Diary

9:17 am – Lit candles on cafe table, waited for a while and then decided to go for the mondo breakfast.

10:07 am – Pushed on to the centre of town, did a few laps of the ice rink.  Good to get a bit of exercise at least.

11:02 am – Hot air balloon ride was a bad idea, never had a head for heights.  Forgetting my glasses turned out to be quite serendipitous.

2:34 pm – Picnicked in the park, champagne and strawberries took the edge off the balloon ride.

3:52 pm – Chap in the park refused to rent tandem bicycle to me, argued with him for longer than I should have.  In retrospect he may have had a point about being in charge of a vehicle under the influence of alcohol.

5:13 pm – The funfair can only be chalked up as a success – won two large soft animals on the coconut shy.

7:35 pm – Managed to get last minute table at new seafood restaurant.  Had lobster and more champagne.  Both good.  Waiting staff a bit snooty though.

9:30 pm – Saw new Sir Stanley Higginbottom exhibition.  Some of it anyway, not really my thing.  Wine not bad.

11:10 pm – Got home, gave Mr Appleseed his dinner, let him play with the stuffed toys.  Overall, the day was a bit of a mixed bag.

*Note to self for next year – more preparation needed, best not leave it to chance again.

Posted at 11:29 pm on 14^th Feb 2010

Sample

He removed the sealed polythene bag from the freezer for the penultimate time. He weighed it on the kitchen scales and  noted the measurements.  With a gloved hand he removed one of the two remaining frozen pieces of excrement from the bag, placed it inside a tight fitting cardboard box and began the timer on the old fashioned stop watch.  He weighed the bag again, noted the difference and placed it back in the freezer.

He sat on the floor and having nothing left to do but wait, he watched the hand on the stop watch tick away, its arc becoming  smoother  the longer he looked at it, losing the rigid movement that denoted each passing second.  The hand gathered speed as it became fluid, flowing powerfully round and round the basin of the watch.  A powerful hand gripped the back of his head, the fingers weaving a tight grip through his hair and forced his face into the whirlpool.  He struggled under the water for breath, inhaling wet tissue and chunks of turd as the cold water swept around him.  He tried to scream through the choking and the water, “Please.  Stop”.

He jolted awake.  He prodded the stool with a stick to test the consistency and satisfied with the texture, he recorded the final results in his notebook.

With the testing completed he was confident he could accurately predict the time which it takes a human stool sample to defrost.  He calculated what time tomorrow night he would need to deliver the parcel in order for it to be completely thawed by breakfast time.  Mumbling something about revenge being served cold, he disposed of the test subject in the toilet and began his preparations for the night ahead.

Yahtzee

The old man was always trying to pull off some scam.  He came home one night with a big, black bin bag full of dice.  Cheap ones that left an unpleasant smell on your hands.

“How much did you pay for that shit?”  My mother asked him from her permanent position directly in front of the telly, as he enthusiastically unveiled his horde to her.  She screamed the sum of money he expressed back at him, repeating it twice, an octave higher each time.

“You couldn’t give those away to pissheads spoiling for a spill outside the pub.”

Instead of reading a story to me in bed that night, he opened his hand and revealed that he had six dice in his palm.

“Son,” he said “Tonight is one you’ll always remember, it’s the one that’ll make us millionaires.  Tonight, I’m going to teach you the sport of kings – Yahtzee.”

What followed was a night of intensive learning.  As he taught me we discovered that I had, as he’d hoped, inherited the family flair for the game and a wide eyed excitement was shared between us every time a five of kind rolled up.  I may be sentimentalising a memory, but I swear I saw a tear roll down his cheek when I rolled a fourth consecutive Yahtzee.

The sun rose and I let out a yawn that almost perforated my ear drums.

“Don’t worry about going to school kiddo, get a couple of hours kip now and later we’ll take to the streets, I’m going to show you the arena of the Gentleman’s Game.”

He pulled the covers up over me and brought his face close to mine, so that nothing else existed.

“I’m going to sort out getting some boxes printed, no one’ll know they’re hooky then when I try to flog ‘em.  I’ll wake you up when I get back and then you, my little champion, can make your debut to the world.”

I fell asleep before his lips left my forehead.

My mother woke me up with her screaming, which wasn’t unusual.  But her voice was different, it was guttural, like her soul was trying to release itself into the world alongside her voice.  I ran downstairs and found her doubled up on the doorstep with the shadow of a policeman draped over her.

