Absolute silence

[I found this true story I wrote, from way back when, and I thought I’d give it another airing: hope you don’t mind?]

One of the cheap; brightly coloured plastic pegs that I’m using to hang out the washing, slips through my cold fingers. There it will lay - a bright red one - hidden in the slightly damp grass until tomorrow morning, which isn’t actually that far away. 

Its half past midnight, maybe even quarter to one; dawn is only a couple of hours away at this time of year, and I’m standing outside in just a blue toweling dressing gown hanging out the washing. It’s only a small garden, but even so, the far end of it is in total darkness. The shed windows are the only points of reference, reflecting back the lights that I have left on in the kitchen. As I get to the end of the washing line with the last few pairs of stripy socks, I’m aware that I feel slightly scared out here, and I start to rush. It’s not the darkness, but the absolute silence that unnerves me. It’s as though the world is holding its breath until it goes blue in the face. I can’t hear any cars, planes or people. Right now, I could be the only person on the planet. I think back to six hours ago when the garden was brightly lit with hot sunshine on what turned out to be the hottest day of the year so far. Beth and Ann - my daughters - sat on a tartan blanket on the warm grass, while I cooked on the BBQ. When did I last cook outside for them both? It has to be six or seven years ago. As I flipped over half blackened sausages and burgers I could hear the girls gossiping and laughing about the colourfully covered celeb magazines they had brought with them.

‘Oh yea, she’s such an old slapper, why would she go out with him?’ 

They don't see that I half smile to myself happily, and for a moment everything in my head is normal. 

The warm sun that I welcomed earlier has been replaced by a lovely coolness, and I stand outside the back door for a moment and stare up into the night sky, breathing in the cold air, ignoring the midges that are biting my bare legs. Now I have to, I don’t want to go indoors. I want to stay up and not go to sleep. Flickering stars from distant galaxies look back at me, as though they are begging me to stay. As I turn my back on them, and close the kitchen door, I’m the only person on the planet who is awake.

Advice for melancholic’s

Live in rooms full of light.
Avoid heavy foods.
Be moderate in the drinking of wine.
Take massage, baths, exercise and gymnastics.
Fight insomnia with gentle rocking or the sound of running water.
Change surroundings and take long journeys.
Strictly avoid frightening ideas.
Indulge in cheerful conversation and amusements.
Listen to music.

A.Cornelius Celsus, 1st Century AD


I love the sunshine on my face. Just to stand outside, away from my desk with the sun stroking its warm fingers over my face is bliss for any soul. 

I fear the winter and the darkness that comes with it. 

Avoid heavy foods perhaps, but eat what you enjoy in moderation. If you count chilli as a heavy food, I’m in trouble. 

Alcohol is always on standby, but see the above. 

Insomnia is my occasional unwelcome guest. I can nearly always tell when he will visit in advance, and the next day you can tell because of my red eyes and drifting mind. 

When despair takes my soul; I always want to run away. To be anywhere, but where I stand at the time. 

I only just realised a few months ago how important this is to my anxiety: Yes! Strictly avoid frightening ideas and situations and places and meetings and people and people and PEOPLE. 

But funny people and friends, are the drug I need to get through this life. 

Music is a way forward for those in depression, but select your sounds carefully: No Coldplay. I have a special playlist that contains songs that are cheesy and make me smile. They are meaningless and are attached to nothing from my past; they are just sounds for a happy NOW.

Try it. 

D.Carter 2012

A question of physics

‘Granddad... has anyone ever gone all the way over the top of a swing?’ asks K, unable to see me, but knowing I’m there behind him, as I push the rubber vandal-proof swing at the local park. It’s the first nice day of spring, with a bright blue sky, Robins and Blackbirds singing for all their worth, and the sun trying its best to warm the still chilly, early morning air. This new question from K about the possibilities of swing acrobatics, comes off the back of countless other questions that I struggled to answer on the walk to the park, including: why plastic burns and melts when metal doesn’t, although metal does melt if it gets very, very hot. I kick the swing idea around in my head for a moment before I answer:

     ‘No I don’t think it’s possible to go –‘

     ‘A boy I know did it once,’ interrupts K, going off into his own universe, the way only young children and old people can.

