Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Christmas Breakdown...


Its that time of year when you end up curled in front of the dangerously tinsel-bedecked fire with three children with hacking coughs and streaming noses, in an approximation of a festive family Christmas.

For this reason, Singular Cake will be closing down for a week or two - re-opening in the new Year with thoughtful and profound insight, gained no doubt over the chocolate and brandies along with a few extra inches of waistline. Hey! You're lucky to be having a Christmas, ain'tcha - considering the state of half the planet.

Til then ...Happy Holidays, whether you're in a tent in Tibet or a commune in Catford...think on.

Wednesday, December 06, 2006

Why Lust is Good...

I've finally sussed it! Why we need lust as well as love in our lives... Its like this.
The Pattern of Lust
We discover Lust at puberty when we first fall for someone. It's all about being selfish and gratifying our desires. WHICH IS GOOD and essential to our development ! Teenagers have to learn what they want in order to work out how to get it. And normally that means something different from their parents so they can define themselves as distinct. All those sex-crazed teens watching Buffy or Smallville - they are doing their homework on Lust. THIS IS GOOD. Without this experience we do not know how to fulfill our bodies desires.
The Myth of Love
But we've been sold this myth that love and lust are the same. OH NO - THATS WHY WE GO WRONG! All those films showing the heroes IN LURVE suggest that the two forms of love are always found together. Not so...a time and a place for Love and/or Lust.
Real Love or Lust?
Once we've got a handle on teenage lust, and tried sex, we might grow into mature beings who can offer one another Real Love ie platonic selfless undemanding love. But what often happens is we have a series of lust based relationships (dump our friends and family and go sow our wild oats) and then meet THE ONE. We wanna hang on to him or her. We think this means we've found real love but at first it can only be Real Lust... We rarely feel the sort of love that demands nothing in return at this stage.
The Object of Lust
Sometimes all that lust creates a baby, and an important shift occurs. We have to care for this creature and create a good environment for it to grow. Here's our first glimpse of REAL LOVE when we put our wants on hold for the sake of this babe. Lucky parents discover they can be selfless and giving when they look into baby's trusting eyes... Not-so-lucky ones find that lust goes out the window and one of the couple strays looking for it. Not that surprising really, when Society tells us that Sex is Dirty and Nice Women don't want It. Sometimes the new mum becomes swallowed up in all that baby stuff and only offers her partner the same kind of platonic love.
Lost Lust
So the object of Lust is really motivating our species to procreate or satiate our urges - in the sense that we are driven by 'animal passion'. But Lust wanes temporarily as we concentrate on providing for a child. Through loving a child we find that Love can be as fulfilling and wonderful as Lust (but without the distraction of passion.) PROBLEM... As the man is often not as involved in child-rearing he may not feel this overwhelming love for his child at first. So he may revert to Lust to fulfill his needs. If his partner does not offer Lust - he may go elsewhere.
The Object of Love
But if both partners stick it out, Lust does rear its head once more - either to create Baby Two, or to fulfill the personal needs of the parents. And now we have the opportunity to put what we have learned about Love and Lust together. Bingo. Those weird couples who still fancy each other after all these years... now thats IT. Accepting someone with their human imperfections and still wanting to jump their bones...

So the key to it is remembering when we need Love and when it is really Lust we're after. We need both. If we cannot find Lust in our lives, we often stray into different experiences without realising that we're looking for replacement Lust. But pure Love and sincere Lust can and should go hand in hand.

First we only receive Love, then discover Lust, then discover Love and Lust combined, and only when our needs are satisfied do we have the capacity to give Love. Without the revitalizing power of Lust in our lives, we rarely have the awareness and self-control to give selfless Love. So don't relegate those feelings of Lust as unhelpful. Get horny, get satisfied and you'll be more likely to give real love in return.

Tuesday, November 28, 2006

Go GIRRRRLS !

I'm glad to say that the Anti-choice Bill was overwhelmingly defeated in the Commons this October.

Conservative MP Nadine Dorries' Bill to reduce the abortion time limit was defeated with 108 votes for and 187 votes against.

Christine McCafferty MP who spoke against the Bill correctly pointed out that it was ill thought out, cruel to women and not based on science.

She exposed the Bill as being part of an anti-choice campaign driven by extreme religious views from the US that were being imported to Britain.

See! When we stick together how strong and successful we are !

Friday, October 27, 2006

Urgent Information for All Women

Nadine Dorries MP begins a campaign to restrict abortion for women in the Chamber of the UK Houses of Parliament on Tuesday 31st October.

If the right to an abortion is decreased or removed from women in the UK, (as it is elsewhere across the globe), how will that be a step forward?

What misogynist hatred is this? You would condemn a woman to 9 months carrying an unwanted child, to which she must give birth? She will then be forced to raise the child, be expected to care for it, provide for it and educate it, until he/she can fend for him/herself? All the while the mother will be aware that she did not want this child, and that a 'civilized society' forced her to spend her life this way. We do not give life prison sentences to some rapists, but instead would force the 'victim' of rape to endure a life caring for any resulting child?

And the children? Babies born to unwilling mothers are put at greater risk of physical and mental distress. When a child keeps you awake screaming for nights on end with toothache, and you did not want that child, what likely outcome is there? Is this what 'society' wants?

The reason behind this thinking is that life is somehow sanctified. A foetus has miraculously been created (by some Higher Power) and who are we to deny it life? What just God would allow this poisonous logic? When we deliberately breed cattle for the table, do God-fearing Christians take up arms against our intention to create life? If a woman takes medication for a life-threatening condition and suffers an early-term miscarriage, is she to become a murderer? Women do not schedule abortions thoughtlessly. They are a necessary medical procedure made to protect womens' health, mental well-being and genetic vulnerability.

Life is what we make it. Every day, many spontaneous and planned actions result in the conception of a child or children. Many of these will naturally miscarry undetected. Others may be lost during pregnancy. Others may grow full-term and be born. There is no mysticism in this. We have an over-populated planet, and many common dangers affect the balance of human beings on this planet. But I, for one, have no desire to make mothers out of unwilling women for the sake of religious or theological argument.

Please contact your MP and give him/her short shrift if you agree.

I'll get off my soapbox now and return to inane blogging shortly.
Penny Clark Lapenna, mother of 3 daughters and 2 miscarried foetuses, who fervently believes in a woman's right to a safe abortion.

Saturday, October 14, 2006

Things that I am afraid of


Is our fear of the Dark really a fear of that unknown disease lurking within, the unforeseen malevolent attacker, the unguessable moment of our own death?

What wakes you in the night in a cold sweat? Are adult fears just extensions of those childhood worries – is that a vampire, a witch, a lecherous neighbour? Does that translate into - will I amount to anything? Will I be found deficient in social graces and die alone? Will I achieve a significant something? Will I ever escape the daily threat of poverty?

Studying our human fears displays the underbelly of society, which most of us prefer remains hidden. And yet within the nugget of what torments us most is a core that hints at our best qualities – kindness to overcome fears, gentility in the face of man’s inhumanity, optimism that our best will be good enough if we believe it to be so.

Just a thought. Aren't we all supposed to face our own fears?



Tuesday, October 10, 2006

From womb to room


After they exit the parasitical inhabitance of your body, they take up residence upstairs. At night you think about them, in a way that is not possible when they are awake; demanding, provoking, embellishing your own existence with extraneous de-railing thoughts and feelings.