After Dad had left me, he’d broken into a printers he used to work at.  He had tried to nick a roll of cardboard that was already mounted to the presses ready for printing, but he timed it wrong.  The foreman had come in and started the presses without checking them, just as Dad was doing his trapeze act across the machinery.  His laces got caught and he was minced up before the foreman had chance to hear his screams.

At the funeral, after they lowered his casket, I chucked the six dice in with him.  I doubt any of the mourners noticed that six sixes were facing up at them as they took their turn to throw dirt into the hole.

Chart

Sylvia awoke and found herself alone in an unfamiliar bed.  She began to survey the room through muffled vision but was interrupted before she could come to any conclusions about the room’s occupant by the door inching open.

A thin man in a dressing gown entered, clearly startled to find her watching him make his way into the room.

“Oh, good morning.”  His voice struggled to find the correct octave to speak as it rang through those few short syllables.

Her voice also betrayed her as she croaked a greeting back.

“Here, have some water.”

She raised herself to a seated position, clumsily trying to keep herself covered and drank.

“Before you say anything I need to get something out of the way.”  He spoke at fast pace and began his next sentence without pausing for a response.

“Right, I’ve been monitoring my self esteem over the past five years on an almost daily basis, I would show you the data but my laptop’s broken.  But I have a chart here that I’ve quickly thrown together that should illustrate my point.”

He pulled out the chart from the belt of his dressing gown and held it up to show her.  It was a line graph drawn on an empty pillow case.

“I hope you don’t mind but I used your eyeliner pencil, I couldn’t find anything else.  As you can see, for the most part the line sits somewhere in this area between low and lowest, with only the very occaisional spike into middling to good.  All these points can be explained by the ingestion of mood enhancing drugs, or as the brief moment a romantic conquest inevitably discovers one of my very apparent  inadequacies.”

Sylvia found to her surprise that she was able to follow the chart despite her fragile state.  The man flew back into his lecture before she could consider the wider implications of what was actually occurring.

“That’s why, when I woke up this morning to see you there and felt this chest warming glow of elation, I immediately felt a desperation to delay the inevitable.  That’s why I couldn’t be next to you when you woke up.”

Having moved away from the chart, which had proved to be an excellent visual aid, Sylvia was finding it a lot harder to follow the man.

“So in an effort to prolong this experience I’ve made you two breakfasts.  Do you want to start with poached eggs or croissants?”

Unable to think of suitable alternative to having breakfast, Sylvia chose to start with the croissants.  The butter might at least sort out her dry throat.

Return

The bus pulled in, the doors opened and a young man in a loud hooded top boarded.

“Return to town please.” said the young man to the driver.  The driver raised his head from the loose change he was counting and considered the man.

“Sorry?” asked the bus driver, his eyes barely visible underneath the brim of his uniform cap.

“Return to town please.”

“D’you mean a return from town.” questioned the driver, allowing the smallest amount of weariness into his tone of voice.

“What?  I just want to get to town and back, a return to town.”  The young man laid out his desires as plainly as he felt he could.

“That’s not right.  Town isn’t the place you’re returning to.”

“No, but it’s like Back to the Future innit?”

“How so?” The driver raised his head completely to look straight at him, he believed in giving someone his full attention as they attempted to back up their claims.

“Well, once they’ve gone to the past and sorted all their shit out then they go back to the future.  That’s why it’s called that.”

“Yes, but you haven’t gone to the past yet.”

“Town.”

The driver ignored this misstep and continued.

“You haven’t gone to town yet, so you can’t be returning to here yet.  In the future you will be returning to here, but right now you are here and plan to return to here in the future.  Once in town, you will return from there.  Hence, return from town.”

“Look man, just give me a one way to town.” the worn down youth quietly demanded.

“Good lad.”  He gave the young man a sympathetic smile as he handed him his single ticket, he felt he owed him at least that for making him pay for a pricier ticket.

The driver wasn’t sure which part he liked more about being paid commission on every ticket sold.  The extra money came in handy, but the esoteric debates he’d had with passengers over the last week had really made his shifts fly by.

Rescue

Despite the thickening blood in my ears I can hear his voice getting closer.  I knew he’d come back for me, he’s my best friend.  I can see his light, it’s going to be ok.

“Don’t worry man, I’ve got you.” His voice calls from behind the light that’s fixed on me, blinding me.  He’s found me.  I’m not going to die.

“I got it perfect, all on my phone.  Gonna upload that video to Facebook.  It’ll say RIP and that, like the celebrities have in the papers.  No one’ll forget you when you’re gone, you’ll be a ledge!”

