Monthly Archives: July 2023

Flame

Leave a reply

Marylebone Platform 2: Connection

Meet on the concourse beside the flower stall. Midday. He’d been very specific about it which was unusual; they typically met at Marylebone anyway and just found each other under the departure boards. Five dates now, six if you counted when they met, and the station was equally convenient for both of them. Bakerloo from Willesden for her, mainline from the Chilterns for him. Jane thought that he quite liked the romance of meeting at a station as well, the second time they had met there he’d enthused about its Edwardian architecture and would have possibly still been talking about Neo-Baroque features now if she hadn’t interrupted and suggested they get a drink. She hadn’t found it dull, she liked that he was passionate about something, but she had always found the people at stations more interesting than the buildings. In transit, intersecting briefly, thousands of stories to imagine.

Jane was slightly late and took the escalator two steps at a time, the posters on the adjoining walls passing in her periphery. Jersey Boys. Multivitamins. Clinique. The Mamma Mia movie. Mental note to not see that. eHarmony. Mamma Mia again. Her phone vibrated in the back pocket of her jeans, it would be Paul wondering where she was. She slowed for the final few steps, partly to navigate the end of the escalator and partly as she didn’t want to arrive flushed and out of breath. Date five felt like it might be the time to be flushed and out of breath but at the end of it, not the start. They’d kissed last time, briefly, he’d been rushing for the last train, and it was evidently an audition they had both passed as here they were.

Paul stood, as arranged, in front of the flower stall. White shirt, blue jeans, he’d had a hair cut since last time and Jane was relieved that he’d abandoned the fringe that he’d kept running his fingers through for something closer cropped. He smiled as she approached.

“Sorry I’m a bit late. Tube was busy, seemed like everyone was trying to get out of Willesden today.”

“I can’t imagine why,” Paul replied with a smile. “Don’t worry about it, I’ve only just got here anyway.” He took a step towards her and leaned in to awkwardly kiss her on the cheek. “Hello, you”.

Jane looked up at him, saw that he hadn’t moved away. She wasn’t sure if it was in hope, expectation, or if he had committed to a pre-rehearsed greeting that hadn’t quite gone to plan and was now stuck in no-man’s-land, wanting the ground to swallow him up. She put him out of his misery.

“Hey, you. I think we’re a bit past that now, don’t you think?” She leaned up and kissed him on the mouth, closed her eyes and took in the scent of his aftershave. One of the CK ones, maybe One, she wasn’t sure and was having a hard time concentrating on anything other than keeping her balance as she was up on her tiptoes and whilst he seemed to be enjoying the kiss it hadn’t extended to him putting his arms around her. She sank back on to her heels and pulled away. “Hello. I should’ve worn heels.”

“Sorry,” he said.

“Don’t be. Just, next time, you are allowed to touch me. Even if it’s just to stop me falling on my face. It’s not a Jane Austen novel.”

“Makes sense and, er…,”  he tailed off. “I was going to say something clever about sense and sensibility but it got away from me.”

“Points for trying,” said Jane. “Pride and Prejudice is the one people usually know so I’m mildly impressed that you didn’t go for the obvious.”

“It was on TV earlier this year,” he said with a grin. “BBC. I watched the first episode but it wasn’t for me. Someone twisted an ankle, that seemed to be as dramatic as it got.”

“The drama is in the relationships. What’s said, what’s unsaid. It’s a delicate dance of manners and protocol. I should warn you that I really like that stuff so you might want to change the subject if you’re about to reveal that you thought Pride and Prejudice would be better if it was called Pride and Extreme Prejudice. Some action movie about a former Marine who did jobs for the downtrodden and wronged, killing his enemies with excessive force and pithy one liners.” 

“That sounds pretty good. Too similar to the A Team but Hollywood doesn’t have a problem with reusing old IP so you could be on to something.” He was laughing and raised his hands, palms up. “Don’t worry. I’m joking. Half joking at least. My cultural bandwidth takes in a range of frequencies. I am not a total meathead.” 

“Cultural bandwidth?”, said Jane, eyebrow raised. “Has someone been reading the Saturday Guardian supplements?”

“Perhaps I just have hidden depths,” replied Paul. “Still waters and all that. Anyway, now that you’re here and we’ve established your love of formal courtship rituals…”

“I didn’t quite say that…”

“Close enough. Now that we’ve established all that. What’s your favourite flower?” He gestured at the stall behind him, a blaze of colours popping like a firework display, frozen in place. “I don’t know anything at all about flowers so I thought I should consult you before I bought you something.”

Jane walked up to the stall and smiled at the woman behind the counter, gave a gentle shrug to acknowledge that she seemed to have heard most of their exchange. There was a large bank of peonies,  pinky white, in the middle of the stall surrounded by, variously, lilies, some red roses, burnt orange tulips, and several taller stems she didn’t recognise. Gladioli maybe. Had she been the heroine in an Austen novel then clearly she would have learned all of them after long afternoons flower arranging or practicing the piano whilst the gentlemen talked business and smoked cigars. She liked looking back at it but had no interest in being anyone’s accessory or adornment. 

“It’s a lovely thought, Paul, but let’s not get flowers now,” she said. “We’ll have to carry them round all day and they need to be in water. You know that much, right?”

“That’s about the extent of my knowledge,” he said. “You sure? This was my whole plan to impress you at the start.”

“I’m sure.” She saw him waiting for something else. “And, okay, I’m mildly impressed and noting that this is the second time on this date that I’ve been mildly impressed.”

“There’s got to be some kind of multiplier on it. Two lots of mildly impressed equals quite impressed?”

“Nope, just two lots of mildly impressed. Otherwise what incentive have you got to raise your game?”