They are.... CHILDREN.

Progeny you have spawned, often started from a moments inattention to detail, like that pill, that condom, that retraction you meant to make... Now expanding the global domination of the planet by raucous humanity, they define your every waking moment differently - no longer a solo adventurer tip-toeing a fragile way. Instead, your family spread around you like wanton proof of illicit urges you didn't curb. This seething mass of growing flesh mutates its six arms, three heads, three mouths into three angelic expressions of delight unconfined. Who would not wish to share in the anarchy of irrepressible glee that is a pillowfight fuelled by late night rations of jammy toast?

Beware. Thats how they get you.

Legoland
The freshly beaten ragrug shucks up from her mini trainers.

Light from the tall window
illuminates sides of yellow bricks, red squares, green cubes
on the cobbled base board.
She places toys that don’t fit
- a horse, lopsided Tigger, a lions head with open jaws
his plastic orange chin resting on the purely rational board -
using her three years of experience.

The outsize bricks would hurt my hand.
It’s insistence on exact longitudes and latitudes would irk.
But in my garden
I would revel in unmatched colours
and sprouting tessellations of Gaudiesque proportions
that bloom forever unwatered.

I peer through her shielded eyes
- from optic nerve along neural pathways to the brain where I must be refused entry -
with my eyes, some thirty nine summers older
my hands craggy beside her vitality of thigh, her buoyancy of cheek
her darkly penetrating gaze under fringe.

Cats can’t do lego, as she removes the tower from a pit of fur,
but I can.

July 2006 with Tabitha

Friday, October 06, 2006

...Are we Human Starfish?


Starfish

The bed, a profundity, probed by toes

Immeasurable in grades of softness

Since toe tips lack subtlety

Of form; texture.


I lie indistinct as the lurk of Ophelia’s father

In wait - a lady in waiting

Spread-eagled for my Othello

Tell Iago I lie in the arms of Morpheus

If it should hasten him to my bed


Where, displayed

By retreating surf, the duvet

Uncovers my five-pronged

Opulence.


Monday, September 25, 2006

...Dr Seuss meets Margaret Atwood


I have now submitted books to two publishers via online submissions. That's www.transita.co.uk and www.librosinternational.com - the former publishes great new fiction by women, the latter is a new venture based here in Spain.

It's been a strange journey, even to get this far... from my first disastrous effort at a novel (called Subliminals - Sex and Death !! I may resuscussitate it one day but for now lets say it was a 'juvenile work' written at 21, freshly dropped out of university), to the current head count of 2 completed novels, 2 unfinished novels, 2 published articles in Canada, some music reviews and interviews for indie magazines in the UK, couple of articles on the web (not including my blog) one novella for 10 year olds, a box of short stories for small children, and two overflowing crates of poems. Oh, and I didn't include that poem published in Puffin Post when I was 13 and 3/4's...

It's hard to get GOOD feedback. I go to a writers group (Jalon Valley Writers, based in Alcalali) and distribute snippets of work to friends, but I kinda hoped this blog would generate feedback. Course it doesn't...yet. Not competing with the 6 million other regular bloggers in the UK. So if you're out there in Lapland trying to get your first novel published, or write regularly for a Mexican poetry 'n' porn magazine, or whatever, do drop in and say hi... its kinda lonely without you.

Coming soon...
An idea for a screenplay based on a future where America has become Hollywoodia in the south, and the Canadian Atheists in the north, and one huge bible belt encircles the globe. What happens when a god-fearing lass falls in love with an exiled atheist, who is fighting the global power of the Media...

Wednesday, August 23, 2006

Those Days

I loved your dainty biro-covered fists

The gentle tread of DM boots, no socks

No underwear, a subtle Mohican crest

Your re-runs of PIL’s appearance on the box

I lusted for a touch of your self-styled tattooed thigh

Curled childlike round mine, your builders vice

You arrived at 4am – I refused to cry

Over vomit in my sink, no sacrifice

Too base to prove, sans words, my love for you

I would wreck trains, split lips, and even dye

My pubic hair with bleach and ‘Opal Blue’

The bath, next day, stained like a bowl of sky

I hated your fear of phones and blood-red jeep

Parked in other roads, near Sloppy Joe’s

Where Anna worked with long-legged ease and chips

At your feigned indifference, or so I suppose

Your tranquil nature like relentless Mardi Gras

In Notting Hill at opening time near Al’s

The dealer you thought I hadn’t even sussed

After toilet duets left you like bosom pals

It’s high time rose-tinted memories expire

Love isn’t spreading honey on my bruises

Nor sharing your brothers whisky or dancing in vaults

The Catacombs blacker than a disc of Siouxsie’s

Nor absconding to fuck in a deserted house on floorboards

Although after Tequila and salt the feeling was fine

But I’ve thrown out the joss sticks, black candles and Gothic accoutrements

This sonnet’s nostalgia; my anonymous shrine.

(The sonnet is not a form that is played with much anymore, requiring as it does the discipline of iambic pentameter - here loosely applied.)

Thursday, August 17, 2006

Big Ole Spaceships?


So the other evening instead of lazing around on the sofa, I got all inspired with a sci-fi idea. I've never written a space novel before, but I've read all the classic goodies (Clarke, Asimov, Dick, Heinlein, Lem, Le Guin etc) and the new guys like David Mitchell, Jeff Noon. I've even read Iain M Banks. And some of those trashy ones that have girls popping all out of their spacesuits at opportune moments. But really, the best ones have one simple idea that ricochets through the whole story and gives it zing...

I can't claim to have one of those. But I can envisage the trailer blurb that says "The Answer – to the Big Bang, space travel, the afterlife, and first contact..."

So what do I do with this idea? I've written a synopsis, drafted characters, researched my factual data (to do with Deep Space and new galaxies and current & future space exploration) and I'm ready. Do I start the opening chapters, go for a screenplay, or pitch the idea itself? Who do I talk to or google for?

Come on guys, gimmee some clues...

Tuesday, July 11, 2006

Matryoshkas




‘During the Soviet era, the ‘State Planning Committee’ decided that it would be politic to make as many nesting Russian Dolls as possible, in order that each person on the Earth could get his/her own ‘matryoshka’. The factory dolls that were subsequently churned out had none of the appeal of the old hand-carved ones. Highly skilled old masters turned matryoshkas with very thin sides, which were considered to be a special artform. Painting matroykas was secondary. The professional artists who painted the first factory turned dolls did not treat them seriously enough. Without the native traditions, the matroyshka lost its charm and became an ordinary wooden toy, primitive and simple, but certain themes and patterns were still visible in their designs. The red and black Dog-Rose with many petals was the main element of the painted aprons. This flower was always considered to be a symbol of femininity, love and motherhood.’

Women are the real Russian dolls. Inside, are their children, growing and turning, their wooden faces emerging from the carving tool, their newly painted eyes blinking into awareness. Deeper within every doll is their mother, who only comes to the fore when the babies are born. That is when we realise what it is to have a mother and be a mother – the heart-churning, chest-rending ache of it, coupled with the sweetest indescribable joys. And when we first realise what our own mothers and grandmothers have achieved.

