22/1/13

The hill is steep and I’m tired, it’s late and all I want is to go home, to watch TV, to eat from the fridge and sleep till twelve the next day. It stands there like a dark green menace, smug and waiting for my clambering feet to climb it and then give up, for it to win... Well, she’s already half way up now and I’m at the bottom alone and cold cause it is nearly February. Does she not know that? She runs around all the time with her skirt flapping and no coat or scarf or gloves and hat on, as if she’s invincible. Or smug, smug like the hill I can’t climb. Smug cause I can’t climb a hill and I get cold. Well, I’ll show them both...

She’s at the top and calling down to me “Jack! Jack! Hurry, its b-e-a-utiful! Oh, I’ve never seen stars like these from up here, I could just grab one and put in my pocket!” What a child... She doesn't read either, not that I really do, sometimes I just pretend and show off in English cause i’m the only one bothered to read Wikipedia as if my life depended on it... Sometimes I don’t know why she’s my friend, Mother says I’m above her. That she’s a distraction, that all she wants to do is get smashed and kiss boys and in the morning gorge her little fat face out and say she’s going to learn how to cook and camp properly, like the experts on TV. I should study, she says, study hard and read more, more more more, that’s the key.

“Jill, well, that girl is raised as if she were a wolf. Wild and rabid and eating raw meat if she could! Ha! I bet she’s never even left the country.” Sometimes I don’t want to leave the country, but I do anyways.

It’s muddy and I slip and get dirt all over my clean and ironed shirt, so I call out that I’m taking a rest, so I do. I look out over the country and the town. I can make out landmarks, the church, the library, the schools and resource centres. I think I can see my house but i’m not sure, it might be a bit hidden behind the school. I can make out Jill’s house, out there alone in the country with its farm. That’s another reason Mother doesn’t like Jill, her family are farmers. My family are all important people she tells me. So important that they don’t have time to meet the farmers, too busy... I’ve met the farmers, they’re perfectly nice, charming and warm and they chuckle, all of them, deep and throaty chuckles, the best type of chuckling... That was when I was little and since then I’ve always reminded myself to chuckle, not giggle like my parents. They hate chuckles, say chuckles take too long, “a quick giggle is all that can be condoned.”

I get up and start again up the hill, slipping and cursing loudly into the darkness. Three-quarters of the way up. I can hear Jill shouting out and tracing star patterns with her fingers. Do I have homework for tomorrow? It’ll be too late by the time I get home anyways.

I get there and there she is, lying in mud, her skirt pulled up high and her eyes wide looking up at the stars, so I lie down next to her and look up, and...well, she was right, these are the best stars I’ve ever seen. So many that I’ve seen before and all of these new ones, scattered across like jacks. Christ, why does she always have to be right? She doesn’t deserve it...

31/10/12

“Each one of us has a designed and set place and purpose in the universe and it is up to us to decide whether we accept this as undisputed fact, or rebel against and decide our own duty, our ultimate our personal duty.” I sat speechless staring at him, loving him and watching his lips move to form each marvellous and angelic syllable. He smirked that little wild smirk that every person has down inside of themselves and said “Ah, shit man, don’t be leaving me hangin’, c’mon, what d’ya say about that?” “It’s brilliant” I said and I knew that I loved him and I knew that he could also love me and he knew that too and we loved each other momentarily. So we stayed up all night staring at each other on his bed with our backs up straight and hands folded on our laps and breathed deep and slow and talked about everything and everyone, childhood, lovers, the people I loved and admired like my Grandfather and for him that one teacher and all the music I love and films and books and writers, and he did the same and he confessed (when I asked) that he’d never really read until he had had me and realised all the wonders reading could do to a man and his soul. I really was touched and he said that on the day we met he went straight to a bookstore and bought a copy of Ulysses and The Sea-Wolf. “Gawd, I read one page of Ulysses and went back and exchanged it for the first book I saw East of Eden.” I told him that both of these books had been favourites of mine when I was a kid and still were. “How did you like them?” “Well, I read them cover to cover to cover no problamo and I did not care for them, not one little bit.” “But the Timshel in Steinbeck and the Nietzsche in London are perfect for you! You went on about them near enough just then!” “I know I know and I appreciate their help to the depths of my soul I do, but they were just straight reads. I didn’t need to reread anything. I need a challenge, to be stimulated, ya know?” I told him to try Ulysses again – “Not that stimulated!” So I gave him my copy of Naked Lunch and The Wasteland, he thanked me and I kissed him on the cheek and wished him good morning and left him and went for the door quick. 