“I see,” said Paul. “Okay then, we won’t get the flowers but for future reference, what would you have chosen?”

“Probably the tulips,” said Jane before pointing at them as she realised that he didn’t even seem to know which ones they were. “The orange ones. But, for future reference, they can come in many colours.”

“Confusing. I like the ones that are easy to remember. Sunflowers. Looks like the sun, is a flower. Easy.”

“Hidden depths, eh?,” laughed Jane.

They walked out of the station and made their way along towards the main road that cut right across the top of London, from the Westway through into the heart of the City. It was busy, cars concertinaed between traffic lights, stopping, starting; the occasional angry horn, electronic beeps from the pedestrian crossing. They crossed to the south side of the road and walked past some office buildings before Paul stopped them outside the Town Hall, by one of the stone lions, faced raised into the noon sunshine. A small group of people, dressed in suits or summer dresses, hats and fascinators, stood clustered on the stairs leading up to the entrance.

“Imagine getting married here,” said Paul. 

“It’s a little early for a proposal,” replied Jane. “You haven’t even bought me flowers yet. But I think you’re right about the venue, it’s great. Wonder what it’s like inside?”

“We could sneak in,” suggested Paul. “Join this wedding party and check it out.”

“I’m not really dressed for it,” said Jane. “I would definitely have worn heels if I’d known we were attending someone’s wedding. Come on, we should get out of their way.” Whilst they’d been talking a vintage double decker bus had pulled up and more guests, along with the groom and his immediate entourage, were alighting from the opening at the back. On the other side of the lights, further up the street, they could see a black cab adorned with ribbons. The guests had seen it too and quickly began to make their way into the hall.

“Last chance,” said Paul. “I’m sure I’ve read that they can’t legally stop you attending services in public spaces.”

“Legally, no,” said Jane. “But I’m not about to crash someone’s special day just to see what it’s like where Paul McCartney got married.”

“Really? Did he? Which time?”

“To Linda. He was local I think at the time although I’m not quite sure. He was definitely living with Jane Asher round here before that so I guess he must have stayed after they split up. It’s not that far to Abbey Road.”

“Paul and Jane,” said Paul. “What are the chances?”

“Given they’re pretty common names I’d say the chances are quite high,” said Jane. “Besides it didn’t end that well for Paul and Jane, you need to be looking out for your Linda if you’re after the love of your life.”

“I’d never be able to give up bacon,” said Paul.

“That wasn’t really my point,” said Jane, smiling. “Speaking of bacon we should get some food.”

They ate lunch in a small cafe on Marylebone High Street, chatting idly about work and plans for the rest of the summer. They stepped around it lightly, each of them hinting that there was enough space for the other in those plans but neither presuming that it would play out like that. After lunch she dragged him into Daunt Books, it was her favourite shop in London and she wanted to show him. Maybe she wanted to stress test those hidden depths a little too. She watched as he browsed the sports section, picking up various cricket biographies of people she didn’t know. Ian Botham. He sounded familiar. Otherwise she was stumped. She lost sight of him as she flicked through the latest Kate Atkinson which had been stacked on a table towards the front of the shop, a handwritten note of recommendation from one of the booksellers detailing its virtues. 

She saw him again paying for something at the counter and walked over to join him.

“I got you something,” he said, handing over a book, freshly placed in a canvas tote bag, emblazoned with the shop’s logo. She took it from him, said thank you, and slid the book out. It was a copy of Pride And Prejudice, a Penguin classics edition. “I was going to write something inside but you caught me too soon.”

“Tell me instead,” she said. “What were you going to write?”

“I hope not to lose your good opinion, for I suspect it would be lost forever,” he replied, smiling.

“How very Darcy of you,” she said, gently bowing her head in what she hoped was a mock approximation of Elizabethan courtesy and courtship. “You haven’t lost it yet.”

They mooched around Marylebone for the rest of the afternoon, she hooked her arm around his   and they wandered with no fixed destination in mind. He wanted to find John Lennon’s blue plaque but neither of them knew where it was and so they speculated, instead, on where he might have lived, where Paul and Jane lived, in some imagined, heady, swinging sixties version of the streets they were walking now. They stumbled into hidden mews, small, brown bricked Georgian houses, tightly packed in the midst of the city. A film crew had set up in one of them and they peered over barricades trying to catch a glimpse of someone famous, looked for hints of what they might be making. It’ll be something like Notting Hill, something that makes the rest of the world think that all of London is like this. As they were discussing the perspective that the rest of the world may or may not have on the capital city she pulled in a little closer to him.

“Maybe I should show you something a bit more real, then. Would you like to see Willesden?” In her head it had sounded more flirtatious, more casual. Out loud it was difficult to imbue Willesden with much by way of sexual intrigue or mystery. 

“I never thought I would say this but I would really love to see Willesden,” he said. “We’d better get a move on though, I don’t know what time all the trains back run.” It hung there a moment.

“You won’t be needing the trains back,” said Jane. “Not tonight at least.”

Next instalment in the series nobody is calling The Marylebone Six (as there are six platforms). Happier times for Paul and Jane. Apologies to Willesden but I did used to live there so it’s meant with a certain degree of affection…

This is another in the series to write 26,000 words for Great Ormond Street Hospital in July ’23. All donations, however small, welcome here.

Ashes

Leave a reply

Marylebone Platform 1: Arrival & Departure

The train slowed and stopped. Jane closed her eyes, hand resting on the bag on the seat next to her, listening as the driver announced that they were being held outside the station for a few minutes whilst he waited for a platform to clear. She had promised that she would do this for him. She had promised and she would fulfil that promise despite how it had all turned out. Despite the divorce, despite the deceit, despite the drift and damage of their separation. It was more than he deserved but she had long since concluded that she had been more than he deserved. She ran her hand across the top of the bag that contained the ashes of her dead ex-husband.

