Sitting comfortably
by Eamonn Skyrme
He found himself again sitting in the client’s chair, not a Solicitors or Accountants, but at the Counsellors, going through his medical history.
They talked about medications, antidepressants, anti-anxiety tablets, there were tissues on a coffee table, easy chairs, soft lighting and the ubiquitous silk flowers in a jar that had no water.
Oh goodness he had been through this before so many times, but this time was different a high achiever he had crashed and burned. She asked him about abuse of alcohol – but it wasn’t the alcohol – he could only manage two or three units a day, that was not the problem.
He could work for three even six years between breakdowns, it was always the same, he would get up in the morning, sit at the top of the stairs, and crumble. Crumble in to a sobbing wreck, crushed and without any more energy. He had seen the mental health system, change over the years, baggy jumpered Psychiatric Nurses, maiden aunt Psychologists or curt 50-year-old shrinks who were brisk and without empathy, the system taking every last ounce of understanding some years ago from her. All had come and gone the only consistency having been – him -the patient.
He was running out of options he had avoided the mental hospital by the skin of his teeth, too many times, voluntary and compulsory, the system saw him as a vulnerable adult.
Various prescriptions and cures had been proffered, he had to change, change his life. A one-way ticket to Fort William was in his pocket, he just had to get out of this room, away from the well-meaning Counsellor, and to Euston for that evening’s Caledonian Sleeper.
Waterproof coat, a snood like neck scarf, a small rucksack packed to bursting with clothes, his favourite poster from the bed sit, sandwiches from the Euston Pret and watery coffee would be the final thing he would add along the way. One bottle of 7 star Metaxa brandy packed carefully between the two jumpers.
Out, out of here, was the best thing; start again in a distant horizon away from the pressures of the metropolis and his work.
He idled away the rest of the day having made his excuses, and left the counsellor promising to go back next week and try the art therapy. Victoria and Pimlico had a variety of cafes ranging from 24 hour Formica finished tables with curled up buns, and chipped mugs to swanky patisseries, with dark corners where you could disappear to without being seen for a few hours.
He spent the evening at a cinema somewhere up on Baker’s Street before strolling past doorways with rough sleepers awaiting the soup van run.
Along into Euston station off the busy highway, into Pret’s for the hot drink and the last of the day’s sandwiches. Standing on the abyss of something new looking up at the Departures Board, there it was platform 13.
He opened the door to the carriage, and hurried past the guard to
the standard cabin. Opening the door to the cabin, it stank of whisky, he
stepped back startled that before him sat Nicola Sturgeon and an aide. “Come in and join me, and have a whee little
dram, why don’t you”. He couldn’t believe the change of direction this
chance meeting would have for him.
Four Minutes
By Eamonn Skyrme
Enormous ships skulking across a hinterland
The council flats surge onwards to Battersea
A mass of metal spaghetti spews forth
Towards London Victoria, Waterloo East and London Bridge
Up close now the flats are a library of lives
Cardboard boxes, bikes, toy cars, plants and dying geraniums
Commuters staring on a moment of life
A rich sunrise punctuated by commuter trains
Industrial units – Nero’s roasting plant, a gypsy caravan and
Red brick Victorian houses
The Thames cold as steel ebbing on the tide,
Powerful tug boats, juddering against its ebb
Pull full rubbish containers to a processing plant somewhere beyond the eye
At last Victoria a hubbub of arrivals, departures and hurried commuters
A cheese shop with roughly made rolls – with every sort of filling
Smells of Lush, hurried goodbyes, hugs, tears and earnest men and women in suits and trainers
Arches so big where ….to now….. Canterbury, Dover, Three
Bridges, or beyond ?
Creative Rioting
By Ines Manning
The fox appeared from under the bushes, sat on his haunches and took out a pink iPad and tapped in his password. This was a remembered sentence from creative writing, which by accident became creative rioting.
I enjoy attending creative writing because it inspires me and makes me write. We have a member who attends sporadically, and not being on face book had asked me to email him occasionally to remind him to come, I must have hit a few wrong keys because the subject was creative rioting. The sun has come out and I feel happy and ready to write/riot.
To riot creatively you need lots of ideas and time to write these ideas down. It helps if you hold some of these ideas passionately and strongly, but religion and politics are two subjects to avoid unless they barge their way in uninvited like the loaf of bread that landed in the midianite tent in the Old Testament when I was writing about dreams.
It is easier to do creative rioting with a box of paints as the colours conspire to arrest your eyes in their bold profession. They may look totally out of control, but like a Pollock or a Rothko the skill is to make it look accidental, when in fact it is finely crafted. This kind of rioting needs a cause, it needs outrage, and lots and lots of people feeling passionate, and then you need something to go horribly wrong. Like the British army shooting at unarmed protesters in India in the days of empire or Northern Ireland in the days of the troubles, or as still happens to the Palestinians in Gaza, and whoops this rioting has gone political, difficult not to when it involves injustice and desperation.
