Ceci n'est pas un Blog!

She

2011-09-23T08:55:00.003+01:00

I loved her, of that there is no doubt. Indeed, she was the first woman I truly fell in love with, the first woman I met with whom I dreamed of spending my life. We met for the first time in the shadow of Putney Bridge, a place that will forever now be uniquely treasured to me, and my first sight of her stopped both breath and heartbeat for long moments. She possessed sublime beauty: long, straight, dark, dark hair; delicate, classical features; a glowing smile which revealed small, regular, white teeth; piercing, onyx eyes, a look from which connected directly with one's soul; a laugh it was impossible not to match with one’s own; and a slim, graceful figure that gave one the impression that she never quite made contact with the tangible world, but rather floated just above it. While others battled their way through the crowded streets, she slipped through the throngs as effortlessly as a neutrino through water.

Before I met her I wore a shell, hardened through many years of disappointment, acute shyness, and lack of confidence. It was a shell that both protected me and proscribed my movements. She broke through the shell and released me from the twilight of existing into the sunlight of living. Being with her gave me a sense of self-belief that was intoxicating, so long had it been since I had experienced it. Crowded places, which before had held for me irrational but real terrors, suddenly opened up into inviting spaces, places I not only could enter but actively desired to be. For the first time in my life I felt drawn to other people.

She it was who brought me to London for the first time since childhood; she who showed me the sheer joy of simply being at the centre of things, where before I had been perpetually peripheral. She had spirit, an acute awareness of all around her. She taught me to see beauty and meaning in everything around me. She gave me vision where before I had possessed mere sight. She imbued my superficial appreciation of art with deep understanding for the first time. She showed me how to look through, beyond, around, and within; how to see the big picture and the detail; how to see the latent beneath the manifest. She showed me how to see the world through an artist’s eyes. She fired my desire to be creative in every way.

At the end of our first day together, we sat talking in my car. I desperate to postpone our parting; she, apparently, happy to spend an extra hour with me. While we talked, she drew, with one delicate, manicured finger, a smiling face in the condensation on her window. For weeks afterward the ghost of that face remained visible, and I preserved it until the last traces had disappeared, feeling her closeness through it even though she was far away.

For a few brief weeks and months, I thought myself the luckiest man alive. Surely none could be more fortunate than I? Spending whole days exploring the city with the most beautiful woman on Earth; strolling around its galleries; having long, latté-fuelled conversations in coffee shops; browsing the market stalls along Portobello Road; or simply people-watching in the most cosmopolitan city in the world. She fired every neuron in my brain. I felt more alive in those moments than I had before or have since. I fell through her event horizon and could not have been happier at the prospect of eternal imprisonment within that imperceptible sphere.

She was, of course, always far beyond my reach, but such messages take a long time to make the journey from head to heart. Yet even after reality broke through and dissolved the dream, still the joy, the calm, the contentedness I felt merely by being in her presence diminished little, and remains with me. I love her still, and always will, but as tides roll the sharp angles from a rock to form a smooth pebble, so time has moulded that acute romantic love into the rounded love of friendship. She will always be my dearest friend, the one who gave to my life depth, meaning, richness and joy for which I could never find a way to truly thank her enough.

Peripheral Vision -- One of my earliest pieces of writing (be gentle!)

2011-09-22T13:15:00.001+01:00

1998

It was one of his favourite places. Since he discovered it about five years ago, he’d lost count of the number of visits he’d made here. Approaching the village along the gently winding road, he anticipated spending an enjoyable hour or so browsing in the tiny yet packed bookshop, a converted three-story terrace in a row built, originally, to house mill-workers in this most important of Derbyshire villages.

Cromford stood out in English history for one very good reason: it was arguably the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution. In 1771 Sir Richard Arkwright chose this site to build his first water-powered cotton mill, because of the existence of the strong, fast-running Bonsall Brook, which flowed into the River Derwent at Cromford. The waters of Bonsall Brook were warm, owing to the hot springs further up in the hills which formed its tributaries, meaning the water did not freeze in winter and thus making it an ideal source of power for his water wheels. The village grew up around the mill; houses, shops and other necessities of life sprang up to support the battalion of mill-workers.

He turned left at the traffic lights in the middle of the village, then turned right into the car-park fronting the magnificent stone-built Greyhound Inn, an imperious and imposing monument to eighteenth-century confidence.

Climbing out of the car into the warm June morning, Pete stretched, closed and locked the car door, and started the short walk to the bookshop. The village was beautiful not, perhaps, in a quaint “chocolate-box” way, but because of the character and history of its buildings. It was a miniature of a northern mill town, where King Cotton had served for a while as a Prince. Most of the buildings were tall and narrow, long terraces winding up steep hills away from the brook running through the centre of the village, past the famous mill. He walked through a short alley and into Scarthin, a particularly picturesque terrace, narrow and cobbled, the Black Swan Inn on one side, the tiny Post Office on the other. Further up, on the same side as the Post Office, was his destination. Scarthin Books, the most fantastic bookshop he’d ever been in. He approached the tiny shop, squeezed through the narrow doors, immersed himself in the unique smell of aged tomes, and lost himself among the labyrinthine aisles, corridors and landings, totally content.

1983

There was an air of excitement and anticipation, as always on these occasions, as the minibus was loaded after school finished on Friday night. The two teachers, Mr. Rogers and Mrs (perpetually referred to as “Miss” by the pupils) Newbury, packed the bags into the bus while the children talked loudly, ran, chased, screamed, and generally caused mayhem around the playground.

When all the bags had been packed, Mr. Rogers called his lary wards to order. “Right. Calm down, shut up, and get on the bus in an orderly fashion, please. Just find a seat, it doesn’t matter where you sit, let’s get moving.”

Mrs. Newbury did a head-count as the twenty-one twelve- and thirteen-year-olds climbed onto the mini-bus, racing to find the best seats alongside their particular friends, in total disregard to the given instructions.
After a few minutes of general musical chairs and a last minute conflab between the two teachers, the minibus departed through the school gates, Mr. Rogers at the wheel.

A school field trip was the very epitome of excitement and adventure for these youngsters, half-way between children and young adults. A weekend away from home, maybe a chance to flirt in a half-innocent, half-knowing way with fancied members of the opposite sex—usually amounting to displays of strength from the boys, met with feigned disgust and disregard from the girls. For Pete, sitting alongside his best friend Jason, it was no different, although being rather shy he was not normally given to showing off for the benefit of certain girls, even though his feelings towards them were the same as most thirteen-year-old boys.

The drive to Cromford was not a long one, being only about twenty miles in distance, and took just under an hour, but for children of that age, it was a world away.

The minibus moved along the winding road, flanked by a steep wooded hillside on the left, and an equally steep wooded drop to the right, down to the old Cromford canal running along the bottom of the narrow valley. Presently they came to a narrow, partly concealed driveway through the trees; the sign read, “The Wharfshed. Property of the Derbyshire Education Authority.” Mr. Rogers pulled the bus off the road and drove carefully down the steep track towards the canal, and pulled to a stop in a cleared area surrounded by several small buildings and one rather larger one, the Wharfshed itself, now converted into a small hostel for school trips, right on the very edge of the canal.

After another display by the group of excitement, anticipation and general horseplay whilst unloading the vehicle, the two teachers led their flock into the hostel, showed them the separate girls’ and boys’ dormitories, and left them to their own devices for a while, for the ritual of fighting for upper and lower bunks, ribbing, teasing, and discussions about prospective rendezvous with various members of the opposite dormitory.

After their evening meal, eaten to the accompaniment of rattled cutlery, youthful raised voices and laughter, they were led into the common room and, after finally getting settled in, on and around the chairs and sofas, were given the itinerary for the following day.

“Okay, lads and lasses,” began Mr. Rogers in his usual way, “Tomorrow we’ll walk down the canal into Cromford village; it’s about three miles.” This was greeted by exactly twenty-one groans. “Alright, alright. Then, we’re going to have a good look around Cromford, but the way we’re going to do it is this: You’ll split up into groups of three. Each group will have a map of the village, a list of things to find in the village, and a task for each one. Now, you’ll need to find each item or place on the map first, then find your way to that place so that you’ll be able to complete the question. Some of the questions will need written answers, some will required you to draw. You’ll have about three hours in Cromford, you’ll all have a packed lunch, then we’ll meet up and walk back along the canal again. After tea we’ll see which group got the best score, and there just may be a prize for the winners.”

This was received with somewhat more enthusiasm, although thirteen-year-old adults are not easily impressed, so the obvious excitement quickly subsided into adolescent laissez-faire.

After this speech, the group was allowed to do their own thing for a couple of hours before bedtime. Pete, along with Jason and Mark, went to look at the canal. As they walked along the towpath, they came to a narrow inlet (or outlet, it was impossible to tell which), complete with a sluice gate. Jason and Mark walked along the narrow dam, over the raised top of the sluice gate, and onto the towpath at the other side. Pete, always a little awkward, was the last to go, and gingerly stepped out onto the slippery dam. It was hard enough just to keep his balance, but as soon as he left the safety of the towpath, Mark and Jason started throwing stones in the water to either side of him. Although he knew they were not aimed at him, it put him off sufficiently that he lost his balance, tipped over to the right, briefly managed to steady himself by placing his foot onto a slippery rotted log, before slipping again and landing in the green canal water with both feet, the water reaching almost up to his knees.

To the sound of uncontrollable laughter from his “friends”, he climbed out of the inlet, trainers and jeans absolutely sodden. “You prats!”, he shouted, trying not to laugh himself. “Look at me, I’m bloody soaked.”

After another half-hour’s walking, though, the garments were dry and friendships restored. It would not always be so easy, but at thirteen, these sorts of things were quickly forgotten.

Getting the kids, particularly the boys, to go to sleep that night was no easy task for the two teachers, and it was after midnight when all the laughing, joking and surreptitious attacks on unsuspecting sleepers finally died down.

1998

Pete was in heaven as he mooched around the cramped bookshop. Every available space was filled with books; floor to ceiling shelves, shelving up both sides of the stairs, shelves on the landing, and in all of the former bedrooms. It was an Aladdin’s cave for bookworms, and for more than an hour he was lost in the world of words.

When he finally emerged into the outside world again, bright sunshine making him squint, he happened to glance across the road. For some reason, though he had been here many times, he had never before looked in precisely this direction, and the view was one that was immediately familiar to him. He wandered across the narrow cobbled street, the heavy bagful of books knocking the side of his leg, to the railings across the street. On the other side of the railings was an almost perfectly circular millpond, the surface of which was so flat and mirror-like, it could have been the very millpond people had in mind when they used it as a simile for any flat, calm body of water. Pete looked at the pond, then over to the other side where a row of tall, narrow houses lined up like a bad set of lower teeth, uneven in height and colour.