Paul had always loved cricket. Promise me, if I go first, promise me that you’ll scatter my ashes at Lord’s. That had been this thing she’d signed up to. All their other promises to each other had been peeled away over the years, exposed as empty, but she could still hold true to this one. She had never really understood the appeal, if she was honest. She’d even misunderstood when he’d first asked her, assuming he was looking for some kind of salvation and wanted to go to Lourdes. He’d laughed at her and asked why she thought he’d believe in all that musty old religious nonsense. She’d silently weighed pointing out that the MCC seemed to have more than its share of musty nonsense in its own rituals and uniforms and adherence to baffling, unwritten codes and principle, but had decided the resulting argument wasn’t worth it. He took all of that stuff very seriously and didn’t appreciate it when she poked fun at it. He hadn’t spoken to her for several hours that time he tried to explain field positions to her and she kept referring to silly point as what’s-the-point and suggested that it’d be more fun if the positions were more literal. People in the slips would have to wear slips, people at gully would have to be in a gully. She was about to explain how deep extra cover would work when he stormed out of the room shouting that she wasn’t taking it seriously.

She felt now that’d she’d indulged it more than she should. If she’d known how it would play out – which, in cricketing terms, was very much a rain-stopped-play conclusion – then she would’ve said no to more things. When they got married he’d arranged for wickets to be placed at either end of the aisle and all of the ushers were dressed in their best whites. She had half expected to arrive to see him waiting, padded up, bat in hand, as if she was going to send down a yorker, try to sneak one under him for a surprise dismissal. All the surprises were to come though. And they were all to come from him.

He had saved the rest of the cricket references for his speech. The importance of a long partnership at the crease, how she was a great catch, how he’d been bowled over, hit for six, that kind of thing. At the time she had enjoyed it, laughing along with the rest of their family and friends. It was genuine. He had loved her, she was sure that part was real. The opening partnership was strong and secure but it had been a shock how quickly their middle order had collapsed. 

The train moved forwards again, its initial lurch prompting Jane to open her eyes. She watched a departing train pass on the adjacent track, saw her face, translucent, appear momentarily in the glass as a reflection. She glanced at her phone, checked how she looked using the camera as a makeshift mirror. There were a couple of strands of grey hair that she made a mental note to sort out but, save some fine lines across her forehead, she thought time had been kind. Smiling she wondered if she’d left one of the filters on the camera and she was kidding herself but, after checking, was reassured that the face staring back at her wasn’t subject to any technological support or softening. Could pass for thirty two. Okay, maybe thirty five. Her real age didn’t bother her other than the sense that biology was going to eventually time her out of the thing that she’d always wanted from Paul; the thing that he had stubbornly resisted. Is it too late at forty one?

She left the train and strode, almost marched, down platform one as if she wanted to dispense with this final promise as quickly as possible. There were too many memories around Marylebone and she didn’t want to be blindsided by nostalgia, didn’t want to be reminded of the better parts of him, of them together. She was done with regret and just wanted it to be done. Lift a finger in the air, declare him out. It was busy on the station, there was a crowd milling around the departure boards waiting for platform confirmations and a steady ebb and flow from the mainline concourse through to the tube barriers. She didn’t pause. Paul had always loved this station; he’d stand and stare at the vaulted roof, sunlight streaming through the glass panels picking out the cherry red pillars until she’d pull at his arm, impatiently, and encourage him to move. They had met here but thinking about that served no purpose now. 

Outside the station it was quieter and she walked up past the small park in Dorset Square. She vaguely remembered that there might be a shorter route the other way, picking through backstreets, but she didn’t properly remember it and decided to take the main road. Wandering aimlessly around these streets was another thing they had done together. Back then she could afford to get lost with him, now she was on her own and knew exactly where she wanted to go. The traffic noise rose from a low, intermittent thrum to a constant pulse as she turned left onto Gloucester Place. Black cabs passed on both sides of the street and she momentarily considered flagging one down to save time. She checked her phone again. It was half one and her guided tour was booked for two so she’d just be waiting around at the ground if she didn’t walk.

The tour was something Paul had always wanted them to do together but she had always refused, it had seemed a waste of money on something that held no interest for her. Well, now we are going to take the tour. Sit in the dressing rooms. See the Ashes urn. Walk through the Long Room. Step on to the outfield. She hadn’t really thought through how she would manage the scattering. How or where. The place he would have liked, she assumed, would have been on the pitch itself but she didn’t imagine that she’d be allowed to just pull out her own makeshift ashes urn and start sprinkling powdery remains everywhere. Even powdery remains that really, really liked cricket. So where? The closer she got to the ground the more it bothered her. Perhaps this whole idea, like so many of his ideas, was ridiculous and she should have just discretely scattered him at the local cricket club. There was a large oak tree by the boundary rope that would have been perfect if you overlooked the fact that it was also quite a popular spot for dog’s to relieve themselves. Actually that makes it even more perfect.

Perhaps it would be enough for him to be close to the ground? Within the vicinity of cricket’s spiritual home, if not entirely inside it. She was at the entrance now, wrought iron gates between stone pillars. She paused to read an inscription next to the gate: “To the memory of William Gilbert Grace. The great cricketer. 1848-1915. These gates were erected: The MCC and other friends and admirers.” She composed a brief accompanying eulogy to Paul in her head: “To the memory of Paul James Roberts. The great deceiver. 1982-2023. There’ll be no gates for you, no admirers, and we’re no longer friends.” It was longer than he deserved. “Paul. Goodbye you unfaithful bastard.” Better.

