The Town And Times of Leo Jennings PART ONE: The Job

In the town where I live, there are two football teams: Fishermen and Firemen. Don't be fooled, they are professional players, it's just one of those team name things that started before the dawn of time, and has stuck through everything ever since. There's barely a fisherman left in this town, and apparently the Firemen name came from the guys that would stoke the fires on the boats and nothing to do with the emergency services. Anyway, the point is, people were passionate about these teams. They both played in the second highest league and would switch and swap around positions in the table; usually around the 5th and 6th mark. One year Fishermen finished top, but they didn't get bumped up because of something dodgy to do with the manager stealing money and owing it back and nobody really knew and the local paper favours Fishermen so the story was hushed up pretty quickly and all anybody knew was that Fishermen started in the same league the next season.

Supporters of the teams aren't geographically based. It has nothing to do with what side of the railway line you live on, or what church is on your corner. It's more to do with what school you went to and whether you got on with the kids of the managers or players from various teams or sometimes it was just as simple as who your dad supported. The girls got a bit involved I guess, but it was definitely a man thing of the town.

Being a man of this town who was born and bred here, I had my team - Firemen, and I supported them with a generous level of enthusiasm. I would go and watch them play every other weekend, sometimes every weekend if I was feeling particularly flush or wanted to piss off my girlfriend. One of the lads in my year at school was son of the star player for Fishermen and I hated him. Hence my allegiance with the opposition. He went on to also play for Fishermen like his dad and mysteriously it was around this time that my support for the Firemen grew more intense.

Four years ago, I lost my job. I'd been working in the office of a Removals company and when the recession hit, people stopped moving house and one day when I was sat there by the silent phone, twiddling my thumbs, the boss called me into his office for a chat.

At first I tried to keep quite optimistic; I was a hard worker, I'd been with that company for five years which showed loyalty and had gained me a lot of experience in office and people skills. I applied for jobs I wanted and didn't get them so then I started applying for every single job that ever came up, but by this time, that's what everyone was doing and I just kept losing out and being pipped at the post. It was tough. My girlfriend was supporting the both of us but the pressure became too much and after a few months we both had to move back to our respective parents' houses as we couldn't keep up with the rent. The living separation put a strain on our relationship as she discovered that she quite enjoyed living without me and so we broke up. Well, I say we broke up but really she broke my heart and kicked me in the balls and spat in my eye while I was rolling around the alley letting every last shred of dignity leave me. In my imagination, I see me laying in that alley, writhing in pain and clutching my stomach and balls and moaning while just being able to see through the spit in my eye, the blurred shape of her walking off in her high stilettos and getting into the car of a guy I knew was new at her office and then the car pulling away and the rain starting.
But the official line is that we broke up. That's what we tell people.

I hate her.

So, there was I; nursing my wounds and with no job, back at my parents' and unable to find work anywhere, when one day my mother knocked on my bedroom door. My bedroom still had stars on the ceiling and posters of my favourite Firemen players from back when I was at school. There's a desk in my bedroom, which has been there since my 11th birthday when I wanted to be a sports journalist, and it's built for a child. When my mother entered that day after the knock on the door, I was sitting at that desk writing a hate poem for my ex girlfriend while listening to a really bad punk band I was really into at school. When I think of myself in that moment: a grown man in that room, it makes me want to punch myself in the face.

Anyway, my mother came into my room and told me that she'd just been down the doctor's surgery and seen an old neighbour of ours' son, Matthew, who was all grown up now and that he had said that he had just gotten a new job that was starting next week and that his old job would be coming up. She suggested I should get in there before they advertised the job and I agreed.

The company was a security company, that's what Matthew had told my mother and what she told me anyway. It was office stuff; admin mainly. To be honest at that point I didn't care what it was, but it actually seemed really decent in way of what I could be good for. I called the number that was scribbled on the back of a 'So You're Worried About An Autoimmune Disease?' pamphlet and asked to speak to the boss. I explained that I was a close friend (lie) of his old employee and I pushed myself on him so that he agreed to having a meeting with me that very afternoon.

In my best office attire and clean shaven employ-me-face I rang the top buzzer at 45 Cork Street and, on hearing the click, walked through that heavy door and up the stairs to the very top floor. I was greeted by a young lady I would have ordinarily considered very attractive if she didn't look so much like my sister, at the reception desk.
"Ah, Mr Jennings. Please take a seat. Mr Petersen will see you in just a few minutes."
I thanked her and took a seat in the empty reception area. On the walls I saw frames containing black and white images of what appeared to be local landscape aerial photographs. They was something a bit odd about them, like they were taken with a fish-eye lens but I couldn't be sure. I noticed one was of the Fishermen grounds and draped over it was a Fishermen's blue and yellow striped scarf.
"Mr Jennings" said my frustratingly cleavage-blessed sister. "Mr Petersen will see you now." and she gestured toward a frosted glass door which bore no name or logo.
"Thanks" I said trying my hardest to look at her face.

Upon entering Mr Petersen's office, I was a little taken aback to find that he was smoking at his desk. The smoking ban had been in place for years and it just seemed so peculiar to see someone in a workplace, in an office smoking! It threw me immediately near to the point of losing my manners in distraction.
I remembered myself and shook his hand, beaming. He was tall, skinny, blond hair, not as old as I had imagined him to be from our phone call. He had high cheek bones and wore a very tight fitting drainpipe suit. He was quite something to look at, but whether this was just because he wasn't what I expected I couldn't be sure. Everything about him had thrown me off guard.