Rioting is not safe, it is quite frightening when something quite peaceful, like a protest march turns into a riot. That is not creative it is destructive, so the only really creative riots are made of words or colours. The words of Shakespeare, Cervantes, Wilfred Owen and Benjamin Zephaniah are creative riots and the paintings of Rembrandt and Caravagio are particularly good at crowd scenes which seem to move. Even Richard Caton-Woodville’s painting showing the charge of the light brigade illustrates a riot. Or was it a riot? No it was war.
And what is war but a created riot?
I
prefer the riots of colour by Van Gogh and Monet, Cezanne, Velasquez and
Gaughin. Those are the creative riots I like, along with Picasso, Miro,
Modigliani and Turner. They are riots, political and religious, every
persuasion is up for grabs. Long live creative rioting.
Strange Day
By Kev Neylon
All the leaves are dead and lying on the ground.
I fell into a puddle and I almost drowned.
The wind picked up and houses started to sway.
It was really gusty and blew the clouds away.
The sun came out and the puddle disappeared.
It felt very hot and my skin was seared.
Now that I could breathe, I got up from the floor.
I looked all around and couldn’t believe what I saw.
A snow drift behind me, it was eight foot high.
More worrying to me was the purple coloured sky.
I heard a dog barking and I turned to see,
Thirty springer spaniels, all staring at me.
I closed my eyes, and then looked again.
All the dogs had gone, replaced by a plane.
The snow had gone too; there was none to be seen.
Where it had been white, it was now all green.
The plane flew away, with an almighty roar.
I looked at my watch; it said it was ten past four.
Yet it had been eight thirty only five minutes ago.
I was so distracted that I stubbed my toe.
I hopped about, cursing at the throbbing.
Then suddenly I heard a woman behind me sobbing.
When I turned around, it was plain to see,
They were tears of laughter, she was laughing at me.
I would have found it funny if it was someone unknown.
I started to smile myself, but then I heard my phone.
I pulled it out of my pocket and it started to grow.
How big it would get, I didn’t know.
In a matter of seconds it was three feet wide.
Before it transformed into a children’s slide.
A dozen toddlers were suddenly using it.
A kid was sliding down when it suddenly split.
The slide had changed into a Venus fly trap,
It ate the kid whole as its jaws went snap.
I had had enough now and I ran for home.
I opened the front door, the house was filled with foam.
I couldn’t take any more and I started to scream.
Then
I woke up in bed, it had all been a dream.
Is It Safe?
By Kev Neylon
Tony had got the keys to his house that morning and made his way to the property to have a look around before starting to get any items he needed to fill it. When he had done viewings of the property prior to signing the final paperwork for it, there had been all sorts of furniture and debris in every room. He knew that it had been rented out, but didn’t know what the tenants were going to take with them, or what the owner would remove before contracts were exchanged.
He opened the front door and entered the house, there was lots of random items lying around in all of the rooms, various bed bases, pine bedroom furniture, unmade flat-packs for a whole range of kitchen units in a mismatch of styles and colours, an overgrown garden and two outhouses filled full of junk, one of which turned out to be a toilet. Then in the main front bedroom of the terraced house there was a big old style solid wooden desk and chair.
In the corner of that room sat another door, this was to a walk in cupboard over the stairs, it was in the cupboard that Tony found the two most interesting items in the house.
The first was a six foot long cast iron road sign bearing the name “Evington Valley Road”. Tony stood there considering the sign; he was trying to work out just where that road was in comparison to his house. It must have been four miles away, and it was a heavy beast of a sign to move. Whoever had managed to remove it from its original location, probably at first floor level where these sign were normally set, and to carry it across the city to this house must have been on a mission and a half. He suspected there must have been a lot of alcohol involved. What was he going to do with it though? Was there a market for this sort of thing, or should he ring the council to come and pick it up? There’s a strong possibility it’s still in the outside shed all these years later.
The other item in the cupboard was a safe. Almost three feet long in all directions, it was made out of some real heavyweight kind of metal, with a brass frontage to its door and a large silver coloured handle next to a keyhole. Tony tried to move it, but couldn’t even budge it by himself, it was heavier than he was, not an inconsiderable feat. He went back to the set of keys and tried all of them without success.
He spent the rest of the day running errands, including getting a double mattress from MFI and carrying it up Western Road on his head and shoulders, the thick plastic making his head sweat profusely. He shuttled back and forth on the bus picking up certain items he could carry from his parents, and then spent the weekend moving larger items with help from his friends and someone he knew who had a van. By the end of the weekend he had a more up to date fridge freezer and cooker, a three piece suite that would normally be found in a conservatory and by the looks of it had probably been swiped from Noah, plus countless boxes of books and records. With pubs and clubs taking up the night time hours it was the middle of the following week when Tony thought of the safe again.