Jane took the tour. She had paid for it and decided that it might be interesting. They hadn’t come here together so there was no danger of any fond, residual memories spinning her emotional compass away from its set position of resenting him and their time together. She knew, in reality, it was more complicated than that but, for today, just wanted the surety in casting him as the villain. She hadn’t been surprised that there was a bag check, she’d had enough savvy to predict that and prepare. Paul had been decanted into a thermos flask for his final journey. The security guard had seemed happy enough to give it a brief shake and wave her through. 

She didn’t enjoy it. She was out numbered by middle aged men, all of whom had decided to wear chunky cricket jumpers over an assorted assemblage of pastel shaded polo shirts. Most of them had a lot to say about the ground, the current state of English cricket, the current state of the country, and all spent too much time laughing at their own jokes. She kept quiet and stayed towards the back of the group, looking for an opportunity to leave Paul to his final resting place. The tour had paused and the guide was gesturing up at the roof of one of the stands. Jane looked up to where he was pointing and saw a weather vane, it appeared to be a depiction of Father Time or, to Jane’s eyes, Death, removing a bail from some cricket stumps. The sun glinted off the tip of his scythe. 

Is it too late at forty one? She stared at the weather vane for a few moments, felt her heart beat quicken, a sick feeling in her stomach. She closed her eyes, felt the breeze on her face and focussed on her pulse, the chatter of the rest of the ground fading out of her hearing as she thought about her breath rising and falling in her chest. She felt still. She didn’t know the answer to her own question but she resolved to stop asking it and find out.

Jane left the tour group and, on her way out of the ground, left her bag, and Paul, behind in the toilets. He hadn’t said where at Lord’s he wanted to be and whilst she knew that an unattended bag would possibly end up being destroyed she also realised that she didn’t care anymore. She had fulfilled the last promise she would ever make him.

She checked the time. They wouldn’t see her today but she could make an appointment. She knew she could call but something in her wanted to see it again, wanted to check that it was still there. If she hurried she might be able to reach the clinic before it closed.

Next piece for July’s GOSH fundraiser – details here. I have sketched out an overall six part story for this, of which this is part one, so will see how it pans out over the next week.

Apologies to any cricket fans for abuse of terminology…

Smiling Assassin

Leave a reply

She was a professional. Human Resources. Emphasis on the resources rather than the human. Her colleagues had nicknamed her “the smiling assassin” and whilst she gave no outward expression, beyond that signature smile, that she either agreed nor disagreed with the moniker, inwardly she liked it. Inwardly she also silently chalked up who was a little too keen to keep calling her it. Chalked up, filed away, took a mental note to take them out at the knees when an opportunity presented itself in the future. And it would. It always did.

She had not agreed with the new behavioural framework for the organisation. She’d maintained a steely, tight-lipped smile as her peer, the Head of Employee Experience, had taken them all through the briefing. As a general principle she didn’t believe that employees should be having experiences anyway; experience was something you gained, incrementally, steadily, painfully if necessary. Not something that was gifted to you, wrapped in a bow, from a team trying to smooth out all the rough edges of work. There was a reason it was called work.

The new framework – or “our behavioural contract” to give it full title, complete with the need for mandatory signature to signal “buy in” – was, on the face of it, simple. Be candid. Be respectful. Be brilliant. Be you.

She wasn’t having difficulty with any of the statements individually although was still disappointed that her suggestions of minor tweaks had gone unheeded. For the record they were: be brief or be gone, be good or be gone, be you unless you is insufferable and unable to understand acceptable parameters of professionalism in a modern office. She hadn’t actually voiced that last one despite the new desire for everyone to be candid. She’d judged that it might be perceived as not being respectful and therein lay the issue. Individually the statements were all fine – if a little soft – but entirely contradictory in practical application.

Being candid she wanted to regularly let everybody know that she was singlehandedly covering for their woeful performance. Being candid she wanted, specifically, to tell the Head of Employee Experience that, no, she wouldn’t like to be reverse mentored by a sixteen year old to learn about the lived experience of Gen-Z and how she could extend her profile via Tik Tok with a self-deprecating rap about the menopause. And, no, she didn’t think that giving everybody a day off on their birthday was a good idea and, no, she didn’t want to join in on fancy dress day and come in attired as a pirate. Being candid she wanted to put two thirds of her peers on performance measures, or, in the spirit of real candour, just get rid of them all via a compromise agreement. The compromise, on her side, being that she hasn’t just called security to have them escorted from the building without notice because the in-house employment lawyer (who was within that two thirds of peers) wasn’t prepared to play who-blinks-first at the resulting tribunals. Being candid she thought that the competency framework was better expressed as an incompetency framework given the examples at hand from the people around her. The idea from the Head of Talent to bring in an actual bicycle to brief everybody on the talent cycle (“it’s a metaphor, if people pedal really hard around here and steer well then they can succeed”) was, candidly, the most ridiculous thing she had heard since the same person had suggested that the potential axis on the talent grid could be changed to run from un-nurtured acorns to mighty oaks. She had given up trying to explain that all the potential was in the acorn. Not that she cared about potential: you can either do it now or you can’t and if you can’t then please refer yourself to the “be good or be gone” behavioural standard. Being candid she wasn’t entirely sure that she agreed with dress down Fridays, flexible working, the “Shining Stars” recognition scheme, time to work on your development, and, to be honest, lunch hours. Obviously people need to eat. But do they actually need an hour to do it?

She felt like saying all of those things was her being brilliant, being her. Be brilliant. Be you. So, you could argue that she was completely delivering against three of the four behaviours. Seventy five per cent. Crushing it. And if she delivered all of that candour, all of that brilliance, all of that “you”, with a firm, determined smile then surely that meant that she was also being respectful. Four out of four. One hundred per cent. Exceed on her end of year performance rating, top right box of the talent grid, earmarked for greatness on the succession plan. A mighty oak if we really must use the officially sanctioned scale.