"Mr Jennings! Leo Jennings! Please. My friend, take a seat." He smiled and took another deep, long drag off his cigarette. "Smoke?" and offered me a packet of soft top foreign cigarettes. I hadn't smoked in years, since I had started going out with The Bitch in fact, and seeing those foreign cigarettes that felt like lazy summer holidays with friends in Europe; outside bars, sangria, warm nights, girls...
"Thanks" I said and took a long, white filter-tipped cigarette from him. He held up a lighter decorated with the Danish flag and I started to relax and took in the first drag of my first cigarette in three years and seven months. I leaned back a little and he smiled at me and I smiled back.

"So." he said, "You know Matthew?" I nodded. "He's a good man." I was about to nod again when I sensed the tone and took a punt on a sudden hunch I felt and tilted my head and sort of grimaced ever so slightly." Mr Petersen nodded. "I know." he said. "I know." Then he smiled at me even more. His teeth were so perfect and white and straight. He put out his cigarette out and leaned forward.

"I know you know this isn't just an office job. I know you know why Matthew had to leave and I know you know that I know you know. I am impressed by your discretion and opacity. I am impressed that you knew the drill with the cigarettes."
I was completely overwhelmed and had absolutely no idea what he was talking about but all I knew is that I needed a job and he was about to offer me one. I just needed to hold it together for a few more minutes. I put my cigarette out too and smiled at him across the desk.
"Well. You need not worry about me, Mr Petersen. I am VERY discreet." And then I winked.
He started laughing, "ahh Leo" he said in between giggles "I like you. You will do very nicely. But there's one last thing I need to know." and he leaned forward, so I did too. Our heads were but centimetres apart. He looked me straight in the eye and said
"Which team?"
and without blinking, but having a flash of that image of me sitting in my room earlier that morning listening to bad youth punk and writing hate poetry to my ex at a desk for an eleven year old in a room full of stars on the ceiling and my childhood favourite Firemen posters I said
"Why, Fishermen of course."
Mr Petersen leaned right back on his chair laughing loudly and banging his fist on the table.
"I knew it!!" He was still laughing and rocking back and forth on his chair. "I knew it! I'll see you here Monday morning ten thirty am. Oh don't worry, it's not like we don't work you late to make up for it! April will tell you all you need to know outside, but if you'll excuse me for now I have a telephone call to make."
I couldn't believe it. I had a job!
"Thank you, Mr Petersen. You won't regret it, I promise!" I shook his hand enthusiastically and almost waltzed out of the door right into April, my horribly sexy sister.

"Well, well" she smiled. Her lips were stained red like raspberry puree. I love raspberry puree. Inwardly I groaned, cursing my actual sister.
She went through my pay (30% more than my salary at the Removals place!), showed me where I'd be working, what my log in was, where the tea and coffee was and when she showed me where the paper for the printer was kept, bending over to the bottom drawer, I had to look away.

Karmaic By Nature - For Jessie

Karmaic By Nature
he said
in a way that suggested
he didn't know what he was saying.
Karmaic by Nature?
I asked.
He
looked
down
and said that when he was
tall
he used to look down
all the time at people.
and what about now?
I asked
now that you have been shrunk to the size of
a flea
by your time machine that went wrong again?
he sighed
Well, that's just it
he said
I still look down, but now I look down so that people won't see
my hideous
human
face
on the body of
a flea.

The Last Time I Saw John

The last time I saw John in real life was at his dad’s farm. We were asked to look after it while his dad and step-mum went on their annual holiday. We didn’t know shit about running a farm, but somehow we managed to blunder through. It was early autumn and nice enough weather to want to spend hours in a field trying to catch a sheep that had a poorly leg; or to bomb around the farm on the quad, trying to count the cows. We miscounted them every single time, and so drastically that we didn’t even notice that two calves had been born under our jurisdiction. On an evening, John would hand me a garden fork and gesture toward the vegetable patch saying “have a look round and see what you fancy for your tea” and then we’d cook giant marrows and cabbages into any sort of dish we could manage. After we’d made sure all the chickens were safely shut up in their pen for the night, we’d settle down with a fine wine from his dad’s cellar and watch cheap horror films. It was easy, really.

Being on the farm was good, hard, honest work. The occasion I mentioned with the sheep was especially interesting as we had to call upon the help of a local farmer, Alastair, who sometimes helped out on this one. He was a dairy farmer and after we had managed to catch the sheep (which was fine by the way, just a little lame) we had a long cup of tea with him and he told us all about the industry and where it’s going and how it had changed and that his dad had been born in the very barn we kept the quad in. (Alastair didn't make too subtle a hints at the fact that he wanted to rent the land on this farm and so was eager to press his emotional attachment to it upon us, hoping the sentiment would seep upwards to John's dad.)He was a really great guy and you felt good just by getting on with him; as if vicariously, you were as wholesome as he was, even if for just a few days.