He knew this place, knew he had been here before, but could not bring the memory into focus.

There was a wooden bench here, placed so people could sit and look out over the pond, and he sat down, lifting the bag of books onto the seat beside him. For a while he just gazed out over the pond, trying to bring that elusive scrap of memory out of its pigeonhole.

1983

The June morning was bright and warm as the young group assembled roughly and energetically outside the Wharfshed. After once more checking that all were present and correct, Mr. Rogers and Mrs. Newbury led the group off down the towpath. Twenty-one youngsters with clipboards in hand, looking like trainee market-researchers, followed on, laughing, fooling, attempting to push each other into the canal. Just a bit of fun.

After an hour, the ragged group reached the village, where they climbed the steep path up from the canal to a grassy area by the traffic-lighted crossroads in the centre of the village.

Mr. Rogers gave the instructions. “Okay, you’ve all got your worksheets, all got your packed lunches, so I want you to split into groups of three.” This was the cue for a round of chaos, some groups forming quickly, some individuals floating round before joining, or being joined to, spare pairs. Eventually, seven groups of three enthusiastic teenagers each could just about be discerned.

“Right”, continued Mr. Rogers, “it’s eleven o’clock now, so we’ll all meet up here again at two o’clock. Now I want no stupidity, no messing about,” (fat chance), “and I want you all to be very careful of these roads. They’re busy and there are a lot of quarry lorries going up and down, so look what you’re doing. There’re plenty of pedestrian crossings; please use them. Okay, off you go, and good luck.”

Twenty-one excited, happy adolescents walked off briskly, not, of course, with the anticipation of looking round a very important site for English Industrial History, but with the enthusiasm of dogs being let off the leash in a field full of rabbits.

Pete was in a group with Mark and Jason, and they crossed the busy main road to stand on the pavement edging the market square, empty of stalls this morning but full of cars. Pete looked at the list of tasks, and read out the first. “The Greyhound Inn was built in 1797, and has a magnificent example of a late Georgian frontage, built in the local materials of limestone and millstone grit. In the space below, make a sketch of the front of the Hotel.” Since it would have been virtually impossible to stand where they stood and not see the Inn, the maps were not immediately required.

This would be tricky, particularly for Pete, who had never shown much aptitude for freehand drawing, but the three stood in a line in front of the solidly-built edifice, and for the next twenty minutes or so attempted, with varying degrees of artistic ability, to replicate the beautifully symmetric frontage of the building, with its saw-tooth patterned limestone block edging and nineteen small-paned windows, finishing off with the clock in the centre of the pediment.

Sometime later, after much comparing with and deriding of each other’s efforts, the three looked at their next appointed task.

“Find the waterwheel next to the millpond, and count the number of blades. Also describe the type of waterwheel (undershot or overshot), and briefly explain how it would have worked.”

After consulting their maps, they found that the millpond was directly behind the Greyhound Inn, just up a narrow street, so they set off with typical youthful speed. Rounding the Black Swan Pub, they found the millpond and, adjoining it, the old mill, complete with waterwheel, which did in fact turn out to be of the undershot variety. As they made their way to the edge of the millpond, Pete noticed, out of the corner of his eye, a youngish man sitting on a bench a little further up. He seemed to be just staring straight ahead, and Pete wondered if he was perhaps a little simple. But there were more important things to attend to. The three friends stood at the edge of the millpond, leaning on the rusty railings, and began to count the blades of the old, disused waterwheel. The soft breeze failed to make any impression on the millpond, which was as flat as a marble floor. Counting the blades was fairly easy, since the water level was now low enough to see the blades all the way around the wheel. After arguing then agreeing on how to describe the relatively simple mechanism involved, they decided to attack their packed lunches, and Jason pointed to the bench and suggested they go and sit on it to eat.

When Pete looked over to the bench, the man he had seen earlier had gone. “Where did that bloke go?” he asked the others. “What bloke?” said Mark, a tinge of sarcasm just beginning to colour his words.

“There was a bloke sitting on that bench when we came, he was just staring out at the pond. I think he was a loony or something.”

“There’s only one loony round here”, said Mark, in full flow now, “and I’m looking at him. There wasn’t anybody on the bench. I looked at it when we first came round.”

Jason agreed that there had been no-one on the bench, and the three went and sat down on the bench. Pete was puzzled for a while, but at thirteen these sorts of things are quickly forgotten.

1998

As Pete gazed into the millpond, his vision gradually de-focussing, he began to recall why this particular view had been familiar. It must have been on that school field trip, God knows how many years ago, when they were sent out around the village in groups. Who had he been with? That’s right, Jason, his best friend at the time, and Mark. They must have come here to see the pond and the waterwheel. As the memories came back to him, he smiled to himself as he thought of happier times, when spending a weekend just a few miles from home was such an adventure and life, in general, was simpler and brighter. And now his vision blurred further and he realized he was looking at the millpond through a film of tears.

It was movement on the surface of the water that brought his attention back to the present, and as he focused on the pond once more he could see that it was not the water itself that was rippling, but that there was a reflection on the glassy surface. There seemed to be three people walking towards him. Was it three kids? As he turned to the left to look, he could see no-one on the street and, turning back to the millpond, the reflections had disappeared. The millpond was still mirror-calm. After a minute or two he stood up, picked up his bag of books, and walked back down Scarthin to his car outside the Greyhound Inn.

God or Not

2010-02-08T13:44:00.001Z

I tend to avoid talking (or even blogging!) about religion, because if I would prefer people to keep their personal beliefs to themselves and not try and foist them onto me, then I feel I should practice the same restraint. However, I am making this one exception to my general rule, and hope I will be forgiven. Having decided to write something on the subject, though, I am of course prepared and ready for whatever comments anyone who reads this may wish to make!

Last night I watched the third part of Channel 4's excellent "The Bible: A History", this episode being presented by the intensely irritating Anne Widdecombe. However, I forebore my annoyance because I was interested to see what she and others had to say. The topic, for anyone who didn't see it, was the 10 Mosaic Commandments, how they form not only the basis of religious morality, but also of English Common Law, and how they should still underpin our behaviour today.

I could feel my annoyance growing--as it tends to do these days very quickly when I hear people defending the literal truth of the Bible--and found myself wondering why such basic, obvious tenets as "don't kill" should necessarily have a religious origin. Surely these ideas--don't kill, treat other people the way you would like to be treated, don't steal, etc.--are essential axioms for human society? Must they have been handed down by God? And are we to believe that before God's chat with Moses, such things were commonplace and acceptable?

I was brought up a Christian. My parents were both active in our local church, my father being both choirmaster and lay preacher up until his cruelly premature death at the age of 32. Since then my faith has been on a generally downward slope, and today I find it virtually impossible to hold on to a belief in any kind of omnipotent, omniscient, essentially benevolent God, when simply turning on the TV brings so much evidence to the contrary. Today it is from Haiti. Before that it was New Orleans. Before that, Indonesia and Sri Lanka. All of these places lost tens, hundreds of thousands of good, law-abiding and--in the majority of cases--religious people. I know it's an old and hackneyed argument against the existence of God, but it doesn't make it any less potent, and if an argument is good enough for Richard Dawkins, its certainly good enough for me.

What do such disasters tell us about God, and a belief in Him? We are presented with three equally unsatisfactory options, it seems to me, if we wish to maintain a belief in God:

1) God is neither omnipotent nor omniscient, and cannot prevent natural disasters

2) God could prevent such tragedies but chooses not to

3) "God works in mysterious ways."

Which of those would I most like to have as my own creed? Frankly, none! Do I find infinitely more palatable the idea that in fact there is no God, at least in the sense that the major religions cast him, and that such events just happen? Yes, hugely so. There are geological and meteorological reasons why, and that's all. On a human scale such disasters are immense, beyond comprehension, but I actually start to feel a certain comfort in knowing that these events were neither a punishment from God, something that He chose to allow to happen even though He had the power to prevent it, or that He couldn't have stopped it even if He'd wanted. The Universe may not care about us one iota, but I actually find that more acceptable than a punitive or powerless God.

So why do I still have even the slightest lingering doubt, the last remains of a reluctance to call myself an atheist? That one is easy to answer: because in that simple and--apparently--obvious act, I would be killing my father. Since the age of nine I have held on to the belief that I would one day see him again, in Heaven. By finally losing totally my faith in God, I would be forced to accept that my father left my life for good when he died thirty years ago, and his spirit died with him.

I have two hundred thousand Haitian deaths telling me there can be no God, and a single one telling me I must hang on to the possibility that there is. And as illogical as it may seem, the scales aren't entirely tipped towards Haiti.

Sleepers Awake

2010-02-04T12:55:00.001Z

In the news today is the most remarkable story about UK and Belgian researchers who have found a way to communicate with patients in PVS (Persistent Vegetative State). They have been able to elicit Yes/No answers to their questions by asking patients to imagine themselves playing tennis if the answer is yes, and by then recording activity in the parts of the brain responsible for movement.

This, as I'm sure goes without saying, is an extraordinary discovery and, if further research and wider trials continue to back up their findings, opens up a huge potential for treating and possibly even curing many PVS patients. It will bring hope to hundreds of thousands of friends and family members of people in PVS that they may once again be able to reach their loved ones. It also provokes thoughts about current treatment of people in this condition, and surely must affect decisions about termination of life support or withholding of medical treatment should they become ill.

I don't think I really have anything controversial, profound or insightful to say on this, it just struck as by far the most amazing and potentially far-reaching piece of news I've seen for a very long time. Considering the pace of modern developments in our ability to read, map and interpret brain activity, it surely cannot be beyond our realistic imagination that within a relatively small number if years doctors will be able to go much further than simple "yes/no" responses, and actually read the complex thoughts of people in PVS. And what a revelation those thoughts will be.

Windmill Dreams

2010-01-20T13:27:00.007Z

Do the wind turbines atop our hills and mountains sing of hope for the future, or intone our past failures? When they watch us, ant-like from their Olympean heights, do they look down on us in pity, anger or compassion?

Wind turbines polarize views. Champions point out the free, clean, infinite energy source waiting to be tapped, which will free our air of fossil-fuel fumes, and allow our atmosphere to repair itself. They talk of the critical need to reduce carbon emissions, to mitigate as far as possible the potentially devastating effects of climate change, to which we as an island may be particularly vulnerable. They point out that the landscape we cherish is under threat, and if the alternative to its total loss or transformation is the erection of these white leviathans, then that is a price worth paying.

