Short Stories

Waking in a strange place

If I seem a little dazed it’s because I’ve just woken up. I’ve not woken up from a sleep you understand, but from a past life. A life where one day bled into the next and I couldn’t open my eyes. A life where all the memories I had to make had been made.

But I no longer feel like a camera out of focus. Now, I’m so in focus that even the birds that twitter through the silence sound like the ringing of a telephone. The greens are as green as shamrock and I’m feeding my soul with it.

I’m sitting in a rectangular walled garden with a row of whitewashed cottages at one end and a sweeping driveway at the other. I’m underneath a memory tree. It forms a canopy of dappled shade shielding me from the relentless sun.

As I sit here, I breathe in the freshness of newly mown grass. I hear the cows and sheep as they call to their young, and the clippety-clop of horse’s hooves on cobbled stone that echo in the courtyard. I hear bees that race for the honeysuckle, and it’s no wonder they do, the perfume would calm even a mad man. Flowers hug the garden wall like children tugging at a mother’s skirt.

At twigh-light the evergreens that form a hedge at one end of the garden, sway and bid the day farewell. A sun sets to order like a commandment or an answer to a prayer.

Yes, I’m in this magical place. No longer inside someone else’s head. They’re no longer inside mine.

I’m inside my own head, and I’m here, and it’s the right place to be.

In the evening, I draw a picture because I think I can, and I think, because I know I can.

Yes, I’ve just woken up, so forgive me if I seem a little dazed; I’m busy making memories you see.

Published by Aesthetica Magazine February 2007

The . com crew

In the narrow lane, the on-coming motorist gesticulates like a rich person. We take this to mean that we should pass and gesticulate like poor people as we go. We arrive at a haven built on history and solid ground. It’s peaceful for days until the dot com crew arrive with their white skin, nicotine breath and speakers on fire. In the morning they sleep late and so the silence prevails save the distant trains that hurtle over the railway bridge or the wild geese that gaggle through my sleeplessness.

Yes, they’re the dot com crew alright; they’re a new breed, with new ideas, new energy and new rules for the new century.

Unlike us though, they never leave their cottage, so the . com car with the snazzy logo emblazoned, remains stationary, but alert and ready for take-off. We begin to question whether they actually exist. We think they might be busy inventing the next super highway programme that will virtually save the world from its own inhumanity, or maybe they’re making virtual memories. We’re hopeful for both.

We know that with one slick click of the mouse, right or left, they can make change happen. They’re the instigators, the innovators, the pacesetters, the trendsetters, the ‘do everything faster and faster-ers and better and betterers.’ They’re the e-go getters, the myspacers, the spaced-outers, the self doubters with baby features that teach us and teach us. But they’re branded with words like expectation and civilisation, inflation, migration, starvation, temptation, frustration and location location, urbanisation and environ-mentalisation. Yes they’re branded and shiny and new.

And us? We’re spending our days clicking up our heels, imagining and watching clouds and writing poems and clicking our fingers and singing new songs, and recycling memories and jars and cans and coats and books and hearts and dreams and trees and rules and waiting for the . com car to ignite.

Designer Label

She said ‘you should save water,
I said, what for?
She said, for future,
I said, nobody saved nothin for me, who am savin it for?
Yer know, the environment, she said,
Oh no, I said I’ve got to ave me bath,
Never erd of the three F’s she said,
Three f’s I said, steady on, one’s bad enough,
No, she said, three f’s face, fanny and feet,
It’s economy, she said, like savin lecky, and only puttin in coin when yer need it.
Oh I don’t know, I play lottery now yer know she said,
Have yer won ought I said
No, but yer know I likes givin to charity,
Why don’t yer give to charity then I said?
Well I likes to see what I’m gettin for me money, she said,
I do shoppin in them charity shops yer know,
There’s posh people in them charity shops,. You can ere them ask for money off. They’ve no shame. I said to one, put it in machine luv that’ll get stain out., she said it’s designer label, right snooty like, I said yea, and that’s designer money you’re payin with luv, designed for some and not for others. Any way she paid with cheque book. She even ad er own pen. Gold it were, and she ad dead nice writin too, and er ands was all white and smooth.

Ave you got cheque book then I said?
She said, don’t be bloody funny.

Published by Transmission Magazine September 2005