A day at the races

Early this year I covered the J&B Met for a magazine. It was interesting.

What I know about horses is dangerous. The sum total of my knowledge is that they featured prominently in the Lord of the Rings trilogy and the girls who rode them when I was at primary school always smelled faintly of a paddock and had bigger arms than me. I'd also had the misfortune of going to the Vodacom July some years ago, an experience which made me swear that I would never go within 100 metres of another horse race again (My question to everyone: what is it about paying a lot of money to dress in uncomfortable clothing, get crushed in crowds and scorched in the sun for a full day that makes everyone so excited about the July? Because if you want an excuse to get drunk and flirt with scantily clad girls or guys with popped collars, that's what Toti's for, and it's cheaper.)

So considering this and the vast depths of my ignorance of all things equine, it was with some trepidation that I covered the J&B Met. Would it be obvious to all and sundry that I couldn’t tell a stirrup from a bridle, a stallion from a nag or a jockey from a gaily-dressed child? Fortunately, it seems that about three-quarters of the 45,000 or so people who went to the J&B Met this year were as badly versed in horse-lore as I was. What was also fortunate was that my wife could join me, and we were given tickets to the J&B Marquee.

It’s hard to describe just how awesome it was without seeming hyperbolic. If modern day oil sheikhs were nomadic and threw lavish parties in Bedouin tents I somehow doubt they could top it. There was more excellent food and drink than you could shake a riding crop at, mostly inoffensive live entertainment (though in a mid-day radio kind of way) and beautiful (and, in many cases, deranged) fashion to gawk and – if I'm being honest with myself – laugh at. Suffice to say much of the day was spent in a gastronomic daze, alternately heading between the buffet, ice cream station, bar and racetrack to yell at the exhausted horses as they ran fruitlessly in circles. I wish I’d had a copy of a gossip rag on me, because it would have been a fun diversion to play celebrity bingo. Michael Mol! Marc Lottering! Bryan Habana! Roxy Louw!

Early in the day we decided that we needed to get in on some betting, but realised looking at the programme that we had no idea how to pick a winning horse. So, as one does, we went with names that appealed to us. I ended up backing the splendidly named Eagle Squadron, which I thought could only be as sleek and fast as its title. Shockingly, a horse’s name has little to do with its speed. This would be a hard lesson I struggled to learn throughout the day, as all the horses I backed lagged traitorously towards the rear.

It was hard not to be romanced by all the abundance around me – all that food and drink couldn’t appreciate itself – but at the end of the day as we trudged through the horse pat bestrewn grass back to the car and passed the unwashed masses groaning in the dust and dressed in sackcloth, I realised a simple truth. Horse-racing is only worth a damn on someone else's dime in an air-conditioned tent while feasting on craft beer and fillet. Also, it helps to pick one's horses properly when betting, and for that I'll develop a foolproof system in the future, probably based on the jockeys’ outfits.

It's been a while...

What the flip, guys? In the year since I last posted on this stupid blog, Greta and I left our jobs, moved to Cape Town, then after four months left the meager things we had going on there, and moved to Phuket, Thailand. It's been scary, it's been gnarly, it's been fun.

We've seen a guy riding a motorbike with a live eagle on his handlebars, dogs that look both ways before crossing the street, a dude with too many thumbs (it is as it sounds), kiff beaches, a bunch of jungle, lots of really sunburnt British people, a wasp killing a tarantula, a whole bunch of stonefish while snorkelling, and some other stuff that escapes me. Suffice to say, it's pretty interesting here and we're having a good time. I should post some photos, but I'm feeling lazy today. They'll come in time people, I'm a work in progress.

I've had a chance to make a heap of progress on my book (which has subsequently stalled again since I started working full time again - I'll get there eventually folks), so I thought I'd post a short, actiony clip from one of the chapters I'm semi-happy with. Fun times.
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It’s a typically glorious Cape Town summer afternoon. The sunlight glints off every reflective surface and I start to feel better. The trees are green, the mountain looks awesome and the detective seems to believe me. Maybe I won’t find out much more when this becomes a full-blown police investigation, but at least I’m not going to be sitting in Pollsmoor Prison wondering whether I’m to be the new plaything for the 26s or 27s.
I direct Detective Roberts to my hotel, but it’s a slog. The traffic in the city is a pain. I remember being told a while back that Cape Town’s traffic is so bad because the roads weren’t designed for 21st century traffic volumes. I can believe it. I really need to find a guesthouse or something in a pleasant suburb away from the nail-on-a-chalkboard irritation of city traffic.
Eventually we get to Camps Bay. There’s no street parking in front of the hotel, so we have to park about 200 metres up the road. Opposite us, loads of people hang out on the grass and walk on the promenade. A few yachts ferry sightseers a little out to sea.
Unsurprisingly, the hotel is pretty busy when we walk though the foyer. Detective Roberts is as quiet as ever, though I can tell his mood is light. Finding new evidence is probably like catnip for the po-po.
We wait a few minutes for the lift, and take it to the eighth floor. I don’t ordinarily like staying so high up in any building – I can’t help but imagine the innumerable, freak ways I can plunge to my death, and I’m a little ashamed to admit that these imaginings sometimes keep me up at night – but there are few rooms to choose from over Christmas. A panpipe version of My Heart Will Go On warbles over the speakers. The lift stops on our floor and as we walk down the passage I realise the song is following us. The scourge of muzak.
“Can I have your key card?” Those are the first words the detective has spoken in about 15 minutes. He must be in a good mood; he swings his car keys around his finger as he whistles along to the panpipes. My estimation of him takes a sharp downward turn.
As he opens the door he drops his car keys.
“I’ve got them.” He opens the door as I bend down to pick them up. He takes a few steps inside the room before stopping in surprise.
“What-” I look up from behind him as he fumbles for his shoulder holster. There are four quick bursts of muffled gunfire, and blood and flesh explode from Detective Roberts’ head and back as he falls backwards against me. There is hair and something soft and warm in my mouth. I scramble back, spitting, as more shots hit the plaster of the wall above me, which is flecked with gore.
Oh crap oh crap oh crap oh crap. I find my feet after what feels like forever and sprint the few metres down the passage to the stairs. Another bullet bursts into the wall just next to my head. I half run, half jump down the stairs. I can hear a few pairs of feet thudding in the stairwell behind me. My back feels so naked, but I can’t turn my head or I’ll fall. A bullet zings against the railing next to me and I shriek. I make sure I keep against the wall and more bullets zip into the steps from above. I can’t tell if they’re getting closer or not, and it feels like I’ll never get to the bottom. I pass a lady who glares at me. I’m only a few seconds past her when she screams; they’re pretty freaking close.
I finally reach the bottom of the stairwell, burst into the foyer and sprint across it to the doors. People start yelling just as I reach the street and turn right up the road towards the detective’s car. I try to zigzag a bit in case they start shooting, but there are so many people on the pavement I doubt they would. Just before I get to the car I turn around and see two guys in suits running towards me about 30 metres away.
I duck into the car as one guy takes aim and hits the windscreen on the passenger side. I turn the key and pull off. A car swerves around me, hooter screeching. Ahead of me, one of the guys is standing in my lane. He fires a few bursts as I duck my head below the steering wheel and floor it. Bullets smash through the windscreen and rip into my headrest. I hear people screaming and cars skidding as their drivers hit their brakes. Suddenly there’s a thump, the windscreen breaks and something hard smacks me in the head, blurring my vision momentarily. More bullets hit the side of the car and then I’m past the shooter. I lift my head and wrench the steering wheel to the right, narrowly avoiding ramming into the back of a parked car. A few more half-hearted shots ring out but nothing hits the car. I floor it and weave through the busy evening traffic for a few kilometres.
I shake my head and try to clear my vision, but the wind is blowing against my eyes through a huge hole that’s been smashed through the windscreen. Only then do I see the body in the passenger seat.
“Holy cr-” I panic, and tug the steering wheel to the left by mistake, and jump a curb before jamming anchors. It’s one of the shooters, minus some of his head. His legs are up against the headrest, and his head rests against the floor. Blood, bone and what I can only assume are bits of his thoughts and personality pool on the carpeting. Bits of glass litter his body, glittering in the evening light. A stray hair still in my mouth reminds me of the detective. I open the door and puke into the street.
I’ve never felt so out of control in my life. My body feels like it’s turning in on itself, like my oesophagus will burst out of my mouth and envelop me so that I look like a giant, glistening sausage. I vomit until there is nothing left to bring up, and after a few extra agonising dry heaves my stomach stops bucking my body further towards the ground. I close the door shakily and wipe my mouth on my sleeve. My mouth tastes foul; I’m ten-years-old and have gastro; I’m an awkward 17-year-old, drunk out of my mind at a crappy action bar, eyes glazed, conscience numbed.
“Hey man, are you okay?” A young guy materialises at my window. I can’t respond before he sees the dead dude, swears and starts running. “Call the police, call the police, there’s a dead guy in that car!”
Crap. I start the car and roar back onto the road before anyone else can get to me. Where the freak do I go now?
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Each day a new adventure

