On Death and Rioting

The week started off with a dead body. I don’t mention this for shock value and this blog isn’t specifically about that, but when that’s how your week starts off it tends to inform how you perceive and react to everything subsequent to it, so I can’t ignore the fact. On Sunday morning my girlfriend and I discovered the body of a neighbour of ours, dead for some hours. I’m not going to go into detail; firstly it’s not really any of our business, we were just unlucky enough to be where we where when we where and secondly you don’t want to know the details. I wish I could forget them myself.

Our first reaction was to get out of the house, the second to eat, the third to get drunk. Sunday passed like a strange, stoned dream, a long wander through an unreal landscape, drifting along but also tethered to the constant reminder in our heads of what had just happened, what we had just seen, which kept dragging us both back down, just looking at each other and not being able to make sense of it. We drifted like this for a long time until we got home and then we realised that we felt safer and more normal out of our home than in it. That feeling passed, slowly, over the next few days, but it was an unpleasant thing to suddenly find yourself with no place that felt safe. Those few days were a dreamlike, paranoid time filled with tension and strangeness. I’m a great one for internalising anxiety and stress, so that’s what I did, to the point of giving myself a series of painful and blinding migraines. I worked my 12 hour shifts at work in a daze, coiled up and tense, trying not to snap at colleagues, finding myself sitting and staring blankly at images in my head.

Against this backdrop, this horrible tension that we hadn’t asked for but couldn’t ignore we watched the riots unfold. For the first time in months I logged into Twitter and finally learned what a hashtag was and how useful they are. When not at work we poured ourselves into watching second by second updates, fictional and real, of what was happening. Sat side by side with laptops on laps and the news channel on the TV with it’s repetitive 20 minutes cycle of new news and old news. We’d turn to each other and say how we couldn’t believe what was happening, how frightening and dystopian this was. We wondered out loud whether this was the end of how things were, whether this would just now be how the world would be. Occasionally we’d look at each other and know what we were really thinking; Sunday morning. It seemed as if from that point when we’d woken up from a comfy Sunday lie-in to a jarring, senseless event that the world had stopped making sense and would maybe just carry on not making sense.

This wasn’t true. The shock of what we’d been through started to fall away slowly and the riots peaked and then slipped away in embarrassment. But I guess that’s what I really want to talk about; the riots. All the rest has been pre-amble, just to illustrate that I wasn’t quite in a normal state of mind while the riots were going on and whilst I don’t like the reason I wasn’t in a normal state of mind I’m kind of glad I was; I think it allowed me to think a little differently about things. Let’s get something straight first; I know this is madness to tackle this subject, I know this is going to devolve at some point into an uninformed rant about some point or another, but this is important and I want to write about it. Writing doesn’t have to make sense for Christ’s sake.

Okay; the riots. At first I was in there jerking my knee with the rest of the nation – nothing but criminality, stupidity, chavs gone mad – but as I listened to others around me get more and more wound up and vocal the more I stopped to think. I reminded myself that I had spent the last seven years as a volunteer on a well known suicide helpline listening to people’s problems without judging those problems and trying hard not to judge the people themselves. If this teaches you anything it teaches you this one very, very important lesson: SHUT THE FUCK UP AND LISTEN CAREFULLY. Apply this lesson in any area of life and it will be of benefit to you and to everyone else. I remembered this lesson and I tried it out. I listened to the news reporters, I listened to the victims of the crimes being committed, I listened to the perpetrators of the crimes being committed and I listened to the views of those around me, whether it be colleagues at work, friends or just people on the street. I then remembered another very important thing: you can be right and still very wrong and you can be wrong and still very right.

Then I thought about sex callers. if you work on any kind of helpline for people, you always get the sex callers. These are people who ring up, often with a specific fantasy or practised script and attempt to get you to say things that will turn them on as they masturbate on the phone. I shit you not, every helpline gets them, no matter what. It’s more likely that you will get these calls if you are female, or rather they will not just immediately hang up if you are female, but even male volunteers get the calls regularly. And there seems to be nothing at all you can do to help these people. Usually they will start into their fantasy only to be asked a flat, practical question by the volunteer. “How are you feeling?” or something like that. And then they will hang up. But they will try again. And again. And again. There are sex callers who call every single night of their lives, often multiple times in the same night, for years on end, doing the same thing over and over again – trying to get what they think they want or communicate what they think they need to communicate, but always unable to. As volunteers it was frustrating for many reasons. It was often genuinely upsetting and weird, yes, but also it was frustrating because it was so obvious that these individuals have a problem that they need to deal with and they can never deal with it because they are locked into a pattern and a way of thinking that does not allow them to step outside of it and think of new ways to communicate. This encapsulates for me the problem with the riots and the general public’s reaction to them.

I have listened all week as work colleagues make suggestions such as this: Deport the rioters (where to is not made clear). Make them live in tents surrounded by barbed wire (no location specified). Take all their benefits away (this assumes they were all on benefits – clearly now proven not to be the case and if so and you do withdraw their benefits no suggestions as what else to do with this hungry, homeless, mob of former rioters roaming the streets with nowhere to go). Deploy snipers to take random headshots from two miles away (what can I say to this one?). Kill all looters on site (who’s up for executing children today, anybody?). Send people with knives into the crowds randomly stabbing looters (no, honestly, this was a genuine suggestion). When I heard that last one I piped up and said, hey, we should get that guy from Norway to do that, he got a pretty good head count. For that obviously sarcastic comment I got a look of utter shock, distaste and disgust. From the same person who had just suggested randomly gutting people on the streets of London, Birmingham and Manchester.

A lot of people have been disgusted specifically by the fact that the looters have wrecked people’s businesses, their livelihoods. They’re the same people who sit at home illegally downloading movies, music and software whilst people in those industries lose their jobs because of tumbling profits. But hey, long as you’re not acting illegally whilst wearing a hoodie on television it’s not really illegality is it? Some more of the same people I know for a fact use drugs regularly. When they denounce the illegal acts of others I don’t see them voluntarily handing themselves in at their local police stations and confessing to this. Do they imagine that there is no chain behind their drug use, that no one in that chain of criminals has ever been violent to anyone else in order to supply them with drugs? Why should they be immune from punishment, why should they get to choose what illegal act is “properly” illegal and which is not? They get angry about the riots and twitter and facebook their feelings on their smart phones. Their smart phones that are put together in Chinese factories staffed by workers treated little better than slaves, denied basic human rights, denied family, freedom, all the things we take for granted. None of these facts seem to mitigate the righteous indignation of the public as they climb way up on their high horse and let loose against the people they see on television, the people they have never met, never talked to, certainly never listened to. I did warn you this would turn into a rant, didn’t I.

Anyhow, it’s impossible to only listen and nothing else, no matter hard you try; you can’t simply observe something, you inevitably end up interacting with it. So I end up arguing. I try and listen and pay attention and occasionally I try and calmly point out a contradiction or varied opinion and I get shouted down as if I have no right to speak if I don’t agree with majority “common sense”. This is the same “common sense” that takes glee in watching poor people punished whilst the rich, capitalist bankers of our society rob us blind and carry on regardless, often in increased comfort and wealth. They cost more jobs, more livelihoods than a thousand nights of rioting could but they continue to go unpunished whilst the general public gets wound up about dole cheats and Cheryl Cole. People are demanding action from their MP’s right now, but those same MP’s cheated us all out of money and for the most part also went unpunished. As far as I can see people want one set of criminals to sentence another set of criminals so that they, criminals themselves in one way or another, can feel vindicated in their knee jerk reaction. After visiting a prison once (and only once) I remember realising “the only reason I’m not in here permanently is because I haven’t been caught for anything yet”. There’s no-one I know that this statement can’t apply to if you look through enough law books.

I’m not going to judge whether the looters where right to act how they did, whether they did it as protest or simply criminal act. I can’t judge that from the limited, filtered information I have available to me. I just wish a few more people would step back and think about how and why they are judging who they are judging. It simply doesn’t matter whether these riots were purely criminal in nature or whether they were even partly a protest, it still leaves us all, as a society, with the same question : why would such a large number of people think that it’s okay to act that way?