Within the Russian dolls of a family are the minute changes in appearance that dictate the changing generations – a misplaced mole or birthmark perhaps, a tendency to a long nose or a high forehead. Echoes from this genealogy create that striking sense of a family. When you walk into the room of someone else’s family gathering, there is a moment, while you are still an outsider, when you can see these clues. Laid out before you are a mass of pale-skinned, freckled, red headed folk, or the cast of The Cosby Show, or domed foreheads of every shape, size and age like Old Masters come to life. Whatever it is, you’ll see it that first time, as clearly as a brand on sheep. This is NOT your family. Your own family has blurred for you over time, until now all you see is its familiarity. Faces that might as well be your own in a mirror; you know them that well. Auntie this, Cousin that, who may be irritating as hell individually, but taken together reflect back your sense of yourself in the world. Like us Clarks.

My family is loosely from London, England. My mother’s side (Capon, Swetman, Hammon) moved out gradually, from Edmonton, North London to Hertfordshire and Essex, the Home Counties. My Dad’s family (Clark) have dispersed erratically to Bishops Stortford, Newmarket, and Clacton, and one or two to Spain, Israel, Tasmania. There is rarely a Clark family gathering anymore. The last was probably Grandad Joe’s 80th birthday. I think I got stoned in someone’s car in a parking lot, and avoided the milling flesh in uncomfortable party clothes all dancing to bad disco in the marquee….

Sometimes matryoshkas portrayed the whole family, with numerous children and other staff members of households. There were matryoshkas devoted to historical themes. They described boyars (old Russia noblemen), legendary heroes, bogatirs (warriors), or Russian book characters. Those portraying older women would have their hair covered with kokoshniks; to portray young girls they painted hair ribbons. Black drake's feathers were stuck in the headdresses. The most popular dolls consisted of 3, 8 and 12 pieces, although in 1913 a 48-piece matryoshka made by N. Bulichev was displayed at the Exhibition of Toys in St. Petersburg. Some Russian dolls depict aspects of tea making. The Russian tea-making ceremony is reminiscent of the English one, i.e. tea is served in a teapot, with bread and jam, cakes and pies. It is normally served at 5pm (tea time) but also throughout the day, and especially when visiting a friends house. However, Russians might use a samovar to heat the water, instead of an English style kettle’.

And it really is a ceremony. No matter how corny, rushed or commonplace having a cup of tea has become, it’s a potent symbol of home and family. A cup of ‘tea and sympathy’ at times of stress or grief, a heartwarming mugful to dispel shock, the ritual teapot and dainty cups with saucers when an elderly relative, vicar, neighbour or potential in-laws call by. Those late night mugs of chocolate, or continental shots of coffee are all very well, but someone only has to say ‘Fancy a cuppa?’ and I feel cosseted and welcomed. I can differentiate old boyfriends and their families by different styles of tea. The dilute milky taste of Mark’s tea, the harsh tannin laced with copious sugar of Steve’s Irish family. Joe dubbed Auntie Doreen’s ‘Guinness tea’, relishing its rich copper colour and dense flavour - that ‘puts hairs on your chest.’ And now everyone drinks green tea, red tea, fruit tea, camomile tea, Earl Grey, Darjeeling, ice tea, tea with soya milk, tea with honey…

Nanny Em’s tea was the best. One bag of PG Tips per person, and one for the pot. Scalding hot water in the teapot and straight on with the woolly tea cosy, on a tray, surrounded by little plates of French Fancies, or Swiss Roll, or a slice of homemade apple pie. The cups were a mismatched combination of white porcelain fluted cups with a gold rim, and smaller, squat white cups with a pale pink tea rose pattern, all on plain white saucers. Inevitably, I spilled some tea in the saucer, trying to sit on her plump cushioned sofa. Grandad would slurp his tea noisily out of his saucer afterwards, to the delight of us kids, sat waiting for Nan to rebuke him for his manners. Whereupon he’d roll his eyes at her, and pull a goony face at us, jutting out his lower jaw to show us his one peg of a tooth. The tea itself tasted mild, warm and soft - the type of tea that rolls round inside your mouth and is fit to drink alongside Southend’s best battered rock eel and chips, or after a late tea of marmite soldiers and runny egg, or with early morning smoked kippers, bread and jam.

Monday, June 26, 2006

The world is random


While walking along the road from Alcalali to Parcent this morning, I found one credit and two debit cards in the name of Miss H. Deaves, chucked in the ditch. I wouldn't normally be scouring the ditch but the cars bomb so close at times, that you have to be aware of the roadside in case you need to make a leap to safety. (One night walking home in the moonlight I got tipped in the ditch and found the stream at the bottom. Another time Joe and I were drunk and stood in the field pretending to be trees whenever potential axe-wielding murderers drove by looking for their next victims. Of course, we used to live in London, or we'd never think such things, here in sleepy rural Spain.)
Where was I ? Oh, yeah, so I found these cards and it seemed like a message. I'd been having a tough time at home - pile of bills mounting up, Joes new business is just eating cash, the girls need shoes, teeth-braces, swimsuits, school books - an endless list. I haven't bought new underwear in over a year. How grim and unattractive that sounds! I looked at these cards in my hand - one from Abbey National, one Tescos, one HSB - and they were all in date, signed on the back, pristine-looking. A womans name and signature. And for just one second I thought about what would happen if I kept them? Hid them in a drawer in case times got even harder. Would I be tempted to try and use them? Could I even hand them in for a reward? I wasn't really sure of the procedure - should I report them to the Guardia Civil? Ring the number on the back? Would the person have already cancelled them?
I imagined a lady, pleasant-looking, very English, living over here maybe, with folks back in the UK, and a retaining back account there. Perhaps she'd been robbed last night, and the thieves used her cards to pay on the motorway toll roads. Maybe she was devastated - could she have been mugged like a friend was last week? A knife held to her throat through the window of her car, while she was made to hand over her bag and contents, possibly forced to reveal her PIN number. Horrible.
By now, I'd walked home, and was snatching a quick tea before picking the girls up from their last day at school. I stood holding the cards and picked up the phone. I thought about the arguments lately, and how I'd threatened to walk out last week. I wondered why I'd found them today. Was there a reason? Is the world just random?
Of course, I phoned to report the cards stolen - the phone operative at the other end said they'd already been cancelled. Could I please cut them up, length-ways and width-ways and dispose of them? I put them in the bin, with a strange sense of purpose. Miss Deaves would never know I'd found them, and there they were among my decomposing tea-bags, the remains of Tabi's Rice Krispies, the bill envelopes.
Tomorrow I would write the first line of my next novel - maybe the one that will get published. Maybe the one that will moulder in the Playroom cupboard until Farley finds it one day, looking for scrap paper, and hand it out in sheaves to her two sisters to cover with exotic drawings of stick people and grinning suns and wobbly houses.

Monday, June 05, 2006

Reaching

Just when you think - Whats the point??!! - someone steps in and says "Read your blog. Loved it. Some issues on there. Made me think."

Isn't that where we're all going with this? Isn't it like the scene in that movie Bruce Almighty where Jim Carrey gets to be God, and has to listen to everyone's prayers (via email). You can read 20 blogs in under ten minutes - and every one has a prayer or a wish or a thought process outlined in it. You can perceive lifestyle choices, faiths, politics (duh, obviously) loves, loss and heartache... and the humanity of it strikes you, whether the blog is from Aarhus or Zimbabwe.

Of course, publishers wanna publish it - in them old fashioned bindings of paper and string, because there's a world of people immune to blogging who yet wanna know about it. But it's a vast human experiment - greater than reality tv, more open to measurement than the impact of the internet, more poignant than hacking email - because these sites are the sneak peek into your hallway that voyeurs treasure, and the rest of us claim as intellectual stimulus when in truth its more about soap opera...