Opponents decry the loss of unspoiled vistas, landscapes virtually unchanged since Turner, Constable and Gainsborough captured them on canvas; the impact on bird populations who have little chance against the giant blades travelling at over 100mph; they claim that they are inefficient, expensive white elephants which cannot solve the problem of replacing fossil fuels.

And as the arguments rage around them, the turbines keep turning, and as they turn, they watch. They are both markers of our failure to grasp earlier the changes happening in our climate, and to act more quickly and decisively, and at the same time sentinels of a future hope that the worst impacts of those changes may be avoided. They may not provide the entire solution but over and above their individual contribution to our energy needs, they represent the results of what we can achieve when we steer our scientific and technological abilities in the right direction.

So when I look at that distant hill, crowned with grey-white turning statues, I do see hope. Tinged with regret that such major changes are becoming increasingly urgent and that it is already too late to entirely prevent the effects of climate change, but hope nevertheless, that we do have the ability to generate the energy we require to sate our greed from clean, renewable resources.

And I also happen to think that if Messrs Constable, Turner and Gainsborough were around today, they would be reaching for their Titanium White with a certain relish.

Down The Lane

2010-01-11T13:04:00.004Z

Over Christmas, I spent a few days at my mother's house, the house I grew up in, the house in which I spent the entirety of my generally happy childhood.

After the usual over-eating of Christmas lunch, I decided to take a walk. My mother lives on the edge of a smallish, rather anonymous village, and running down the side of her small house and garden is a narrow lane which winds between a mile or two of fields to the next village. This was the route I decided to take so, wrapped up against the unusually icy weather of this winter, I set off.

The road has a name, but to us it has always been known simply as "the lane." As I walked down between the high hedgerows, the road itself sunken into the landscape by several hundred years of footsteps, horses hooves, cart-wheels and car tyres, my mind drifted away from the present moment, to countless occasions during my childhood when I had walked this same path.

To us, "going down the lane" was always an adventure. There was an air of the mysterious about it. As it meanders its way left and right, climbing hills then running down to the base on the other side to cross over streams, all the time half-hidden between the banks and hedges flanking it, it keeps itself half-hidden, so to young, forming minds, it seemed to hold something new and different with every new stretch which became visible as we walked.

I remembered, too, how much further it seemed. To an adult, a walk to the next village would take no more than forty minutes. To a six-year-old, however, it was a trek that had no ending, a journey into the wilds of the unknown country. There were strange and exotic things to be found as one followed it, and once sight of our house had been lost behind the hedge and the hill we had just crested, we were truly in a foreign land.

After barely ten minutes, I came to "the brook." I remembered how, in early childhood, common features such as brooks, hills, fields and lanes were thought of not simply as one specific instance out of a thousand, but as a singular, unique item, to be denoted by use of the definite article. Our world consisted almost entirely of what could be seen from our window and, since within that proscribed view there was only one such run of water visible, this became "the brook," in exactly the same way that the one road was "the lane," and the one un-metalled track that ran off it was "the dirt-track." The field at the bottom of the garden was "the field," and the playing field at the end of the road was "the rec." No need to be more specific; our world consisted of just one of each feature. Such simple times.

The lane crosses over the brook without fuss; no quaint hump-backed bridge, no dramatic ford, just a utilitarian flat bridge running over a concrete tunnel beneath. I stopped here for a moment, recalling the sense of slightly guilty excitement of the times when, as a seven- or eight-year old boy, I would play under the bridge with my friend. We would have followed the brook from close to his house some half a mile away--a lengthy journey in our world--to arrive at this point. The sense of danger was palpable as we entered the dark tunnel, and if a car were to pass over the bridge as we were underneath it, this excitement would be heightened to almost unbearable levels. Surely the whole thing would choose precisely the moment when two small boys had chosen to clamber through it to crash down, entombing us beneath concrete, masonry and twisted metal?

Beyond the bridge, the road climbs again, towards the destination for many of our childhood walks: "Wooden Hut." Not within my memory has there been an actual wooden hut anywhere in the vicinity, but one supposes that once there was, and this gave rise to its name.

It is very hard to describe this place in a way that would convey the sense of mystery, excitement and joy with which we reached it. In essence, it consists of a stand of trees, bisected by the road. The actions of rain over decades have eroded out the roots of the trees on each side of the road, so that they now form a knotted wooden jumble on the red-earth banks. Climbing up these, one can reach the top of the bank and stand amongst the trees. As I reached this place so indelibly burned into my early memories, so powerful were my recollections I could almost hear those delighted yelps as we ran down one bank, across the road and up the other side, using the exposed roots as make-shift ladders.

On one side of the road here, a small stream had cut a deep channel in the red earth, and this had subsequently become overgrown with tangled hawthorns. The combined effect was of a dark, secret place that promised great adventure and excitement to anyone brave enough to dare its shadows. We never did. Some things are just too scary for six-year-olds to attempt. Looking at it now, thirty years on, I could see that all it led to was a rusty barbed-wire fence delimiting one field from its neighbour. The dried water-course had simply been used as a convenient marker, and an untidy hawthorn hedge planted alongside it.

And in that moment, I felt a profound sadness for times lost. For those times when the prospect of walking a mile from home was one of such wild excitement that it was barely containable. The times when even such mundane, ordinary places as this slowly decaying group of sycamores could hold such mystery, such novelty and adventure. We had almost nothing when we were young, my parents struggled financially more than I will ever truly appreciate. And yet not once did we consider ourselves poor or deprived. Wearing scruffy jeans, wellington boots and knitted sweaters, as we played and explored our tiny part of the world, we counted ourselves rich beyond imagining.

And we were.

The Boy Who Turned Into A Man

2009-12-31T17:26:00.002Z

A pleasantly warm, bright day in May. Just after his ninth birthday. The boy and his six-year-old sister climbed out of his aunt's car and crossed the road with her to the park. They walked up the grassed slope to the playground, where brightly-painted swings, slides and roundabouts beckoned. The boy loved playgrounds, and should have been excited at the prospect of a couple of hours playing in the warm sunshine. Not today. Both children walked in pace with their aunt, neither wanting to run ahead as usual.

They reached the play area and while his aunt pushed his sister on one of the swings, the boy wandered off towards his favourite piece of apparatus, something for which he never knew the correct name: a solid, wood-clad barrel mounted horizontally in a frame, the idea of which being that you stood on the barrel, supported yourself on the frame with your arms, then "pedalled" the barrel round with your feet as fast as possible.

He climbed up on the barrel and started running, slowly at first, building up speed, his feet slapping down on the barrel, sending it spinning round in a blur as he looked down on it. He ran and ran, for what seemed like hours. And as he ran, all his efforts focussed on spinning that barrel, he could for just a short while feel like everything was fine. He could feel like a normal nine-year-old boy who was just out for a day with his auntie and who would, in a few short hours, be back with his family, and everything would be fine. Normal.

But even the pounding rhythm of his legs as they spun the barrel, even his ragged gasps as he ran as fast as he possibly could, nothing could completely take away the knot of anxiety in his stomach, the sickening sense of something dreadful coming towards him, and just like running on the barrel, no matter how fast he ran, he couldn't escape it. Because he couldn't stop the march of time, bringing towards him the event that would, even though he couldn't have thought about it then in such terms, change his life utterly.

As little as he was really enjoying the afternoon, when it came time to leave the park, he desperately wanted to stay. Just a little longer. Just another few minutes of being able to pretend that everything was still okay. But he acquiesced and climbed into his aunt's car. They drove in silence.

~*~

He knew, the moment he opened the door, that it had happened. Nothing about his grandparents' house was visually different, and the smell was just as he had always known it (furniture polish and pipe tobacco), yet something ineffable but fundamental had changed. They walked through into the lounge, where his grandparents sat in their usual places, and his mother sat on the sofa next to his grandma. She wasn't crying, but he could tell she'd only just stopped.

She took the boy and his sister in her arms and hugged them for a long time, before sitting them both down on the sofa and kneeling in front of them. She took one of their hands in each of her own. "Kids, I've got something to tell you. You're going to have to be very brave. You know that Daddy has been very poorly, don't you? Well, he's gone to Heaven now. He was very poorly and in a lot of pain, so the angels came and took him. He's okay now, he's not poorly any more." Her voice began to waver and fresh tears welled in her red-raw eyes. She pulled the children towards her and hugged them again tightly, burying her face in their chests. The boy could feel her shaking, and started to feel the warm wetness of her tears through his shirt.

Some time afterwards, after his aunt had left, and with his sister, mum and grandma all in another room, his granddad talked to him:

"Now, you're going to have to be very brave, you know. Your mum's going to be very upset for a while, so you're going to have to help her as much as you can, okay? You're going to have to support her. You're the man of the house now."

He was nine. Nine years old and the father he worshipped had just gone from his life forever. And yet he didn't cry. He never did. Not from that day until adulthood. Because men don't cry. And he was the man of the house now. So he couldn't cry. Had to be strong. Emotions? Feelings? Strictly to be kept inside, bottled up. Hidden. "Are you okay, son?" "Yes, I'm okay." "Are you feeling sad?" "No, I'm okay." "You can always talk to me, you know, if you want to." "Yes, I know." But it never happened. Because he was a man now.

His sister was six years old. She never really knew their father. Not like he did. Was he luckier to have had three extra years with a father? Sometimes, many years later, he thought probably not. Sometimes he wished he had been three years younger and hadn't know him at all. Overwhelming guilt accompanied these thoughts, yet still they came. Because those three extra years meant, when it happened, three extra years' worth of memories, love, and having a dad, to be achingly missed when they ended.

Second Look -- A Story

2009-12-29T17:49:00.003Z

The limbless, serpentine monster slid out of its labyrinthine lair, eyes blazing, with a snort and a high-pitched shriek. In this hollowed-out subterranean space, it disgorged the contents of its insides; then hungrily, it fed on fresh meat.

As the giant metal and glass snake hissed-squealed-juddered to a halt, all the doors on the platform side of the train opened, and he climbed aboard.

He took a seat in the sparsely populated carriage, pulled the worn paperback from his jacket pocket, and began reading. A brief interruption as he was politely reminded to mind the doors as they closed, then he returned to the text as the train smoothly slid away out of the light and back to the thick blackness of the tunnels.

The journey, and his reading, was punctuated by the train stopping at each station. After a while, he realised he wasn’t concentrating on the story, so he tucked the book back in his pocket.

A minute later, the train stopped again. Hyde Park Corner, Piccadilly Line. A busy station on London’s Underground, but tonight, strangely quiet. At the end of October, summer was over and the frantic build-up to Christmas chaos was still, thankfully, a few weeks away.