One day some of our friends, including John’s girlfriend, came to stay at the farm for the night. Earlier that day John had asked me if I wouldn’t mind mowing the lawns and the paddock (of which there was a lot). I think he wanted everything looking shipshape and impressive and he strutted about like a land owner as he opened up the shed to reveal the ride-on mower. I’d never used one before and so leaped at the opportunity. I had great fun trying to make the lines as straight as possible and, I admit, to behaving a little bit over-confident and cavalier at times; making too tight a turns too quickly and knocking down a length of fencing John had only finished a few days before. The fence-blow aside, I was really enjoying mowing. I chugged along singing pop songs that I’d re-purposed for my newfound love of mowing.

The Beatles: - please don’t spoil my day I’m miles away and after all, I’m only mowing. Dum dum dum dum dum.
The Bangles: Am I only dreaming, or am I mowing an eternal lawn...
Kate Bush: Keep mowing up that lawn, keep mowing up that hill, keep mowing round that corner
etc.etc.

When I eventually finished and came inside I was shocked to discover that the others had already arrived; they must have driven up the track right next to the paddock I was mowing and I had not noticed them at all.
“Gosh, I’m so sorry, I didn’t realise you were all here I would have come and said hello otherwise!
and Vicky said
“It’s OK, we’ve been watching you through the window but John had said ‘leave her’.”
Three and a half hours I’d been mowing and it had passed in a blink.

A few days later we were at the end of our farm fostering term and it was the last afternoon. John was staying on that night to make a clean switch over with his dad and step mum but I was leaving that evening. We’d spent the morning putting up a section of fencing that had been destroyed by Tarragon, the bull, in an attempt to reach a sapling just over the fence that must have looked tastier than anything in his field. He watched us as we worked; snorting and generally stropping about. You often find you can get used to anything after a while; sewerage workers get used to their surroundings and the smell, high-rise builders get used to the precarious positions they are in every day (we’ve all seen the famous photo of a bunch of builders having their lunch on some sort of insanely high piece of scaff.) But anyway, my point being, that no matter how one can usually get used to anything with enough exposure, I never got used to being near Tarragon. I simply didn’t trust him and his little devil eyes.
“He’s a softy” John would say, but that’s just what Tarragon wanted him to say and I knew it.

The rest of the afternoon had been spent shoveling muck off the long track up to the farm. We literally used shovels and a stiff brush and it was hard work on the arms and the back. The air was fresh though and the sun was low in the sky. The Dales glowed gently; green lit through orange.
We got back in and cleaned off our wellies and fed the dogs. John flung himself on the sofa and stretched out, while I put the kettle on and as I was stood there making the tea he started talking about the music business and what artists he especially hated. Even with all that good, honest fresh air inside his lungs, out bellowed this vitriol and hatred so quickly that by the time I was handing him his mug, he was already onto the ‘televised’ part of his plan. I laughed it off of course, and only half-listened while I caught up on my emails and reported in jest back to friends on instant messengers the basic gist of John’s hate-filled pipe dream of what he would like to do with Lady Gaga.

I left the farm in a form of goodbye, as it was truly the end of the summer now, and John was moving back through to university the following week and I was away all the days to follow until then. It was a nice way to spend the end of the summer; on the farm and driving down that track in the setting sun with a snoring dog on the front seat who was exhausted from all the excitement of being a farm dog for a week. It felt like the end of a holiday and the beginning of head-down, work mode which has always pretty much been my favourite sort of seasonal feeling.

It was two months later when I saw John again, but this time it wasn’t in real life. I’d been working in the recording studio all day and then came through to the front room to watch Coronation Street with my dinner on a tray on my knees. My mum, dad and sister were all away so it was just me and the dog and the cat. I was sitting there with a horribly catchy whistling melody ringing around my ears, trying to forget about arrangements and kick drum patterns and just enjoy watching new-mother-Molly trying to get around the fact that Tyrone wasn’t the father and that Kevin, who was the father and Tyrone’s business partner was there at the birth and how his wife, who was clueless to the whole situation helped deliver the thing. It was just what I needed, and there, with my vegetable stew, I sank into my planned evening.

Just as Tyrone was suggesting that heroic baby-deliverer Kevin ought to be the godfather, the picture on the television went a little fuzzy and before I could even reach for the remote to try and fiddle around with the settings, there was John’s face looking right at me, from the screen. I simply couldn’t understand what had happened. Had I accidentally set playing some sort of video recording John and I had made messing around on the farm or something? But it didn’t take long to realise that this was not the case, the video nor DVD player were even turned on, I was watching ITV and ITV was broadcasting John... John on a boat...? Yes, he was on a boat of some sort, at sea it seemed from all the motion, and he was adjusting the camera.

My vegetable stew fell from the tray on my lap onto the floor which the dog was quick to take care of and I sat there in absolute bafflement as to what could possibly be going on. Even though it was the strangest thing in the world, for some reason it also seemed familiar somehow in a way that I couldn’t quite understand or remember. John, who was wearing an orange life jacket and had a weather-beaten face with his cheeks even rosier than normal looked nothing but... angry. His arm reached forward to something on the camera and with a clunk he had turned on the microphone. Wind battering the mic like scrunching up crisp packets and the sound of halyards wildly clanging against a mast. It was now clear that John was on a yacht that was not under sail, merely drifting about in whatever body of water he was in the middle of. Above the wind and the clanging sounds came John’s voice while he stared right down the lens.
“Right. I’m sorry to interrupt, but this just had to be done. It’s just gone too far, so I’ve gone too far to even things out. If you think this is extreme just have a little listen to the top 40 charts. Want to arrest me? I don’t give a shit, I’m saving humanity and what you gonna do anyway? I’m in the middle of the fucking ocean, it will be way too late by the time you find me....” and then the really sinister bit where I suddenly remembered why this was familiar to me:
“Or by the time you find her....” at this point, John leaned forward and took a hold of the camera. He jerked it across the deck and zoomed in then out a little until she was bang in focus. There she was; Lady Gaga, bound and gagged to the pulpit. I clapped my hands to my mouth and watched with wide eyes, utterly incapable of turning away even though I KNEW what was coming next.