Which brings us back around to the sex caller. Someone acting in a counter-productive, repetitive, futile way, day after day, desperately trying to communicate something, trying to connect with something or somebody and having no idea what language or form to use in order to do this. No idea of how they must appear to others when they are blindly following the only pattern that they know to follow, the only programming that they’ve allowed themselves to accept. As far as I can see we’re all sex callers, trapped in our own individual reality tunnels, as Robert Anton Wilson described our lives. Maybe the looters would benefit from being able to conceive of other ways to express their feelings and frustrations aside from nicking some trainers and bottles of cider. Maybe the general public would benefit from being able to conceive that not everyone has the equipment to express how they feel in words or constructive actions. Maybe we would all benefit from conceiving that there isn’t any real difference between any of us, no matter how alien other people’s thoughts and behaviours seem. Maybe we would all benefit from a little SHUT THE FUCK UP AND LISTEN. After all we are all here together, all part of society together, all descended from the same primordial goo. Of course I’m as guilty and hypocritical, as cowardly and self-righteous as anyone else, so  I’m sure i’ll soon settle back down into my own little reality tunnel and forget to think a little out of my own limits. I’ll just have to wait for the next unnerving shock to my system.

 

 

PROCRASTINATION AND PROCRASTINATION

 

Has it really been early March since I posted anything here? For once it’s not procrastination to blame. Life, death and general change just get in the way of everyday living which also gets in the way of itself. At the moment I am still writing, just not publishing as often on here. Currently being worked on: two short stories (trying to get short listed for fancy competitions in order to get noticed), a partially completed TV/film script, Thanks Peter God Chapter Ten (almost there) and a plan for a third novel which came to me in a crazy dream. Also my short story Home should be getting published in this year’s Grist Anthology sometime in the autumn or winter and you can be damn sure I’ll be crowing about that as soon as I have more details.

 

So personally I haven’t been procrastinating, I’ve just had other things to do as well as writing, maybe more important things. Plenty of writers do procrastinate though (as I have undoubtedly in the past) so that is the subject tackled by the latest Fictions Of Every Kind, the open mic writer’s night which this time will be held this July 5th starting at 19:30 at Leeds “Secret” Library, 18 Commercial Street Leeds, an amazing hidden old building right in the heart of the city. It’s opposite Lush, between Paperchase and Brittania Bank. If the shutter is down, don’t turn away, buzz the bell, we’ll be there. Check out their website here: http://www.theleedslibrary.org.uk/. It’s a rare opportunity to hold an event here so we’ll not only be having the usual open mic presentations from anyone with enough moxy to put themselves forward we’ll also be presenting a number of short films on the theme of procrastination by filmmakers worldwide. Get there early, they don’t stay open late. There will be boxed wine and popcorn too and this particular night has free entry. I’ll be there of course, it’s one of those things that’s more important at the time than getting some writing done. But it’s certainly not procrastination.

 

Thanks Peter God Chapter Nine

Chapter Nine

-in which our protagonist reminisces about parrots, pretentions, prizes and panic

Odd Man Out

Peter Godfrey was the only person who did not really believe he was a writer. To everyone else who knew him it was obvious. They had not given it any thought before he had start doing it but once he had it seemed such a natural thing. Announcing to his friends that he had written a book (back when he had) had been like coming out of the closet. Friends and relatives simply acknowledged the fact and went on with life; it was no surprise to them. It was something they realised they had known all along.

Peter remembered when he had attended his first literary event. He had had a short story accepted and shortlisted in a competition run by a local University’s literature festival. He had been invited to the prize giving, not knowing whether he would win one of the three main prizes. He was really not concerned with winning; he was just extremely pleased to have been shortlisted. It had only been the third competition he had entered and that seemed like a good result to him.

He had been so nervous that he had bought a pack of cigarettes, for the first time in over nine months. That was the night that those nine months of wonderful effort had gone out of the window and stayed there for a long time; he wouldn’t give up again until he had met Anita and realised that he had to be healthy and strong to keep a relationship working. On that night he bought a pack of Menthol Superkings and despite the first one making him feel like retching in the streets of a town he had never been to before, five minutes before reaching the ceremony.

He’d attended alone, having been single at the time and unable to take his writing buddy with him (a friend who was also in the midst of writing a novel; they’d get together and just sit in his living room and write). He’d wanted to take her along for support and because she was always good company; he’d also wanted to take along a girl he was interested in but she was busy that night and he would have been too scared to ask her to come along anyway, At least the fact that she genuinely couldn’t come along hid from Peter the fact that he would have been too scared to ask her anyway.

Luckily he had bumped into a friend of a friend at the prize giving, a writer of short films who had been plugging away for years but still had to maintain a day job. She was not someone he knew well, more someone he had been introduced to at some event years ago and had maybe one or two conversations with, but it was a great relief to have someone there that he recognised and that recognised him. They had sat together and chatted; she had immediately started regaling him with stories of the many prizes her latest short film had won. He had not been interested. He was nervous to be there and had started drinking as soon as he had gotten through the door. He drank and drank whilst she talked and talked. Like many of the screenplay writers he had know years before she had a habit of trying to make herself sound much more impressive and successful than she actually was and he found this odd. He had never been one for self aggrandizing so found it hard to stomach in others. It was too near to lying for his liking; Peter found it difficult to tell lies, it made him too nervous and it felt intrinsically wrong to do it, a mix of ethical pride and childish fear. He didn’t mind telling outrageous lies for entertainment value – that was fiction, which was fine, but actual lies, to mislead others, to hurt them? He could not quite grasp why anyone thought that was a good idea.

The prizes were eventually given out, three places for short stories, three for poetry, Peter did not place in either list. He was pleased to learn however that his short piece would be published in the literature festival’s anthology the next year. This seemed enough for him. He would be a published fiction author. Then the winners of the main prize were invited to read from their works. First up was a middle aged woman with one of the strangest shaped heads Peter had ever seen in his life. It was like an upside down pyramid with a strange little face stuck onto the front and Frankenstein monster hair on top. No, he had thought, that’s not quite accurate (he was always striving for the most accurate way to describe the way he saw people and things), she was more like an atypical grey alien, like the one in the infamous autopsy video. She was more fictional than her own work which was a morbid little poem that he could not pay attention to because he was too busy studying her head. She was frightening and intense. Next was a pensioner who had won one of the short story prizes, a grandmotherly woman who delivered a chilling reading of a piece about an aborted child kept in a cupboard for decades. Peter found that much more interesting and could see why she had won.

It was the guy who had won first prize in the short story section that had pissed him off. He had spotted him earlier when he first entered the bar where the event was being held. He’d been early and there were few others in the room so this guy had stood out for him. He had a scruffy beard not often seen outside of film footage of the late sixties or films that satirized that era, one that looked like it was deliberately unkempt, as if an effort was required to keep it in that particular shape, a shape like the fractal edges of a map. The guy had looked sheepish and worried and it seemed obvious to Peter that he must be one of the shortlisted potential prize winners. Peter was glad to see someone more nervous than himself, having been on his own right at that moment.

Sitting now at his desk, thinking back on that night, Peter Godfrey couldn’t summon up the guy’s name. He would have thought “I can’t think of that man’s name” except he did not think of him as a man, more between child and something else indeterminate, so “guy” was appropriate.

So Peter was a little drunk when the final prize winner, the scruffy looking guy, took to the stage to read an extract of his work, but he was also feeling okay with not winning and quite comfortable with the woman he knew who had at least stopped talking whilst other people read. What was her name, Peter thinks now, I can’t remember hers either. Peter is not being honest; he’d just rather not put her name down in print lest she read this and be angry or upset. Let’s call her Flo. The scruffy guy coughed a couple of times and took out his piece of paper, looking even more sheepish and nervous that earlier. Then he started reading.

“So I’m there, yeah, in this pet shop, yeah, and there’s this parrot, yeah!”

Peter sat up a little.

“And this woman in the pet shop is talking to me, yeah, and the parrot starts up yelling, yeah, and then the parrot is on my shoulder, yeah!”

The guy was gesticulating with his free hand, his body rolling about as he read, his face contorted.

“Then this fucking parrot is on my shoulder, yeah, and it’s shouting in my ear and the woman’s talking and I can’t hear her and this parrot, man, this fucking parrot is yelling, yeah!”

Peter burst out laughing. It wasn’t a derisive laugh, it wasn’t mocking, it was a laugh of surprise and puzzlement, a sharp outburst. He looked sideways at Flo and asked:

“Why is he doing that?”