Brainstorming

“Superhero?”

“Been done.”

“Interior Designing?”

“Not hands on enough.”

“Tree surgeon?”

“Too prop intensive.”

“Unblocking a toilet?”

“Too imaginatively nauseating.”

“Bowling ball polishing?”

“Been done.”

“House of Commons Backbencher barracking?

“Too shouty.”

“Monkey picking tea leaves?”

“Too imaginatively demanding.”

“Milkman’s round?”

“Too early.”

“Loan shark’s collector?”

“Too violent.”

“Tapestry weaving?”

“Too inactive.”

“Record scratching?”

“There’s already a game like that.”

“Formula One car mechanic?”

“Too specific.”

“General car mechanic?”

“Good, less specific, but still too technical.”

“Return of the Jedi re-enactment?”

“Catchy, but a copyright minefield.”

“Ostrich farming?”

“Ostracize is already something else.”

“Backyard wrestling?”

“Too dangerous.”

“Battering a critic who rubbished your latest work?”

“Too aspirational.”

“Mime artistry?”

“Too creepy?”

“Pensioner protesting against the close of her local library?”

“Too politically current, it’ll date quickly.”

“I give up, we’ve been at this for three hours.”

“Come on man, there must be a gap in the exercise DVD market somewhere!”

“Let’s just stick with our original plan.”

“Alright, we’ll play this your way.  But I refuse to pay Gillian McKeith extra to include that blasted poo chart of hers!”

“Go get her big guy.”

Videos

“You masturbate to videos of your ex-girlfriends?”

“Oh yes, but you have nothing worry about, dear.” said Stephen “I have deeply misogynistic thoughts while I’m doing so”.

The host rang the bell to indicate it was time to change partners.  Stephen decided that this Speed Dating lark was far easier than he’d been led to believe.

Party

I’ve spent the whole evening talking to people in her eye line.  I’ve stalked from room to room swapping introductions with strangers hoping they’re the talkative type so I can smile and nod along to their stories, while focusing mostly on Mary.  I’ve caught pieces of her voice all night, but never enough to get the context.  The only sound she makes that rises above the party is her squawking laugh, it’s nice to hear her laughing for once.

Now the party’s really thinned out and people seem to be shying away from the woman next to me who’s banging on about making the trains run on time.  Those that are left are finding portions of carpet to call their own for the night, Mary’s already laid down.  There’s a space next to her and I quietly bed down there without her noticing.

I watch the outline of her face in profile, so close.  The night darkens and darkens around us and the life in the rest of the room disappears, it’s only our breathing that inhabits the silence, separate but so close.  The tension that separates our bodies is so physical that I would choke on it if I weren’t in ecstasy.  There is nothing left of me but the breath that kisses her cheek.

She stirs.  Her outline changes as she turns to face me and my life truly begins as I see light reflect from her open eyes.

“You.” She addresses me with a fragile, croaking voice.

I see realisation blossom in her eyes and my heart cracks then bursts during the momentary pause before she speaks the words that I’ve longed to hear.

“You’re the one.”

Elation, I want to weep or pounce on her or have her cradle me in her arms.

“I’d recognise your breathing anywhere, you’re the freak who’s been giving me those phone calls!  Stephen, help!  It’s him, it’s fucking dirty phone call man!”

Corkscrew

Half an hour before the shops shut on Christmas Eve and I managed to find it – a mechanical cork screw, perfect for the elderly, arthritic relative who likes a hefty drop of wine.  It even came in a presentation gift box, giving it the illusion of being more than merely a practical present.

Full of high spirits having found the last item on my list, I decided to bide my time and approach the till when I’d be served by the pretty red head, rather than the overweight bald bloke.

I handed over the corkscrew with a festive verging on over-enthusiastic come-hither smile, she returned a less enthusiastic one.

“I should have the right change here.” I said with a swaggering head gesture.  That’s right baby, I’m a man on the case, prepared for any scenario where a variety of loose change might be necessary, you know you love it.

“These must be new ones.”  She indicated the brightness of the pound coins I’d given her.

“This year, I think.  That’s how I like them, the shiny ones always get me going.” I laughed and gave another smooth roll of my neck, hoping this would hide the fact that I’d failed at concocting a flirty double-entendre.  She didn’t join in with my merriment.

I made a show of having a swagger in my step as I thanked her and walked away.  There was no way I was going to let her eye rolling repulsion spoil my Christmas.