So that was the last time I saw John in any form. I watched him on that boat with Lady Gaga, dressed in her finest lead bodice that had crude parrots John had obviously made from the foils of KitKat wrappers hanging off her like a baby’s cot mobile. She was wearing an eye patch made from a patch of astro-turf and she wore thigh-length boots that appeared to be made of thousands of snail shells glued together. The whole ITV-watching nation watched as he made her walk the plank whilst blasting out from some elaborate sound system he had rigged up on the deck, the title track from the Marvin Gaye What’s Going On album. When the splash was made John turned to the camera and said
“Sorry you missed Corrie. In a bitch. Over and out!”
and then the picture went fuzzy and came back on to the end credits and mournful horn theme tune of Coronation Street. My phone started ringing immediately, but I didn’t answer the calls.
I’ll ring them back in a bit, I thought as I went to clean up what the dog had missed of the vegetable stew from the floor. Just before I went to fetch the floor cloth and stain remover though I headed for the CD player, and took out What’s Going On.
He’s got a point, I thought as I turned up the volume.

Cat Flap

"Coping with a cat, when you live in a flat
can be hard" said Faye who had been trying to stay out of Evan and Daniel's big argument.
Dan gave a snort "Well you can't talk! You live in a 9th floor apartment!"
"Dogs are different, they're patient, obedient! Dealing with dogs is much easier!"
Evan came in
"Oh don't you begin, going on and on about dogs again!
We want a cat. A cat, and that's that! Tis only the colour we cannot agree on!"

Faye started to pout as she sat drinking her stout in the pub that they always came into. She was only saying, that's all - just saying! Well, really! She was growing quite tired of those two:

"I saw a white one, a cat I mean, in the snow one winter some years ago. It had bright green eyes which came as some surprise as his eyes were all I could see of him!"

"Well I saw this black, giant big cat round the back of the garden last October. It was Halloween and I'd just been to a party and was in no way sober. This cat just seemed to shine and gleam with his glossy black coat he was purring and ever since that, I've wanted a cat as black as the sky when midnight's occurring."

Stirring her foot on the floor, Faye became sure that in both of their points lay the answer.
"I've got it! I know it! Now listen, okay? You two listen to what I'm going to say: the colour of the cat that's not white nor black is very simply GREY!"

It Was Never My Idea To Go To That Party

It was never my idea to go that party, let me make that clear from the start. It was never my idea to attend the National Society of of Turkey Basting Swingers Competition Party, but Donna was a strong woman and she could always make me think of things as ‘a good idea’ and somehow she did it with this. Even with a party of that title I can honestly say that it seemed like a good idea, at the time.

It was after six glorious years together that we had decided to have a baby. We were certain that we didn’t want to adopt, Donna spoke with a desperate clinging of her longing to be pregnant, and I, with my fear of all things sickly and my recurring back problem was more than happy to go without the whole ‘miracle’. We lived in my house in the surburbs of a small city and had a decent income, many good friends and it just seemed like the logical next step.

Donna. Oh, Donna! That beautiful, sexy witch! Why did I let her rule me so? I had always been at her absolute mercy without either of us really knowing it. I wonder now, if I had ever even been myself the whole time we were together, but more just the person I wanted to be for Donna without a single regard for myself. I had no soul to feed or life to lead, I had only Donna.

Donna was freelance journalist and a very good one at that, she was always being invited to press launch parties and this is how I would meet most of our friends too. I was just serious old scientist Maggie; but she would dress me up, show me off, introduce me to the people who were actually interested in the kind of science I was working in, and I would watch her dazzle them with her headlines.

One morning I was sitting at the kitchen table, drinking my tea, eating my toast, listening to the breakfast show radio as I always did before leaving for the lab. It must have been the heart of winter for I had the gas fire on all bars and it was still dark outside. I remember this morning clearly, for this was the morning that Donna put to me the idea. She appeared at the foot of the stairs; bed-hair, silk robe barely covering her perfect, naked skin and she had that look on her face. The one that made her special and that also made her dangerous.
“Maggie. Darling Maggie!” she was excited and she came pawing at me, kneeling by my side. “After the opening party at Trams last night, I went on to Hippos” she was now stroking my hair, curling it around her fingers, “and sweetie. I got talking to these people who told me about this sort of party that, well...”