The globe is changing - so fast we can't measure it or keep up. Climate, war zones, extinction of key species, barriers of geography and language are dwindling, people are getting a global consciousness. There is talk of a 'critical mass' - a point at which humans could truly learn from their mistakes. Is it round the corner? Check out some more blogs, and let me know...

Wednesday, May 31, 2006

2: More Chupa-Chups

I’d got hurt at school, from falling over in the playground. There were little stones, nearly as small as sand, and they got stuck under my fingernail and pushed my nail loose. It stung like anything, and I knew it would hurt more if they tried to get the stones out. So I started crying and biting my lip and swinging my arm about so the teachers couldn’t get to touch my fingernail. Marie-Carmen took me to the medico who turned out to be a lady, in this other building, who looked like she just sat there all day waiting for people to hurt themselves.

Then my mum arrived, and looked down at my finger as if it was going to bite her. Just as I stood up, a small brown-skinned boy was carried in, kicking and screaming, because he’d fallen on scissors. They were in a real rush and I saw his blood dripping and they left the door open, as though they had no time to waste with doors. So I watched the medico lady while she stitched his eyebrow and all the while the boy howled. I couldn’t see the doctor lady’s face. She talked Spanish under her breath but I don’t think she was angry with the boy, although she did pull him about roughly. I understood what she said:

‘Mother of God, they let them play with anything! It is for the doctors to care for children now, not parents. If I were able to have a child like this, surely there are good things to teach him, things that awaken his soul; not to be left in a room like the spare bull. To hell with the lazy foreign dogs.’

Eventually, she was done.

I didn’t want to go in there after that. As the boy came out, he looked at me strangely, as though the accident had affected his brain not just his eyebrow. Marie-Carmen nodded at us, and my mum dragged me in, but I wouldn’t sit on the chair or the bench. The medico had short brown hair whose ends turned up from being tugged in her fingers a lot. She looked at me and I saw her eyes were weeping oil. It just looked as if she was oozing from seeing so many things she didn’t like. I didn’t want her to touch my finger, and I worried that the oil would drip on me and I’d start seeing things I didn’t like. I told my mum that it was hurting and she asked about a way to numb the pain, but the medico said that my mum had to hold my arm still, and then she pulled my nail off, and flicked the stones away with a sharp metal shape, got the jagged bit of skin off, and squirted it with Betadine. It was in a bandage and my hand felt heavy before I could remember the Spanish for Stop.

Moltes graciés per su attención, señora,’ I said.

She shrugged: 'No pasa res.'

I thought it was better to say thank-you in Valenciano, like at school, because then people go relaxed, and let you off things. She did slump her shoulders a bit and she was quite young, and I thought if she didn’t have children of her own, maybe she didn’t realise how much it hurt.

After we came out into the stinging sun, I watched the boy across the road, digging a weed out of a crack in his house. His mother came out, shaking a tablecloth, and he cursed at her in Spanish. She was going to yell back, but he put his hand on his stitches and rubbed the hair out of his eyes and I could see she was upset. He sat on the step with his face all red and swollen. His mother went back inside.

We had to go past them to reach the Farmacia where they sold boxes of clean bandages and plasters and had jars with green water in where creatures floated. I was so busy getting given more chupa-chups and listening to my mum smile at the ladies, that I didn’t notice him creep in the door and watch me. I turned round when he said ‘J***r! in the same rude voice he’d used with his mother. I licked the pale pink and cream lollipop, as his mouth dripped oil from the sides, all down his chin. He looked like Gollum. But no-one else seemed to notice.

So now you know that the Dark isn’t just in my head. When people become infected they can spread it to others. I don’t remember seeing the oil before, but that’s like I never saw traffic lights in London until someone told me about them, and then I saw them all the time. Every corner had the lights, blinking their colours all day, splashing in shop windows and shining in my bedroom at night, while people and cars waited to be told when to go and when to stop. In the country there are no traffic lights. You can decide for yourself when it’s safe to go or stop.

By now I began to see the oil on other people. It stained their clothes, dripped from fingers, stuck their hair, stung their eyes. Some people hid it, but others were so full of it, it ran from their faces, and dripped on their kids. It was disgusting and shiny and hard to avoid. If I could, I’d have carried wipes with me, and worn a rainhat and washing-up gloves, only it was summer. Instead, I avoided talking to people who were so clearly full of the Dark. You’d think everyone would be horrified about dripping oil, but the ones who are infected don't seem to care, and the ones who aren’t infected yet can’t seem to see it. Except me.

The time when the Dark was strongest was at night. I mean that’s when everyone is most easily scared, isn’t it, but the Dark is cleverer than just shadows and creepy night sounds. I think it chose to live in the realm of darkness and half-truths because it knew best how to manipulate people, when they are tired and not able to focus. I remember one night, getting into bed, and really not worrying about anything, when my mum came in.

‘Darling... Nanna sends her love. She’ll bring your other paintings over next time she comes. Erm... you know Nanna’s not well, don't you?’

She stopped and tried to think of a way to weave it into a happy bedtime story but it was beyond even Mummy’s imagination that this was good news. Okay, so Nanna was getting ill, and my mum was telling me about it so I wouldn’t be so scared. When grown-ups do that, you know it’s the time to be really scared. It meant that Nanna was ill in a way that couldn’t get better.

That night I went to sleep thinking about my Nanna, and the time I played making tea with her. It was a day so incredibly bright you had to wear a hat or close your eyes. We were sat outside her house at the Bernia mountain, and Nanna had her feet in a bowl of water and I was using the same water to pour into my red plastic teapot. It was fun to pour the water over her sun-browned knees and make her squeal. Her toes had pale nail-polish on so they looked like shells in the bottom of the bowl of water. Big sunflowers had grown nearby, along the sides of her house, just from seeds dropped by accident. There was even a tomato plant that probably grew from the pips in Nanna’s salad sandwiches that she ate on the doorstep, because she loved her view of the mountain. I was just getting used to Spain and we were staying with Nanna for a while, so that Dad could buy a car and Mum could look for a house. It was playing out just like in real life when the dream changed. Nanna suddenly said:

‘Don’t fight it, Farley, when you feel angry. Get scissors, or break a toy, or shout in someone’s ear. You’ll feel better.’

Then Nanna sat down slowly as if she was going to sleep. She looked rather sad, as if someone had told her to say those things, but she didn’t feel good about it.

You see, I know my Nanna, and she would never tell me what to do. Neither tell me to be good nor bad. She doesn’t push other people to do anything. I think she knows that people have their own minds and forcing them to do what you want is evil. And what’s more it doesn’t work, because people just don’t like you for interfering. But because she mentioned scissors, and I had some in my school kit, I got them out and kept them near my bed just in case I’d need them.

What the Dark doesn’t realise, is that I know Nanna. I have spent more than three months with her, and put necklaces over her face, and shared my birthday cake with her, and told her things I’ve told no-one else. The Dark changed my dream so that I would think Nanna said being mean was okay. Can you imagine something so powerful and sinister that it can get into your dreams? And in your dreams it can make your family act strange and wicked. It’s pretty sneaky. If it does that to little girls, what could it do to grown-ups, whose dreams are less clear, and who are so busy they don’t always think slowly about everything? This is when I realised that I also know more about the Dark than anyone else.

