi, hi-tech, media villages.
Nothing is left of the industry that caused the canal to come into existence in the first place. The tall new white buildings alongside the canal are topped with penthouse apartments that gaze down at the old canal.Through the floor-to- ceiling glass windows, I can see little people, like figures on a wedding cake.
I snake along the path, nobody noticing me. I hug the walls and dart under the bridges. I am not in a hurry. It’s just the way I walk: fast, urgent and with purpose, even though I have none.
A newspaper feature on my book and me !!!
The Camden New Journal ( a London Paper ) interviewed me ages ago and I had forgotten it ever happened and then it came out the other day....here's the link here it is It's a book about London in a way. Hence the article - have a read....
Angels stand corrected...
I have to have a blog...the site told me, my publisher told me, my publicist told me, and even my turkish barber told me, as he was administering the finest of close shaves. So I thought I had better
...more
- Richard Butchins's profile
- 21 followers