And so there it was. There was the moment when Donna told me about the party and talked me into thinking it was good idea. The party I’m talking about is of course the National Society of of Turkey Basting Swingers Competition Party. It works basically like this:

There are twenty parties that happen on the same night nationwide. In each party there are five lesbian couples who are all wanting to have a baby through artificial insemination and there are five men who are willing to donate their sperm. There are five turkey basters that the men fill up while watching the couples have sex and then all the turkey basters are put into a large dish, much like car keys at a swingers’ party, and they are shaken around, mixed up by an officiator of the NSTBSCP.
Each couple takes away one of the basters and inserts it into the woman who is going to get pregnant. Nobody knows who the father is, and then when the babies are born each party has to come to a decision by committee as to who they think each father of each baby is, fill it in like an orienteering card, and send the completed card back to the HQ of NSTBSCP. The NSTBSCP run DNA tests and then the first party who has sent back their card and correctly identified each baby with each father wins the money.
Did I forget to mention it costs each couple and each man £2000 to enter so with five couples, five men in each party and twenty parties the prize money is a delicious £400,000 which means a nice £40,000 for each couple and man of the winning party.


Were we poor? I didn’t think so, but then I didn’t know about the debts. From what I saw, we didn’t even particularly need £40,000 but I allowed that seed of greed to settle within me, planted by the evil goddess, Donna and nurtured by me and my fancy.
“At the end of the day, Donna” I said “I suppose we can just look at it as a fun way of getting pregnant. I mean, we get to go to a sex party AND get pregnant. The chance of winning £40,000 is slim, but a possibility. But, darling, we have to just see that as a bonus in the unlikely event that it happens.”
She smiled a wicked smile.
“Oh dear, sweet Maggie. Why don’t you ever realise who you are?” she kissed me all over as she told me of the dangerous part of the plan.

The science I worked in, was with DNA. I was working on a project at that time that examined the DNA of living things that had now died. But that’s not to say that the specifics of my work were not mutually exclusive to all other parts of DNA, or that I did not have access to the sorts of things you would need to perform a DNA paternity test, for instance.

Oh, Donna! Ghastly, dazzling Donna! With her ways and her wiles! Her soft lips that I so lusted for and licked up the very poison which oozed from them. I agreed to it; to the party, to the plan, to the whole wretched affair. She signed us up, we had to be interviewed and approved and we were charming and sparkling, and naturally, we passed. We maintained this delightful atmosphere about us as we pulled up into the driveway of the private country estate house that the party was being held in. Donna held my hand as we walked through the rose garden around to the front of the house. From inside, I could faintly hear the sound of a violin. I remember looking at Donna in the moonlight and being quite unable to speak for her beauty had me so spellbound. Stars flickered in the clear, country sky. It had been so long since I had seen these stars. I was back at college all over again; breaking into the observatory at night with my friends, drinking whiskey and smoking cigarettes under the willow tree and Faye Coulson asking me to come and look at the moon with her.

I can barely think about those times now, it makes me so sad because I can truly say that that was me back then, that was who I was. And yet the years that followed after college, when I met Donna, I simply lost that. Donna was the interesting one, she was the one who did the things worth future reverie, I just watched her. I complemented her but she was magic on her own. She was a willow tree in the good times all the time. She was remarkable and thoroughly overwhelming and there just wasn’t room for the both of us.
“Look a shooting star!” Donna, smiling, pointing upwards, "Make a wish!" But I just carried on looking at her thinking how I had nothing I would wish for.
Oh, shooting star! If only I could see you now. I would take that wish. I would take it now and wish myself never to have met Donna Craven!

Everyone in our party got pregnant, everyone in our party took very little pursuading to agree to the plan to win the money. All the babies were born, I performed the swabs on the men and the babies. Our baby, a beautiful girl we called Sadie, was the daughter of Benny, a man who left watching us to go and watch a foursome down the corridor. Rubia and Liz had a baby boy they called Zeek, he was the son of Marlon, a maths lecturer who had watched us and who had been my favourite of all the potential fathers. We filled in our card and sent it off to HQ and won the money. It was about eight months after that that it all started to unravel.

Liz came home from work early one day after her office was closed due to a fire in the neighbouring cafe at lunchtime and she found Rubia and Donna naked on the living room floor. I got the phonecall from Liz while I was in the park with Sadie, feeding the ducks. I sat there with my mobile against my ear, looking at Sadie and listening to the ducks mocking me. Rubia and Donna had been having an affair ever since the night they met in Hippos. Donna was in debt of more than £50,000 and Rubia was more than willing to pool her money with Donna to pay of the debts and then she and Donna and the two babies could run away together to Brazil where Rubia was from and desperately homesick for but Liz had always thrown out the idea of moving to San Paulo where as Donna was up for getting as far away from her past life ie. before me, as possible. What she did to gain those debts and to need to run away from her former life I do not even want to know, but I bet it is even worse than my darkest imaginings.

When I heard all the sorry details of their plan, I came back to myself. I found the person I truly was before I turned into the pleasure of Donna and I made plans for custody of Sadie.
“What are you going to do?” Donna snarled “how can you tell them we had a plan involving the money when the only sure way to get that money was to use you? You’d get years for that sort of fraud, and you’d lose your whole career!”

I took no notice of her and filed ahead. Sadie was the most important thing to me now, much more important than Donna or the lab. But oh! Donna! That evil wench! She had been right! Rubia had a cousin who was an excellent barrister who specialised in fraud cases. In the custody battle that I waged, Donna of course, hired Luis and I lost my baby. Donna was the biological mother of Sadie, she had carried her for nine months, and though we had lived together, we were not married and there was nothing the court could do to give me- a fraudster, the custody of a baby who technically I had nothing to do with. Donna was her mother, and Donna denied all knowledge of the paternity testing I had performed on all the babies. Everybody else in our party denied that they knew anything about the paternity tests too, as they wanted to keep the money they had mostly already spent.