Peter had never seen this behavior outside of films that satirized artistic people as geniuses with eccentric behavior. The guy was acting like he was in one of those films, he was being a character, but it seemed forced and weird and wrong and just funny. It also struck Peter as dishonest. Flo didn’t answer Peter and had a look of slight dismay on her face. Peter grew embarrassed and wondered if anyone had heard him laugh; certainly it had not interrupted the guy up on stage who was still going on about that fucking parrot with vehement energy. Peter went from embarrassed to puzzled again, thinking how the hell has this guy won first prize with this amateurish, clichéd drivel? He didn’t feel angry that this piece had won over his, he felt sort of relieved that he had not been chosen if that’s what the judges thought was the best piece of work they had received. He decided at that point that it was perhaps not best to go over and try and mingle with the judges after the prize giving. Peter was not very good at feigning interest in things he was not truly interested in, or praising things he was not truly impressed by and the last thing he wanted to do was appear phony and desperate if he tried to ingratiate himself.

Instead he had remained seated with Flo, chatting and then watching an awful performance piece by a singularly unfunny female cellist decked out in a basque and petticoats. She seemed to think that a few very lame, middle class arty and bawdy jokes amidst some average cello playing made her sophisticated and witty. Peter felt embarrassed for her and then wondered how it was so easy for some people to make a living not being very good at what they did whilst he slaved away in his call centre job, forcing himself to write on evenings.

After a couple of more similarly dull acts had performed he was relieved when Flo said that she had to catch the train back and Peter eagerly agreed to join her, hoping she wouldn’t take it the wrong way and think he was trying to come on to her. He wasn’t; she was far too frail, over enthusiastic and needy for him to be interested in. They made their way to the train station with Peter drunkenly laughing about the bad performances and the hammy readings, all the while thinking maybe he should keep his mouth shut in case she told other people that he was an obnoxious, ungrateful bore. Drink won out over this fear and he rambled on.

At the train station he was initially aghast to find the scruffy guy waiting for the same train. Flo pointed him out to Peter and then they had no choice but to introduce themselves to him and give mock congratulations. The guy, let’s call him Ben for ease, was shy and self-effacing but Peter could not help but distrust him. They got a clumsy conversation going and then sat around a table on the train when it arrived. Around this table the talk turned to writing, as they had little in common with each other but this. Flo repeated, almost word for word, her tales of the prizes her short film had won and then when things had gone a little quiet and awkward she had started sighing and complaining about how difficult it had been that afternoon for her as she had sat down to write a sex scene for her new feature film script. Peter wondered silently how likely the odds were of that feature film ever being made.

That turned the ensuing conversation into one about the difficulty of writing. It turned out during this that Ben was a lecturer at a local university; not only that but a lecturer in creative writing.

“You actually teach creative writing?” Peter had said, blurting it out in disbelief but Ben seemed to take it as a compliment.

“Yeah,” said Ben, “I know I look a little young for it.”

That hadn’t been Peter’s thought. Peter’s thought had been one of surprise and a mild revulsion. If the teacher was that lousy how did the students stand a chance? He then felt grateful that he had never enrolled for a creative writing class if that was the standard of the teaching staff. Flo started up about her sex scene again.

“I find it so hard,” she said, “like, when I’m writing a screenplay I simply can’t watch any film or television or go to the theatre and when I’m writing prose I can’t read anybody else’s work or I’m afraid I’ll just absorb it too much and parrot their style.”

Peter flinched at the mention of a parrot.

“Yeah,” said Ben, nervously fingering the fractals of his beard, “It can be so difficult like that. I love writing, I love teaching my students but honestly, it’s absolute torture wrenching those words from inside me.”

“Hmm,” said Peter, under the impression that this was just a genuine conversation about writing techniques and habits, “I find it really easy. I just don’t write for a few days and then it all comes flooding out, it’s so enjoyable and great when it does. I mean I’m really undisciplined, I have to force myself to sit down and start but once I do, woosh! There it goes. I don’t think I could do it at all if it felt like torture.”

Then there was silence. Neither Ben nor Flo would look Peter in the eye. Peter realised then that he really hadn’t spent much time in the presence of others who wrote or regarded themselves as writers. He had just committed a colossal literary faux pas, bringing into question their perceived notion of themselves as gifted geniuses struggling with their art. Peter wondered then if he thought of writing as art at all, maybe he thought of it as craft. Or maybe he just didn’t subscribe to the idea of the tortured genius in the same way they did. This was one of the reasons that Peter had failed to continue making art after his Fine Art degree had finished; he found that he could not stomach the pretensions of other “artists”. He had stopped attending the numerous gallery openings he used to because of the continued disappointment in the work and because he loathed to see others laud the artists that in his view were underwhelming under performing in their chosen field. They seemed to think that simply being an artist and making work was good enough. Peter though that the only thing that was genuinely good about making art was striving to communicate worthwhile ideas, trying to provoke new thinking and understanding. And trying to do it well. In the Fine Art world it had seemed to him that you were deliberately confining yourself to only communicating with those who already knew and shared your ideas. He felt that caused people’s practice to become lazy and uninspired. Why make an effort when you know that you’ll be understood no matter what? Or someone will at least pretend to understand.

Peter let the silence ride. He contemplated speaking the truth and arguing his point, he contemplated telling Ben just how pretentious and uninventive his writing had seemed when he took the stage, he contemplated telling Flo that it was dishonest to portray herself as simply a writer when he knew for a fact that she worked virtually full time in a regular, dull, day job. Instead Peter decided to keep quiet and let them enjoy their delusions; let them think they are extraordinarily gifted geniuses, let them labour under their misapprehensions if it made them feel good to do so. He was smart enough to realise that everyone in the world lived in their own reality, with their own rules and their own way of seeing themselves and the world. We are all little universes to ourselves, he thought, there’s nothing I can really do to try and bridge the gap between my world and anybody else’s. There is no way of telling, he thought, if someone else is seeing the same colour as I do when I tell them I see the colour red. Maybe they see what I see as blue but to them that is red. Let these two see whatever colour they want, Peter though, I have no way of knowing that what I know is anymore right than what they do.

The conversation carried on and Peter made only sporadic and guarded remarks from there on in. He was weighing up in his mind now whether to spend anymore time with other “writers” at all. He had of course spent time with his writing buddy, Laura, but that had been normal and pleasant as well as incredibly helpful as she seemed not to harbour any pretensions about herself and her writing, much in the same way Peter hoped he did not either. But this was a different level, these people were writers who had been paid to write (though not to do nothing else but write) and maybe that was where the difference lay. They had been garnered with plaudits by their peers, told that they were doing something special or even that they were good enough to tell other people how to do the same thing; surely that must go to your head.. He made another decision right then, sat there on the train looking across at these two self-deluding individuals; he needed a bullshit detector, someone he could rely on to snap him out of it if they thought he was approaching the same state. He resolved to make a list as soon as he got in (he wouldn’t – he was far too drunk and would just look at Facebook and watch a couple of episodes of Snog, Marry, Avoid before passing out) and he took out his moleskin notebook and wrote “bullshit detector. Urgent” on the next clean page.

Peter now sits remembering that night and he takes out his old notebook (he keeps them arranged in strict date order on a clumsily made wooden shelf above his computer) and finds the page with “bullshit detector. Urgent” written on it. He looks at that and then he looks at the line in front of him on the computer screen. It says:

Peter Stone, thirty-eight years old, lean and mercenary, single and predatory, numb as a dead limb, lonely and happy.

This is all the writing he has done so far on his second novel. He remembers now his words to Flo and Ben on the train, what must have seemed so boastful, words pouring out of his head, the absolute joy of being able to write so easily. Not so now. Now his head was jammed with worry and fear, stuffed full all day every day with Anita Powell and the sheer terror that he would not be good enough, not be strong enough and that he would lose her.

 

Fictions Of Every Kind

Fictions of Every Kind Event

Tuesday 23rd November, Library Pub Leeds, 19:00 – 22:00

I’ll be appearing at this event co-organised by my writing buddy (and recently published author) Sarah Bradley (hopefully one of many events to come). Against my better judgement I will be reading from my first novel Goodnight Horses, a laugh a minute rom-com in the style of Four Weddings and a Funeral. Actually it’s a bleak, depressing but weirdly uplifting tour of one man’s deluded mind.

Take a look at the Facebook link here. I urge you not to come along as it will only make me more nervous and embarrassed.

 

The Sound Of The Pump

The Sound Of The Pump is a short story written for a competition (that I didn’t win). It was invented from nothing more than the first line, which I overheard somewhere. I just wrote and then rewrote until it made sense.

The Sound Of The Pump

 

“It made my hands poorly,” the old woman was saying to him, “it made my hands poorly.”

She was starting to cry and he didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know whether it would be right to do anything at all and from there he didn’t know what it was he could have done anyway.

