Dead man (Scottish: Deid mahn)

I awoke from a dream, laughing. The dream was of a brilliantly funny Scotsman I had once worked with. In it we were drinking whisky in the morning and then found ourselves at a ball. I was mixing a drink that was reacting and producing steam, the Scotsman was behind me somewhere, watching, and he shouted ‘deid mahn’ (dead man in his strong Scottish accent.) Everyone burst out laughing, including myself… but my laughter was real and woke me up. I lay in bad laughing for a while and then simply started to ponder life at 3am as one tends to do. 

                  A note has been sent… and was greeted with a death-like silence. The note I wrote was sent to a former lover whom I met just a few months before the pandemic arrived. It was wonderfully intimate, and it was a deep friendship, too. I was mesmerised by her voice, her beauty, her compassion, her curiosity and sense of adventure. Over time, for various reasons, the relationship settled into friendship only and then, many years later, involved some intimacy once more. However, as always tends to be the case, this year, after six years, it seems that the friendship has stopped too. 

                  Nevertheless, ‘tis a beautiful day. Starting with a walk and a swim, followed by a call with my dad, after which I walked to the office to change the scenery and see some faces. In the afternoon I hope to watch the Spain v Belgium World Cup game with some neighbours at the local bar. 


The Ginger Man, Las Colinas, Irving, Texas. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

their envy

  They drive home from their 16-hour shift in the office and pull into the carpark… then they sit in their cars, engine running, lights on… they sit and sit. What are they doing? It becomes clear, they simply don’t want to go home. They are afraid of the boss all day in the office, and they are afraid all night of the lack of privacy they have in their home. So, that period in the car park after parking their car is the only period of freedom that they have in their day.                     Couples always want single people to date and ‘find a partner’. That is because they want single people to be as miserable as they are. They see the happiness and contentment of a single person and their envy makes them want to destroy it.  
Read more

french night

  03:33am and sleep is merely a vision, a wish, a dream. A day of work lies ahead and yet, here in bed, there is no rest. There was a reconnection, a revival of a love long lost, but it was brief and flickering and, as usual, something popped up suddenly to sever the connection as rapidly as it was regained. The ship sails on, silent and alone in the night. Who would have thought that a fuck in the French night could rekindle so many feelings… from love to despair. And a forgotten one: the feeling of becoming less significant when one’s lover finds someone more interesting via a chance encounter.  
Read more

it's not someone else's fault.

  I see many articles about Britain wanting to rejoin the European Union. I am delighted about this. But people claim they were misled, and that is why they voted to leave. I see people in the US regretting their vote for Donald Trump, and they say they never knew it would be like this. All I can say is that, as a British citizen, I voted to remain in Europe and, later, becoming a US citizen, I voted against Trump. In both cases, it was blatantly obvious to me what the outcome would be. The truth is that Brexit and Trump votes result from the same thing… fear and hatred. It is complex and nuanced, but the main fear and hatred was that of immigrants and immigration, in both cases.                     It is not easy, I understand. In a sense, I was fortunate… when I was eight years old my parents left the UK and moved to South Africa, we were immigrants. Years later I returned to the UK and was ...
Read more