Carl gazed idly through the window, bored. The journey was one he made regularly, so even if the view from the windows of the tube train had been somewhat more visually stimulating than the interior of pitch-black tunnels punctuated by milkily-lit stations, he would still have been bored. He was returning from the British Museum, one of his favourite haunts in the capital, although he could be found at many others: the National Gallery, both Tates, the good old V&A, even, on occasion, the Transport Museum. But always he returned to Great Russell Street and the grand imposing edifice, a forest of pillars protecting the treasures within. Walking through those doors was almost guaranteed to lift his spirits; today, however, when he was most in need of popping a few cultural uppers, it had failed to lift his gloomy mood.

Why was Charlene treating him in such a way? She said she loved him, yet behaved towards him as though he were an annoying stray mongrel that followed her home. If he was affectionate, she told him she needed space. If he gave her that space, her accusation was one of being unfeeling and uncaring towards her. Confusion was his steady state these days.

The train doors opened, admitting an unwelcome ghost of cold air. That was the trouble with underground trains: because they always stopped at every station, and since the stations were no more than two or three minutes apart, the temperature inside could never be maintained. The stations were almost always draughty, and the bitter wind fell over itself to tumble into the warming carriages the instant the doors opened, almost as if it were trying to warm itself up.

The old chap climbed aboard. Later, when he thought about it, Carl would swear that he hadn’t been waiting on the platform. And yet there he was. He took a seat not quite opposite Carl.

As the doors closed again, Carl couldn’t help sneaking a look at him. An oldish guy, without being elderly. Carl put him in his sixties, though ageing him was difficult. He wore a thick tweed overcoat, a small porkpie hat, and clutched tight to a carrier bag proclaiming “Harrington’s Cheese Shop” to the world. But the most striking thing about him, by far, and the thing that drew Carl’s gaze despite his concern for propriety, was the man’s eyes.

They were a deep, almost sapphire shade of blue, but that wasn’t the significant aspect. They were misaligned. Carl knew there was a medical term for the condition, but he either couldn’t remember it or had never heard it. Whilst the left eye looked straight ahead, the right seemed more interested in what was above and to the right.

Initially, Carl found this rather unnerving, since he was unable to know exactly where the man was looking. It was a little like looking at someone wearing impenetrable sunglasses; you could never be sure whether they were looking at you or not. But strangely, the more glances he sneaked at the man opposite, the less uncomfortable he felt. His expression seemed to be one of ‘amused bemusement’, the phrase that came into Carl’s head to describe it. There was something else there, maybe a certain melancholy, but it was slight, and played a minor role to the happier nuances in his face.

Knightsbridge; South Kensington; Gloucester Road; Earl’s Court; West Kensington. The station names were as familiar to him as the liturgy to a priest. They provided their own metronomic rhythm, and he found his thoughts returning to Charlene. What should he do? He loved her, he was in no doubt about that. The eighteen months since they met had without question been the happiest of his life. Frankly, he couldn’t believe that a girl, a woman, as beautiful as she would even look twice at an extraordinarily ordinary man such as he. But look twice she had, at that party they had both been invited to. Actually, as parties go, that had been one of the dullest he had ever attended. Some aspiring artist in Holland Park had thrown the soiree to showcase her ‘talent’. Carl was strictly of the “like what I like” school of art criticism, and this artist had definitely fallen outside of that criterion. But whilst working his way politely through all the pieces, he had been surprised to find himself standing next to the most attractive woman in the universe, whose opening gambit had been, “What a load of crap.”

He couldn’t remember quite when he’d fallen in love with her, but it was either during her first sentence or very shortly thereafter. Amazingly, extraordinarily, unbelievably, she had fallen in love with him, too. Each morning, without fail, from that occasion until this very day, he had thanked whatever higher power, supreme being, or quantum event had brought the two of them together. The intervening year and a half had passed by as quickly as the underground stations were passing the train tonight, and all but the last few weeks had been Arcadian. But for some reason, though she professed otherwise, she did not seem quite so close to him as she always had. And now he had a decision to make which it seemed could not lead to a happy conclusion for him either way. Did he just try and stay with it, hope that she returned to him? Did he confront her with it? Or did he walk away? For this moment, he had no idea.

Abruptly, he realised the train had stopped. Looking up, he spotted the station logo on the platform wall: Hammersmith. He jumped up from his seat, and was almost to the door when he heard the old man speak.

“Talk to her.”

Carl swung round, saw no one else in the carriage, and realised the man had been talking to him. “I’m sorry?”

The old man smiled, and his eyes, just for a second, seemed both to look at him and through him, beyond him. “Talk to her. You must. Otherwise you’ll lose her. Talk to her, Carl.”

“How the hell…?” The doors began to close, and he leapt through the narrowing opening, onto the platform, minding the gap as instructed via the loudspeakers. He spun round to look back into the train. The old man was still there, but Carl couldn’t tell whether he was looking at him or not, since his eyes had again gone their separate ways. But the faint, bemused smile was still firmly in place.

How the hell did he know my name? And how did he know what I was thinking about? The second question, he supposed, might be fairly easily answered; he must have looked pensive, possibly anxious, and it might not have been a particularly inspired guess that he had “relationship problems.” But the first question remained, as it still did years afterward: How the hell did he know my name?

~*~

Raymond Vincent Jones was going home. Whilst to some, homecomings might be pleasant journeys, filled with warm thoughts of welcoming fires, parents and hot meals, the images that filled Raymond’s head as he travelled were quite the contrary: arguments, the odd punch in the face, and at best, cold indifference to his arrival.

The middle of three brothers, he had neither the respect of which the first child could usually boast, nor the fondness often shown towards the youngest. He was just another. Not that he could see either parent dishing out much in the way of either fine sentiment. His father certainly hadn’t found much in the way of the milk of human kindness, despite years of searching for it in countless bottles, and his mother had long since given up the fight. So why was he going home at all? Simple: he couldn’t afford to live anywhere else.

The train rocked and rattled violently. Why did they always put the shittiest trains on this line? Why was he asking himself such a ridiculous question, when he knew damn well what the answer was? They put the least valuable rolling stock on this line because it carried some of the least valuable inhabitants of the city.

Back to his thoughts. The only reason he was making his way back to Bethnal Green, the only reason he wasn’t on the other side of the city, was money. Or lack of it. But that was about to change. Gil Brooks wanted him on the next job. And Raymond wanted in. Brooks, with two others, had already broken into at least a dozen shops. Now they were going into banks. They’d already pulled one off, last week. Got away with ten grand each. But Dave Landers had pulled out, and Brooks needed someone else. He asked Raymond. And Raymond said yes. By next week, he’d have enough to be able to tell his parents where to stick it, and he intended to do just that.

The ugly old bastard got on the train at Tottenham Court Road, and sat not quite opposite Raymond. Raymond immediately felt uncomfortable. He was sure the bloke was staring at him, yet every time he looked directly at him, he could no longer be as certain. The problem was the man’s eyes. They were all over the place. One was down at the floor, the other was out the window. One was at him, the other was up at the fucking roof. Yet each time Raymond looked away, he could feel at least one of the eyes staring straight at him.

He was already anxious enough. He was pretty much convinced he’d get a beating off his dad when he walked through the door, unless of course he’d drunk himself unconscious by then. His mum certainly wouldn’t be around. It was after eight, so she’d already be spotting her Bingo cards with that bloody ridiculous marker pen, hoping to win enough cash to fund her sixty-a-day habit for a few weeks. Not that she’d be any good if his dad decided he wanted a fight, anyway.

Coupled with this, he was thinking about his upcoming debut as a bank-robber. The money would be wonderful, but Gil Brooks didn’t mess around. He used sawn-off shotguns. Loaded sawn-off shotguns. Raymond had never handled a gun in his life, much less fired one. If someone rushed him, would he be able to shoot them? He supposed that was something you only found out when it happened, pretty much like being in the army. And anyway, it wasn’t likely to happen. Was it?

All in all he was pretty wired, and as the old train rattled and shuddered through the dank, brick-lined tunnels, the old bugger opposite was getting under his skin. By the time they reached Liverpool Street station, he’d had more than enough. He looked up, and though the man’s eyes were still showing no signs of a desire for common purpose, he knew that he was being looked at.

“What you starin’ at, mister? You want a fuckin’ photo?” He snarled, exaggerating his already thick East London brogue.

The man said nothing, just looked at him, a slight smile on his face.

“You wanna watch ‘oo you’re laughin’ at too, you old bugger.”

No apparent response to the threat. In black leather jacket—ripped—denim jeans—stained and ripped—and black welder’s boots—scuffed, and with three rings in each ear and one in the nose, Raymond knew he was a pretty frightening sight, especially to the generation of which this old git was a paid-up member. And yet, for all the reaction he saw in the man’s face, he might as well not have spoken. In fact, he actually began to feel a little embarrassed, so ineffectual had his posturing been. This made him even angrier. Fortunately for him, the train lurched to a halt at Bethnal Green station, and Raymond stood. He stared at the man a final time, intending to pass to the man, via the severity of his look, the message, One stop further and you’d’ve been in serious trouble, mate.

Except that while he was thinking this, the old bastard had the cheek to speak to him. “Don’t do it, son,” he said. “It’s not worth the risk. You’ll be caught, I’m telling you. Don’t risk it, Raymond.”

What the fuck…?

Raymond was off the train before he’d even registered what had been said to him. By the time he turned round, the train was already halfway into the tunnel and he couldn’t pick out the carriage he’d just alighted from. He stood for a moment in the draughty platform chamber, then made his way up to street level, the man’s words echoing in his mind as his footsteps echoed around the tiled walls of the station.

~*~

Damn it, she was late. It was always the way; whenever you were two minutes late leaving the house, there were more people than ever in the station, which meant you were even later getting on the train. The train would then, as if in conspiracy with unknown forces, travel slower than usual, not only depriving you of the chance of making up lost time, not even running the same number of minutes behind schedule, but later still. She wondered if this seemingly unbreakable rule of the universe had anything to do with the Third Law of Thermodynamics. Very possibly, she concluded; the tendency towards chaos and disorder was a consequence of this law, so why not a law of lateness? She formed the principle in her mind. In the customary scientific manner, she dubbed it after her own name: Gregory’s Lateness Principle: In any given day, lateness tends to increase as the inverse square of the time available. Pretty good for seven-thirty on a Monday morning, she allowed.

And why was she thinking such nonsense at this early hour? Could it be in order to block out the thoughts she knew would come flooding into her mind if there were any signs of a void? Too late; here they came.