She was a professional. She kept these thoughts to herself and with-held her candour. The Head of Employee Experience was pregnant and she knew that she was the obvious candidate for her maternity cover. Twelve months to unpick this madness and take them all out at the knees.

She smiled.

So this, I think, got caught trying to decide if it was funny or mildly sinister and didn’t entirely settle on either… which is my way of saying I’m not entirely happy with it but am also writing on a deadline and have no recourse to an edit. There are bits that work, I think. It’s probably informed by some past experiences but, thankfully, bears no relation to the brilliant people I work with now.

Anyway, internal critic aside… this is another 1,000 words or so towards my pledged 26,000 words in July for Great Ormond Street. Donation page here

Riffs and variations on loss and friendship featuring crochet, black holes, Fred Again, and the dial of destiny…

Leave a reply

“Did you read that thing about the ‘cosmic bass note’?”

“That link you sent me? I only skimmed it. Lost me at super massive black holes colliding and then I got distracted by some unfortunate fashion choices on Insta.”

“So you’re more interested in the come back of crocheted boiler suits than the signature of gravitational waves from the distant universe?”

“First of all, how’d you know that crochet was making a come back? Second of all, it’s not making a come back in boiler suits but they may well be decorating a few wardrobes this year. When did you become Anna Wintour?”

“Who’s Anna Wintour?”

“That’s more like it. You were worrying me there with your sudden extensive knowledge of haute couture. I thought you were about to start advising me on accessorising and form emphasis.”

“You’re changing the subject. We were talking about how shallow you are.”

“Hey, clothes are a visual expression of us as individuals – it’s no less deep than your back holes just because it’s on the cover of Vogue and not Yay Science!”

“I’m pretty sure there isn’t an academic publication called Yay Science. And the very point of black holes is that they are very, very deep.”

“Is it though? I thought the whole point was the light couldn’t escape from them because matter has been compressed so tightly that it produces a huge gravitational pull. So it might not be deep. It might just seem deep because we can’t see into it. Maybe they’re really shallow but, you know, just kinda sucky.”

“Sucky?”

“Sucky. Liable to large amounts of suck.”

“Thanks, I got it. So you did read the article.”

“I did not. I skimmed it. But I have knowledge of things beyond the next must have from Prada’s showing in Milan. Whereas you, despite your lucky guess on crochet, are still dressing like a Gap advert from 1995.”

Pete laughed, glanced down at his jeans, adjusted the phone in his hand.

“You just checked, didn’t you,” said Jen. “You just checked what you’re wearing?”

“Clothes are a visual expression of us as people,” Pete offered. “And I choose to express myself as a Silicon Valley tech start up kind of guy. From the 90s.”

“The 90s will be back in soon, you can just wait for it roll back around,” said Jen. “Anyway, let’s pretend I had read that article. What note do you think it is?”

“What do you mean?”

“The cosmic bass note. Is it like a B? A flat? Or something more basso profondo. G7, maybe. My music theory is a little rusty.”

“Unlike your Astrophysics which is stellar.”

“Interstellar. So what do you think?”

“I think,” said Pete after a pause. “I think you’re not taking this entirely seriously. If I was to humour you though I’d say it was like the bass in a club. Like a proper dance club where you can physically feel it coming out of the subs. Like a throb.”

“Cosmic bass throb. That’s actually not a bad name for a club night. I could see the flyers now. Georgie would have been into that.”

“She would.” Another pause. “Did you see the Fred Again set at Glastonbury? I missed her so much watching that.”

“Yeah, I watched it. I missed her too. There was just something weirdly moving about seeing all those people tuned in to something at exactly the same time. You could tell he was really touched by it.”

“It was completely her sort of thing. She was also trying to get me to one of her DJ nights, she kept talking about it like it was a community, like there was something different that happened to those tunes when a room full of people were all giving themselves up to them together.”

“You’re more of a sad banger kind of guy.”

“Pretty exclusively now. Even then, I guess. Georgie did the uppers and I took care of the downers. Not, you know, literally. Well, sometimes literally.”

“That set was weird though, right? It was euphoric but there was a thread of… I don’t know, a thread of sadness in it. Melancholy. I don’t know.”

“For me there was, sure. It’s just what you bring to it though, isn’t it? I was bringing all my bereavement and loneliness and hurt so even if there’s just a trace of that there I’m going to feel it.”

“Like a gravitational ripple…”

“Like an emotional ripple from the collapsing black hole that was her death,” finished Pete quietly. “That’s a bit melodramatic. Sorry.”

“I thought it was pretty beautiful,” said Jen. “She loved coming down with you, Pete. She used to tell me that she looked forwards to finishing up her sets, exhausted from the adrenaline, from the rush, as much as playing them. Because she could sit with you, put her head back in your lap, listen to whatever slow burn sad song you had queued up, and just be still.”

“I loved that time too,” said Pete. “Stillness was all I wanted, I think. If I could be her point of stillness then that was all I wanted. She was always on the go, always on the move. I just didn’t want her to escape.”

“Like her personal black hole.”

“Yeah, but a nice one. Not a, what did you call it? Not a sucky one. One with a great playlist, a wide selection of movies, and maybe a crafty joint before we’d crawl off to bed.”

“She’d have hated that Ford’s still playing Indiana Jones.”

“True. She didn’t really like him as anyone but Han anyway to be honest so I don’t think she’d have been on board with Dial Of Destiny. He’s what, 80?”

“Something like that. What even is a dial of destiny? I haven’t seen the film. It’s a clock, right?”