I tried to ask Mum about the Dark, and she thought it was just the usual stuff, either me having a dream or being a weird kid. She was really nice about it but I could tell she thought I was just a scaredy-cat, all afraid of night-time. She’d try reading cheery poems at bedtime, and cuddling me, and bringing me drinks in the night for an excuse to check me. She tried her hardest to protect me, from knee-scratches and fast cars and bad weather, and giving me long relaxing stories to fall asleep to, but she didn’t know the Dark was real, and in my dreams, and it would be a problem for grown-ups too.

Maybe the Dark is following me from London. You see, at first, living in Spain was like one big holiday, and I didn’t have to go to school yet or get up on time. We found a house we liked and the builders were fixing it, (with Daddy getting in their way), and we had trial mornings with Marie-Carmen and even the thought of school still seemed like fun.

One morning, when Mimi and I were watching Spanish TV in our pyjamas, Daddy interrupted his latest argument with Mum to call to us.

‘Hey, Tigers!’ Dad said. ‘Isn't that a bit gory for breakfast time?’

‘But it’s the point where the sand goes brown with blood, and the bull bends to its knees. Cool! He’s gonna do the final stab. Watch, Mimi.’

Mum and Dad were arguing about not getting to the bank before siesta-time to pay some bills. They still hadn’t got the hang of what time everything opened and shut, what days the men came to collect the rubbish and which fiesta was the one where the whole village had a huge paella in the plaza.

‘Put a nice DVD on Farley. D’you think that’s fine for them to watch? Look, I need more work to pay for their school books and there’s no way the house is gonna be ready on time. Spain isn’t just a holiday now, it’s real life.’

‘If you got a proper job, you’d have to learn Spanish anyway,’ Mum was saying. ‘I’ll sort out the paperwork and make the bank manager understand somehow. Can’t you fix computers at weekends? Or sell your old Brownies at the antiques market?’

‘Those cameras are priceless, in original boxes. They’ve never been touched! Why don’t you sell your old books? You’ve read ’em all anyway.’

Maybe the Dark was affecting them a tiny amount, like having a sniffle before you get a full cold. They argued over the slightest thing; Mum was looking sad most days, and Daddy was always mooching about in the garage, turning over the stuff in boxes that they’d brought from England.

It was a few months later I saw the medico with the starey oily eyes. I think the Dark could tell we were a troubled family and it followed me to see if it could infect me when I was distracted.

Monday, May 29, 2006

Transitory Glory

Starting with the premise of freedom

emerging into the grapey light of 7am

to a street of doggerel, grinning ribaldly

past old lamp posts with fresh cables trailing

and a shattered life from last night

lying as windscreen glass across

the camber of the road.

Twinkling, reflecting and so do I,

on Europe’s libertine and laissez-faire

approach to its pioneering offspring.

Here, there are no tumbleweeds to blow

and wedge in wooden doorways

nor one Plexiglas bubble home from which to appear

silver-suited, smirking, overflowing with technology.

Doesn’t seem likely those skateboarders

will explode into strains of Ohhhh-klahoma

at my approach

nor wield capes, astutely contemplating Yorick’s skull

unless he supersedes Def Jam as a House label.

Am I Crusader, invader, or refugee, if I take my life elsewhere?

The liberty I escape to is far more euphoric

than spaghetti western, sci-fi, musical or melodrama

- dances its slamdance, high on the smell of paint

from my fingertips -

as I execute a Dadaist statement

or is it a Surrealist 21st century one-off

smashing a Smartie to smithereens

and scorching down an English High Street,

suitcase in tow, two kids, and a one-way ticket,

unrepentant.


October 2001 Leaving England...

Saturday, May 27, 2006

Last Year in Parcent

Having three children is a bit like learning to live in a hurricane zone. It's possible, but you sometimes wonder why you made life so hard on yourself... Course, there are probably up-sides to hurricane regions too, like gorgeous scenery and windmill-powered tv?? I'd better stop the analogy there.

At home in Parcent, Mimosa has become a girl and wanders around in high heel shoes with her hair in strange arrangements. She has a way of tipping her head to one side that is very regal. A bit incongruous considering her scabbed knees and bruised shins from the new slide at school, but if anyone can carry it off it's Mimi. We moved here when she was only four months old, just lifting her baby face up to see the world. As a middle child, she has a life of comparisons ahead of her, but she has an inner calm at four years of age.

Yesterday, Farley went to the dentists in Orba. She probably needs very expensive braces to correct her 'ugly duckling' syndrome - that stage kids of 7 go through when their teeth all arrive at once and look like tombstones being tilted sideways by the undead. However, she can't wait to have a brace. (Weird child)

While we were tiptoeing through our Spanish with the dental receptionist, Farley chatted to people in the waiting room. How cool it must be to speak 3 languages and be able to switch instantly when you meet a stranger. She knows without asking whether to try Castellano or Valenciano Spanish or English, and almost always gets it right. The Dutch guy chatted to her, and a whole Spanish family and a lone English teenager.

Tabi has finally been speaking - probably as a result of listening to visiting adults natter for a week solid - and can now say I do it! My one! and No want bubize! The three of them all loved flying Mimi's kite at the football pitch last weekend, and Farley's trying to master one of those skipping things that has a hoop round your ankle with a ball attached? Shaped like the male sex sign?(I can't do the bloody thing, - bruised to bits)

I had a special 3 hour pass to go shopping at La Marina this Saturday (big mall near Benidorm with groovy shops galore) while Joe took the girls to a huge shaded beach climbing frame in Finestrat - basically he had a 3 hour snooze while they played monsters and tied up damsels.

It sounds as if we've got one of those blissfully uneventful lives, full of shopping and kids funny sayings and home comforts. You should see the house... rustic, we call it. But our lives have been anything but uneventful in the last few years. But more of that later. For now, this is normality. (Written July 2005)

Monday, May 22, 2006

Blog crazy?


So you start up a site, just for a laff. Then you edit it, and jigger around with the way it looks. Then you try to upload your own photo, have trouble with a hit counter, accidentally delete some crucial html and decide to quit for a day.

But you're hooked. Try telling your neighbour about blogging. Try telling your kid's best friend's mum at the school gates. Explain that you can play 'Next Blog' and surf around the world in minutes, reading intimate details of peoples lives, looking at photos of other peoples cats and picking up weird snippets of Iranian news or a cry for help from a stay at home Dad in Atlanta, Georgia.

The non-blogging community think 'Maybe I could use it to publicise my business?' PLEASE NO. Get your own website if you wanna sell stuff. Real bloggers are out there scooping awards for journalism, or getting their blog-turned-novel published, or just freaking out their neighbours who never knew they were swingers. But they're passionately driven individuals, impatient, nerdy, often over-educated or under-educated, but almost always quirky.

Try it. You might juss love it.

Thursday, May 18, 2006

1: From the Smiling Sun

...Tales from the Light Side.

‘...But when we lived in London I’d never heard of the Dark. Qué estupendo! Well, except for normal dark, like at night time. The sort of dark that’s in your room when you switch off the light to go to sleep. I was only 3 then, so I probably didn’t know a lot of things. I’d never had sisters, or lost teeth, or been in a fiesta. But I remember I had a big blue and yellow bedroom, with wooden floorboards and waves painted round the bottom of the walls, and a big picture of a dancing smiling sun looking like it had just skipped in the window. Although Mum and Dad knew that London was bad for children, it had good parks and tons of shiny shops, and my Auntie and cousins lived there too.