He nipped into the estate agents and asked about the safe. Surely the previous owner would want it back. A series of phone calls followed. The previous owner had been renting the house out, so knew nothing of what had been left behind in it. The previous occupants just denied all knowledge of the safe; it was just a dead end. Tony asked around some of his dodgier friends, but none of them had safe cracking skills or would own up to knowing someone who did. Tony then went to the police, but they were only interested if it had been opened and there was something illegal in there. Another half an hour was wasted in a circular argument with the police around how would he know if there was something illegal in there if he couldn’t open it, before he gave up. He rang a locksmith about it, but they were somewhat sceptical of his story and quoted him five hundred quid to open it for him, despite the advertised price being fifty. Eventually Tony gave up on trying to get into the safe and just used it to store stuff on.
It was only three years later when the police came to investigate potential mail fraud that they took any interest in the safe.
“What’s in the safe?”
“Don’t know.”
“What do you mean you don’t know?”
“I don’t know as I can’t open it.”
“But it’s your safe.”
“No, it isn’t, it was in the house, in this cupboard, when I bought it.”
“Why haven’t you got rid of it then?”
“Have you tried to move it? It’s heavier than me, I can’t move it myself so I use it to dump stuff on.”
“Are you sure you haven’t opened it, it’s a bit difficult to believe you’d sit here with an unopened safe.”
“I don’t care what you believe. I tried to sort it out when I moved in, but the previous owner and occupiers all denied all knowledge of it. When I reported it to your mob, they weren’t interested unless I could open it, and a locksmith wanted five hundred quid to open it, which is a bit excessive seeing as I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT IS IN THERE.”
“So you don’t have a key then?”
“Which part of “I can’t open it” didn’t you understand?”
“There’s no need to take that attitude with us sir.”
“Try listening then. If you want to know what’s in it, take it away and get it opened.”
They looked at the safe, then back at Tony and agreed they would. They tried to move it themselves, but found it too heavy for the pair of them. Eventually they came back with four others and the six of them managed to remove it from the house, but not without one of them having an incident at the foot of the stairs that required a hospital visit with crush injuries.
They invited Tony to the station to view the opening of the safe. The locksmith arrived and struggled with it for nearly an hour before it was opened. The door swung open and half a dozen pairs of eyes looked into the space behind the now opened door.
There, on a shelf in the middle of the safe sat a small envelope and a piece of wood. One of the detectives took them out and put them on the table, and another put their arm into the safe feeling around the whole of the inside trying to find if there was anything else in there, only to stop and withdraw his arm whilst shaking his head.
The piece of wood looked old and weather beaten and the envelope had a single word written on the front of it.
PRONOEA
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Look it up, you’re supposed to be a detective.”
They glared at Tony, but one of them left the room as if to find out. Another opened the envelope and took out a single piece of paper, and a couple of old photographs. The detective read out the words on the sheet of paper.
This is to verify that the wood held within this safe is a fragment said to be from the true cross of Christ. The pictures enclosed show the fragment in its original display in the Cathedral Church of Turin, and also of the original Latin document giving its providence signed by Landulf of Turin, bishop and restorer of the Cathedral, dated 1036. It was said that this fragment was removed from Turin to the Vatican archives in 1979, but that was a story put out to hide the theft of it the year before. I have however been unable to sell it in the years since, and I am not much longer for this world, so I am leaving it in this safe to be claimed by my relatives in years to come. Signed Vittorio Alberico, 14th May 1983.
Everyone in the room stood staring at the piece of wood on the table, gradually moving their heads to look at the picture from the envelope and back to the piece of wood.
Tony wasn’t interested, he didn’t belief in religion, and the item wasn’t his, so he moved to the door of the room to leave.
“Hey, where do you think you’re going?”
“Home,”
“Wait a minute; we need to deal with the contents of your safe.”
“As I keep telling you, it’s not my safe, it’s not my problem, I’m sure you can sort all of this out. As long as you can find someone that speaks Italian of course.”
Tony slammed the door behind him as he left.
He was sure he had several
pieces of wood like that in his shed.
The Earrings
By Ruth Hogg
I saw the earrings in a small gift shop on the sea front and thought they would be perfect for you. I could almost envision you wearing them. Hair in your face as the wind blew across but the earrings would shimmer in the sunlight. They would bring out the blue in your eyes which would sparkle like the sun hitting the sea on a hot summers’ day.
Your laugh was always so infectious and reminded me of a wind chime singing in the wind.
I picked them up imagining you unwrapping them and looking up at me, those blue eyes shining along with your smile. They would of reminded us of the holiday where I asked you to be my wife on the bridge overlooking the city.
I never imagined that I would miss my chance to ask you that life changing question. If only we had stayed in that day, if only I had offered to go to the shops then you would still be here with me. If only that driver hadn’t run through the red light. If only you had crossed at a different set of traffic lights then you would still be here with me.