“I’m fully unconscious” the old man next to her was saying, “I’m fully unconscious.”

Do they all talk in that way, he thought, parroting the same sentences over and over? This place was depressing. More than that it was strange; strange and unnerving. Someone was tugging at his sleeve now. He turned to see a man who may have been in his early twenties, short hair sticking up like a wire brush, eyes big and dark. The man fixed him with a gaze that passed right through, as if he were trying to burn a hole that would allow him to see the wall beyond.

“I am in my head today,” the young man said.

Derek thought: what do I say to that?

“Do you understand me?” the young man said, insistently. “I am in my head today.”

There it was again, the repeated phrase. Derek felt like he would go out of his own mind if he heard that once more. Maybe it would stop if he replied to the young man.

“I understand.” Derek said.

The young man became very still, regarding him with something between pity and repulsion.

“You understand nothing.” The young man swept his head sideways in an aggressive motion and his body followed as he walked away.

Derek had flinched at that movement and then became immediately embarrassed by his own reaction. He felt shaky and remembered that he had not eaten in quite a few hours. Maybe food would be a good idea. Once he’d picked Bernard up he would take him for something on the way home. Pizza, maybe. Bernard had always loved pizza.

Derek tried to edge away from the patients, moving back to the wall. The nurse had been gone maybe two minutes but he was already paranoid and nervous. He hated this place just like he’d hated all of the places that Bernard had been to over the years. He dreaded this period that he had to endure; it was always the same, the waiting alone while they went and got his brother. Alone with all the other people who were like his brother but so different in their individual ways. He thought maybe it was this complexity in each one of them that seemed so overwhelming to him; each person here was their own delusional universe, self contained and full of their own secrets, fears and neuroses. The thing that scared him about this was that this meant they were really no different to anybody else in the world, whether they were in here or not. These people here made it so much more obvious because what they were going through was so intense that it could not be disguised, but everyone was much the same, little separate worlds of their own. He knew then that he was like this too.

It seemed a long time since he had been in this position. Bernard could be stable for long periods and it was easy to become complacent and assume his stability had become the norm. Derek had not really spotted any warning signs this time but then he hadn’t spent too much time with Bernard over the last few weeks. Work was especially busy and had kept him away. He knew that he deliberately used work as one of the excuses for not paying attention. He didn’t like having to deal with this. He didn’t like having to deal with his brother’s problems; he didn’t really understand them and it was easy to let himself drift away from the situation. Bernard had a paid carer, she was compensated to worry about his problems. For Derek it was a burden of familial responsibility.

Derek had been in a meeting at work when this latest call had come through. It wasn’t a very important meeting, just a briefing with a colleague, but Derek had played up the situation for what little drama it had, acting over-concerned when he took the call and then overly embarrassed when he’d had to excuse himself from the rest of the meeting. He knew no correct way to excuse himself from a meeting because his brother had been picked up by the police tying string around lampposts whilst topless, so he exaggerated and told half truths. He couldn’t even remember now what he had said. He just remembered the acutely anxious feeling that the phone call had brought. It was the same feeling he got when he realised he could no longer put off washing his clothes or washing up the dishes or cleaning the kitchen floor. He knew it was something he had to do, something that was solely his responsibility, but then he would really only do it because he had to.

Derek felt no guilt at this. He felt he was a practical man acting as most would in an impractical situation. He had no wife or children, no burdens on him but his work, which was a burden of his own choice. Bernard was his only family now, their parents dead a long time ago. They had been a small family anyway, their parents quite a bit older than most and their own parents in turn dead before Derek and Bernard were born, so they had grown up without grandparents. The family unit was not only small but insular too and the focus had always been Bernard and his ‘problems’. His Mother had always used that word about Bernard; his Father had remained for the most part silent. Neither had really grasped any complexity about the situation they had found themselves in once Bernard’s ‘problems’ had started to become apparent, they had simply gotten on with things and adapted their simple, uncomplicated habits to incorporate the practicalities they needed to. There had been no real effort to address what may have made Bernard the way he was, no thought to understanding him, developing him or addressing his needs in any other way than one which made sure there was the least amount of interference with a normal life. Or rather, Derek thought, the appearance of a normal life. He knew he got that from his parents, that worry that you must always appear normal to others, to society at large. They had spent their lives making sure they looked acceptable to strangers. All their energy, all their efforts, had been towards that goal. Bernard potentially brought them shame and that had to be kept in check. They did little more than tut about him and look embarrassed when things got ‘out of control’. They would look at other people and smile and they would give that knowing tilt of the head that expressed their exasperation, inviting others to join in as they felt ashamed of their own child. If he was out of control then they must convince others that it was his own fault and not that of his poor, beleaguered parents who had not asked for this burden but had carried it nonetheless with as much dignity as they could.

The old woman with the poorly hands was back. She was carrying a plain, white carrier bag now, with a trail of string hanging out of the back of and dragging along the dull floor for about fifteen feet.  Occasionally someone would stand on part of the trailing string and more would come out of the back of the carrier bag. Hadn’t they said that Bernard had been tying string around things when he was found? He looked around for the nurse again. When he turned back the poorly hands woman had come right up to him again; she’d seemed to have been quite far away just a second ago.

“It made my hands poorly,” she said to Derek who tried to smile kindly. “It made my hands poorly” she said again and he felt himself tensing up.

“Yes,” He said to her.

“It made my hands poorly,” she said.

“I gather so,” Derek said, attempting some sort of pleasant humour.

“It made my hands poorly,” she said.

Derek tensed, not sure if he could survive hearing the same words spoken one more time. A hand on his shoulder broke the spell and he turned to face the nurse who had talked to him when he had first arrived. She was a miserable looking woman, thick bodied and sour faced. He didn’t like the confidence she exuded; it felt much more like a self assured arrogance.

“Mr Michaels, your brother is ready to go with you now.”

“Thank you,” Derek said but wondered what he was thanking her for.

The nurse started to explain things to Derek but he did not understand what she was saying and he did not take the information in, especially the names of the drugs she was telling him. He knew the names and the dosages Bernard had to take would be written on the bottles anyhow. That he could understand, something written down plainly in front of him. All he could gather from this particular exchange was that this nurse smelled somewhere between custard and cabbage and that he really did not like that.

They were in the car together before Derek said anything to Bernard.

“Aren’t you hot? That jumper looks very thick.”

“They gave me this.” Bernard said.

“Oh. Yes.” Derek sat with his hands on the wheel, looking ahead with a troubled face.

“I thought we’d get pizza on the way back to mine,” he said. “I have a new flat but it’s down near the canal where you used to like to go. It’s nice.”

“Near the power station?” Bernard asked.

“Yes,” Derek said, “near the power station.”

“Can we see it?”

Derek’s grip on the steering wheel tightened. Years ago he’d taken Bernard down to walk on the canal, hoping he would find it relaxing and peaceful. He had heard that exercise was good for mental health problems. Just behind one section of the canal path there was a power substation, lots of pylons and other stuff he didn’t know the names of, cordoned off by high fences. It stood on its own in contrast to the surrounding greenery of the canal and some barge moorings. Derek had always thought of it as an eyesore that interfered with the enjoyment of some nice countryside. Bernard had been entranced the first time he had seen it. They had stayed staring at the pylons and transformers for half an hour before Derek had insisted they move on. He’d assumed Bernard would be much more interested in the ducks, swans and horses waiting to be seen along the canal.

Derek’s flat was five minutes away from the substation in a new block of luxury apartments. They could not get to it without driving past. Derek sighed.

“Yes, we can take a quick look.”

“You try not to go but there are drifting clouds of converse form, you know, in the air from speaking.” Bernard was trying to explain something to him now. “They know it as well but down that street the dogs don’t lie still, they just don’t go to sleep.”

“Okay,” Derek said. He had nothing else to say.

They sat there for a couple of minutes in silence. Bernard looked a little slumped now. He looked tired.

“Pizza then?” Derek asked brightly. Bernard didn’t answer so Derek started the car and drove off.

At the pizza place they sat mostly in silence again. Bernard ate a lot; he loved the stodginess of pizzas and ate two by himself, followed by ice cream. Between pizzas one and two Derek went outside to smoke a cigarette; it wasn’t as if Bernard would miss his company as the food was taking up all his attention. Derek stood outside on the street with a couple of other smokers that he politely smiled at but did not speak to. He lit a cigarette and stood with one arm folded and the other hanging loose. The wind was picking up and smoked most of the first one for him so he lit another and stood for a few minutes more in silence before he returned to his brother.