“She must have pulled hair out of our babies when we weren’t looking!” Candice shrieked in the witness box. How she had the brass to look me in the eye as she said these things I can never comprehend.

“Is it possible she took DNA from our babies through collecting old soiled nappies from the bin outside our houses? The woman is SICK!” was the contribution from Jade.

“She tried to kiss me once, but I realise now that she was actually taking a mouth swab from me!” -Marlon, who I had always liked the best from our party.

And Donna, in that witness box, Donna put on quite a show. She sobbed quietly, saying through the gulps and the tears how she was unable to understand how she thought she had known me so well when really I was just a liar and had she ever really known me at all?

Devil take that woman! For here I am, in prison! Nine years before I will even be able to begin my search for Donna and more importantly for my Sadie. Every hour of every day I weep. I weep more than that willow tree which, if I stretch on the very tips of my toes, I can see through the bars of my window. In a final sick twist of fate it is such that my prison cell happens to ever so cruelly overlook my old college and, in the far distance, the observatory holding within it the brutal memories of when I was last truly myself . I sit here and watch it like a distant star; the light from which it burns is from so very long ago and has taken so long to reach me. The star; from which the light has traveled all these years to me is, quite possibly, already dead.



Diane

I stumbled across this translation of a Rilke poem and couldn't believe how much it reads like Special Agent Dale Cooper of Twin Peaks doing a dictaphone entry to Diane. I think it's a pretty unaccredited translation and more like some bloke just doing it in his room as opposed to a widely published one but I much prefer it.

Remember that scene where Coop's been shot and he's on the floor talking to the voice-activated dicta about all the things he would like to do with his life and how he feels about being shot? Keep that scene in mind then read this poem!

LAMENT by Rainer Maria Rilke translated from German by Cliff Crego

O How everything is so far away
and so long ago departed.
I believe that the star from which
I receive such glittering light
has been dead for thousands of years.
I believe that something
frightening was said
in the boat which just passed by.In a house, a clock
has marked the hour . . .
In which house? . . .
I would like to leave my heart behind
and step out under the immense sky.
I would like to pray.
That one of all these stars
must certainly still exist.I think I know
which one
has endured,—
which one, at the end of its heavenly ray,
stands like a city of white light . . .

Long time working, mapping and looking

It started on day one, because I guess how could it start on any other day? On day one, though, he didn’t realise it was day one, (How do you know you’re counting until you start counting?) he merely decided that he’d simply had enough, and that he had to do something about it. He started moving around the house. He tidied up everything; cups, plates, teaspoons, food wrappers, clothes that he had left to pile up over the week. He brought out the hoover, he straightened all the throws on the chairs and sofas. And after he had cleaned the windows, bleached the bathroom and even de-greased the oven he sat back down with a cup of tea and started to make his plan.
“Wow, you cleaned!” his housemate exclaimed when she got home from shopping.

On day two he went down to the timber yard.
“Well what sort of boat are you building?” asked the short, serious looking one.
“One that floats” he replied and watched the man go off to the store room, shaking his head.

On day three it rained so he covered up his pieces of wood that were lying all over the garden with a tarpaulin they used as a smoker’s shelter for when they threw house parties. He went into town to the library. He pulled out the almanac of tide tables for that year and for every port and secondary port in the country and its neighbouring islands. He took out a note book and started to jot things down, scribble some things, turn pages, go back pages. He stood up after an hour and went over to the maps section and took out some admirality charts of certain coastal zones and took them back to his table. Every few hours he would go and get more tea or water and he bought a sandwich and some flapjacks from the library cafe.

Outside, smoking under the shelter, an attractive girl with huge, swooping brown eyes said to him
“I love these rainy library kind of days”
“Maybe” he said, and threw his cigarette end in the ash bin and went back inside to his charts, notes and almanac. He worked until the library closed at 9pm.

On day four it was still raining so he went back to the library and did the same as the day before. The attractive girl with the huge swooping brown eyes turned up at midday and smiled at him. Outside, smoking, she asked him
“What are you doing with all those maps?”
He looked at her from a thousand miles away
“Planning.”

They finished their cigarettes with no more words; just the sound of the relentless rain, stinging the pavement over and over.

On day five the rain continued and so he did the same as the previous two days and worked down at the library until the latest time he was allowed to. The attractive girl with the huge swooping brown eyes was there again but she did not take her cigarette breaks at the same time as him and only acknowledged him with a smile as she passed him on the spiral staircase on his way down to the cafe. At 9pm the librarian had to tell him to leave.
“We’re closing now. But I’m sure we’ll be seeing you tomorrow again.” And then she laughed.
He gathered up his things and put the charts and the almanac back.
“Maybe. There’s a lot of work to do yet.”

He walked home under the street lights which were struggling against a fog that had begun to lie about the town. The smoke from his cigarette blended in perfectly to his background.