But I’m pretty sure that the Dark was around because of how everyone talks about it being a dirty, busy, angry place, where there are guns and strange men.’

- And is that why you moved to Parcent, because of the strange men?

'Well, my mum had me and wanted to keep me safe and sound. Dad had to work until late at night in London so he didn’t get to put me to bed or tell me his sort of stories. But they worked out that they could get on an aeroplane, and come to Spain, and buy a house in a little village that no-one had ever heard of, and then when I became seven, I would be able to walk to school on my own, and breathe fresh air and not have eczema or nut allergy. Daddy wouldn’t have to wear a suit and he’d have time to build things from wood and drink his cup of tea slow and I’d be able to chat to him then so I’d be happier and so would they.

You see, it’s not just that London was full of the Dark. I dont remember it a lot, but I hear what Mum and Dad say about it, and it sounds like a place where the Sith would live; you know, the bad Jedi, or trolls or ghosts. It was a big city with too many people, and when the people that lived there got fed up, they got angry with each other, and that leads to fights and people getting hurt. And that’s why the Dark started there. London was a place where horrible things could grow because it had pollution and gangs and you couldn’t get an appointment at the doctors. When people became full of the Dark, there was no-one to help, or care about them, or try to stop it.

The Dark is cleverer than people. It can make you think that you want to do mean things, not just for a good reason, but for no reason at all. Sometimes the Dark is like a best friend, who tells you about the nisperos on the tree next door, just waiting to be stolen, and it wouldn’t really be stealing if the people who live there don’t want the fruit. And you think its being your best friend when it says that. Only a little tiny part of you knows that it’s wrong. But who’s to know? Just you and the Dark, and the Dark won’t tell.

I think Mum had Mimi in her belly at the time. I remember our first house here; we called it the Christmas House, and it was painted yellow on the outside. It had a big terrace on the top of the building that we shared with other people, and we moved in on the first day of our chocolate Advent Calendar. The streets were really noisy, but not just with cars, they were even noisy with people. Cars would stop and people would lean out and have whole conversations like that just hanging out of cars talking to people on their balconies or in their doorways. It was even worse at fiesta time. The streets would be decorated with flags and streamers and palmeras. Some windows had huge pictures of a beautiful golden lady and her baby. There were processions and fireworks and bands that played trumpets all night. I wasn’t used to it, and I cried at new noises, (like I still don’t really like fireworks). But now I’m the one most likely to natter to you in the street, and tell you about my family, and be noisy, tell jokes and tease the littler children.

When we first arrived it took ages to buy anything in the shops, but ages in a nice way, because the ladies would stop and ask my name, and was I looking forward to getting a sister? And did I want a chupa-chups? - That’s a lollipop, all sticky and multi-coloured, and wrapped in paper that you have to pull off with your teeth. People in shops dish them out like they are free. Anyway, at the Christmas house before going shopping Mum would have checked the dictionary for words like vegetables or ham or cheese, but sometimes when we got there she would buy different things like stuffed olives or nisperos, and then have them for lunch and say they tasted amazing. I still don’t like olives, well, I’ve never tried one, but Mimi and Tabi do; they eat them by the bucket load. Nisperos are good though. They’re like peaches only smaller and you can cook them with chicken or gambas or in a tarta and the juice is lovely and orange.

We can’t have stayed at the Christmas house for long because Mimi was still a baby when we moved into this house. Dad had to build wooden gates everywhere to stop her crawling into danger. When she was nearly two and going upstairs from the kitchen, (or maybe it was downstairs from the playroom?), she slipped and Mum just in time got her hand between Mimi’s head and the edge of the tiled step to save her. Once I fell on the tiled floor and chipped a tooth. It took some getting used to, as Mum used to say, but here we all are. Some of my friends say they’d love to live in an English house all cosy with carpets and central heating and a proper fenced-off garden. But this house has three different floors and a terrace for bikes and a courtyard for breakfast in the sun, just like most of my friend’s houses. It is cool in summer and warm in winter and now that I have my own room it’s my favourite place to live. Especially because for ages there was no sign of the Dark.

The Dark has been around so long that like learning Spanish, I don’t really remember how it started. I know that one of the first times I saw it here, was in a drawing. I think Mum and Dad had been arguing. In those days I went to a half-English nursery school that gave me sheets of paper to take home with holes along the edge. So I did a drawing, to the right of the holes, of Mum and Dad fighting. Their heads looked pretty enough, with swirls of blue, green and purple, but their faces were too close together. When I drew little Mimi on the paper, the pen changed from blue ink to greasy oil. That’s nothing much, but it really was a blue pen. Only somehow this oil forced its way out and got on my drawing and when I saw it I began shouting.

‘Ooo yuck. Nasty stuff! That’s because you’re trying to take Mimi away from Mummy.’

The more angry I got, the more the oil swirled on my drawing. But I didn’t put it there.

Daddy was the first to hear me. ‘If you'd just button it for a minute, you'd see Farley's upset now too. ’

‘Ohh, and now that's gonna be my fault. If the baby doesn't sleep, it’s my job. If the child’s upset, it’s because of me. Where are you in all this then?’

‘Earning money. Trying to concentrate.’

‘So if I can't cope with the kids and the heat and the lack of sleep and dealing with you know what, I shouldn’t bother you at all. Ring the Samaritans in England and rack up the phone bill, but sure as sugar don’t trouble Daddy. Well, fine.’

I waved the paper. Mummy and Daddy looked at my picture, and Mummy bit her lip. Oh-o. Maybe she could see the weird slimy oil too? But she said nothing about that. Just sat down, and patted the chair for me to sit next to her, and hugged me, and gave Daddy her big eyed look. He stopped all the gruff voice and uptight shoulders, and handed Mimi back to Mummy. It stopped the argument, but they couldn’t see what I could see.

That was odd, but I didn’t really think about it then. Until I saw the medico with the oil leaking from her eyes. That’s when I really knew what it was.

2001:Our Spanish Odyssey

Five years ago we moved from London to a small valley called the Vall de Pop, 30 minutes inland from the Costa Blanca in Spain. A cluster of traditional Spanish villages are strung out like beads on a necklace, from Calpe on the touristy coast to Castell de Castells in the rugged Serella Mountain range. Initially we rented an apartment in Jalon, while we renovated a 'casa del pueblo' in Parcent, one of the smaller villages - some 900 inhabitants...

This is my email record of our journey.


Hola! Bon Festes! We've arrived as it's October fiesta time here in Jalon, but this is THE BIG ONE. Festival of the Poor Virgin's 50th Anniversary - Aniversario de la Coronacion de la Virgen Pobre. Which is also the name of the town's biggest bodega, a lucrative coincidence as they are dishing out free wine and beer.