“No idea. Shower dial? Your destiny is to be extremely cold and then scalding hot. Indy has a narrow window to wash his hair before disaster strikes. Maybe a sun dial. The whole film just him watching a shadow pass over its surface, a slow rumination on the passing of time and ageing. And then some Nazi’s show up.”

“It could be a really important phone call he has to make. You know, like when you used to ring someone up to ask them out.”

“That could work. They could franchise it. The Dial Of Destiny, followed up by The Date of Desire, and then the trilogy concludes with The Walk Of Shame.”

“That was me and Georgie. Except we skipped the first two. It was just a messy night that turned into a messy morning but one we both wanted to stick around and clear up. Thanks for calling by the way. I appreciate it. Know that I appreciate it.”

“It’s my destiny to be your friend. Just as I was hers. You’re stuck with me.” There was a pause, the usual pause as they ran short of things to say, ran up against the absence. Jen broke the silence in their usual way. “You alright, Pete?”

“Not today, Jen, not today. But ask me again tomorrow.”

This is the third story in July ’23’s mission to write 26,000 words for Great Ormond Street Hospital – fundraising link on main page.

I tend to return to Pete and Jen talking every now and again. It started as an exercise in dialogue and then, over time, I just kinda like listening to them. Their last outing was here and their other conversations are on this page: here

Trenton, Nebraska

1 Reply

You were walking up the incline, one hand bridged across your forehead to shield your eyes from the setting sun. I watched you approach, idly running my fingers through the grass I was sitting on. There was a patch of earth where I’d pulled up the blades in chunks, letting them scatter on the breeze. They didn’t go far but then nothing in this place went far. You had stopped and turned back to look down and across the town; I. thought maybe you were worried that Marv had noticed that you’d clocked early and had followed you up here. It was unlikely. Any time past three and he could reliably be found at Frank’s, holding forth on the betrayal of the American heartlands, why the great state of Nebraska deserved an NFL franchise, and how folk who didn’t make it to church on Sunday had no place in his town. If you could get past the MAGA hat and the bluster he wasn’t so bad. His perspective was just a little narrow, that’s all. I was finding it a struggle to stop mine narrowing each day too.

“Do you think we’ll do it this year?”

You’d turned back from looking at the town and called up to me.

“Do what?” I humoured you. I knew what you were asking. We played this game all the time.

“Scratch two off the sign. Welcome to Trenton, population 516. Is this the year we make it 514?”

“They won’t change the sign” I smirked. “Someone will squeeze out two more to replace us before the year’s out. Nothing else to do round here. Frank’s and a fumble on Saturday, repent at church on Sunday, try and find work Monday to Friday. Besides, we won’t leave. We’re never getting out.”

You sat down next to me, frowned, and pushed a fist gently into my arm, a playful punch. “That’s what I come up here for my little ray of sunshine.”

“Hey, if you wanted sunshine then you’re in the wrong State. I believe Florida has that one all sewn up.”

We sat quietly for a while. I leant back on my elbows and let my head fall back, tried to watch the sunset, upside down, behind me but it made me feel queasy. Neither of us had ever said it but I liked to think that we came up here because if anyone was watching us from the town we’d be backlit by the setting sun, silhouetted against the horizon. Probably looked pretty cool. But neither of us had said it and I wasn’t going to go first in case you thought it was dumb. It always seemed like a fine line between what was cool and what was dumb and not many people drew that line in the same place as me. Once, couple of years ago, before we graduated, I told some of the other girls in school that I thought it’d be fun to dig out some old Disney movies, have a sleepover round someone’s house, pretend to be kids again. I don’t know, maybe I thought we could be all ironic about it but if I’m honest I think there was part of me that wanted the simplicity of evil step-moms and brave, impossibly big eyed girls again. It didn’t go well. They started posting pictures of my head super-imposed on a succession of Disney Princess bodies and posting them to Snap, Insta, whichever flavour of social was in favour that day. They were captioned. I don’t remember all of them but it was stuff like Beauty & The Beast: definitely the beast or Frozen: panties. Nothing that was going to trouble their GPA. Nothing too smart. The one of my dismembered head being held aloft instead of Simba from The Lion King was quite well executed though. Props for the photoshop talents. They left me alone after a couple of weeks when Jennifer Harlow bleached her hair blonde but did something wrong with the peroxide and it all turned bright orange before starting to fall out in clumps.

I met you later that year. You were a year ahead but flunked graduation and they held you back. I guess I’d been aware of you through school but the older kids didn’t really mix with the other years and you weren’t actually there that much. Hence, the flunking. It must have been hard for you. I felt like we were both misfits and maybe that’s why we started hanging out. I thought Jennifer might join our little tribe of the ostracised but she dropped out of school and works now at Cindy’s Grooming. There were some pretty funny looking pets for a while in Trenton but last time I saw her she said she was getting the hang of it. So it was just me and you.

I got you through graduation and you got me through the year. That ended up being the deal, tacitly understood but never stated. I worked hard enough for both of us and we spend long evenings where I’d catch you up on George Washington or irrigation systems or algebra or The Grapes Of Wrath. It wasn’t like you weren’t smart because you were; you just didn’t see the point and didn’t want to do the work. I saw the work as the only way out but maybe even then you didn’t think there was an exit and you gave up before giving it a try. I was determined to prove you wrong back then, it’s only this last six months or so that I’ve felt like the off ramp to anywhere else but here has been closed for essential maintenance with no indication of when it might be open again. I owe you though. It’s true that I got you through the exams but you had my back that whole year. Nobody messed with me because it meant messing with you and your no-fuck’s-given persona was just unpredictable enough that no-one was quite sure what you’d do and didn’t really want to find out. Someone started a rumour that you had a pistol, that they’d seen you shooting at birds over in Bush Creek. It wasn’t true but you didn’t disabuse them of the notion and gradually people fleshed out their own idea of you as some sort of troubled outlaw, firing clips at Blue Jays down by the river on weekends and spoiling for a fight in school in the week. The most troubled I saw you was on Wednesdays when we used to try and learn math. Or wait, it was actually when we first stated looking at sexual reproduction in biology and you had gotten so flustered that you’d left and said you thought you should learn this by yourself. I thought it was kinda sweet and also, to be honest, a relief.