Though she knew he loved her, and of course she loved him, the fear was undeniable. Even now, some three weeks after the home pregnancy testing kit had revealed the truth she’d already known, she felt a strong echo of that bolus of pain in the pit of her stomach that had come to her then. She hadn’t told him; couldn’t tell him. Because if she did, and if he was angry, and if he walked out on her…well, if all those conditionals took positive values, the unconditional result would be that her world would fall apart. She couldn’t bear to consider the possibility, and so she denied the reality by not speaking of it.

But she wasn’t naïve. She had a degree. She worked in an investment bank, for God’s sake. She knew it was only a matter of time, and not very much time, at that, before he would find out. And if that happened before she told him, then how would he feel?

And now, on top of this, he’d told her this morning that they needed to talk. Tonight. Important, he’d said. His face contained none of the humour she loved in it. He was serious. Despite her questions, he had refused to tell her what was on his mind. And now she had a new worry, a twin for the existing one: he wanted to break up. He’d found someone else. Notwithstanding his frequent declarations of his feelings towards her, he was going to leave her, right now when she needed him the most. The God to which her father had devoted his life to teaching others about seemed to have abandoned her, just as she had turned her back on His service in favour of a more materialistic career. Though she still believed, she had a profound feeling that she was out of favour with Him.

She looked at the man on the other side of the train. He’d been the only person in the carriage when she’d climbed aboard at Shepherd’s Bush. But now, as they approached Oxford Circus, all the seats were taken, and there were several strap-hangers. Normally she would pass up her seat in favour of someone either older or less hale. But today, her mind was not focused on the here and now. When she did think about it, she realised that she was now precisely the sort of woman to whom other people gave up their seats. The concept gave her such a jolt she thought the train had actually collided with something. Looking around, she realised that the only impact had been inside her own head.

The man looked back at her, or at least, she thought he did. With his strange eyes, it was difficult to tell. But he seemed to be smiling at her, too. She found herself returning the smile, though she knew it hadn’t been much of a smile, since it was probably the least appropriate expression of her current turmoil. Several stations merged together, the incessant ingress and egress of passengers a blur, and she found herself automatically getting ready to stand as the train approached Bank, at the heart of the Square Mile, London’s financial inner sanctum. As she did, and above the metal-on-metal rattlings of the train and the dozen morning conversations buzzing between commuters, she heard a voice directed towards her. The old man with the funny eyes was talking to her.

“Tell him, Charlene. You must tell him. He’ll be overjoyed at the news. Don’t worry about it. But you must tell him, tonight.”

The train had stopped, people were squeezing out, others were squeezing in, and suddenly she realised the warning to mind the doors had been issued, and she had only a second to get out. She jumped up, threw her bag over her shoulder, and plunged out through the closing doors.

For a moment she stood on the platform, her heart trying to beat a way to freedom through her ribs. Had that really just happened? How could a complete stranger know so much about her? As she wandered towards the escalators, being barged and buffeted by the morning crush, she tried to make sense of it. And a small, insistent voice inside her told her that, however the man had known what was in her head, he was right.

~*~

Two weeks later, Barnabus James sat at the kitchen table, reading the Hammersmith Gazette.

The Reverend and Mrs. Desmond Gregory are proud to announce the engagement of their daughter, Charlene, to Mr. Carl Preston, of Notting Hill.

Shortly afterwards, in the previous night’s London Evening Standard, he read the article on page five:

Three held after attempted armed robbery.
Three men are in police custody tonight after being arrested whilst attempting to rob the Natwest Bank on New Bond Street. Gilbert Brooks, 23, of Peckham Rye, along with Robert Marshall, 22, also of Peckham Rye, have been charged with armed robber. A third man, Raymond Jones, 20, from Bethnal Green, was additionally charged with actual bodily harm. Mr. Brooks accidentally fired his illegally shortened shotgun whilst attempting to avoid arrest, shooting woman police constable Sally Evans in the leg. She was taken to hospital, where her condition is said to be satisfactory. All three men are expected to appear before magistrates in the morning.

Barnabus removed his reading glasses and rubbed his eyes. The strabismus with which he had been born meant that his eyes tired quickly, particularly when reading. But it was this very affliction which allowed him, somehow, to see into people.

He had stopped questioning his ability many years ago. The closest he’d got to an explanation was in the understanding that, in animals, the eyes were positioned at the front of the head to afford deeper perspective and distance judgement. His conclusions were that the non-alignment of his eyes in some way gave him the ability—and occasionally the curse—of being able to see things normally hidden. He had no idea whether that was anywhere near the mark. Many times, he had wished not to be blighted with such a talent. He had seen things in people he could not, even in his most evil and lurid nightmares, have dreamed could exist in the depths of the human soul. But now and again, he found he could help.

Carl Preston and Charlene Gregory would make a fine couple. And Carla, when she came along in about seven months, would have her mother’s beauty and her father’s humour. As for Raymond Jones...well, he had tried. He couldn’t have done any more. Maybe one day, after Raymond was realised from prison in about six years, he would happen across him again on the tubes. And maybe he’d get another chance.

Later, the bitter wind tugged at his tweed overcoat as he walked towards Mornington Crescent Underground station.

A story inspired by a curious gent I saw once on the Underground. The strabismus was real. Whether or not it gave him this particular gift, I can't say...

Leave The Rabbit In The Hat

2009-12-04T16:11:00.001Z

Colours are an entirely human concept. They have no meaning outside of our consciousness. Words like “red,” “purple,” “orange,” and so on relate solely to light of specific wavelengths.

Newton, using two prisms, demonstrated that white light contained within it light of all wavelengths, and that once light of a specific hue had been extracted, a second prism would not—as widely believed—“stain” the light a different colour. The redness was intrinsic, not added.

Our understanding of the nature of light was further enlightened—pun intended—by the famous “double-slit” experiment, beloved of physics students the world over, which demonstrates the quirky, schizophrenic wave-particle nature of light, being both nuggety photons and rippling waves at once.

Science has unravelled the mysteries of the rainbow, which now reduces to a simple line-of-sight phenomenon caused by photons bouncing around in countless billions of water droplets before exiting at various refractive angles in the direction of our retinas.

So, that’s colour cracked then, isn’t it? It’s wavelengths of light, made up of odd wave-particle things.

And yet, somehow in peering into the magician’s hat, we lose the rabbit. Colours touch us in ways more profound, more fundamental, than a mere register of wavelength. We delight in a roseate dawn. Swathes of green bring us peace. Azure skies and aquamarine seas give us a sense of the vastness of the world, and perhaps a yearning to travel.

Colours affect our mood. We even use them to describe our mood: “Feeling a bit blue today…”; “He was green with envy…” We describe cowardice in term of yellowness, and a “purple patch” is what we all hope for. We use them to describe politic inclination. Red universally warns us of danger; green assures us that all is well. Colour words permeate our language and our thoughts. Indeed, we would describe such words as “adding colour to our language”, in a literal and self-referential way.

We are creatures of colour. Colour allows us to describe and understand the world, to differentiate, aggregate and classify, but beyond that it speaks to our innermost essence. Without colour, we would be very different animals indeed.

Away From Earth -- A Story

2009-12-03T10:38:00.001Z

The first thing you notice, of course, is the silence. The science books are quite clear on the reasons for this. It was one of the first things I remember learning about in our physics class, and I can still quote almost verbatim from that stuffy, dusty old textbook: "Sound is carried in the form of waves in any gas, solid or liquid. Noise creates a compression and rarefaction pattern which moves, through air, at around 730 miles per hour. The speed of propagation depends on several criteria, including the density and temperature of the medium". The speed of sound, we learned, unlike that of light, is not fixed. Acoustics is not an exact science. One thing is absolutely certain from all of this, however: sound does not travel in a vacuum. And at the moment (and for the foreseeable future), I am immersed, if that is the correct term, in the most complete vacuum known to man: I am in space.

It is about two hours since I left the airlock of Space Shuttle Endeavour, exiting into the vast, glaring white cargo bay, the doors open to the Earth like a pair of giant communicant's hands, awaiting the precious body and blood of Christ. On NASA mission STS-124, our main task is to put into orbit the second of the next generation of Space Telescopes, this one named, wonderfully so in my opinion, "Sagan"; after Carl Sagan, of course, who was always a hero of mine. It was largely Carl who inspired me to pursue my dream of becoming an astronaut in the first place; a career path which is difficult enough to follow in the USA, but in Britain was and still is considered downright foolhardy. Nevertheless, here I am, twenty years after setting my heart and mind on the goal, orbiting the Earth at a distance of 250 miles, creating for it one more infinitesimal satellite to add to the swiftly growing collection of communications satellites, space stations and debris which now surround our planet like a swarm of wasps.

I am currently passing over Africa or—to put it equally precisely, since Uncle Albert taught us that in space everything is relative—Africa is currently passing beneath me. I can see the lush greens of the west and central regions, transmuting almost imperceptibly into the dull orange-browns of the East. The horn of Africa points down like an upturned wizard's hat, bent at the tip. As I gaze down on the Eastern regions—Ethiopia, Tanzania and Kenya—I am now in direct line of sight with the very place where humanity began. In that small area on the surface of our azure sphere, several million years ago, a group of apes, probably finding their natural arboreal environment dwindling in the changing climate, gradually came to spend less and less time in the trees, and more time in the savannah, slowly changing their diets, from almost purely herbivorous, to omnivorous with a vengeance. For this small group of creatures, life became tougher. Forced to eat virtually anything they could find, they had to become canny and aware, predation being much more of a problem down on the ground than it had in the safety of the forest canopy. Gradually they developed a way of living together, sharing food and baby-sitting, from which developed communication skills and improved dexterity. Over evolutionary time, this small group expanded and became the dominant and most wide-ranging of the old-world apes, and thus began an evolutionary story which is familiar to most. A story which Ends, at least for today, with this small group of their far descendants floating 250 miles above the very spot where it all began, carried aloft on a giant burning fuel tank, then flung into orbit in a glorified glider.

Of course, Africa has now passed away and out of sight, and my perpendicular position with the planet is now the deep cyan of the Indian Ocean, the triangular subcontinent above, the myriad dots of Indonesia, Micronesia and Polynesia directly beneath me, and Australasia further down. It took Sir Francis Drake three years to circumnavigate the Earth—between 1577 and 1580 if my history serves me; we do it once every 45 minutes. It is difficult to say which is the more remarkable achievement.