In the plaza today, there are huge tortilla pans cooking over bonfires and the streets are being decorated. Well, that's hardly the word for it - the roads have been painted with huge murals, symbols and religious messages in celebration of the Virgin Mary, some streets have gold zigzags along the kerbs, others are painted completely green and swirled with flowers, others in the pale blue and white of the Virgin. Every street was cleared of cars yesterday, the whole town was cordoned off and carparking space made in a nearby field. Each household has been out painting - the roads, kerbs, steps and pavements. At 11pm last night there were old ladies wielding brooms to clear the way for the spraypainters carrying road wide stencils. It's like walking around Disneyland. Some streets have become tunnelled arches of paper flowers, strung from the balconies, some have draped banners and party streamers. Gotta get my photos developed but no doubt they won't do it justice. To walk around here is like being on a film set of a Spanish village, you suspect you could turn a corner and see that the apparently sturdy houses are just fakes. Meanwhile the girls are loving the unreality of it, music at all hours and excuses to stay up late.
Our moving-in date is drawing nearer - weekend of 30th Nov / 1st December 2001. The house in Parcent is just barely renovated, two upper floors have new terracotta tiles and whitewashed walls. Downstairs we have the basic rudiments of a kitchen, and the living room is full of cement bags, cement mixer, paint pots, empty beer cans and other essentials. If I kick out the builders, we can move in time to erect the Christmas tree on Dec 1st - a regular family ritual.

The acid test of our move abroad will come soon - getting jobs. My Spanish is still variable - some days it's coherent, other days I forget how to say 15 or Thursday. Languages are tricky blighters - if you say 'Es bueno?' as opposed to 'Estas bien?' you're asking if someone feels sexy! Bit inappropriate when buying your green beans at the market. Oh well, we're making friends quickly... Hasta luego, P & Co

Tuesday, May 16, 2006

Give it up


So why be an atheist, right?

You have no god, no big aunty come-give-me-a-cuddle, no safety net, no playground pals, no idea what comes next, no comforter, no guiding star, no agent for work, no freemasonry handshake, no HAL, no online editor, no early morning radio DJ, no software backup, no cot bumpers, no security guard-cum-janitor, no Genesis 1:28, no skatepark kneepads, no panic button, no revelatory shining light, no currency converter, no Ronco Veggiechop, no kneel-a-bed prayers for the Lottery.

In this day and age, no freedom of speech.
Its not about owning your own soul and the right to do with it as you will. We all have responsibilities, ties, and commitments that put paid to that.
You don't have myths, parables, bedtime stories or tales of Boogey men to scare the kiddies.

What DO you have?

The ability to create your own culture, with its rich, pertinent histories and deeply mythical record books. A soft blank page from which to cut your own cloth or copy other's that suit you. The just fear of what may come after - be that an endless sleep while the worms gnaw your bones, or a return to the great glowing gene pool of life. A just fear which can give you the power to live in the here and now.

It means no insurance. Get it right. Or die trying.

Friday, May 12, 2006

God's Bet


Cynthia was showering, when she struck her ankle bone against a tiled corner.
“Jes-SUSS Christ almighty! That hurts” she yelped.
Up in heaven, God mused.
“She’s the one,” he decided. “She doesn’t believe, so no-one will realise I am behind this. She can save the world.”
In doing so, she would have to eradicate religion, he thought, so there will be no cause for further dissension.
“But sir,” queried an underling. “Isn’t that what You were trying to achieve? Isn’t this Your plan? Should they not be made aware of this eventually?”
“I’m trying a new ploy. You see, if their lives are good, and they choose voluntarily to become good people, then they will be eligible for my heavenly rewards.”
“But what if they persist in badness? What then? Won’t He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named get them?”
“I will lose a few, it’s true. Some souls will not be saved. It will take humans a long time to see the rewards of a good life on earth. Many may pass below where HWM-NBN will rejoice. His armies will grow stronger and more confident.”
“Then this will not work,” the underling shrieked. “We may be invaded, overtaken, destroyed by the multitude of demons!”
“And you do not think I am more than a match for him and his kind? Remind me, why are you here, if your faith is this flimsy?”
The underling shuddered, peering up like a troubled homunculus. He was unsure which of the answers which sprang to mind would gain him more milk and honey.
“I think it’s a great plan,” he ventured. “Let’s see what happens.”

She loved singing in the shower. Under the tumbling spray she closed her eyes and concentrated on the sound echoing from the tiled walls.
“I-i-i-i know a place that’s safe and warm from the crowds – into your arms o-wo-oh into your arms I will GO-O-O.”
Suddenly she had one of those warm and personal moments when you feel at one with the world. She felt hugely powerful, omnipotent almost, as if she could solve any problem if she put her mind to it.
“I should install a web cam in here and broadcast to the nation,” she announced to the pot-plants and lounging cat. “I’ll say I am the woman they need – to solve the planet’s problems. If they would all renounce God and all that nonsense, I could show them how to have perfect happiness in the here-and-now.”
While she towelled herself dry, the thought lingered. Over coffee and a jammy croissant, she allowed herself the indulgence of imagining what might be. Before she could change her mind, she rang the computer engineer at MBiT Computers and asked if he would pop in and install a webcam. There was a small matter of the nudity involved, but it might work in her favour that folks would think they’d catch a glimpse of bare behind. It would be the ‘tease factor’ to hook ‘em in, and then they’d listen to what she had to say, and maybe soon fans would set up a website, there would be an open-air concert where bands and artistes would support her views, a small clique of followers might establish a school to study her comments, and books would come out yearly dedicated to the cause.

After her first live webcam, where she had to get to grips with the logistics of voice projection, avoiding ‘shower curtain crackle’ and atmospheric distortion from the bathroom environment, whilst simultaneously concentrating her views into catchy sound bites; she found she improved with each performance. It was sometimes a struggle keeping goose-pimpled flesh to the minimum - hits for the blog on Google dropped if the web filtering detected high ratios of pink skin and labelled her as Porn. The reality TV show broadcast from her front lawn was an initial shock, as was the honorary doctorate from the University of Colorado, presented by George Clooney, live by satellite from his villa on Lake Como. But as the weeks lengthened into months, she settled into a kind of routine. Up at 6am for a real shower, with the heater on and no make-up, then her breakfast radio slot broadcast from the kitchen, with authentic crunching and slurping. Her first webcam was around 11am, generally something ground-breaking – Women CAN read Maps was a good one, and the infamous Make Cake Not War, which had increased her following in the Middle East, United Korea, patisserie-orientated France and Japan particularly. Then afterwards she’d fit in some shopping – maybe opening a new QuickieMart if it meant she got an hour’s uninterrupted browse down the aisles, and she could plan the week’s meals – she was often cooking for dinner parties now at the weekend, for 12 or 13 friends. Afternoons were generally spent in preparation for the evening’s peak viewing webcam, having her hair crimped and skin airbrushed with fake tan, reading her notes and humming a lot. The humming helped to keep her ‘centred’. She’d tried a mantra but that smacked of religion which was a slippery downhill slope. After the performance, she relaxed with friends, ate good food, watered the garden, took select phone-calls and trawled the internet to catch up with the worldwide reaction.

When the summer peak hit, she found herself craving some privacy and time to think. She’d covered all the basics now – schools were content to preach her first ten podcasts as the New Commandments, followed by age-appropriate interpretations of the Saturday Night Specials in which she’d first dispensed with the Big Faker. They’d moved on to Cyn and Forgiveness (the one that became a car bumper sticker) and Singular Cake – A Way to Enlightenment (the World Health Organisation’s first recommended DVD; sales of which finally eradicated World Hunger.) Now she really needed to recharge her batteries before the Autumn Season Network programming meeting.

