clinging to the wreckage

  The curtains are black… like my heart. Block out the sun. Combat the heat. Venture out and think of the people we can’t meet. The noise is relentless. Four people at a table and all four talking at the same time. A witch-like voice cackles and rises above the others in a sinister laugh. The bar tender is intelligent, he is well-travelled, he loves music and literature, he is good company. He turns up the jukebox and an assault begins… original music versus the witches coven.                   Flip flops are vital in this Texas heat, but I see people in jeans and boots. I feel suffocated by their jeans, as if they are a ghostly unit that leaves the legs and attacks innocent bystanders. Social norms passed on and passed on. They stay in the bar to prolong the time before having to go home to the chaos of family. I leave the bar to go home to peace and quiet and calm and escape the noise of the bar....

  The very first memory… my parents were involved in building an additional room on the house, I must have been 4 or 5 or 6 (or less), and it had rained so much that the foundations had flooded. We had an emergency operation, and I was helping to scoop water out of the ditch. If I could see a video of that moment I would, of course, be shocked, because it would not resemble in the slightest my memory… but that is the first one that I have and it is pleasant… there is happiness and peacefulness overpowering the concern for the flooding. That little Greater Manchester home… Cambourne Drive… was a little capsule of happiness. I recall the build-up to Christmas, school holidays, putting up the Christmas Tree, snow falling and already deep outside, Smokey and the Bandits on TV. I was delightfully happy. Later in life I asked my mother what her happiest memories were and she said ‘Cambourne Drive days.’               ...

  The gym twins linger daily at the pool. The first encounter with them was during a fierce storm. I had retreated to the gym to walk because it was impossible to go outside. It was a classic Texas storm; winds of fury and horizontal rain threatening to destroy all within its wake, punctuated by deafening thunder and lightning. In these storms, instant flash floods bring life to a standstill as all moving objects shelter in place, embrace and wait. I was astonished by the similarity of the twins, as I still am today. It is impossible to tell one from the other. Identical hair, faces, legs, etc. It’s difficult to determine their age… I’d say mid-twenties. Each day at lunch time they light up the pool and occasionally draw a crowd.                     For a period of time, I sit on my balcony and work, but the heat is stifling (how are the gym twins surviving in the sun? I am dying in the shade)...

  It is 40 degrees Celsius, 100 Fahrenheit, and I worry constantly about the cat. We try our best and yet we still make mistakes. For example, has it been a mistake to feed this cat for years? Would it have moved on and found a better life? Would it have perished? Is it perhaps living its best life right now? I don’t know.   I think of my family, how much my parents did for my brother and I, how differently we turned out. Why? I miss my mother tremendously. My dad has become a friend, and each day I talk to him and try in some way to repay all that was done for me. The concept of family was smaller for us, we moved away from the larger family and, even though I think of my childhood as a wonderful time, I never wanted a family of my own. I love peace and calm and quiet… but I also get lonely at times. Then I chat to friends who are married and they tell me they are horribly lonely and feel trapped in a nightmare loneliness. That is worse. It’s true that the good people disappe...

  Slow, solemn, and sad, thus begins the day. A few calls and discussions before deciding to change the scenery and walk to the office. Ridiculously, the decision comes down to the items in my fridge versus the cafeteria in the office building. I love to support the cafeteria, but I also need to utilise my groceries because I refuse to throw food away, and I want to reduce costs.                     I sit in the cafeteria now and, as always, I am astonished by people. Fridges in public spaces have glass doors so that customers can make a decision before they open the door to select the item they want. However, as I sit here for 20 minutes on most days, I observe that at least 80% of people open the door and stand with the door open trying to make a decision. And people do not make decisions very quickly. Typically, before I even enter the building, I know what I want from the fridge. It is not...

  In researching pictures and places and searching through notes for traces of the places I went and the words that were used I discovered something completely removed from my memory. This discovery was that, when I had been in Hollywood, it was to fulfil a dream of seeing Bad Religion at the Hollywood Palladium, a dream I’d had since they released a DVD of the same in 2004… but the thing that had completely slipped from my mind was that I saw them there two nights in a row. Seeing the pictures revived the memory of how it had happened. I had gone with one ticket to one night but, while I was there, they added a second show, so I decided to buy tickets and go again. I had not done this, like a groupie, since I lived in England and I watched Bad Religion in London on Friday night, close to my home, and then took the train to Manchester, close to where I was born, to watch them the following night at Manchester University. Before the Manchester show, I met Greg Hetson, a legend, and ...