As I mentioned, the first thing you notice out here is the silence. There is nothing on Earth, absolutely nothing, which prepares you for that. The second aspect to this experience is the isolation, not just of oneself, but of the entire Earth. In all directions other than Earthward, the blackness is more solid, more total and unyielding than anything ever experienced on the surface. Of course it is interspersed with a dizzying miasma of stars, hundreds of thousands visible from here, rather than the paltry two thousand to be seen in the night sky, and each of them burning with the steadiness and intensity of a laser. But the surroundings are predominantly black. The light of the sun, which is just emerging from the limb of the Earth, is not refracted as we have become accustomed to. When we look up into the daytime sky, the bright blue is simply sunlight being broken and spread out by the atmosphere, whereas in space, of course, this does not happen. When the sun becomes visible once more, and I slide my gold visor down the front of my helmet, it will show as an unbearably bright circle, with absolute blackness all around. Stark, white light. And yet it is that very star, its energy lethal in space, which has been the benefactor of all life on Earth. Its warmth coaxed organisms out of the primordial soup of the early Earth, nurtured those organisms, giving them precious energy, and provided the first link in the ever lengthening and complexyfying food chain. It has provided light for us to see our beautiful world, and to represent it in a million artistic depictions. It is not difficult to understand why all of the first human civilisations revered and deified the Sun. It was, and still is, the life-bringer.

There is an extraordinary peace in this unprecedented vantage point. A peace, and almost unbearable sorrow when looking down upon this most wonderful and wondrous jewel beneath me. To look at this planet, and then juxtapose the vision of awe with the knowledge of what we have done, and continue to do, to it. We have daily, for the last three hundred years, whether innocently or maliciously, worked towards the destruction of our world. Pollution and noxious emissions, beginning with the birth of the Industrial Revolution, and continuing even today—in our full knowledge of their consequences and despite the finely crafted rhetoric of politicians around the globe—threaten to choke and bake not only mankind but almost all other living organisms. We continue to destroy the equatorial rain forests at a rate that no bush fire, no pernicious disease, not even an encroaching ice-age could match. We are destroying the lungs of the planet, in the same way that billions of us still destroy our own lungs through smoking. Global emphysema, affects not only smokers, but every one of us.

I have to blink away a tear, and do my best not to let it be followed by others, since I cannot reach to wipe them away. And I need to be able to keep my vision clear for a while yet. My oxygen meter tells me I have about three hours’ worth remaining, and I intend to breathe every second of it.

I don't really know what happened. Somehow, my safety tether broke. As I began to ease away from the maternal bay doors of the shuttle, I could see the clasp still secured on the rail, floating dreamily as the momentum of the break was imparted into it. That clasp would, unchecked, move in the same way almost forever, with no friction to slow it. The realisation that I was now unconnected with any part of humanity, that my umbilical had become severed and I had been, effectively, born into the wider Universe, was, of course, initially petrifying. To see the serene white bird easing away from me, knowing that any kind of movement on my part would be totally ineffectual, was, for a while, so frightening and panic-inducing that my normally rational mind gave way completely to hysteria. I could vaguely hear voices in my headset, I think Charlie was telling me that they would manoeuvre the Shuttle using the Vernier jets and come and pick me up, but that might have been just my imagination. That is the proper procedure in such an emergency, but as yet there is no sign of it happening. Occasionally I catch a brief glimpse of Endeavour, just when the sun catches it. It is now a mere pinprick amongst a million others.

Yes, those first minutes were terrifying, mind-numbing. But gradually, as I have watched the Earth revolving beneath me on its invisible axis, my mind has reached an almost Zen-like sanguinity. If Endeavour reaches me and I am rescued, I would, of course, be overwhelmingly relieved. The thought of never seeing my family, never seeing anyone, again, is one I have pushed to the back of my mind. But if these are to be my final three hours in this world, then I cannot think of a better way of spending them. And so I will float around the Earth, as it floats beneath me, and pray to God, the sun, or whichever other Supreme Deity happens to be watching and listening to me at this moment, that they will in some way give my fellow humans the wisdom which they lack, and which I have briefly glimpsed, to finally understand that Earth is the most precious, important place in the Universe for mankind and for every other living creature upon it. It is, so far, the only life-bearing body we know of, and may even be the only one in the entire Universe. If everyone on it could spend just a few minutes orbiting in its gravitational thrall as I am now, maybe they would understand. Since that will not happen, I can only pray that this revelation comes to them in some other way. If this does not happen, then my last three hours in the Universe may bear witness to the last era of humankind. And now my vision has gone completely, and the tears will not be wiped away.

Are You Sitting Comfortably? -- A Story

2009-12-03T09:19:00.002Z

Gordon Stafford drained his third can of the evening, crushed it with sausage fingers and dropped it by the side of his chair, where it clanked against the other two. The last few drops of lager spilled out, adding to the permanent dark patch where countless other such spillages had stained the carpet. On the other side of the chair was a matching bare patch where several discarded dog-ends had scorched the fibres before he put them out properly; usually by pouring lager on them, because he couldn’t be bothered to get out of the chair.

Gordon farted into the chair cushion and cracked open another can. He wondered vaguely if the man who invented the six-pack had been a piss-head like himself. It seemed such a stroke of genius to pack cans in batches of six: four just wasn’t enough for an evening; eight was better but maybe just a little over the top for a normal night. No, six was the number: start drinking around eight o’clock, make each one last half-an-hour or so and you take your last sup around eleven. Perfect. If he bothered to go to bed any more, it would be just about the time he’d have got up and stumbled to the bedroom. As it was, eleven o’clock was about the time he fell asleep in the chair.

Halfway through the six-pack, he generally found, was the Golden Moment. It was exactly where he was now, and it was a magical point of perfect equilibrium, poised midway between sobriety and oblivion, where thought was still possible but slowed by the alcohol, and filtered so that negative thoughts seemed to lose their potency. After three cans of Special Brew, everything was fine. Three cans later the filter turned from translucent to opaque and precious few thoughts got through. At this moment, as he took a first sip from can number four, things were just about as right with his world as they could ever be. For these few precious minutes at nine-thirty every night, Gordon could almost believe he was happy.

He picked up the satellite remote control and switched channels. He subscribed to the total package. He was what could be described—with an unpleasant irony—as a ‘heavy user’. He reckoned he generally put in a twelve- to fourteen-hour TV shift every day. The Big Brother house appeared on the screen, the nine remaining housemates engaged in some inane challenge that would bring them a crate of beer if they won. Gordon took a long pull on the Special Brew and belched loudly. There was a nice-looking Asian girl in the house this season, and he was enjoying keeping an eye on her. He hoped she wasn’t voted off early. Mainly for her benefit, he’d been waking up in the middle of the night and putting in a couple of hours watching the digital-only channel that generally showed the housemates sleeping, but occasionally something a bit more “interesting.” It was many years since Gordon had had any kind of sex life, and even then it was a pretty lacklustre affair. Occasionally while watching the Asian girl he felt the familiar stirrings, but any tumescence was short-lived and whatever discharge there was happened without force or manual intervention. It was many months since he’d been able to reach round with his hand to assist. Or been aroused enough to want to.

Some hours later, he woke from a rough sleep. He was aware that he’d been snoring harshly, as he always did. The neighbours had complained, but what the hell did they expect him to do? They’d been round a couple of times: the first, very apologetic and rather embarrassed; the second, less apologetic and more annoyed. The third time they came, he didn’t even bother going to the door. Now they just thumped on the wall, sometimes loud enough to wake him.

He had the familiar sour taste in his mouth and reached over the chair arm to pick up the last of the six cans he’d drunk earlier. There was a mouthful left in the bottom and he swigged it, washing it around his mouth before swallowing. He felt peckish and wondered if there was any food left on the low table by the chair. He tried to reach across with his left arm but discovered that he couldn’t lift it. For a moment he had the terrifying idea that he’d suffered a stroke while he slept and was now paralysed on his left side. Maybe his brain was sending signals that weren’t reaching their target. But that thought quickly left his head because he knew he could feel his arm, could feel the pressure of its contact with the chair. And now he realized that when he really strained, there was a slight movement, before it met some kind of resistance. In the meagre TV light, he tried to see what was stopping his arm from rising. It looked—it couldn’t be, though, could it?—It looked as though somehow his arm had slipped under the fabric of the chair. He tried to pull it free but it seemed stuck fast, maybe caught on the tough fibres. He strained to reach across with his right hand, but couldn’t quite make it. He was breathing hard with the effort already, and eventually gave up, with a grunted “fuck it.” The empty can dropped onto the carpet, and he fell asleep again.

Pale light from a steel sky pushed weakly through the curtains. At ten past nine, it finally woke Gordon. A rancid fart escaped him and he felt his bladder straining for relief. He prepared himself to stand up, getting his feet into the right position to support his bulk. When he moved—or rather, tried to move—his arms, he couldn’t. He suddenly remembered the strange experience earlier, when he’d been unable to move his left arm. It seemed like a dream, but this certainly was not. Looking down at his left arm, he could see that just below the elbow it disappeared into the fabric. Turning to his right, he now saw that his right arm too was embedded somehow in the chair arm.

Now he began to panic. This couldn’t be real. The chair wasn’t old, there were no tears or worn areas in the covering, despite the fact that he generally sat in it for twenty hours a day. How could his arms have slipped inside? He wrenched first at one, then the other. They barely moved. He could still feel his fingers, still feel the sponge padding beneath them. There didn’t seem to be any one particular place where his arms were catching, they simple felt bound to the chair at all points. As the morning light grew steadily brighter, he was able to more clearly see his situation: both arms disappeared within the chair at the elbows. He could make out no splits in the fabric into which they had slipped; his forearms just simply weren’t there. No matter how much he pulled and twisted, there was nothing he could do. His bladder ached and he knew he wouldn’t be able to hold on much longer.

He called out, noticing without caring the shake in his voice; he was scared, and at this stage he couldn’t care less who knew it. He shouted until his throat was dry and raw. No one came. He knew his neighbours worked. Maybe they had already left. Or maybe they were so sick of his thunderous snoring every night they were ignoring him. Two hours later, his bladder finally let go and he pissed himself.

It was well into the afternoon and Gordon realized with amazement that he must have fallen asleep. There was a moment of utter relief when he realized he’d been dreaming about being stuck in the chair, and then a heart-sinking thud as he tried to move his arms and felt them utterly pinned, as they had been before. His mouth was desert-dry, his throat was burning, and the room smelled of stale urine.