Because Derek judged that Bernard had behaved himself in the pizza restaurant he agreed to fifteen minutes at the substation before they went on to his flat. He planned on spending the weekend there with Bernard and then Bernard could go home to his carer on Monday. Derek had no other plans apart from a little work he had to bring home. Bernard could watch television whilst he got on with that. He’d never taken Bernard to this new flat before and Derek knew that this would make him nervous. He would have to get familiar with the place before he felt comfortable; it had always reminded Derek of a cat when Bernard did this, moving from room to room and mapping everything he needed to with his senses.

“Bernard, you know I have a new flat, like I said before?”

“I liked your old flat.”

“I know. This one is bigger and nicer though and it’s not far from here.”

There was nothing forthcoming from this.

“If you want,” Derek said, “We can come here again over the weekend. It’s a five minute walk. You’ll like that about it, won’t you?”

Bernard just continued to stare up at the machinery in the substation. Derek fell silent and tried to look at it too, tried to imagine what is was like seeing it through Bernard’s eyes, what could be so fascinating about it that it captivated him with such force. It seemed an old place now with dull steel equipment and a variety of objects dumped around the grounds, mainly wheels from bikes and prams. Large metal boxes had numbers painted on them in thick black paint: 203, 509, 308. Derek looked up at the main pylons that thrust up so far and so severely with their angles. One pylon on the corner of the substation had one set of arms shorter than the other and they bent to the side so that the lines could carry on at a forty five degree angle. It looked like some giant with withered limbs down one side, stretching out with the strong ones on the other.

He followed Barnard’s gaze and found his brother was staring intently at the brown or purple plastic looking disc structures atop an object that looked like it was from the set of a nineteen fifties science fiction film. Not plastic actually, it looked more like Bakelite. It was oddly incongruous to think this place may still be using parts made decades ago. Derek always figured that new technology swept away the old quickly. He didn’t like thinking that the power in his brand new penthouse apartment relied on bits and pieces that had been around longer than he had.

At least it was quiet here, he thought.

Back at the flat Derek let Bernard wander around the place for a while. He liked the view from the big window in Derek’s living room and stood a few minutes just staring out of the window until Derek realised Bernard could see the top of the substation’s larger pylons from there. Bernard only moved from the window once Derek had put on his television. Bernard had loved the massive plasma screen in Derek’s old flat but this one was even bigger, even crisper. Derek was always fascinated by how Bernard was entranced by the clarity in the television picture in a way that the real world outside the windows did not capture him. He had tried to explain to Bernard in the past that the real world had even higher definition than the picture on the television but Bernard could control the world on the screen in a way that he could not control the one outside, so he felt safer with what was on the screen.

They sat in silence again. Bernard spoke briefly to ask Derek if he could make the room colder; he was still wearing the thick jumper the nurses had given him. Derek offered him other clothes but Bernard refused so Derek changed the temperature and put on another layer himself. He knew where Bernard was now; he was in that place where the slightest change felt like a great, tearing wrench, even something as simple as moving around. Once Bernard had quite lucidly explained this feeling in great detail to Derek and Derek had understood in a way he seldom did with his brother’s feelings. Derek knew what it was like because he had experienced it himself at times, most recently after the split with Theresa, when she had left him complaining that he didn’t know how to really show his emotions to her, how he didn’t really believe that she loved him. He had gotten a friend to buy him enough weed to last for a week and Derek had taken time off work and sat in his old flat in front of the television for most of that time. He’d started getting stoned on a Friday night and had eventually run out the next Wednesday. The weed made his head rush with ideas, but none he could ever cling to; he liked this feeling, he felt as if it were emptying him out. He had wanted to feel less and less emotion until what Theresa had said felt the same for him. As far as he had known he had loved her as much as he could but he knew that she was not lying to him, so he arrived at the logical conclusion that what he felt about the situation, the hurt, the upset, the craving, must be wrong and he just had to ignore it until it went away and he became who Theresa said he was.

On the first night he was stoned he found himself unable to go to bed. He could not quite get a hold on why this was, only that the thought of moving had filled him with such an anxiety and panic that he had started to cry, a slow, hot weeping that pumped fierce tears out from his eyes and sent them streaming down his face. He had sat there hugging himself as if he had to keep something restrained, not knowing exactly what he was crying for and feeling a strong urge to be able to have his brother Bernard there. Just once he wanted his big brother Bernard to help him, to stay with him and make sure he was okay. Bernard had been locked in a hospital, sectioned.

Derek remembered now about the pump in the kitchen. Because of where this block had been built the water pressure was too low and all the flats had electric water pumps. The pump made quite a noise; the other week Derek had had friends around for food and they had been talking around the kitchen table until late in the night. At one point Derek had stood up and moved to the sink and then turned around and apologised for what he was about to do, which was wash up a glass. His friends had laughed and asked if he always apologised for washing up. He smiled at them and turned on the hot tap and they had all jumped as a harsh and sudden whirring, buzzing noise started up.

Only trouble was the guest bedroom was right next to the utility cupboard with the pump in it. Whenever friends stayed over and one went to the toilet in the night and then washed their hands the pump would start up and there would be a yowl of surprise from whoever was in the guest bed. This was where Bernard would be sleeping and he didn’t want him shocked by it.

Derek handed Bernard a bowl of ice cream that he had asked for as he sat watching Song, Marry, Avoid.

“Bernard,” Derek said, “I’d better warn you about the pump for the water.”

Bernard looked at him, puzzled.

“It’s loud,” Derek said, “Just listen to this for me.”

Derek got up and went into the bathroom and turned on the hot tap. The pump started up. He heard a little help from Bernard. He turned it off and came back in.

“What was that?” Bernard asked.

“The pump. For the water. It has to do that or we can’t have any water. If you need to use the toilet in the night it will come on when you wash your hands, okay? Don’t be scared of it if that happens, okay?”

“I’m not scared of that,” Bernard said, looking sullen. “I’m not stupid, Derek. I’m just a bit ill.”

“Okay. I just didn’t want you to be shocked by it.”

“I’m not scared.” Bernard said again.

They sat up late watching television, stupid little shows and cable channels, the sort of things Derek only watched when he was stoned or very tired. It felt good to do this with Bernard, almost normal except for the lack of communication between them. Derek occasionally laughed at something funny on a show, something dumb. Bernard looked angry when he did this, sometimes shooting him a withering glare and Derek stopped doing it. Eventually Derek felt himself drifting and knew he had to sleep. Reluctantly Bernard was shown to the guest room and put his bag of belongings at the end of the bed, finally shedding the heavy jumper. Derek had to force him to clean his teeth and wash his hands, Bernard jumping when the pump came on. Derek got him into bed and stayed talking to him for a few minutes hoping that Bernard would drift off but that seemed unlikely, so he wished him good night and went off to bed himself.

At four in the morning Derek woke with a start. He wasn’t sure what he could hear at first and his heart was pumping madly as it always did when he woke up from this deep part of sleep. He had half a dream in his head and stumbled out of his bed, untangling his feet from the end of the duvet as he pulled on some sweat pants. He found the tap turned on full in the bathroom and the pump roaring away. A toilet roll was lying on the floor on its side, unravelled across the bathroom tiles. He picked it up and ripped off the loose sheets, tidied it away and went into the guest bedroom.

Bernard was sat on the bed with his arms around his legs, the heavy jumper back on, quiet but crying, hot tears on his face. Derek sat next to him and put his arm around Bernard’s shoulders. For the first time in a long time Bernard pushed himself against his brother and let him hug him.

“I’m not scared, I’m just a bit ill,” Bernard said to him. “Just a little bit ill.”

Derek said nothing and let his brother sob gently in his arms until he fell asleep again.

 

Thanks Peter God – Chapter Eight

Chapter Eight

-in which we meet an ugly little man who likes his tea without milk

Charon

Peter Stone, despite Ratcliffe Fowler’s specific instructions, did nothing for a week. Of course it is nearly impossible for a person to do literally nothing as involuntary processes that keep us alive are a necessity, but Peter got as near as possible without becoming physically inert or simply dead. He reduced his daily routine to the least number of activities he deemed necessary for his personal survival. He slept in late, rising only when lying in his bed with his eyes open became intolerable. He then clothed himself only in his terry towelling dressing gown and sat in front of his computer screen and browsed the websites he liked to browse, checking his email, his facebook, his myspace and his twitter, looking for updates, then he read all the news sites he liked, all the showbiz gossip, sports etc. He went through all the websites, checking, then went through them again. He then went through them again. And again.