     I vaguely recollect seeing something about this, on some rarely watched digital channel, but I can’t remember the outcome. It’s one of those urban myths that children of each generation spread round: The boy who went all the way over the top on the swing at the park. Nobody has ever met him, but he’s John’s cousin’s best mate and he doesn’t go to our school or live on our estate but it’s true - You know the type of thing I mean.

     ‘No K, I’m sure I saw a programme on TV once where they said you can’t spin all the way round on a swing due to the laws of physics or something –’

     ‘Actually, I think I did it once myself,’ he tells no one in particular, having made up his own mind without my help, his question entirely rhetorical.

     I like to think that in some small way, K and I have helped to continue that urban myth.

Overheard on the Northern Line

tube voices

fading in and

out

at bank 

thick hair (laughing)

to brown brogues

return to whatever hellish pit

you came from

walking around in the daytime

dressed in

silk dressing gown

and leather gloves

moorgate red light

train stops - thank god

noise / hisssss / swoooooooosh

doors open

souls out and in

doors close

silence

move  m   e    n     t      a       g        a         i          n

thick hair loves attention

we’re trapped

in his theatre

his coliseum

his prison

should I marry a

s

l

i

m

degree educated english woman

or a fat smelly polish girl

brown brogues

false laughs

squealing brakes

then old street

i leave them to it

posh f**kers


[‘Overheard on the Northern Line’ was inspired (they will hate me for saying that) by two of my favourite poets: Baz Weldon and UV Ray.]            

Overheard on the Northern Line - Is that DC in the background?

The Talker

[This is a short piece of fiction, based on a dream.]

She stands proud, speaking in a semi raised voice as about twenty of us sit on the floor, pretending to listen to her.  I have my legs spread out wide, my hands behind my back with my palms on the dusty floor.  I’m relaxed and uninterested in what she has to say.  Someone asks her a question, and she replies with a plastic smile, and a nod of her head.  It’s hot and humid, and I’m thirsty and tired.  I need a drink, a cold cider; maybe with little beads of condensation running down the side of the bottle.  The thought of this makes my throat contract.

Another question is asked by the front of the group; the creeps.  They sit so close like little children, nodding at her while she talks.  The woman speaking is dressed all in black except a purple scarf loosely tied round her neck like an offering to the colour god. 

She is in charge.  Her demeanour says: ‘I’m friendly, but f**king don’t cross me.’

I look past her to the surroundings.  An airy warehouse type building with huge windows that leak in shafts of light. It’s a weird type of light that looks solid. If you walked into one of these shafts it would hurt. It would be a physical thing, a real time pain.  Further behind ‘our’ group is another, except they have a young man talking to them.  And behind them is another group.  In fact as far as the eye can see are groups of twenty or so people of different ages sitting on the floor.  Each group has its own ‘Talker.’

I lean my head back and look to the blue wooden roof space far above which is spanned by huge pieces of timber. As I gaze upward, some of my Talkers words drift to me as she answers another question from an eager pupil.

‘It doesn’t matter, because you’re all dead.’

She has my full attention now, and The Talker looks directly at me as I raise my arm into the air.

Now I do have a question to ask:  I am interested.

Services

Sipping heavily sweetened coffee from a cardboard cup; I watch three grey rabbits as they hop around looking desperately for a patch of unpolluted grass amongst the lawn of weeds and thistles. They search in the dirty shadows; amongst the fag butts and ice lolly sticks, underneath endless rows of empty wooden picnic benches, and are eventually joined by a pair of Pied Wagtails that flit up and down, in a restless dance of feathered monochrome.

In the middle distance, I see glimpses of colourful motion through winter bare trees, as cars and lorries fly past, on route to somewhere / anywhere. My eye lids; that had felt heavy with lead on the motorway - that enticed me to sleep for a moment, to rest for just a few fatal seconds - now refuse to shut. The ugly squeal of rubber on tarmac - or pigs being slaughtered - as cars pull into slightly too tight parking spaces, doesn’t help the ambitious nap’ per.

A floating island, next to infinite movement that never ceases. Winchester; Clacket Lane and Fleet. South Mimms and London Gateway. A temporary, off the tachograph home for masturbating truckers, and somewhere for the family Red Setter to p**s after miles spent in the back of a people carrier. Where businessmen vainly hope for better deals over the phone, mouthing words I cannot hear from inside their BMWs. Realm of the adulterer, dogger, and serial killer. An in-between world of nearly running away: Neither here nor there. A living, breathing thing; a so called oasis, in the sick joke of modern travel.