New shoes have magic in them. Not the magic of bewildered bunnies spilling out of top hats or lovely assistants being sawn in half, but one deeper, older, true. You pore over the unopened box as if it is a locked chest marked ‘secret codes’, or a covered cage with some exotic beast trapped inside. You lift the lid and there is a hiss as life is breathed into twin creatures. You pause as you sense movement beneath the thin paper covering them – was that the stirring of consciousness or just your breath disturbing their shroud? You peer closer and then their scent hits you; it’s pocked cricket balls with unravelling seams lying in freshly cut grass; it’s brown Kiwi polish just as you open the tin; it’s a khaki uniform sweaty after a day at school when the corridors slingshot you around corners, into teachers, away from girls, onto fields at tea break; it’s glops of mud mixed behind the tennis courts to throw at little brothers. You pull back the paper carefully and there before you are your glowing, magic shoes. They are a rich brown, of earth and adventure, and they shine like the crown of your uncle’s head. They appear unmarked to anyone else, but their tag and instructions are plain to see, written into their form and character like a secret message: Here be the vessels to adventure. Never be hindered by any puddle, tree or grownup. Wear deliberately.
You lift them out of the box and rub the smooth leather with your fingertips, introducing yourself to the friends who will carry you on many adventures. You get the new socks out of your cupboard, kept aside for this very moment, and slip them onto your feet, followed by the first shoe, and then the other. You tie the laces tightly and meticulously, even making sure each one is exactly the same length, the bows the same size. And then you are ready to take your first steps. Seated on your bed, this is not a moment to rush into. You wiggle your toes around and gasp; there’s so much room and yet they fit so snugly!
You stand up very slowly, being sure not to move your feet a millimetre…
… and then you’re off, shooting through your door, down the passage, out the back door, through the gate, down the road, the new soles slapping the hot summer pavement joyously. The croak and rasp of leather harmonises with the strain of branches under clambering limbs as your feet scrabble against bark. You jump down with a thud only new shoes know how to make, and all around the neighbourhood old men cock their heads and think of being young again, and the boys trapped behind their eyes dream once more of cops and robbers, hide-and-seek and footraces.
The bell clangs noisily in the distance and you’re the last one through the gate and into the hall for assembly. The headmaster, the one you and your friends giggle at for his red face, walks past you, takes a look at your shoes and gives your head a pat of approval. The boy next to you is asked to report to his office with clean shoes straight after assembly. You can’t help but smirk in triumph. Your shoes squeak pleasantly against the floor all through maths, and you experiment with making them creak at different pitches during English and Afrikaans. They carry you through history and geography flawlessly as you rub off the day’s smudges and almost-scuffs with the sleeve of your shirt.
And the bell tolls one last time, and this time it is a wonderful sound. Before a girl can try to talk to you or the teacher carry on past the lesson’s end, you’re out the door and the classroom catapults you into the afternoon. None of your friends can run as fast as you, catch snakes like you can, climb to the highest branches with your skill this afternoon. They’ve allowed the magic to seep out of their shoes; some of them never had it in the first place. But the magic yours possess is powerful, the bright leather sparking energy and sending it through your feet to rattle your body alive as it’s never felt before.
With dusk heavy in the air you disband your ragged group and scamper home towards warm supper, a reluctant bath, the threat of homework and a soft bed to gather you up when your swollen head hits the pillow, your dreams carrying you far away, in a pith helmet and steaming jungle one minute, crouched in summer puddles cupping frog princes in your hands the next. And all night your shoes prowl in their box-cave, their growls and shuffling filling the night air with the rumour of pirates, of Jock of the Bushveld, of old maps rustling in a decrepit backpack.
Tomorrow will bring with it new adventures. As will the next. And the next. And the…

Giants

When you’re young, you find comfort in what to you are unchanging reference points – a parent, tall as a giant, whose legs you can cling to for comfort; or a grandparent, who always has and always will live. When you are little, grandparents are eternal, as old as time itself, stoic markers of a world that makes sense because they’re in it – they’ve seen it all and can guide you through the confusion life brings. And when they’re taken from you, the world seems a much bigger, scarier place. It rocks you.