This would continue for hours at a time whilst the television droned on behind him, Peter nearly oblivious to the fact that he had it on, but incapable of sitting there without it. He would occasionally eat, nothing more than warming up a tin of beans or ordering from the nearest takeaway. He did not even exercise, for Peter Stone a thing that could not even be imagined, but something that simply did not occur to him right now. He smoked a lot of cigarettes. His insomnia increased. By the middle of the week Peter Stone felt he was going crazy but had no idea how to address the problem so continued doing exactly what he had been doing which only increased the feeling of paranoia and desperation. It was Thursday afternoon when he got out of bed at half three that it occurred suddenly to Peter that he still had Fowler’s joints in his jacket pocket. He was nervous about using them because of the insanely powerful effect just a few drags had on him the last time, but in the state he was in he could see no other option apart from continuing to do what he was doing, so he took one out and he lit it up.

This way Thursday disappeared and also most of Friday. Fowler’s weed was so powerful that he dared only smoke three or four drags at once. He sat at the computer from Thursday afternoon onwards, smoking those drags every three to four hours and then spending the next few hours in an almost comatose state but still able to operate. He found himself trawling through stranger and stranger websites, freakish porn, strange tirades by isolated strangers, conspiracies that moved around in his head and linked one to the other as he went through them, grazing on information he did not understand but that frightened him. As he browsed on he felt like pieces were clicking together in his head but he could not maintain his focus long enough to figure out what that meant. If he had been able to Peter Stone would have sense something like the pieces of a Chinese puzzle box being slid around as someone slowly and carefully unlocked it.

He did not sleep at all that night, he stayed in front of the computer screen taking in a massive stream of information, occasionally getting up and carefully making his way to the kitchen to drink a pint of water and then carefully making his way to the bathroom to piss like a racehorse. He did not realise when it became Friday, he hardly registered when daylight started to come through the gaps in the curtains. Still he sat, falling deeper and deeper into the bizarre data that streamed into his head and continued to slowly and softly click away, gradually and surely opening that puzzle box.

The joint he was working on ran out about five in the morning and he started to become more lucid and conscious as midday approached. He could feel himself waking up by that point and between eleven and twelve he started to feel a distinct change. He was suddenly hungry and he made himself a bacon sandwich on toasted white bread and wolfed it down. He was still hungry so he made another, followed by a hot cup of strong coffee. At five to twelve he suddenly realised he was fully awake and no longer stoned and he did not feel tired at all. At twelve on the dot there was a knock at the front door.

Peter opened the door and met Bradley Faithless.

“I’m Faithless,” Bradley Faithless said. “Mr Fowler sent me to put you on the right track.”

Peter did not know what to say, so stood there starting at Bradley Faithless saying nothing. Faithless was a short man and an ugly man too. He was overweight with a fat little belly that did not sag but jutted out in a point in front of him, so that when he entered a room his belly did so a couple of seconds before the rest of him. His hair was greasy and dark, not long but not short enough that he did not have to push it back in a clump up on top of his potato of a head. His nose could have made up two noses on two other people. The end was a gnarled, pock-marked Karl Malden of a beast and it looked like it had been stuck on his face by a retarded child playing with plasticine. His eyes were small and beady, dark points hidden by his fat face. He had the redness of a drinker.

“We gonna stand here all day or are you going to invite me in?” Bradley Faithless asked. “You should put the kettle on. I’m dry as a granny’s clunge.”

Peter took a step back and motioned for Bradley Faithless to come in but Faithless stood there until Peter said:

“Please, come in.”

Faithless walked into the house with his little hobble.

“Tea, three sugars, no milk.”

Peter said nothing and went off to the kitchen. He forgot what he was doing and brought out a cup of tea that had milk in it. Faithless was sat on his sofa. He took one look at the cup that was handed to him and handed it back. Peter realised and went back to the kitchen and started again.

Once Faithless had his black, sugary tea and Peter had a cup of coffee they sat in silence. Faithless took up most of the sofa so Peter sat on his computer desk office chair, turned around to face Faithless. He sat there looking down into his coffee but knew Faithless was staring straight at him.

“My employer gave you instructions. And a large amount of money.”

Peter realised he still had the cheque but had not been to the bank with it.

“I haven’t touched the money,” Peter said suddenly, aware that this man made him feel wary, even scared.

Faithless made a grumpy noise and re-positioned himself.

“That money is already yours, a sign of good faith from Mr Fowler. I’m just here to make sure you show good faith in return and act on that trust.”

“Yes,” said Peter and could not think of what he should do or say next.

“I can tell you’ve had… an uneven time lately. Maybe your usual skills are off. I’m here to help you out those skills to use again. I’m sure once we start your instincts will kick back in.”

“Yes,” said Peter, “my instincts…”

“Everyone has off days. Or weeks.” Faithless paused. “You got any pickles? God I love pickles. They’re fantastic.”

“No.” Peter said. “No sorry, I don’t have any pickles. Do you want something else to eat? I’ve got bacon, some chicken…”

“I don’t touch meat, Mr Stone,” Faithless said, “Not for over thirty years now.”

Peter wondered how anybody on a vegetarian diet could get so fat.

“You ever killed a man, Mr Stone? In the line of your work I mean. I can see that you’re someone who can handle themselves.”

“Er, no,” Peter said, “No. At least not yet.” He smiled weakly, trying to make out that they had some semblance of a rapport going on.

“I didn’t think so. I’ve killed men, Mr Stone,” Bradley Faithless said, “Usually in the line of work.”

Peter did not want to ask exactly what line of work Bradley Faithless meant.

“But I killed a man a few years ago out of anger, much to my regret now. Twenty years ago, a friend of mine. Buried him out on the moors.”

Peter felt his sphincter twitch a little. He coughed nervously as he tried to speak without his voice shaking.

“You’ve, ahem, you’ve spent time inside then? In prison? I take it?”

“Oh, no, no. They never found the body.”

Peter found himself looking down into his coffee again.

“Mr Fowler gave you some papers, a file on his daughter. Where is it?”

Peter was puzzled for a moment; he struggled to think. He remembered being handed that file in the car with Fowler but then recalled not knowing how he had gotten back inside the house after the meeting.

“I believe that’s it on the shelf above your computer,” Faithless said, motioning with his fat little hand. There it was.

Peter got the file down. It was a plain, beige cardboard with about 20 sheets of white paper inside and from the weight of it must have had other things in between those papers, probably photographs from the feel of it. Faithless lent forward and took the file from Peter. He opened it and took out a photograph of a beautiful young woman. She seemed unaware of her picture being taken, a shot taken as she walked out of a building. She had long, dark hair, a rich, brown colour and eyes even darker and richer. She had a slender face, an aquiline nose tracing down to her full and red lips, pursed in a harsh concentration. She looked haughty and confident. Peter couldn’t really recall seeing anyone quite as beautiful as the woman in this picture.

“Madeleine Fowler.” Faithless said, before bringing out another photograph. This one was of a man leaving the same building, a good-looking but otherwise indistinct dark-haired man in a suit.

“And that is Martin Flint,” Faithless said, “The man who has… taken Madeleine away from Mr Fowler.”

“Taken her away?” Peter asked before he thought better of doing so.

“Mr Fowler is a man who takes his life seriously. His work and his family are everything to him. He will not tolerate anything interfering in his plans for his family. This man Flint has done that.”

Faithless lent forward and put the file and the pictures down on Peter’s Ikea coffee table.

“Mr Stone, it’s your job, with a little guidance from me, to find Madeleine and to make sure that she returns to her father. How this gets accomplished, well, that all depends. If Mr Flint here decides to get in the way of her safe return, well he will have to be taken care of. He may be an obstacle to her return. That obstacle will be removed.”

Peter felt that twitch in his sphincter again. Another stare into his coffee followed.

“Do you understand, Mr Stone?” Faithless asked. “Is there any problem with that I should know of now?”

Peter Stone tried to calm himself down and take stock of the situation. He had a made a decision to follow this through knowing full well that Fowler had chosen him based on erroneous information, probably a misspelling of an email address. He had chosen to take the man’s money for purely selfish reasons and also just because he thought that he could get away with it. He’d also thought that this might be fun; something that would be mostly harmless and entertaining for him. A laugh, maybe. Sat here with Bradley Faithless and thinking back to meeting the strange and powerful Ratcliffe Fowler, well, it seemed a lot less fun than he had originally thought. But Peter Stone had his own code of ethics – a slim volume, yes, but one that was unshakable in his mind and amongst those few rules was the one that mattered to him most: if you agree to a thing and you give your word on it, then you must be true to your word. It was one of the few redeeming features about Peter Stone, who for the most part was a hedonistic, self-interested loner with a narrow view of himself and the world. Keeping his word mattered to him and there was nothing he could do about it.