Eventually you broke the silence. “Marv’s talking about retiring.”

“Retiring? Doesn’t he do that every day? To Frank’s?” I replied.

“No, properly retiring. Says it’s getting too much for him now and wants someone to take the business on. He’d own it. Just needs someone to run it for him.” He paused, looked at me.

“Truck and car washing? You’re not seriously considering it? What about…”

“What about what?” He cut me off. “What else have I got? I’m not getting out. I’m not smart like you, I barely graduated High School. Where would I go? This is all I know.”

“But that’s not true,” I protested. “You kept telling yourself last year that you weren’t smart, that you weren’t cut out for books and school but it wasn’t true. It isn’t true.”

“I’m not like you,” he said. He shook his head firmly as if to emphasise the point, as if that was the end of it. I wasn’t prepared to leave it alone, to leave him alone. We’d been having the same conversation for the last two years, planning where we’d go, what we might do, how we’d leave all this small town small mindedness and find somewhere we felt at home. I thought I was the one having doubts recently but had always been encouraged by his enthusiasm, his talk of scraping enough together to catch the Greyhound to Denver, find some work, keep heading West over to California. He knew I had my heart set on San Francisco, an idealised romantic setting down of roots somewhere made up of misfits, the original home of the dreamers. Somewhere in my head I knew I wouldn’t be writing spoken word poetry in a loft apartment, sunlight streaming through the skylights in the eaves; it’d be spot work at Starbucks and a waitressing gig at night but, maybe, just maybe, I could carve out the other stuff too. I just wasn’t sure I was brave enough to do it without him and the realisation of that hit me as he told me about his new future.

“Why are you so scared to live?” I whispered it but it was loud enough for him to hear. His face flushed briefly with anger.

“I’m not scared of anything,” he said, voice rising. “You think I’m too good for this town, that it? Too good for some honest work running a business. Too good for a beer on Friday with the boys? I ain’t too good for any of that. Maybe you think you are.”

I was angry now. We hadn’t really had a cross word since we’d known each other, united in our deal at school, united in our plots and plans since we’d left. “Maybe I am too good for that. Maybe I give myself a bit of credit and don’t want to wind up either washed up at Frank’s, picking at labels on beer bottles and drinking away my regrets, or knocked up by some local who once had the run of the town ‘cos he was captain of the hockey team but now binge watches Fox and complains about liberals ruining America.”

“A local like me?” he said.

I stopped, held his gaze. “You were really terrible at hockey,” I said finally.

He smiled. “I really was. You got me.”

“And you don’t think liberals are ruining America.”

“No, I think America is managing that pretty well on its own.”

“So, don’t stay. Don’t settle for this. I do think you’re too good for it. Or, maybe a better way of putting it, is that I think it’s bad for you. There’s someone you could be that you won’t become here.”

“I’m not like you,” he said again. “That person you think I could be isn’t like you.”

“I don’t want you to be that,” I said. “I want you to be you, the widescreen, all possibilities version of you that will get narrowed and reduced if you stay here….” I trailed off, considering whether to reveal more of myself. It was another one of those moments where I couldn’t decide if what I wanted to say was kinda cool or kinda dumb. Maybe I needed to stop thinking they were mutually exclusive or maybe I just needed to stop second guessing myself all the time. “I can’t do it without you,” I said eventually. “I’m the one that’s scared. I’m the one that’s scared to live.”

The sun had set behind us and the dark was drawing in, lights winking on down in the town in front of us. You could see how contained, how small Trenton was at night, a neat rectangle of lights marking its boundaries and then darkness save for the strip of illumination, East to West, where Highway 34 sliced through the countryside. You rummaged in your pocket and pulled out a set of keys on a fob from Dirt Dawg Car & Truck Wash. You held them up between us. “Reckon we’ve got twelve solid hours before Marv notices it’s gone. Maybe more if he has a big night at Frank’s tonight.”

“What are you saying?” I asked. It was quiet now, just a distant thrum from the Highway in the distance.

“I’m saying that we leave now, tonight. Leave it all behind. Run to California, ditch the pick-up, hope that by the time they find it that they don’t find us. It ain’t strictly theft if the owner gave you the keys, is it?”

“I guess not,” I said. “At the very least it’s ambiguous.”

“Come on then,” he said, standing up. He reached out his hand, smiling. “You scared?”

I matched his smile, took his hand and let him pull me up beside him. “I’m terrified but that’s living, right?”

At time of writing, July ’23, I am trying to deliver 26,000 words as part of a fundraiser for British children’s hospital, Great Ormond Street. Link for donations: here

Not sure where this one came from but have been main-lining the brilliant Ethel Cain record so perhaps it was partially inspired by her “A House In Nebraska” song. Her record is much better than my story so don’t let the above put you off.

The lies we tell ourselves

3 Replies

The lies we tell ourselves become the truth of who we are. It was the Autumn of ’89 when I first heard that. We were in the pre-fab classroom the school had put up temporarily whilst they refurbished the Sixth Form block. It was cold, there was an electric wall radiator that leeched heat into the room but you only really felt it if you were at the two desks right next to it. We asked Watson, the Physics teacher, about it and pretended to be interested when he started talking about thermal radiation and conduction and convection. A few of us afterwards kicked around the idea of forming a band called Thermal Radiation – we were all try hard goths back then – but settled on Conviction Convection in tribute to Watson’s enthusiasm. None of us did that well in Physics.