Granddad was one of my reference points. He was like a tree, unchanging in my child’s eyes down the years. His white moustache was always immaculate. His bearing was always upright. There was a precision in his movements that was wholly unique. He was always busy with his hands, and I loved going into the hallowed grounds of his neat workshop, watching him shape wood using one of his lathes or planes, bent over a bench, adding a slight whorl or nick to something. Just the smallest whiff of sawdust takes me to his workshop on a hot day, the cicadas screaming from the trees like the world will end.

I think we all lost a reference point last Sunday morning. Whether you’re a grandchild, son, daughter, cousin, niece, nephew or friend, a marker has been uprooted next to the one sweet Dordor left. It’s impossible to talk about Granddad without thinking about Dordor. But we can take heart that he has gone to his reward. And we each can keep those special memories we all have of them – dust motes swirling in Granddad’s workshop, long chats about the latest book Granddad was reading, lunches under the tree in the garden, sneaking jam drops from the pantry, crosswords on the veranda in Ramsgate.

I miss Granddad more than I can say, and I can’t wait to see him again.

Margins v. 2.0

(Whew! Time I dusted off this old blog! I wrote this for Greti's birthday last month.)

His presence in the house was like a child’s breathing. He skirted around objects as if afraid to dirty them, the click of his crutches shy and delicate. When he sat on the couch, he perched on the edge lightly, never sitting on the cushions in full, foreign comfort. He often hid his stained fingernails by balling his hands slightly. His cheeks still stung where his beard had been shaved off. She’d often catch him running his fingers along the wool of the thick jersey she’d given him. Their cohabitation was a dance they performed in a stilted rhythm, neither really used to it, not quite sure how to speak or go about the tiny minutiae of every day life.

“It’s delicious. Thank you.” He said it without looking at her. In fact, he rarely made eye contact.
“I’m glad you like it.” They continued eating in silence. She liked to watch him eat. He savoured everything in a way she’d forgotten to do. He didn’t chase the salad around his plate, toying with it like she did, and seemed to genuinely like the broccoli she had to force down. She wondered how many hot meals he’d ever eaten.

The first time he’d come into her house, she’d felt ashamed. His leg was freshly set in plaster and he was struggling to get used to the crutches, so initially he spent large chunks of his day in the lounge. Whenever she saw his eyes flick around the room to all the expensive trinkets she’d collected over the years, her cheeks would flush. She tried not to calculate what they’d cost her, and how long that money could feed and clothe him. She wondered if he thought that too.

He’d been reluctant to stay with her, but she had insisted. He knew it was guilt that made her take him in, but once in her home he knew it was loneliness too. As he became familiar with the house, he noticed all the signs. The single bed, always neatly made. The underwear he saw drying on the line outside was all function, no frills or delicacy. There was no sense of there being space for another person’s clutter; every surface had a knickknack of some sort, every cupboard brimmed with the things a single person will collect over the years without someone else to curb their hoarding. The small dining room table had been set for one when he arrived. The couch had a bias on the cushion directly in front of the TV, home to just one body. And there was a tentative longing in her.

She struggled to fathom him. She sensed the wit and eloquence beneath his timid, cautious exterior. That he was well educated she had no doubts, she just wondered how he had gotten to where he was. But she was afraid to ask him, lest she seem judgmental or condescending. She found that she often had to guard her words, and catch herself before saying something that would seem unkind or patronising. She found it easier to share her home with him than she thought she would, but reasoned that it was easy because he did not impose himself on his surroundings. He rarely spoke, and when he did, it was little more than a whisper. He did not watch TV or listen to the radio. Instead he would sit quietly, unmoving, deep in thought, or pick a book from her shelf and devour it in one sitting, his brow furrowed, his lips forming the words silently. She would watch him for long spells, sometimes forgetting to catch the smiles that slowly curled at the corners of her mouth.

He slept in the spare room. It was just like all the other spare rooms you find in single-occupant houses. It was neat, the curtains had a floral print, and when you opened the cupboards there was a whiff of mothballs and musty boxes. She had bought him some clothing; plain t-shirts, trousers, underwear, socks, a jersey, running shoes. She’d tried to buy him nondescript clothes that he wouldn’t feel awkward in. She hadn’t thrown his old clothes away – she’d felt it would be arrogant of her – and so had washed them and put them in a bag. He had shyly accepted the clothing, and when she gave them to him they had both mumbled in embarrassment before she feigned needing to make a phone call. He kept his few things very neat, and she liked it when he spilt food on his shirt and clicked his tongue in dismay.

“You must be mad!”
“Why? I ran over him! It was the right thing to do.”
“The right thing to do would be to kick him out right this instant! He could take advantage of you in the night!”
“He wouldn’t.” A whisper, “Besides, I lock my door.”
“I should hope so! When will he move on?”
“I hadn’t thought about that. When he’s healed I suppose.” She twirled the phone cord around her finger. “I actually quite like having him around.”
“Well I think you’re being very foolish-”
“You’ve made it clear what you think. Look, I can hear his door opening, I’ll call you again next week.”
“I just want you to be safe!”
“I will be. Bye bye.”

She hadn’t thought about the end really. Until this point there had only been the now, and making supper, and asking after his leg, and if he was okay. She hadn’t thought about what would happen when the cast came off. Would he go off one day while she was out? Would she make him?

It was no accident this happened while I was listening to some shmetal...

Margins

His presence in the house was like a child’s breathing. He skirted around objects as if afraid to dirty them. When he sat on the couch, he perched on the edge lightly, never sitting on the cushions in full, foreign comfort. He often hid his stained fingernails by balling his hands slightly. His cheeks still stung where his lengthy beard had been shaved off. She’d once caught him running his fingers along the wool of the thick jersey she’d given him. Their cohabitation was a dance they performed in a stilted rhythm, neither really used to it, not quite sure how to speak or go about the tiny minutiae of every day life. She ashamed of her wealth. He ashamed of his lack.

Poster art

I love poster art from old movies (this was before photoshop came along and brought an end to illustrated posters). This is one of my favourites:



It's a horror movie, but the creature seems more sad than menacing. One illustration evoking so many conflicting feelings...

FUN

Almost a month to the day after our last show. It doesn't quite seem real yet.

4 months from today...

... I'll be married. I can't frigging wait!

Stories coming soon, just as soon as work stops being so intense!