“No,” said Peter, with a resolve and confidence he had not shown in many days, “No, there isn’t any problem with that.”

Faithless smiled at him, turning his lumpy, ugly face into a mellower contortion of a lumpy, ugly face.

“Good,” said Bradley Faithless.

Peter Stone looked at him without smiling.

“Now,” said Faithless, opening up the file, “Mr Flint here is part owner of a nightclub. It’s called Freaky Deakys. Do you know it?” Faithless pulled out a photograph of a building with a gaudy neon sign above large double doors and laid it on top of the other pictures. Peter knew it.

“Yes,” said Peter. “I’ve been a couple of times.  Not really my kind of place.”

Faithless smiled.

“It is now,” he said. “This is the place to start Mr Stone. Obviously Mr Flint is lying low; he’s a smart man, he knows he’s become involved in something he shouldn’t. But this is his business, this is where all his connections tie together. This is where you begin.”

Going to a nightclub, Peter thought, now that’s something I know how to do. That’s something I can handle.

Faithless relaxed a little and leaned back into the sofa.

“I have every confidence in you, Mr Stone. I am available for further guidance as and when it is needed.”

“You better give me your number,” Peter said, starting to feel a little more comfortable with this strange man sat in his house.

“No. You don’t need my number. I don’t work like that Mr Stone. If you need help I will know and I’ll contact you. And if things get out of hand, well, I’ll know that too and I will do my best to get things back on track.”

Peter picked up the file and started to look through the papers. There were details of Madeleine Fowler’s life there, a short biography, lists of shops, bars and addresses she frequented, as well as credit card and bank statements. There was less detail on Martin Flint but still enough to make a man nervous. Fowler had access to details about this man’s life that he shouldn’t have. Peter wondered who had gathered this information for him and why that person wasn’t the one doing what Fowler expected Peter himself to do.

“I’ll start tonight,” Peter said firmly. Faithless nodded slowly and then spoke.

“How about another cup of tea before I go?”

Faithless left the house after another twenty minutes of mostly silent, nervous awkwardness on Peter’s part. Faithless seemed unshakable. Peter imagined that anywhere he was he acted like he owned the place. Peter didn’t like having someone like that in his own home, it infringed on his primal fear of not being in control of his own life. He had always regarded himself as someone who exuded enough arrogance and confidence to own a room and now that he had met someone who truly did that it irked him. Like many of the events of the last few days it was yet another that had shaken Peter’s carefully controlled little world. He spent the rest of the afternoon cleaning the house up and as it edged towards evening he cleaned himself up too, after an hour’s exercise. For the first time in years the exercise seemed like a strain to him. He feared if he did not get a grip on himself he could lose his way and become out of shape or lose his direction.

Before dressing to go out he checked his emails and the websites he liked again, but only once this time. Then as he was about to close the computer down something nagged at him. He logged back into his email account and searched back a week or so. The name Faithless had seemed familiar to him and his clouded mind hadn’t made the connection as quickly as it should. He found what he was looking for without really knowing what he was looking for. It was there, in an email he’d received after Fowler had first contacted him.

The email was from Brad_Faith@gmail.com. He had forgotten he’d even read it until now. It said:

Have information for you. Do not trust Fowler. Mail me back but do it quickly. Do not let anyone you do not know into your house.

Peter hadn’t mailed back at the time. He wondered why not. What was going on here? Was that email from Bradley Faithless? Why would he have sent that and then turned up to help him carry out Fowler’s instructions? More uncertainty, more vagueness, more mystery and questions. Peter didn’t like this. He felt himself mired in doubt. His life had never been like this before, it had always been so clear-cut, simple decisions made over practical matters. Now he was involved in something he did not understand with people of a like he had never known before. He didn’t like people who he knew very well were more powerful than he was, people who he knew would do things that he himself would find questionable or repugnant. He did not doubt for a second when Faithless told him he had killed before. He was certain that Fowler would have no qualms about the same thing. Peter Stone sat staring at his computer screen and for the first time in his life wanted to shrink away from himself, from his circumstances and deny what was going on.

He stood up, pulled himself as upright as he could and he yelled at the top of his voice in his living room.

 

Carter Takes A Holiday – Part Two

Back home Carter watched some television from an alternate universe. His favourite show was on; it was a situation comedy about a group of cats that ran a mental health facility called It’s A Purrfect World. He followed this up with a double bill of Friends (Chandler heavy episodes) and then began his preparations. Forty five minutes and some magic rituals later Carter was somewhere else.

Carter liked the desert. He didn’t know which one he was in, or which world this desert was on, or rather which version of the world. He was not too far out into the wilds; he could see the little town his motel was in from here. It looked like a generic small town set from any number of episodes of the Twilight Zone, right down to the worn out old gas station at the end of town. From this distance Carter could imagine a giant hand descending from the sky and picking a building up from its foundations. That’s what episode of the Twilight Zone this was; the town was just a child’s playset and all the people in it animated solely by the child’s whims.

Carter sat up on a rock, backpack beside him, lying back with hands behind his head. He was wearing Oakley sunglasses (he only ever wore Oakleys) and a straw Stetson that the general store in town had in stock. He wore shorts and a t-shirt and plenty of sunscreen. Tough as Carter was he had delicate skin and he knew it.

It was mid-afternoon, the sun having long passed its zenith, plenty of time to wander for a while and make it back to town before the cold came in. It wasn’t smart to get caught out too far in the desert once night fell. Carter took a long drink of water from his canteen and decided on a direction to walk in. He had only been walking for a half hour when he spotted a figure in the distance, a tiny ripple in the heat haze of the horizon now but closing fast. Carter had two feelings; the first was an automatic tensing as he prepared for the worst and his body slipped into the mobile state of readiness that deep meditational trance training brought. The second was a dual sense of excitement and disappointment as he realized trouble was coming and he could not avoid it. Carter drew in a deep breath and readied himself.

 

Carter Thomas Takes A Holiday

Carter Thomas Takes A Holiday

Part One

Carter Thomas was worried about his karma.

“I’m worried about my karma,” he said to K’an Cho Rin, the elevated master who sat with eyes closed and legs crossed in the half lotus position in front of him.

“A wise man once said…” K’an Cho Rin paused, though nothing but his lips had moved. “A wise man once said: forget your yin and go fuck your yang.”

Carter gave a little ‘hmph’ noise.

“What is troubling you?” K’an Cho Rin eventually asked.

“I feel like I let that kid down,” Carter said. “I feel like I played that part a little too long and a little too well. things got… skewed.”

K’a Cho Rin remained as still as a stone.

“Maybe it’s time I left Faction Twenty Three, at least for a while,” Carter said.

K’an Cho Rin placed his palms on his knees, gave out a rasping sigh of exasperation and opened his eyes.

“Carter,” he said, “you are a fictional construct brought to life by circumstance and by the inaction of an individual who has chosen to now make himself fictional as well. I do not think you need worry about your karma. No matter what, you will act as you must act and no other way.”

“Do what thou wilt…” quoted Carter.

“What I suspect you really need is some good old fashioned twenty first century sex and violence…”

Carter could not supress a grin. Carter grinned because he wanted to and because he was good at it.

“Sensei,” Carter said to K’an Cho Rin, “you’re alright.

” K’an Cho Rin’s nose wrinkled.

“Don’t call me that. This is not a kung fu movie.”

“Sorry, Sensei.”

“I suggest, as there are no immediate missions planned, that you go on a holiday.”

“Holiday?”

“If I want a parrot I will go to a pet shop,” K’an Cho Rin said. “Yes, a holiday. Going on holiday doesn’t preclude the sex and violence – in fact I understand the English mainly go on holiday just for those reasons. You are English aren’t you?”

Carter looked distracted.

“I’m not anything, really,” he said.

 

Thanks Peter God Chapter Seven

In which our protagonist inadvertently tells a woman she has a large posterior and a drunken row ensues.