26/11/12

The pizza takeaway used to be a fire station when the town was alive and important. Since then, some sixty seventy years it has been a bakery and a restaurant and now a takeaway with the grease half an inch thick next to the fryer and the side walls panelled with horizontal boards of wood. The oven burned wood straight, ash and willow mainly, and unless the door was wide open and the fan on the room soon filled up with smoke and it clung to your clothes and the whole building smelt of wood smoke and sweat. Opposite was a bank and a paper shop where I bought my first pack of cigarettes the day after my eighteenth birthday but I wasn’t ID’d. When it rained heavily in the winter the drains would overflow and we would get brown water sloshing up onto our doorstep which would make mopping the place at the end of the day hell and all of the customers would be miserable and short.

                It was owned by a Vietnamese man called Scott Lee who also owned the local Chinese restaurant and the separate Chinese takeaway and chip shop. He was short and stocky with fat fingers and small eyes and black thin hair that pointed straight up in the widows peak. He was smarter than he knew and knew a lot about a lot of things but man did he bullshit about a lot of things such as knowing a whole list of celebrities. He had been in Britain since he was eight when he, his sisters and his parents emigrated to Birmingham but he left there in the nineties ‘cause he got sick of the triad. He was active and loved cycling but was also a bit of a wimp and got really cold in the winter and so would sit around doing nothing in a coat and fleece and fingerless gloves that made him look like a Chinese scholar who should own a antiques store. When this happened he got the deputy chef to do all the work.

                The deputy chef was called Adam and he was a year older than me. He was both a pot smoker and dealer and would often take hour long breaks to run to his car to tend to a client. He was good with numbers and was able to pick up tasks quite quickly but was not very bright otherwise, for example he thought that the Queen was still the head of the government. I try not to judge him too badly. He was my height with a very square head and thick black stubbly hair and bad acne and constantly washed his hands. He had also worked in the chip shop next door where, like here, he did little other than sit around on his phone and eating what he made.

                There were often very few customers so I would usually just take a book and pass the time that way, reading roughly around fifty to sixty pages during my five hour shift. Consequently around a third of my books smell of smoke and many have little stains from tomato sauce of pizza grease. My favourite times were when people recognised the book I was reading and start a conversation about the book or the author and they would look at me all impressed because I know such trivial facts about the book or the author such as that Jack Kerouac was reported to have written On The Road while taking loads of Benzedrine but actually relied mostly on coffee, the Benny thing was just an urban myth. It impressed a lot of people.    

11/11/12

The village and its church lay at the bottom of the hill, which was steep, and so the parade must go slowly or else the elderly could not keep up. Everything was wet from the rain of the night before, the grass was soggy and the stone damp and mist hung in the air which made our sheet music in the band go soggy and limp. It was far warmer than people had expected from early November. The normal uniform of heavy coasts and two scarves, gloves and four layers proved impractical for the day. You could see the warmth from the marchers faces when the parade had finished, the British Legion looked pale and faint and wheezing, the various cadets had sweat on their brow and the kiddies in the St. Johns Ambulance were red faced and panting with wide open mouths like tired little dogs.

                The vicar was a woman and was short and stocky. She wore a dark hooded cloak over her shoulders, but this was removed when the service moved into the church and she wore her usual white robe. The church was small and so the many people who had attended the service were crammed onto the pews, including my weak and frail grandparents and many had to stand. We in the band had to sit to the side usually appointed for children to read books and play with quiet toys and puzzles during services and for the twenty-two of us it was far too cramped and our playing showed our dislike of the position.

                The vicar, ten minutes into the service, took to the pulpit and began her sermon for Remembrance Sunday. She fiddled with the microphone, somewhat confused with the instrument, and cleared her throat:

                “We are gathered here today to mourn the tragedy of war. Our brothers, sisters, sons and daughters, fathers and mothers and grandparents have all suffered from war, as have many among us here today. They sacrificed their youth and often their lives for their nation, out of courage, out of loyalty and patriotism, and, most importantly, out of love of God.”

                Half of the band sighed and I smirked, only to be scowled at by the conductor. It amused me how many of the band were like me and saw no link between respect for the dead of war and the Church. The assumption that the vicar had made was ridiculous, even my grandparents were wide eyed with shaking heads.

                “As many of the sins we fall for come from materialism, consumption and greed, so does war. Possibly the greatest of sins, war is a beast. It takes what does belong to it and gives nothing back but more sin, more greed and death, misery and grief. War is exactly what our Lord God stands against; the mistakes that we, as mortal beings, make must atoned for before the Lord so as he can forgive us. For, without His forgiveness, what else can we take from war?”

                Ten minutes of similar drivel was spoken, condemning humanity for brutality and acting wrongly before she left us to mull the whole philosophy over. When I left the church I saw two of the British Legion members talking to current serving soldiers. They smiled and laughed, shook hands and patted each others shoulders, the old and the new. I overheard a bit of the conversation –

                “Sometimes I worry about my soul. But in Helmand you don’t really have enough time to think about it too deeply, you just get over it and deal with it later.”

                “Yes, indeed, when I was in France during The War I killed a man, a German obviously. But I didn’t worry about my soul and still don’t now because I didn’t actually kill a man, I killed the enemy and that was my job and that was that.”