These ancient places

I’d come a long way in 24 hours. From sitting in my bedroom in Durban here I stood in Athens at the foot of Hadrian’s Arch, the Acropolis rising in the background impressive and wise and ancient. It stands above Athens with a kind of antique though powerless majesty, like a dethroned king still sitting with a regal and haughty air on a kitchen chair.
I wandered crumbling alleyways on flag stones worn smooth and slippery from years of hurrying feet and came upon the Roman Agora and the Tower of Winds, and ran my fingers gently over the faded and perfect masonry. Feeling dazed and puny and young, I climbed the steep hill to the Acropolis, where sits the Parthenon unmoved and unfazed at all the attention it receives. I stood on the Areopagus and tried to catch snatches of Paul’s voice as it would have rung out almost 2000 years ago.
… and I felt greatly saddened. These places which hold such majesty and grace somehow also seemed like toothless old men whiling away their dotage in senility. Hadrian’s Arch sits cramped in a tight fence just metres from a busy road, itself the antipathy of the arch’s static state. I thought about Durban, where something built in 1800 is old, but in Athens everything is ancient, steeped in millennia of history. ‘History’, that word that rolls off the tongue, which when uttered as a whisper echoes with the clash of steel in antique battle, of witty retorts in the senate, of the wheels of chariots rumbling over cobblestone.
And yet, in this the most ancient of places, the locals do not glance at these monoliths of times lost and mostly forgotten. Every one of them pursues modernity; it must be difficult not to look forward when everyone else is looking back. Hadrian’s Arch is fenced in, almost as if to stop it from escaping and lumbering off to another land, one where it feels it most belongs, one of toga’d bodies and braying donkeys, to trap all this history here and stop this city from becoming like any other wreathed in smog and ringing with the expletives of bus drivers.
It’s so difficult to reconcile brash American tourists with their iPods firmly planted in their ears, boasting loudly about the previous night’s party, with the Parthenon. It seems counterintuitive for these two things to exist in the same space. And I think of the empire today which has replaced this discarded one. In 2000 years, will tourists visit the ancient Absa Stadium? Will the Empire State Building be an archaeological find? Will the numerous discoveries of McDonald’s franchises lead historians to believe mankind followed a deity called ‘Ronald?’ (In that respect, would they be wrong?) Will the writings of Dan Brown be to them our Plato?
I wondered what would become of these ancient places and mourned for the day when the last of these buildings crumbles into dust and is scattered by the wind.

Die young!

One summer, there came a new boy to climb trees, to plunge into the river on days when the very air scorched your lungs. He came slowly, timid, aware of how different he was. He watched the tumble and jostle of the other children through flaccid eyelids and compared his body to theirs. He was raisin-skinned where theirs was fair and tight. He had liver spots where they had the beginnings of pimples and his veins wriggled visibly underneath his skin. Trapped in a wrinkled old peach-coloured body suit, he shyly consulted his feet on the edge of their awareness, trying to reconcile this body with the one he remembered from yesterday, the one that didn’t fail him at scrambling over walls and supported him when doing handstands. This body seemed a poor imitation of the one that fell asleep on a balmy evening, young pores perspiring gently after a long day of teasing girls, running with dogs and playing cricket on the lawn.
He awoke early in the morning, one that brought with it familiar birdcalls and summer lawnmowers throbbing, though in a strange room, with strange hands and feet scrabbling at his sheets, sheets he could have sworn held spitfires and zeppelins the night before, ancient lids revealing youthful eyes. Alarmed, the cry for his mother came from a strange old voice, as if his grandfather was lying on the bed beside him and translating his thoughts into words. This voice filled his ears like the sound of gravel crunching underfoot, coarse and shocking.
He sat up quickly and his back creaked like an old house, groaning at what felt like a foreign motion. He swung his legs over the side of the bed and gingerly put his weight onto them. As he looked at them he realised they were not his own, not that he could recall. His had been tanned, strong and bald, tapering down to flat dirty feet, but the two limbs that dangled over the edge of the mattress looked like they’d been tacked on with thread, borrowed from a dead man. They were pale and spotted, varicose veins scurried like road maps, his knees were swollen and wider than his wrinkled thighs, and beyond them on the floor were old toes with long, yellow nails. The boy gasped at the horrible prank his brother must be playing on him, wondering that this was a step up from the usual bucket of water above his door, or the trip wire at the top of the stairs.
Slowly, painfully, he edged his weight onto his legs and stood up, gripping the sheeting with both hands to steady himself as he tottered upright. He reluctantly let go of the bedclothes and shuffled away from the bed to the bathroom he saw through the open door, his hands thrust out in front of him like someone searching for a candle in a power failure. He was breathing heavily and leaned thudding on the doorpost as he reached it, his legs shaking from the effort. He took a moment to collect himself before moving into the bathroom to stand before the sink, above which was a mirror.
But it couldn’t be a mirror; it was lying. For a ten-year-old boy stood staring into the face of an old man. He turned around quickly to see if there wasn’t a great uncle standing behind him. He probed his face with his hands trying to find where the mask was attached, pulling at the loose skin and crying out when it wouldn’t give. He probed at his ears and found them to be long and dangly, each lobe feeling like an old prune. His cheeks sagged slightly and underneath his chin was the wobbly throat of the frog princes he’d caught just yesterday as he hunted in summer puddles. His face was a blotch of pink and white skin, except beneath the eyes where it sagged into two dark bags. His hair was wispy as the spider webs he’d run his hands through and was lank and lifeless as a moth-eaten curtain.
He would still not have believed it was him if it had not been for his eyes. Yes, those were the same. They were bright white, not a vein upon them, like a fried egg with a hazel yolk. Each pupil was small and pitch and young, and he knew they told the truth. He clumsily undid the buttons of his shirt with his thickly jointed fingers, the hair of his knuckles feeling like the wire he used to make fishing lures out of. He consulted his chest in the mirror. It had a path of hair from just below the collarbone all the way down over his sternum and bellybutton, marching to disappear into his trousers. It was long and thick and grey, and felt like the whiskers of his dog. His chest was scrawny and slightly sunken, his nipples the purple of winter-river fingertips. He dropped his shirt to the floor and saw that his arms were thin, with baggy skin where his muscles used to thrash and squirm. He lifted his right arm slowly and winced as he heard his protesting shoulder crack and pop.
He started to panic and stumbled back through to his bed, falling on it heavily, tears streaming from his eyes from the pain or the terror which was jolting through him. He cried out sharply before his throat caught, his huge Adam’s apple sliding up and down his neck as he gulped for air.
‘Ma? Maaaaaaaaaaa!’ He screamed for the only person he could think of, his cries carrying to the nearby cemetery where she had lain for twenty years and falling about her grave like bone dust and dead petals. The oldest child in the world cried until his breath ran out and a bewildered nurse came into the room to find a man older than her father and a boy younger than her son trapped in the same body.