I wasn’t sat at one of the warm desks that day. I was near the door, it was the worst place to be as the seals had worn from the repeated opening and closing since the start of term. There was a draught. I was hunched up, exhaling my breath to see if it was visible. I thought I’d read somewhere that the school had to let you out if the temperature was below a certain level and this was going to be my evidence. The fact that I didn’t actually know that temperature threshold or how that related to the point at which breath vaporised to mist were just inconvenient details. Like I said, none of us did well in Physics. Vaporised To Mist, though, was mooted as Conviction Convection’s first song but I think we nixed it in favour of Chaos Defrost after Pete saw it written as a setting on a microwave in Currys. The song wasn’t as good as the title but, to be honest, that was pretty much our default.

Written down this next bit will sound more dramatic than it was. It’ll look like a metaphor. If it’s like a metaphor does that make it a simile? I used to care about that stuff and I think it was him that made me care. The door swung open, it opened into the room and pushed a rush of cold air through the desks, through the chairs, rustling pages in text books, snaking its way round ankles exposed under too-short, one-more-term trousers, stealing over bored faces, blowing away tiredness from dry eyes. A man entered, maybe early forties, slightly untidy salt and pepper hair, close cropped beard, shirt sleeves rolled up despite the cold. He paced around the room which had fallen silent save for the reaching for papers that had been displaced by his arrival; boys retrieving their scrawled notes on Keats and Orwell, Austen and Marlowe. He stopped by the radiator and gestured that we should come closer. Nobody moved, not quite knowing what to do, until he spoke:

“Gather in boys. Gather in. If convention means you’re too cold to learn then I say convention is bullshit. Pull up your chair and gather in.”

Okay, it was quite dramatic by our usual school standards. None of us had really heard a teacher swear before. There was that incident with a supply cover the previous year when they’d finally cracked under constant baiting about why they couldn’t get a permanent job and told us to “fuck off back to our over privileged detached houses on cultural wasteland cul-de-sacs”. I thought it was fair although technically my parents lived in a semi. Obviously we stole the line about cultural cul-de-sacs for the band which broadly offset the week of detention we also got. This new guy was different though; it was a deliberate choice of words, said softly, conversationally. It didn’t even seem like he’d seen Dead Poet’s Society that summer and was trying on a new set of post Captain-My-Captain clothes. We’d had a lot of that in the first couple of weeks of term with the arts teachers, in particular, seeming to embrace the idea of getting us to go on walks and stand on things to challenge our notions of conformity. I think the Head pulled them all in and stopped it after one of the third year kids slipped off his desk during a stirring rendition of a poem he’d written about why girls didn’t want to play Dungeons & Dragons with him. It was called “no dice”. Hairline fracture of his wrist which was unfortunate as it almost certainly put a temporary stop to his other major hobby at the time.

The rest of that lesson was more routine. A standard dissection of “Ode To A Nightingale” and a straight refusal of any of our attempts to move the discussion on to the extent of the Romantic poets’ drug consumption. What does the text tell you. Always back to the text. What does the text tell you. Is it true for you? That was what we came to understand as his key question, the one he always brought us back to for the rest of that year. He was always interested in this idea of truth and I don’t think I really understood what he was doing until much later, until after I’d told myself so many lies. But I was a teenage boy and understanding things – the real things – isn’t our strong suit.

Alongside the literary criticism and deconstruction he made us write. That was the first time he used the line about the lies we tell ourselves becoming the truth of who we are. I don’t remember it exactly but the gist of it was something like this: fiction is just truth disguised as lies, it’s made up, licensed lying. Use that license and tell your truth under that cover. The lies we tell ourselves become the truth of who we are so make sure you tell yourself the best kind of lies. The ones that are truth. I lied before, I remember it like it was yesterday, each and every word. But acknowledging that someone could reach me that closely, still, from so long ago, is a truth that I need a lie to hide behind.

So that year, I wrote. I mangled rhymes into poetry, flirted with blank verse (it didn’t flirt back, not a flicker), forced out prose, poured my all-out-of-perspective teenage heart into words upon words upon words. It wasn’t all overblown pubescent angst and existentialism. Despite the huge amount of moody goth music I was listening to I wrote some funny stuff, some parody reworking of the texts we were studying, a short play about the band imploding which proved eerily prescient although our demise ended up being more prosaic than my concocted conclusion. We fell out over how much dry ice should form part of our opening number. Everyone wanted the whole stage fogged up thick with it except for John, the guitarist, who said he couldn’t see his chorus pedal on the floor. He walked off one night when he stomped on his fuzz pedal instead and ruined the start of Chaos Defrost. I think we could have salvaged it but there was so much dry ice swirling around that it took him a couple of minutes to actually make his dramatic exit, he walked into the drum kit and then almost went over the side of the stage before he found the right way. It was a slow exit, stage right.

Nobody saw the stuff I wrote, except the stuff that was specifically for an assignment and that always felt a little filtered to me. Like I was keeping a part of myself back from everyone else. I guess I was. As well as not acing Physics I also wasn’t studying Psychology but even I can see that I was keeping a slight remove, keeping the truths I really needed to lie about for just myself.

I found it all recently and can see the traces of myself in there. The traces of who I am now from those dispatches from the past. It was a good reminder. I can even, in retrospect, see which bits were really my truth and which bits were just the lies I was telling myself, the lies I’ve continued telling myself.

Under the license of lies I decided it was time to start looking for my truth again. Time for some more stories.

This is a thinly veiled framing device for the stories I’m planning to write in July 2023. It’s not true but it contains truth and I suppose that’s the aim of all stories.

This one’s for all my English teachers. You taught me how to see and understand the world.