He attacked his bonds with renewed urgency, calling all the time with ever-decreasing volume. Then he realized something had changed. His arms were no less constricted, but now the bottom half of his body seemed less manoeuvrable than it should be. He tried to raise his left leg and found that he couldn’t. His right leg was equally immovable. There was no way of leaning forward enough to look down at his feet, but somehow he knew that if he could, he would see them wrapped within the pelmet at the base of the chair. And now he knew that his arms hadn’t just slipped under the chair covering through tears that had opened up while he slept. Though half of him knew it was totally crazy, and most of the other half wondered if he were either dreaming or had actually suffered some kind of mental damage—maybe a stroke or an aneurism or one of the other things that could go wrong in there—the small part of him that was left knew with utter certainty that the chair was eating him.

The consumption of Gordon Stafford took another day. Thankfully for most of it he was asleep, and towards the end unconscious. It didn’t seem to happen while he was awake, in fact. But always when he came to wakefulness, a little more of him had disappeared. In his final few hours, his only thought was to wish he could at least have a drink of water: a long, gut-stretching drink of fresh, ice-cold water. It was all he wanted. His struggles had long since stopped. His throat was now a ragged tunnel from which he could produce nothing more than a hoarse, painful whisper. He knew there was no way out now. Only his head and neck were free of the chair, and he was sure that the next time he lost consciousness would probably be the last time. Oddly, he was okay with that. It was a bizarre way to go, and he wished it could have been otherwise and otherwhen, but everyone had to go sometime, right? If only he wasn’t so damned thirsty. And then he felt the dry fabric easing over his chin, could smell and taste the dust in it, and he knew that soon the thirst would go away.

“When was the last time you saw him, Mrs. Robertson?” The constable was young, with a pale face and a smattering of freckles. His uniform didn’t quite fit. Joyce Robertson guessed he’d not been in the force more than a year. “I’m not sure I can say,” she replied, realizing that although she had called the police about her next door neighbour, she couldn’t actually be certain about when she’d last seen him, or even been aware of him. Gordon Stafford wasn’t exactly a gregarious individual. Now she thought about it, she wasn’t sure she’d seen him in the last two or three months. But of one thing she could be sure: “I haven’t heard him snore for over a week, now.” She explained how the man’s deafening snoring regularly kept them awake at night, how she and Mr. Robertson had mentioned it to him several times, and even resorted to banging on the wall some nights. “But we haven’t done that since...well, it must be nine or ten days at least.”

The constable nodded, trying to look thoughtful when she was sure she knew exactly what was going through his mind. After knocking on Mr. Stafford’s door and calling through the letterbox, all with no response, he asked her to stand away from the door, took a couple of steps back and ran forward, barging it with his shoulder. The wood around the Yale lock split violently and splinters flew everywhere. The door slammed back against the interior wall. They both steeled themselves for the expected stench of a long-dead body. But apart from the vague odours of stale beer, stale urine and body odour, there was nothing. They walked along the short hall and turned into the living room. It was empty. They checked out the back kitchen, then climbed the stairs and went through the whole upper floor. Finding no-one, they descended the stairs.

Joyce Robertson was relieved, albeit puzzled. She didn’t know Gordon Stafford particularly well, but in the seven years they had been neighbours, she couldn’t recall a single occasion when she’d been aware of his absence. Neither had she ever known him to entertain visitors. She knew that in the last six months he had barely left the house, even to visit the shops. In fact the only callers she’d ever seen had been the postman and the man delivering his groceries each week. She glanced around: there were no signs that he had gone away, and yet he clearly wasn’t around. Baffled, she followed the young constable out of the house, and returned home. Rather uncharitably, she began feeling a certain hope that the snoring was now a thing of the past.

“The bed’s no good, and the dining table and chairs are scrap, but we can take the rest.” John Andrews, manager of the local charity shop, was quite sure he’d manage to sell most of the furniture in the house. Some of it wasn’t really fit to sell on, and most of it was a bit dated, but there were a few nice items, and since it was all free, he couldn’t really lose. The armchair in particular looked in very good condition. It would need a clean—he could detect the body smells emanating from it—but other than that it didn’t appear to have been much used.

The two men spent an hour loading up the van with everything that he’d decided to take, then he followed them back to the shop, where it was unloaded. Several days later, it was all for sale in the shop. The armchair, the best piece of the lot, was sold within a week.

The two delivery men carried the armchair into the cramped, cluttered sitting room, according to Miss Holloway’s instructions. She was a short lady, made shorter still with age, but held onto the last of her independence with tenacity. “Over here please, by the fire. So that I can see the T.V. and reach the radio on the sideboard. That’s fine.” She looked admiringly at the chair, which was still in very good condition and looked so inviting. “Lovely. I think I’m going to be spending a lot of time in this chair.”

Hello, Miss Holloway. Come to join us, have you? My name’s Gordon Stafford. Don’t worry, there are lots of us in here. You’ll soon make plenty of friends...

Changing Lights -- A Story

2009-10-21T15:16:00.000+01:00

Rain splattered the windscreen as his van sluiced along the urban two-lane road, tyres hissing through the standing water. It was almost ten a.m., yet his sidelights still cut twin cones through the dreary half-light. Sodden, late October sycamore leaves plastered the pavements flanking the road. Any time now the weather would turn, and those wet, decaying leaves would freeze and become a death-trap to the unwary pedestrian.

Jed Barnes guided his Highways Department van safely down the inside lane, paying little regard to the traffic racing past to his right. Twenty-seven years spent in this job had given him a wealth of experience of the sheer idiocy to be seen on an almost hourly basis on the city’s streets. He had been involved in five road accidents in his time, none of which had been in any way his own fault. On two of those occasions he had ended up in hospital, once with concussion, once with a broken wrist, both times with whiplash. Jed wasn’t a man to bear grudges, but these and a hundred other near-misses had been more than enough to show him that it simply wasn’t enough to be a safe driver; every moment you were on the road, you had to be watching every other vehicle you could see. Even then, if it was your turn, you just had to hope for a bit of luck when it happened.

Half a mile further along the road, he spotted the pedestrian crossing. Just beyond the crossing, he pulled off the road and parked the van on the wide verge. Looking grimly at the persistent drizzle outside, he took his mobile phone from its dashboard cradle and pocketed it, opened the door and stepped out into the wind and rain.

Several complaints about the crossing had reached the office over the last couple of weeks. Evidently the lights were changing to red at random times, when there didn’t seem to be anyone actually crossing. Jed suspected he would find the cause to be the usual: a matchstick jammed between the button and its surround, which kept the button pressed in and triggered the change of lights at regular intervals.

However, after checking the buttons on both sides of the road, this appeared not to be the case. Next favourite was a short within one of the post-mounted boxes. Checking for this took rather longer, but forty minutes later he had ruled that one out. There was little else he could check out in the field, so he put in a call to the office to request that two new control boxes be fitted.

~*~

A week later, Jed was back, two new control boxes on the passenger seat of his van. As expected, the weather had taken a turn for the nippy, so much so that he’d had to de-ice the windscreen this morning.
Fitting the new control boxes took the best part of a morning, and as he was packing away his tools, plus the two old control boxes in his van, he heard a voice from behind him.

“ ’Ow do?”

Jed turned and straightened up, seeing an elderly gent with walking stick. “How do,” he replied.

“What you doin’, then?” asked the old chap. He wore a houndstooth-checked trilby and overcoat, and Age had performed its usual facial exaggerations on the man, stretching ears, expanding the nose and sprouting long, grey hairs from both. He looked to Jed to be not far short of his eightieth year

“Had some trouble with the lights,” said Jed. “Been turning themselves on all the time. Probably faulty wiring. I just fitted new boxes, that should fix the problem.”

The elderly gentleman’s faced creased into a smile, and twinkles came into his watery eyes. “Ah, I see. And you say you think that’ll fix ‘er, do you?”

Jed nodded patiently, smiling. The old guy probably didn’t have anyone at home to talk to; this might be the only conversation he got today, and Jed was in no hurry. “Yep, with any luck.”

“Ah well, ‘spose we’ll see about that, won’t we?”, said the man, with a chuckle. And with that he walked away.

Maybe he wasn’t in need of the conversation after all. Jed finished off stowing everything in his van, and climbed behind the wheel. As he pulled out into the traffic, he couldn’t seem to clear his mind of the strange smile the old chap had given him. Something about that smile, and the look in his eyes. Something...knowing.

~*~

October faded into November, the days contracted and the weather turned wintery. The number of call-outs grew as Jed dealt with the usual flurry of accident-related damage on the roads: bent road-signs, broken bollards, smashed lights. Just at the time of year when such things were more important than ever, they seemed to become a target for all the stupid and incompetent drivers taking to the streets.

In the second week of November he received a call-out request to replace a 30mph speed limit sign which had been uprooted by a car mounting the pavement (while travelling at 43mph). As he approached the sign, he passed between the twin lights of the pedestrian crossing which, he recalled, he had fixed some weeks earlier.

As he was pulling the replacement sign out of the back of the van, a familiar voice came from behind him. “ ’Ow do?”

Jed put the sign down gently on the ground, leaning against the tailgate of the van, and turned. Sure enough the same old gentleman, who had spoken to him when he had been working on the pedestrian crossing, was standing a couple of yards away; dressed, as far as Jed could recall, exactly the same as he had been on the previous occasion. “How do,” he replied.

“Fixing the sign, are ye?” said the man.

“That’s right. Car hit it.”

“Aye, so I ‘ear. Bloody lunatics, some o’these kids, way they come racing down ‘ere. Still, funny but it’s never ‘appened ‘ere before.” Again that same, wry smile.

“That a fact?” asked Jed. “Just lucky I suppose, it’s happening everywhere.”

“Aye. Just lucky, like you say.” He chuckled and wandered off on his way, leaving Jed standing, watching. He almost spoke to ask what the joke was, but decided against it. He knew, from his own octogenarian father, that with age comes a way of seeing humour in almost anything, as though a lifetime’s experience renders everything mildly amusing.

~*~

He was thinking about Christmas presents when it happened. With an adult son and daughter and four grandchildren between them, there was much to think about in the last couple of weeks before Christmas. He and Pat generally shared Christmas duties between them, and while she organized food, decorations and dates, he had the task of buying the kids’ presents. He swore he was still concentrating on the road, but in the two seconds while he was trying to decide whether twelve-year-old Daniel would rather receive games for his X-Box or a new pair of trainers, the young lunatic in the lowered Renault Clio with an exhaust the size of a drain-pipe pulled straight out in front of him from a side-road. From the moment he saw the car, Jed knew he was going to hit it, but he did what he could to avoid a head-on collision, slewing the van round as it approached the Clio. The driver of the car had stopped, and the last thing Jed saw was the look of utter terror in the kid’s eyes as he saw Jed’s van bearing rapidly down on him, all the time turning so that at the moment of impact it was almost side-on to the car. This last, split-second act of Jed Barnes saved the kid’s life by avoiding a T-bone which would have crushed his slim body like a paper cup. As it was, he escaped with cuts, bruises and a broken ankle.