His waking baffled the local doctors and it wasn’t long before their colleagues from out of town sombrely queued up to study him, rocking back and forth on their heels as they considered this ancient child, uttering more ‘Hmmm’s’ and ‘Ha’s’ than a convention of philosophers. His knees were raw from reflex hammers and he had had to open wide and say ‘Ah’ so many times his jaw was stiff and his throat quite sore. Furious scratchings on note pads were the soundtrack to these visits, entire tomes surely being written, but for all their rapid note-taking, whenever he stole a glance at one of their pads the scribbles were completely unintelligible. His daily appointments with the physiotherapist were painful and challenging, and she did not have to adjust her tone of voice for this special patient, seeing as she spoke to children and the elderly in exactly the same way; sweetly and with unintended condescension.
When not being minutely examined by sternly bespectacled men and women in white coats, he was allowed to wonder the town during the day. His original doctor (whose attitude about his celebrity patient had changed from scorn and burden to pride and boastfulness) said it would be good for his health after so many years of inactivity, and none of the nurses had the heart to deny him anything after having his whole life stolen by sleep.
At first on his wanderings, he had been dogged by journalists eager for a human interest piece, but he was shy and would not speak to them, which left them trailing him like beleaguered dogs after a butcher, hoping for a morsel but not truly expecting one. They eventually left him alone and published their stories anyway, either fabricating quotes or allowing local town folk to piece his story together for them.
No matter which direction he left the hospice, his meandering always brought him to the park, which held swings and monkey bars and roundabouts. He’d watch at the fence shyly, listening to the children’s laughter and giggling at the jokes he overheard about Van der Merwe, the Englishman and the Irishman. When the children were all called home for supper or homework and the playground sat empty, he would walk through it and touch things. The swings would still be moving, losing their inertia slowly, the roundabout would click to a stop as he got to it and the monkey bars had mud and ice cream handprints. It was in the decaying light that he would try to lift himself up on the monkey bars, or swing as high as a rooftop, but his body just wouldn’t listen to any of his commands. He tired too easily and would have to lower himself to catch his breath onto a half-buried tire the other children hopped on.
It was on one of these evenings that another boy was walking home alone, lost in his own thoughts, when he came to the playground and paused. There was that old man who everyone said was really a boy sitting on one of the swings and trying to push himself into the air. His feet scrabbled ineffectually at the sand and he could not launch himself forwards. The boy watched him quizzically for a few minutes before whining the gate open on its reluctant hinges and going to stand before the old man, who stiffened when he noticed him.
‘I’ll give you a push,’ was all he said before walking around the swing set. Suddenly the young boy felt himself getting pulled backwards, the ground sinking slowly beneath him. He gripped the chains tightly with his hands so that the knuckles bulged largely, and then suddenly he was hastening toward the ground before being swung into the sky, the horizon dropping below his feet as they raced towards the clouds. He came to a brief standstill before charging backwards at such a speed his belly was left a few feet in front of him. Everything seemed to rewind quickly before he was back at the beginning and young hands pushed him gently forward once more. He whooped and shouted and laughed, arcing back and forth like the pendulum in a grandfather clock.
And then there were no hands at his back, and his next ascent was not quite as rapid, did not shoot him into the stratosphere. His cries died down and he eventually swung to a gentle creaking, like a dull wind chime on a still day. He did not leave the swing for many hours, returning to his drab room when the night was strong and deep, ignoring the admonishments of the nurse. He had, for a few minutes, gone back to those days he felt he’d just left behind but would never discover again.

Saturday mornings were his favourite. He woke at a time familiar only to fishermen and Christmas morning children. He put on his brown tweed trousers and wished for some shorts, yearning to run barefoot as he put on his leather shoes but knowing his feet were too soft and fragile. He shivered as the sunlight flew horizontal to the earth, only touching the trees overhead, before it came in to land as its trajectory changed. On these days there was already the rumour of children, giggling and running. He heard small feet slapping somewhere to his right. A sinker dropped somewhere down the road rolled into his shoe. Bits of shirt sat like flotsam where thorns had grabbed at them greedily. Glistening mango pips littered the dirt path. And then he was at the river and watching the children, his dowdy clothing hiding him easily as he looked upon their kaleidoscope morning.
Boys ferreted like hadeedas in the dirt, searching with blunted fingers for worms or crickets which they skewered on hooks and cast into the water. They sat tensed for the strike of a fish and yelled insults at the girls nearby who were checking hopefully for sleeping visitors to their handmade fairy houses, finding none and replacing the dry bedding with freshly peeled moss.
The children made forts and threw sand clogs at each other. They pretended to be pirates searching for treasure, scurrying up trees to crow’s nests to spot new land beyond the water. They jumped into the river and played Marco Polo and Torpedo and Sharkey-Sharkey. They lay baking in the sun on the grass and swapped stories and boasts and apples. And everything they did was watched by the drab boy hidden in his geriatric suit, taking part in his mind and remembering clearly when his weekends looked just like this. He decided it would again, just one last time.

There was one tree which was never without a visitor in its branches. It sat in the middle of the park, which was on a hill and looked out over the entire town, just to the side of the playground, and it was wise and old. During the day children dangled from it like drops of resin and when the sun sank there was always a young couple which climbed it giggling and held hands and kissed as they watched the moon rise and the lights of the town flicker on one by one. And this day was no different.
A boy altered but much the same climbed the biscuit brown branches early in the evening just as the shadows slowly crept behind him, after the children had carelessly swung through it like vervet monkeys and before the couples would come, still applying makeup and deodorant and gazing into doppelganger mirrors. He wheezed his way to the top little by little, painfully, and making it saw again the view from the last tree he’d climbed over half a century ago, breathed in a high wind and sent his laughter away over the town to mingle in the hills and high places beyond, pleased that some things stayed the same. He searched a nest and allowed a sparrow to land on his hand. He saw a young girl scurrying home and threw an apple at her, laughing at her shriek of fright as it bounced into her legs. He stayed up there for sixty years worth of sights and scents and sounds.
And as the shadows reached his eyes he dropped casually out the tree, as the other children dropped with confidence into the river from rope swings on sticky days. The last thing he saw as the wind rushed past his ears was a red kite high in the sky, ignited in the fading sunlight, grappling with thermals and shouting joyously to him, ‘Die young! Die young!’