Atop a deserted mountain in Cantabria, she had her second Golden Glow moment. The air rushing up from the cooling valley below was heady with thyme, pine and rosemary. Not a human sound disturbed the silence, only the cawing of Bonelli Eagles now nesting on the southern face, and the muted bellows of herds of goats. It was a sensation like that of a spiritual revelation, but the thought that permeated her whole being was barely containable in words. It was more of an aroma of life. Something that hinted at a global cup of nectar for all humankind. She pondered the moment, all the while scratching at midge bites on her neck. To be honest, she’d had quite enough of this fame malarkey. Did the world really need her as spokesperson? Wasn’t that half the problem with the God business? Maybe this golden moment had to be experienced like a personal affirmation, and all the folk on the planet would feel it themselves once they were at one with the created environment? If so, she could drop out of the picture quite happily now. Her work was done.

On high, God examined her thoughts, and tskked.
“Think she’s gonna blow it,” he murmured. Several underlings looked up from their hair plaiting and ambrosia stirring. One ventured closer to His Right Hand and tugged His gown.
“Maybe you should intervene? Do a shiny light doo-dah, and give her some guidance?” He smiled a winning smile.
“This is all her doing. I cannot intervene now. If this works I will not have to intervene again. There will be harmony on the planet of humankind, such as never has been witnessed before. And only you and I will know I am responsible. The idea of God will vanish and I will have created the perfect world – self-sufficient souls that ascend voluntarily to heaven. Ahhh. I may even take a holiday to experience this beautiful dew-spangled world. But she must not give in to that most human of failings – the spoilt voice of free will. ”
The ascended soul nodded knowingly. “There’ve been no rumblings from below for sometime. Perhaps this plan is working and HWM-NBN has no army left with which to taunt us.”

At this judicious point, God spun round to glimpse a naked hairy demon extending his reach into heaven.
“Foul creature! What messenger is this!”
“Not so much an ‘email of evil’ – more of a one-line text, really. Master wishes to shake your hand. The souls of foulness passing his way have increased both in quantity and quality. He anticipates a showdown in the near future, when he has catalogued and welcomed the plethora of newcomers. Adios, O Whitewasher-of-Wills, O Pious Prig of Pompous…YELP.”

God brushed the remains of the creature from his foot. His face registered no displeasure; more a thoughtful rising of eyebrows, as if a solution had presented itself from an unexpected source. Nearby, the crowd of onlookers were dismissed, with an imperceptible flutter of his fingers.

Perhaps the problem was simply that she needed a holiday romance. She’d been single for too long, and had started to view life like a SIM game – wind up the characters and watch what happened. The people hanging on her every word never contradicted her, nor offered contrary thoughts nor demurred. That was surely not good for a person. Not that great guys simply dropped from the skies when you wished for them…
Having said that, the guy opposite her, picking tapas from his teeth, was what you would consider handsome. Table manners aside and assuming he had no idea who she was, perhaps she could strike up a conversation.
“Is the tapas generally good here?” she tried; gesturing to his empty plate.
“Not much of a line, but it will do,” he replied, dragging his chair over to her table, and seating himself disturbingly close for a first encounter. “The name’s Jeff. Jeff, er.. Conway. Yours?”

He was an artist, and a technophobe. With no computer, and often no electrical connection in his studio, he simply painted, ate, read and occasionally sang in the shower. She felt they had an aural connection, then. Cyn began to explain her disturbing rise to fame, which he dismissed with an imperceptible flutter of his fingers, and they found other topics more fruitful to discuss – sunsets, wine, food eaten with gusto, trails worth hiking. Her holiday became a longer sabbatical in which she found time to unwind, and get back to something like her normal self. He was an amiable guy to be around, uninterested in worldly glory but fascinated with the minutiae of life on earth. She put it down to his profession that he enjoyed studying the patterns of ostrich ferns in the forest, or the colours reflected in the early morning dew.

One morning, dismissing the insistent chirrup of her mobile phone, she stood on the wooden porch of his studio watching as he made clay models of a man and a woman entwined. He couldn’t have been happier if he was God himself creating the first couple. All it needed was to keep the Devil preoccupied with some interminable task, and the world would have reached some ultimate harmony.
Perhaps, she mused, the world needed a quantity of badness in it. While the Devil was busy with those irredeemable souls, the rest of us could enjoy smelling the roses. Switching off the mobile, she took a deep lungful of mountain air, and sighed contentedly.

Thursday, May 11, 2006

Sorrow, anyone?

Even cockroaches sometimes go away. Smelly neighbours win holidays abroad and give you two weeks respite. Your birthmark can look better with age, or rather, with age comes the knowledge that having a birthmark makes you interesting, and sometimes interesting will do, if beautiful isn’t an option.

But the thoughts at the back of your head have nowhere to go. They circle, like basking sharks, shimmying a terrifying fin occasionally. And if your thoughts are like mine, they consist of some incontrovertible facts coupled with some unnerving logic, resulting in an intolerable situation that has to be tolerated. And so you can tell no-one.

There are some things that you can’t tell anyone.

You can tell people you stick your bogies on the underside of the bed – they may love you for that, as it frees them to tell you about where they daub theirs. You can admit to sexual hang ups, deviances, frigidity or nymphomania quite openly. These days who cares whether you have sex with pigs in crotch less panties. It may turn up on a blog site and win awards.

But don’t talk about sorrow. There’s something not quite right about that. Today is just too gung-ho, go-getting and brash for something that smacks of misery. Misery is, after all, an accumulation of disappointments. Which implies that you just couldn’t shift your problem point of view and get past the depression and therefore, subsequently, you gave in to maudlin feelings and dove headfirst into sorrow, as if it were a sheepdip so clingy that you were stained with it for months. Now that’s just not on.

You know you’re going to get out of bed anyway, and go do those supermarket, office, park, coffee bar kinda things, lamely, but with your full concentration, since only by focusing on the mundane can you rock through today and into tomorrow and some other tomorrow after that. And all the while that sorrow is still there.

If you shared this problem, it would not be halved. If you spoke it aloud, just to get those words out of your head for a while, the other person would merely look back, with barely disguised pity perhaps, or feigned sympathy, or worse, disgust. The sorrow would not, could not decrease. The person would not visit for a while, would be waiting for the time when you call them and say “Hey, it’s a fine day, eh?” with some degree of conviction, before they deem it safe, forgotten, unsaid.

If it were only a miscarriage of a foetal clump, you would rationalise it. If it were the cancerous death of your mother; it would be an event to mourn, that dwindles its pain to a commonplace sadness over time. If it were the birth of your three beautiful daughters to a man who cannot love you, it would be a sentence to endure, write about, battle daily, but live in hope of reprieve. These things are not sorrow: since they are the stuff of life. When does it become sorrow?

It’s when I get up in the morning full of disgust for the things I have said yesterday to those children. It’s standing in the hallway holding the phone in my hand with no idea who to ring. It’s seeing pink handprints on her shoulder when she’s dressing. It’s the fights they shouldn’t have seen. It’s knowing ‘I’ve done this before and I will do it again’.

It became sorrow when the weight of my selfishness balanced the weight of my guilt, like some dull stones in a lead necklace.

Greed is NOT good

First postings are almost always inane. The site is called Singular Cake because of my philosophy for life. Someone once asked me my religion at a party. I said 'Why take more than you need? I'm Singular Cake because we believe that, globally, one slice is enough.'

If I include fairytales, its because we've all been children. If there's poems, sorry all you hard assed unrhythmic souls. And if I use too many big or purple words, its because my sideline is selling dictionaries.

Give me a minute, and I'll take a lifetime.