Jed wasn’t as fortunate. The unusual angle of impact meant that the normal safety devices—seatbelt, headrest, airbags—proved ineffective, and the impact of his head against the passenger window fractured his skull and knocked him into a coma. As his world faded to black, one last disconnected thought sparked dully in his mind...that’s the pedestrian crossing I repaired two months ago...Gone.

~*~

Regaining consciousness was a strange experience. It seemed to happen over a long period of time, though he had no idea just how long. Hours? Days? He had absolutely no idea.

Hearing was the first sense to return. He slowly became aware of voices, muddy and indistinct. Then he became aware that he had actually been aware of them for some time without realizing what he was hearing. Some time later, when the voices began to coalesce into understandable words, he tried opening his eyes. Piercing white light forced itself between his eyelids and he squinted them shut again. Slowly, he rationed the light to his eyes until his irises contracted and he was able to deal with it. The voices came from outside of the private room he found himself in, through the open door. For long minutes he lay, taking stock of his surroundings, reconstructing the fragments of memory currently floating around his battered head. To the left of his bed, an empty chair. To the right, some kind of monitor he assumed he was connected to. On a bracket high up on the far wall, a TV, switched off. Next to the TV a clock, showing four-fifteen. He couldn’t see any windows so had no idea whether that was a.m. or p.m. Gradually he put together and understanding of what had happened to him. He remembered driving down the road...thinking of Christmas...the car...young driver, looking at him through the window...

Some time later he awoke, not realizing he’d drifted off until he noticed that the clock on the opposite wall now said ten-thirty. He wondered if he’d been asleep for six hours or eighteen. It didn’t really seem to matter. He felt stronger now, more with-it. He glanced to the side of his bed and realized there was someone sitting there. Not Pat, who he had expected to see, but...no, this can’t be right, I’m obviously still dreaming...was that...? Yes, it was. Seated in the chair next to his bed, leaning with both hands on his walking stick, checked trilby on his head, was the old fellow Jed had seen a twice whilst carrying out repairs...on the same road where I had the accident, he suddenly realized.

“ ‘Ow do?” said the old man. He nodded at Jed, smiling faintly. “You back in the land of the living, then?”

Jed almost laughed out loud at his scrambled imagination. He had to give himself credit, it was a very realistic dream. In his totally relaxed state of mind, he decided he might as well go along with it.

“Aye, back in the land of the living I think, although I’m not quite sure why I’m seeing you here.”

The old man chuckled and gave his wry smile. “Just thought I’d pop in and see how you were, like. Gave yourself a bit of a knock there, didn’t you?”

This time it was Jed’s turn to laugh. “A bit of a knock? Yes, you could say that.”

“You’re not the first to come to grief on that road, you know.”

“Oh no?”

“Bit of a blackspot, actually. Mind, things had been getting better. But last couple of months, there’s been at least four smashes to my knowledge. Odd that, don’t you think?”

Jed couldn’t really see what was odd about it, given the way most people seemed to drive these days.

“Ah, but the way it ‘ad all but stopped, then just started again, sudden like.”

“Probably the bad weather, days drawing in. Just a seasonal thing, I expect.” Jed was starting to grow a little bored with this dream, and was anxious to see Pat and talk to her, talk to the doctors, find out how long he’d been unconscious, what the damage was.

“Last year, weren’t a single accident from June to December,” said the man, who apparently was unaware that he was part of Jed’s dream. “What do you think of that?”

Jed had heard enough. “I really don’t know. Look, it’s very nice of you to come and visit me. I think I’m okay, but I’m going to have to talk to the doctors now, and my wife should be...”

“Oh I know, I know,” he said, “I’ll be on my way now.” He stood slowly, leaning heavily on his walking stick. He headed for the door, then turned back to Jed, catching his stare with eyes that had suddenly become lucid, and rather fierce. “Just one thing,” he said, softly, “Don’t you think it’s a bit strange that all these accidents started up again just after you messed with that crossing?”

Jed forgot for a moment that he was dreaming. “What do you mean? I fixed the crossing because it was faulty. What’s that got to do with anything?”

The old man had reached the door of Jed’s room. As he stepped out, he replied, “Just something to think about, innit? Strange, that thing going off on its own like that, but soon as you fix it, people start driving into each other like lunatics. Makes you wonder, don’t it? Makes you wonder how many accidents might have happened if them lights had been working prop’ly all along; how many folks’re still alive because they had to stop at that red light when no-one was crossing. I’ll be on my way now.” He raised his hat in an old-fashioned gesture. “Get well soon, Jed.”

Jed was glad this was all a dream, because otherwise he would have been extremely unnerved that the old man had known his name. He was glad he was dreaming, because if this had been real he would have been questioning his own sanity, particularly in view of the thoughts going round in his head after the old man’s departure.

Four weeks later, under cover of darkness at ten p.m. on a snowy January night, he was very glad that the surreal conversation with the old man in the hospital had all been a dream, as he removed the two new control boxes from the pedestrian crossing, and replaced them with the two “faulty” ones he had removed back in October. That way, he could pretend that his actions tonight were simply in order to free himself of the guilt he felt on each of the three occasions since Christmas when he heard about another road accident on this stretch of road. He just hoped that he hadn’t left it too late, that the ghost was still in this particular machine.

The pedestrian crossing which inspired this little tale is on my way home from work. Three times last week it caught me, and on no occasion was anyone crossing...

To Infinity...and beyond!

2009-10-16T12:53:00.000+01:00

I read this morning that Sir Richard Branson believes that Virgin Galactic are now a mere 18 months from the first sub-orbital passenger flight. This seems to be something that has made relatively little impact on the general news media; my source was Scientific American's RSS feed. But for the life of me I can't understand why this isn't making headline after headline. We seem to have become so blasé about air and space travel in our generation that the birth of a commercial space service almost fails to register.

The birth of powered air travel in 1904 dominated the news for months, and the exploits of pioneers such as Louis Bleriot, Allcock and Brown, and Charles Lindberg were equally hot topics. The arrival of jet-powered commercial airliners spawned not only a new mode of travel but a new lifestyle: the Jet-Set. Even Concorde captured the headlines.

Our pioneering space programmes drew the world together in awe and excitement. Over half a billion people watched the Apollo 11 moon landing, and when Jim Lovell, Fred Haise and Jack Swigert were in peril aboard Apollo 13, the whole world held its breath.

So where has the excitement gone? Where is that childlike wonder that held everyone enthralled as they followed the exploits of those incredible pioneers who pushed the limits daily, in the same routine way that most of us push paper. Has the age of heroes passed? Are we now so pessimistic about the future of our world that we can no longer feel the thrill and excitement that our grandparents and great-grandparents experienced?

Climate change, terrorism, and global recession are all problems that need addressing, of course, as are poverty, human trafficking, exploitation of cheap labour markets, the destruction of the rain forests, and a hundred other issues.

But part of what makes us human is the drive to always look over the next mountain, round the next bend in the river, across the next desert. When the frontiersmen struck out west across the vast wilderness of north America, what kept them going, pushing on across the plains, the deserts, picking routes through towering mountain ranges? They had no idea what they would find. They couldn't have known that they would eventually reach the "promised land" of California. Yet on they pushed, through bitter cold and blistering heat. That essential, instinctive human drive to explore, to expand our horizons, to see and understand our world, maintained them when surely they must many times have felt like turning back, or staying put.

We need our pioneers. Branson may be an unlikely hero, and certainly his sub-orbital passenger aircraft will be the work of thousands of individuals, rather than he alone. But Branson is the one making it happen. He had the vision, he had the opportunity, and he had the financial position to turn the vision into reality. In the next couple of years, it will be possible for anyone (with the necessary fare) to travel to the limits of outer space. Barely a hundred years since Wilbur and Orville's maiden flight, and only fifty since Sputnik 1, the first man-made object to orbit the earth, ordinary men and women will travel at twice the altitude of commercial jet airliners. There is little doubt that within twenty years, space-travel will become as routine as air travel is today. That, regardless of the thousand ways we are failing to use our unique abilities to solve the world's problems, is a truly remarkable achievement.

There are many reasons to be pessimistic about the future of humanity, but let us not lose that pioneer spirit that has brought us so far. I think we're going to need it.

Mister Music Man

2009-10-15T16:48:00.000+01:00

He sweeps the streets where I live. Years ago we would have called him a roadsweeper. Now, of course, that would be terribly un-PC (despite the fact that it would still be 100% literally accurate) and I'm sure his official job-title will be something like "Urban Environmental Cleansing Officer" or some such convoluted mouthful.

People, as a rule, have little respect for their environment these days, at least not in the city. Walking the pavements has become an obstacle course, dodging the chip trays, lager cans and free-issue newspapers that pepper the flags. Any attempt to improve the situation is an exercise in futility. And yet day after grimy day he sweeps, picks up and deposits in his bin the countless items of grot dropped by a thousand disregarding citizens. Season after season passes, his yellow hi-visibility tabard almost the only constant in the shifting street-scape.

He wears headphones, constantly. Every hour of every day, he wears headphones. That's the reason--I'm sure you've guessed--why I nicknamed him "Mister Music Man." Many times have I watched him from my second-floor window as he works his way along, wondering what on earth it is he listens to. The reality is that it's probably Five Live, or 70s rock music.

But I like to think that perhaps, just perhaps, if one day I were to pass close enough to him, I might hear escaping from those padded 'phones a Puccini aria, a Tchaikovsky ballet, a Beethoven piano sonata. I like to imagine that against the crap and crud of his daily battles, he pitches the beauty and sublimity of classical music: an antidote to the filth and the ugliness, a reminder that humanity has within it such transcendent possibilities. Maybe one day I'll ask him what he listens to. But then again, maybe I won't. I think I'd rather continue my little fantasy than lift up an earphone and discover that it's just the football scores.

Blog one

2009-10-15T15:55:00.000+01:00

So, here it is. My very first blog entry ever. A leap into the unknown. I would love to say that this will become a favoured haunt of all lovers of the pithy and profound, a shrine to verbiage and wordplay, a Mecca for all those of a literary bent. In reality, for now at least it's a place for me to record my daily dribblings and random ramblings. Whether any of them are worth anyone's time to read remains to be seen!

However, I'm sure the customary thing at this point is to welcome you, dear reader, and to express the hope that you find something here amongst the diaristic detritus to compensate you for the valuable minutes and bandwidth you will have expended in simply opening the page. If you do, then please let me know. If you don't, then by all means feel free to withhold your views!