Anathallo is the most incredible band

As proof, visit this site and play the preview track, "The River". Then change your undies.

Let's redefine what it means to heal

Accidents littered our roads every day. Sometimes I wondered when it would be my turn to lie inert on the side of the road, haloed in shattered glass, my crumpled car a warning to others. Your grandmother and I were young and very much in love. We didn’t pay enough attention to the road. Her hand was always on mine, or resting on my leg, and we’d talk and laugh and sing together, far from worry. One day, driving back from the beach together, we passed an accident scene. The road was clogged up, all but one lane closed. Ambulances and police vehicles sat silently observing the scene, their lights flashing. We passed the ruined vehicles and saw a child not more than ten years old lying dead on the road. His body was crushed, his blood thick on the road. He was covered with a blanket as we drove on. There was a profound, devastated silence after that. When we got home, we promised each other never to look at accidents again. When we saw the siren lights spinning blue and red we would not heed their call. We would stare ahead with steely eyes.

It was a few days later. I was driving home after a long day, your mother in the baby seat. The traffic was slow and before long those familiar lights came into view. I remembered my promise and kept my eyes far from the carnage. I drove on and arrived home to an empty house. There was no note on the fridge. I tried your grandmother’s cell phone but it was dead. You mother was screaming in my arms, and there was nothing I could do to calm her. I never heard your grandmother’s voice again. It was she who’d had an accident. A truck driver had changed lanes without seeing her little car. She’d spun, and the car behind her hit her on the driver’s side. The medics say that they could not get her out of the car for twenty minutes. All the while she was calling my name. I wonder if she saw me as I drove past, right before she went away. There isn’t a moment that goes by that I don’t think about her, that I don’t rush to the side of her car, take her hands and whisper in her ear for her to stay.

The Last Cartographer

When not found shaping wood and tin to fantastic creations, John Walker, his body 81 years old, his mind dwelling somewhere in childhood, could be found poring over the ancient maps in his study. They calmed him. They gave him a sense of timelessness when all around him rushed forward in eager expectation of tomorrow. John was more content to look back, to cast his gaze over his own life and beyond over that of his father, and his father’s father, back to times when the world was flat and maps grew as milk spilling on the floor, horizons stretching and forming under each new sweep of the spyglass from gull-haloed ships. Back then there was adventure in every whiff of the sea breeze, new people to discover, new creatures and plants too vivid and outlandish to be birthed from a mere man’s imagination. And just below the water, lurking on the edge of the tide, waited mermen, toothed creatures, giant squid and ghost crews from ships long sunk. They were all there, waiting for the unwary sailor to slip from his rigging and into the deep.

It was the mapmakers who were the true explorers, great men whose names now engraved maps which many saw as naïve trinkets, blessed with the knowledge of GPS and geography text books. Chronological arrogance appalled John, who saw these men as the last true adventurers the world has seen. They were men born with great names and who lived up to them. He thought back to his own grandfather, a bear of a man with an easy laugh and a story for every empty evening. John would sit transfixed for hours, his grandfather’s voice washing over him like warm water from a jug when his mother cleaned his hair in the tub. Together on these balmy nights on the veranda, they visited the orient in times of sheiks, camels and veiled beauties. They ate dates and rode horses and came to desert fortresses where they rescued girls like desert flowers from scimitar-guarded harems. They sailed frigates over the edges of frayed old maps, tantalisingly close to the maws of monsters and the lascivious smiles of naked mermaids. They monkeyed into countless crow’s nests and called ‘Land ho!’ sighting islands never before seen by blue eyes. They joined the scallywag crews of dubiously honourable pirates to liberate fair maidens abducted by fierce pygmies. They drank from coconuts. They fell parched upon oases. They walked through spice markets as the first white men. They duelled scarred foes. They fell in love. They dusted the desert from their hands. They walked with nomads. They huddled under thin blankets in Himalayan snows. They trod before train tracks in deepest Africa and swam in the Ganges. They bartered for ivory and ran dodging poisoned darts. Adventure seeped deeply into the evenings from the well of his grandfather’s memory, his voice gravel and whiskey and gun powder, flick knives and stubble and leather.

The new maps, laser-printed and perfect, intelligent thanks to inherited knowledge from atlases grown senile, were things of great concern to John. Their precision had robbed them of all the qualities he felt maps needed to possess; adventure, a tingling in the belly, a taste that treasure was to be found, the worry of dangerous natives and places named for skulls and treachery and monsoon wrecks. There were no more hidden places, no strange animal cries to chill the soul quivering next to a camp fire, no lurking traps. All the blanks had been filled, all the adventure had been used up. Satellites flitted through the sky like whispers from a knowing mouth, sending, receiving, spying, telling. Great mysteries, which once afforded the dreamers nights of fancy, planning trips to dusty places that knew only the hooves of donkeys, were now shaken and lost like the cobwebs they brushed off their Stetsons in forbidden caves. Where once devils and mischievous winds prowled on the edges of maps, now sat oceans bleak and empty. The old explorers, great men now rendered obsolete, turned to drink and told their yellowing tales to anyone who would listen. What had become of myth? Were the times of antiquity to slide beyond consciousness? Were heroic deeds, pursued in order to achieve some kind of immortality, to be murdered and replaced by the exploits of celebrity misdemeanour? John always had to channel his mind away from such dark thoughts, and he could quickly lose himself in the tiny lives waging their war against time in the worn out pages he so minutely examined.

In the still, golden, dust-sweet air of his study, John would fall headfirst through time and disappear completely. He flew amongst the hanging gardens in Babylon, he sailed beneath the Colossus of Rhodes, he heard reading lips moving, the sound of learning, in the library at Alexandria. If he flipped a map sideways mountain ranges leapt above him, biting hot desert sand stung his eyes and arctic winds shivered him. He slashed through jungles with a machete on treasure maps that were treasures in themselves and slapped at giant mosquitoes which whirred about him arrogantly.

He visited the desert in North Africa and cried as he remembered the violence of the tanks he fought in, of the shifting landscape, of the taste of acrid smoke on his tongue, of the naked fear of death, of friends falling inert in the sand. He thought of the sand dunes that could have built up over each dead soldier, a fitting tombstone for those who lost their lives in a place no one would remember or could recognise upon returning. Sand dunes were in fact the only enemies of the exactitude of the modern map, shifting quickly, continental drift in a matter of days, weeks, months, years, the wind a shaping force creative and demented and inexplicable.