On day six his housemate was off work as it was the weekend.
“I wondered if you fancied coming to that exhibition we were talking about?” she asked him.
“I haven’t got time for these things right now, Cath. I’m sorry. You go and tell me how it is though.”
“What is it you’re actually... errm, doing?” she ventured.
“I’m planning.” He said with a full-stop and end-of-paragraph sort of tone.

He worked in the garden all day on his boat; sawing, nailing, edging.

Catherine returned from the gallery and stood at the back door looking out into the garden. She could barely see him for the fog, she could just make out the outline and shapes of him and a vaguely skeletal boat and she could hear the sound of banging and sawing and hammering which seemed to ricochet and bounce off the fog to its magnification.

“Do you want a cup of tea?” she called out into the white.

On day seven, Catherine was at home again and fog had cleared. They sat together at breakfast while he was reading a book about stars.
“Evan’s coming round for lunch today and he’s bringing Rav and Jenny. Do you want to eat with us too?”
“I’m busy” he said, not looking up from his book.
“You like Rav. I know Jenny can be a bit much sometimes but...”
“It’s not that, Cath. I’m just really busy.” He said, not moving his eyes from the page.

He was back out in the garden working on the boat while they all ate lunch. He could hear them laughing in the moments that he wasn’t sawing or hammering. He paused for just a second, saw poised for cutting, and looked back at the house. He could see through the window the table and the food and he saw Evan doing some big hand gestures while presumably telling some sort of amusing anecdote.

When it started to get dark he heard the door ppen and Rav came out with a tray of food and a beer.
“You’re not going to come in and join us are you?”
“No. Sorry.” He said. “I’m just really busy.”
“Oh well” she sighed “where shall I put this tray?”
“Just set it on the ground there. I just need to finish this beam.” And then he added “thanks, Rav.”

Rav was walking around the pieces of wood that were beginning to resemble at boat.
“It’s pretty good this, you know. Did you honestly make it from scratch?”
He nodded.
“It’s impressive. But, why are you building it?”
“I’m planning” he said and ended the conversation there.

Many days passed.

On day forty three his arms were sore, so he left the boat which now had rigging but no sails and went to the library. On the way there, he saw a pocket compass in the window display of a pawn shop. It was ornate looking but surprisingly cheap, and most importantly, working. He went inside and bought it. It was made of some sort of hard metal and had a strong clasp which allowed it to spring shut to keep the compass safe and shelled. On the inside of the shell, there was an engraving. It read

Impossible to lose yourself

He sprung it shut, put it in his safe zipped pocket and started to run to the library. When he finished that night, he ran home too.

On day fifty the canvass he had ordered arrived. He laid it all out in the garden and measured it and marked it with a pencil. Catherine came outside with a cup of tea for him.
“What’s this?” she asked, and for the first time since this plan began, he smiled.
“Sails!”

On day seventy four it blew a storm. He sat in his boat in the garden, wrapped in jumpers and a raincoat and gloves and a hat. He smoked a cigarette and laying in the cockpit looking up at his finished rigging he closed his eyes. He was exhausted and slept there, in the garden of that residential street; the driving rain, the vicious cold wind and the violent cracks of thunder from far away behind thick, sodden grey clouds.

On day seventy nine he finished his books. He and Catherine were sat there in the front room; he reading and she doing her internet banking. He slammed shut the heavy 700 page hardback and looked at her.
“Huh?” she asked.

On day eighty he went down to the harbour.
“Yeah that shouldn’t be a problem” said the older man with the weathered face. Smoking a cigarette he pointed to a younger, athletic looking man with sun bleached hair.
“Go talk to my son. It’s my crane but he’s the one who actually does it now. I just can’t be bothered any more. Know what I mean?”

On day eighty one he watched his boat be lowered into the harbour. Shaking the younger man’s hand after it all, he said
“Thanks. Perfect. Thanks.”
The younger man asked
“When do you leave?”
He considered the question while looking out to sea.
“When the time’s just right.”

On day eighty six Catherine came downstairs in the middle of the night for a glass of water and found him in the garden. He was sitting under the apple tree on a chair with a duvet wrapped around him, looking up.
“What are you doing?” she whispered from the door.
“Waiting!” he hissed back.
“Waiting for what?”
“Lots of things. The right time, the right height, the right tide” and then he added “a sign.”
“I’m going to call your parents tomorrow” she said, sliding the patio door shut.

On day eighty seven he said “Cath, why don’t you join me under the apple tree tonight?”
She was squeezing lemons for her icing.
“Is this so I won’t call your parents?” she asked, putting the half-lemon down on the side and turning to face him.
“Just come out with me tonight. Then you’ll understand.”
“I can’t tonight. Evan’s coming over, he gets back from America this evening!”
“Aw, that’s great.” He said, looking out of the door up at the sky. “It’ll be cold tonight anyway, there are no clouds.”

On day eighty eight he was gone. Catherine and Evan came downstairs in the morning to find a note on the kitchen table.

Tonight, under the apple tree, through the gaps in the branches, I saw my sign. I have gone to get her. Xx

When She Took The Train Home

And it wasn't as though he didn't know that all he had to do was to pick up a telephone or to log onto the internet but somehow, in this state he had worked himself into, he just sort of forgot. He stood on the station platform, waving at the departing train until it dipped over the curvature of the earth and beyond his eye-line. Given how tall he was, this was a longer visual departure than for most men, but it wasn't as though it lasted that much longer so that he might feel better by the end of it, as if time would do it's healing by the time that train had gone; quite the opposite. He sighed into the empty platform, and along with his recent happiness, the sun departed, leaving him with clouds of gloom and uncertainty.