John could not be roused from these trips he embarked upon at the scrutiny of every map. He was lost to creaking vessels, to the backs of elephants, to the chatter of Pidgin English. He rode magic carpets behind fakirs, joined the caravans of Arabs and ran his fingers over cave paintings. And it was with this knowledge of bygone eras, of voyages to unknown places, of the scent of oil-polished leather, that he started to draw his own maps of places without fast food restaurants, without the treads of running shoes, without the click and whir of a tourist’s camera. And so John Walker, with a steady hand and a vacuum in his belly, thrust his pen back in time and drew history up again, gave it a sip of water from the highest, purest source and set it scampering about its task of setting young boys’ minds on fire once again, to cobweb televisions and movie theatres, to breathe new life into a world gone stale and cynical.

And his pile of maps grew.

The vibe!

Okay, I apologise for not updating and for leaving the story on a cliffhanger - trust me, I really wanna know what's written in those letters! However, this little story has changed from a writing exercise into something bigger I want to work on. So I've been getting my brain-meats sizzling and will continue to let them brown for a little while until the basic structure of the story fleshes out in my head. As soon as I start writing more I'll start posting! Thanks for the support and kind words! In the meantime, I'll put up other little ditties as I write them.

By the way, go check out Polony Mixed Meat Magazine if you like satire, comics, music, meat products, skants, hairy underarms, green juice, mayonnaise, fish curries and/or lowbrow humour.

Stay cool

Just moments before the meteor struck

Visual representations

My friend Steve recently used my story as the basis for a series of illustrations. You can see his other work on his flickr account. Here they are in all their splendour!

Happy spring, everyone

I'll update my story soon. In the meantime, here is something I pulled off a dusty shelf. It's how Greta makes me feel. Have a wonderful trip my love, I'll miss you.

On certain days he would arrive breathless at the gates of his grandparent’s house, skin like lava and mud caking his legs where it had splashed up from puddles. He’d scale the gates with ease and head inside to give his grandmother a quick peck on the cheek before raiding the pantry for some ginger biscuits and shooting into the sunlight once more. He’d ease along the cool passageways created by arches strangled by vines and creepers all a flower to sit on the edge of the slate pond that held the goldfish. Sleek and plump and gulping, they’d crowd to the surface when they saw him, gasping at the surface as if drowning, desperate for a crumb of bread from the crusts he kept in his pockets. Mottled orange, speckled white, golden sunset, peach fuzz, lemon cream skies, each fish its own pigmented fingerprint gliding about with the merest mention of movement from a casual tailfin, hanging suspended for seconds or hours as if on invisible hummingbird wings. The fish would scatter to the far corners of the pond as he plunged his hand into the water, rubbing it against the green-slimed walls to chase the tadpoles which swam like little black holes trailing tails of inky darkness.
From the pond he’d sprint over the mossy slate pathways into the dell, to dive through hedges of smouldering azalea and green banks of feathered fern, pausing only to eat the sour-sweet pink petals of the scattered wax begonias which always made his cheeks squirm but left him aching for more. He raced to the orange grove and remembered when his brother used to play orange wars with him before he met that girl and became serious, how they would find fallen, rotten fruit, carroty as a British tourist with a spray-on tan on one side, grey-green with mould on the other. The moss-covered, baby-elephant sized rocks that littered the grove like fallen fruit from a forgotten time provided perfect cover to hunt and dive away and hide.
The grove would shoot him around the edge of the tennis court, cracked like a thirsty drought-blighted land, and his feet would crunch over fallen pecan nuts, a lottery of rotten or tasty nuts easily cracked against each other in his palm. Then to the sun dial, once bronze but now covered in a stubborn green film, something mystic and ancient brought there from an antique land now only charted in dust encrusted history books bound in leather and sitting on shelves belonging to equally shabby explorers whiling away their paling days in the memory of donkey-paths and bare-breasted natives, musket-fire and creatures never before seen by a white man.
All his speed and scuffling would be forgotten as he came upon the workshop, a living, breathing place nestled in its helmet of indecisively pink, white and burgundy bougainvillea. Through the eyes of the twin grimy windows could be seen sparks from monstrous machines, making it seem like his grandfather had captured an angry storm cloud and was bending its energy to fulfil his stern will. Dust would laze heavily in the air outside, escaped through the workshop’s exhalations, the workshop a creature more alive than a thousand vivid stories, echoing more noise than a thousand summer cicadas on a thousand scorching days. He would stand in the open door of the workshop watching his grandfather work oblivious to his presence, the only thing existing to him the warm-sawn wood being shaped by one of a million but unique tools, all lathes and planes and hammers and screwdrivers, each used and useful, each known intimately by callused hands with nimble fingers. He would bend over a bench, adding a fine and minute touch to something, a slight whorl or nick, his machines, many-legged with spiders and centipedes, all gathered around him like Dr Moreau’s creatures straining for a better look. The machines sat steaming and radiating like light green toads in a sudden summer shower, smug from labour and the fine things they helped create. The boy’s eyes would swarm over the racks of odd tools, foreign things he couldn’t fathom until his grandfather would reach for one without looking, and finding it in its right place would somehow use this odd object to perform some miraculously simple yet vital task.
At times like these, his grandfather did not look unlike one of the tools or machines he so warmly knew. Wiry and bent, sweating from the heat of the furnace in the corner, goggled and aproned, odd shapes jutting out his curved back, his knuckles swollen to marbles, his pale shock of hair wisping with every little breeze, like an aging wing obtained from some snow fowl in his travels too long ago wrestling with the air to take flight once more. This tower of a man now shrunken and gnarled, seemingly a poor caricature of the man he once was, until his gaze met yours or he laughed uproariously. Then his back would straighten, his hair darken and his wasted muscles bulge, and he’d once more resemble that proud stranger in the photos that littered the house, the man who wore strapping army uniforms, who cried holding a child in his arms, who held a strange wife the boy could barely recognise as his grandmother high in his arms (a grandmother of such beauty that all of spring would seem dull and drab when she went about the garden).
If he could take his eyes off the wonder of watching his grandfather create with such affection, he would gaze at the banks of toys that lined every flat surface. Companies of tin men, moustached and stern, glittered in proud uniforms red as a sunset fox, boots polished to the sheen of a drongo’s wing. Pirouetting ladies in delicate lavender skirts sat demurely wearing cheeks dimpled in bashfulness, their joints smooth and graceful and bellowing laughter and dance despite their static condition. Steam engines sat sleek and quick upon short iron tracks, bellies filled with fire and coal dust stinging the eyes. All these and more sat in droves, each the product of such attention and affection they must all have been known and named and whispered to in gentle ways when no one else was listening.
His grandfather turned and saw him, smiled with a wrinkle of two ancient eyes, and without a word beckoned him over. In his hands was a tin steamboat, with a gleaming red hull, black chimney and bright blue cabins. It was still warm, and the boy held it as his grandfather applied the last brushstroke of paint to brown the deck wooden. He blew on it gently before taking it and setting in down on a stand for it to dry overnight.
‘Let’s see about some tea, my boy.’ He wiped his hands on his apron and ruffled his grandson’s hair before ushering him towards the door. Just before he swung the door closed, he pressed an innocuous little button, and somewhere in the workshop a little timer started counting the seconds, minutes, hours in patient little clicks.

The workshop sat quietly in the twilight. The furnace was snugly warm, enjoying its rest after a long day inhaling wood and exhaling heat and smoke fine as wisps of cloud. The smell of sawdust and fresh, hot tin was heavy on the air, and drying glue pooled like honey sucked of colour on heavy countertops. Tins of paint crowded together like a stunted rainbow, spilling some of their secrets in impossibly slow rivulets along the floor; emerald green whispered softly of forests where no man ventured, populated by fairies and unicorns and splendid magic; crimson and orange hinted that somewhere a phoenix might rise again from sombre ashes; cornflower yellow reminded the gloom that summer hair was joyous and beautiful and smelled of fresh lemons. The silence was pregnant and expectant, like the pause between a lightning strike and its resonant thunder when the air is torn like a grey sheet. A little pile of dust suddenly gusted to the air. There was a scurrying without any real audible or visible proof, just the knowledge that with each passing second, not everything was exactly where it had been a moment before. There was a slight shifting. Mouse-breaths stirred the air and a single ash rebelled briefly against gravity before landing on a desert table, shattering in a slow, crumbling motion, like a cluster of cells suddenly intent upon mitosis. There shuffled hidden feet just on the edge of hearing, a small army walking silently on gentle soles and arches with a deep knowledge of all that is quiet; the quiet of a gust of wind dusting dandelion heads of their sugar-white burden; the quiet of a graveyard respecting years of grief; the quiet of wings in flight, so high as to not exist. Soon, the maybe-sounds became audible and brushed against straining eardrums that quivered with the pleasure of fulfilment. Cupboards scratched as if boiling with weevils and drawers rattled like teeth in a skeletal jaw. Hushed whispers called out to each other in a timid gusting too shy to disturb the pyramids of dust in the corners of the room. Little tracks appeared where none had been before, like hieroglyphics carved in sandstone and prone to be changed and channelled and gouged even with the gentlest ministrations of a breeze. It was as if the air had grown hands fond of shaping and pinched the fine carpet of sawdust, prodding it to the shape of little feet and strange paws. Whatever tread so timorously did so like a somnambulant shadow, dreams manifested in a silent wandering.
The brushstroke concussions grew braver and the whisperings surrounded the room. Stifled giggles gave way to rowdy laughter and pitter-patterings from tiny feet fell like metallic rain. The clicking noise in the background suddenly stopped, giving way to the lifting and scratching of a gramophone. Speakers popped and cleared their throats. A new noise jostled the dust for space in the dry, warm air, and the giggling and excited whispers increased. Something beautiful was happening. Violins appeared and poured out their hearts like golden syrup thick on young taste buds. Hesitant cellos found their tongues and provided a sonorous background for the sawing violins to rest upon. A piano gently percussed to the rhythm of falling rain, now fast, now slow, now bold, now shy. A kettle drum thought of clouds colliding as a snare dropped a proud collection of marbles scattering to a wooden floor. The scratching and rustling of the cupboards gave birth to creakings and slidings, and little heads poked out and looked around. Long shadows cast simple maps to toes that edged around corners and became fluent in motion. Wooden limbs clattered onto and over tables and benches, and metal appendages thudded dully behind them. Wooden men with forever smiles stiffly knelt in front of shapely women, with equally eternal expressions of mock shyness. The painted grins were no less real for their inability to express anything else; delight was heavy on the air. Red uniforms glowed with pride as loving creations paired off and entered into an embrace of motion and swirling and laughter. Those not yet finished, without eyes or a limb, were guided by loving hands and snickered nervously at the marvels unseen but felt, or a clumsy step tutted with a smile by a partner. Dust was kicked up into the air to drift like a pale snow, and the footprints were of a running and dashing and moving and swaying. Inflexible hips moved just the same, as legs clutched soaring notes and allowed themselves to be led as the music so dictated, as if guided by invisible strings. There was not a sad face amongst them, not a frown or a grimace, and minor chords were coy as a young girl holding her skirts, ripe with beauty, declaring feelings long hidden to a restless boy. The music swelled and burst glittering with each fresh quaver. The incomplete toys that stumbled and laughed, foretold a future of firecrackers and puppies owned by naughty boys, though for now they were works in progress, art not signed. The dancing in the workshop was without burden, without explanation and without fear. It was freedom given motion, joy given an outlet, life given limbs of wood and joints of steel. They danced in perfect rhythm, though each experimented with foxtrots and waltzes, rumba and salsa, tango and bop.
How the xylophone tinged and pinged! How the laughter leapt on the air and rode it like a current! Each couple clung like sticky centrifuges and lips no balm could soften brushed each other, led unbidden to meet by the music as it roved around the room like thermals drifting and falling. The scattered steam trains blew jets of smoke and shrieked their whistles raucously in an aural elbowing as their tin soldier friends spun their partners like dervishes. Two ladies watching the dancing from a distance curtseyed before the steam ship, introducing themselves with a giggle before scattering behind a paint tin, like schoolgirls teasing each other about the new boy in class.
As suddenly as it had started, the music reached a crescendo and fell silent. Breathless bodies bowed stiffly and kissed proffered hands, and two by two the toys retired to cupboards, draws, shadowed grottos where for the eternity of daylight they could hold each other in a touch only couples long in love can understand. There they would wait once more for the music.
There was always sawdust in the air.

//////// End

A gentle pause

Grandfathers aren't just workshops and war stories and wise fingers. Grandmothers aren't the sum of spectacles and roast potatoes and talcum powder. They are spring wrapped in autumn and winter, grass clippings and young blooms stuck away in rotting Hessian bags or pressed flowers hidden on dusty shelves between the pages of crumbling tomes. They are men like yesterday’s news, women like stale teacakes. They were young and foolish once too – still are – frivolous in ribbons and trapped in the accumulated prune skins of age. They were us once. They still are.