He scuffed his feet along the concrete as he made his way out of the station and, without any conscious thought, took the bus out into the countryside instead of to his house. His head was beginning to fill up with sounds, but not those of the diesel engine of the bus, or the screaming child at the ice-cream parlour where he alighted, but instead with his own voice saying things:

I can't believe she has gone. How will I go on? Can I really go on living here alone? Is this really what I want? Are these circumstances the best or should I change them? Do I just accept what is going on or do I change them? She is gone now. Shit. She is gone now. Oh fuck, I am lonely. She has gone home and I am still here.

The sounds stopped as, suddenly the real life sound of the running water, the singing birds crept in through his ears. For just a few moments he listened and smiled, looking at the river, and then the voice started up again and he began to frown.

This is where she made me paddle. This is where she made me take off my socks! I haven't taken my socks off outdoors for anyone ever. This is where she made me paddle. This is where I was happiest. This is where she was.

And he began to cry. Through sobbing, audible gulps and whines, he collapsed down on the bank of the river and began violently pulling off his shoes and socks.
"JESSIE!!" he cried out.
"JESSIE!!"
And he threw his shoes toward a rock and a mother sheltered her young son away from the crazy man as they watched him run into the water. His great frame; clumsy and awkward and pathetic. He was splashing the water around with his feet at first and as he moved into the deeper water he started to bend down and swoop at it with cupped hands. He was crying harder now, with real tears falling from his eyes.
"JESSIE" he screamed over and over again above the sound of the water.

Needless to say all of the birds had left in fright and the mother and her young son did the same. A few passers by were quoted as having seen "some sort of lunatic crying in the water" and "a giant man dressed in black throwing water at the sky" until well into the setting sun. The river, with the tears of this heartbroken madman, had begun to swell. The police sergeant in charge of the scene had said in the press conference the next day "It's really only his extraordinary height that kept him alive for so long. But even a man as tall as he, could not survive the kind of depths he was dealing with. His tears were more than he was tall, and in the end, that is what killed him."

Faraway From The Tree

Idea for a story - the characters from a story like Enid Blyton's The Faraway Tree are older. Are they called Fanny and Dick? No, and in the Faraway Tree there are three of them, but let's say there are two - a brother and sister, and these are their names.
Fanny and Dick and Moonface just get pissed on mead all the time. Fanny throws up in the bucket and Moonface spews on the magic carpet and he has to scrub it with fairy liquid - like literally fairy liquid. And Dick, when Dick's drunk he turns into a total dick...

Moonface: You know w-w-what, Dick? You're... a r-r-real... DICK! BLEAURRGHHH!

Fanny: Hurr hurr hurr BLEEEAAUUURRRHGGHGH!

Dick: FUCK THE LOTS OF YA! FUCKING MOON FANNY FUCKFACES!
etc.
So Fanny and Dick turn 18 and Moonface dies and they skip their final A Level exams to go to Moonface's funeral.
They get shit results and their parents get mad. They can only get into a shit university and in their first term away from home, the Faraway Tree gets cut down. They get so sad about it all that they sack off their shit university and go travelling. Everything's so rubbish though. These guys have been to the Faraway Tree and all sort of lands. Do you think they're much impressed by an inter-railing holiday in Europe? Not much. They end up in Zante, getting pissed on the beach every night. They hang out with people that take loads of pills and mushrooms and for a while, it all seems OK because they can talk about the Faraway Tree which they never have done before, for the obvious reasons that people would think them insane.
After a while they just get really sad though, because the irony is that their lives in this world is actually far more un-real than their lives in the Faraway Tree. The Faraway Tree was the most real thing to them, it meant something to them and so did the 'folk' who lived there. Anyone in this world who is willing to believe them, or even just allow them to talk about it without questioning the validity, is just too stupid or smashed to be of any worth in being friends with.


They stop hanging around with the wild people so much and learn to stop trying to talk about the Faraway Tree. They're not stupid, they know it will land them in some sort of mental health hospital if they persist it, so they just stop trying. Sometimes, when they get in a relationship with someone they feel close to, they try and tell them. But it always breaks them apart, for how could anyone of any stability in this world, permit, or understand such talk, even if they want to.

Fanny and Dick live with such a gap between them and anyone else in the world, that they can't form closeness with anybody else, and the closeness they have with each other, people find odd and cliquey and impenetrable. They live together like a peculiar brother and sister spinster couple and grow older and sadder at their lack of real connection with anybody other than themselves. When they get home from work, they pour out some mead which never tastes the same as it did in the Faraway Tree, and talk about the old days. It's almost as if anything past the age of 18 never happened to them.

The author of this story is called Ophelia Rudge and she becomes so saddened by her own storytelling that she makes less and less sense as it goes on. Her writing becomes careless and angry and pointed and hopeless. She eventually leaves the story where I have and just says
"OH FUCK IT YOU'RE ALL NOBS" and nothing else gets written in the book.

Rudge is drunk at all the book signings and readings and she becomes withdrawn from the world and humanity much like her characters, only in a far more destructive way and she doesn't even have anybody else in the way that at least Fanny and Dick have each other.