Chapter Seven

The Lovers

Peter Godfrey laid there in bed and thought about all the stupid, little judgements we all make, all of the time. Anita was asleep next to him, flat on her face in those green pyjamas of hers that she always left at his, completely oblivious, laid out like a slab of meat. He watched her carefully, trying to see any movement. He could see the back of her head, just a tussle of blonde hair which had fallen across her face so he could see nothing else unless he sat up. Her big, nice ass looked like it could take a scrabble board across it and remain still for an entire game. Her cute little feet where folded over each other, just on top of the duvet. He worried when she slept this still; he had an urge to shake her awake just to prove to himself that she was not dead but he knew that it would just infuriate her and lead to another argument.

They had been out that night to a barbecue at a friend’s house and Anita had drunk a little more wine than was sensible. Peter had not gotten away lightly himself; he’d had too much weed early on and had what his friend’s had previously described to him as “a whitey”. He’d never really believed they happened until he’d started to feel his blood pressure drop and his vision become a television screen filled with static. He had been sat on a stand chair in his friend’s garden surrounded by people he for the most part did not know. Anita was sat to his right and the guy to his left was someone he only knew from a previous event at the same house. He was a nice guy but one who always brought large amounts of weed along, hence the whitey.

Peter had sat there wondering if he should try and move and then quickly realised he probably couldn’t if he wanted to. When the sweat had popped out on his forehead and he had felt himself become very, very drowsy Anita had turned to him and told him that his lips were turning blue.

“I don’t think I’m very well,” Peter had said to her and was thankful she was also stoned; otherwise she would probably have taken her best berating tone with him.

“Do you want some water?” she’d asked him and he nodded.

He had sat still whilst she went off to get the water and he’d listened to sounds fade as his ears seemed to stop working. He had been worried now that he may pass out – he had never done so in his entire life and the prospect held a great fear for him. If people passed out then ambulances were called and people were taken to hospital. At the hospital they would do tests on him and discover all the secret, serious illnesses that only his neuroses and fear kept at bay. Then it would all be over.

He remembered he had taken a sip of the water that Anita had handed him and then the next thing he had known was hearing her voice as she said his name over and over, asking if he was okay. When he’d opened his eyes he was confused; her face was at the wrong angle altogether and he had wondered what was wrong with her. Then he had figured out that he was at the wrong angle; slumped sideways and almost laid on her breasts. He had righted himself and looked around, embarrassed, but no one seemed to be paying any attention to him. He was sweaty and cold.

“Are you alright?” Anita had been asking him, “You were shaking. Are you epileptic? I would have thought you’d tell me if you were epileptic.”

“I’m not epileptic,” he’d told her, “I think I had a whitey.”

“Your lips really turned blue but when I mentioned it you looked panicky.”

“No… no, I was just interested. Just interested. It was scary but I just tried to relax and let it happen. I just feel a bit wiped out.”

He had begun to perk up after that. He slowed down his drinking and even had a few more drags of weed later on and had actually felt quite good. Anita seemed okay with him, talking, laughing, acting normally but he had wondered if she was secretly pissed off with him and was not showing it because they were in company. She had seemed to be flirting a little with a guy they knew but she described him later as resembling a serial killer so maybe she hadn’t. She had asked Peter if he’d wanted another drink and then come back with two large glasses of wine, knowing very well that he never drank it. She had finished it off herself and then accepted another large glass from the serial killer guy and drank it down much too quickly.

By the time they left Anita had not been able to walk without putting her arm through his. When they’d detached to cross a road she had wandered sideways and almost into the path of an oncoming car. They had made it halfway home before getting a taxi seemed a much, much better idea, so they’d flagged one down. Peter hadn’t seen Anita this drunk since that night two months ago when they’d first had sex. She hadn’t been as drunk then, he’d decided, probably because she’d been nervous at that time too. Now, two months into what was definitely a relationship, she was relaxed enough to get into a state and he considered that a compliment. There were those silly little milestones in relationships – for instance, the first time a woman farted in front of you, you knew she had decided you were probably going to hang around.

They’d gotten home to his place and Anita had demanded coffee and a bagel and then declared that it was the best food she had ever had. She had gotten excited when she thought she had enough weed on her to make one last joint and Peter had shared that excitement until she brought out a little baggy with three tiny specks in it. They shared a cigarette instead and then Anita had disappeared out of the room. Ten minutes later he had realised she wasn’t coming back and he’d crept quietly into his room and gotten undressed. Anita was under the covers snuggled up and he’d had to disturb her to get a little cover himself. She’d grumbled at this, only half asleep, still reeling drunk. Although he hadn’t actually said anything she started shushing him as if he’d spoken.

“That’s it,” she’d said, “enough chatter. We’re going to sleep now.”

“I hadn’t said anything.”

“Shhhh!”

He’d laid on his back, keeping still and silent. He knew if he stayed on his back he would find it difficult to sleep and that if he did go to sleep in that position he would definitely snore. He wasn’t sure that it would’ve woken her once she’d fallen into her drunken sleep. She was probably going to have a good, deep sleep.

“That lesbian was cute,” She’d said all of a sudden, making him start.

“Which one?” He’d asked.

“The pale cute one.”

“Not the one that looked like Katie Holmes?”

“The other one looked like Katie Holmes?”

“Yeah, she had that forehead thing going on.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“They were both cute,” Peter Godfrey had said and immediately knew he shouldn’t have.

“You thought they were cute?” Anita asked.

“Yeah. Well, I’m just agreeing with you…”

“So you were looking at them?”

“No.”

“Well how do you know they were cute?”

“Well, I wasn’t looking at them like looking at them… I just noticed them like I noticed everyone else.”

“So you weren’t just looking at them, you were checking out all the girls there then?”

“No!”

“But you just said you noticed them like you noticed everyone else which must mean you looked at all the girls and judged them all.”

“Well, men just do judge girls like that don’t they,” Peter had foolishly continued, “but it’s just like being in an art gallery and looking at the pictures and knowing which ones are best.”

“So you judged every single one of the girls at the party? Go on then, who else did you fancy?”

“I didn’t say I fancied any of them!”

“But you did fancy some of them. Because you’re a man in an art gallery. Or whatever.”

“No, but… well… you look but you don’t stay at the art gallery, do you? I mean, it’s one thing to go to an art gallery and look around but it’s better to have your favourite painting at home.”

“What? I’m a belonging? That should stay at home?”

“No! That’s not what I said!”

“That is what you said!”

“No, that’s not what I said.”

Silence fell for a few moments.

“Look,” said Peter, unaware that speaking further was the worst thing he could do at this point, “You can go to as many galleries as you want, but when you’ve got, er, when you’ve got, say, a genuine masterpiece at home, like a Picasso at home, then what does it matter?”

“A Picasso?”

“Yeah.”

“So I look like my face is twisted round and my eyes are wonky and my lips are up under my left ear? And my tits are on my knees?”

“Jesus Christ! No! Did I say anything remotely like that?” Peter still did not have enough sense to stop talking at this point. “Jesus. I was not checking out the girls at the party and I do not think your tits are on your knees! You mentioned one girl, a lesbian for god’s sake anyway who would not be interested in my opinion of her and I agreed with you anyway! How can we be having an argument when I’m agreeing with you on something?”

“Well if I said my ass looked fat and you agreed I wouldn’t be happy!”

“That’s because it isn’t fat!”

“You called it big.”

“What? When?”

“The other day we were having sex and you said something like bring that big ass round here.”

“I said big old ass!”

“It’s old as well as big? I’m sorry I’m not as young as your last girlfriend.”

“No, no, no,” said Peter. He sighed. “It was nothing to do with your ass being fat or old.”

“So it is?”

“No! I was quoting from a Prince song. Or something. It was like sexy talk.”

“Calling my ass fat and old was sexy talk? You’ve got a lot to fucking learn. Even at your advanced age.”

“So now I’m old? And it’s okay to say that?”

“Yes!” Anita shrieked, “Because you are a dirty old man who’s been looking at girls and says my ass is fat and saggy!”

“When did I say saggy? Jesus! Keep your fucking facts straight!”

The argument had not gotten better from there. Like most men in his situation, Peter Godfrey had no intention of winning the argument; he had just wanted it to end.  He had felt anxious and out of control, he knew very well from experience that these kinds of arguments between men and women were not really arguments at all, just a ritual of positioning and power. He had not wanted to win, or get an apology or anything in particular except go to sleep. He had wanted her to just stop talking and pass out drunk and then he could drift off himself. He had been stoned and drunk still and should have been in that nice comfortable place where it was easy to slip into the place between waking and dreaming and let all those thoughts run through his mind as he went to sleep.

Instead he had carried on trying to calm her down, feeling tenser and wired up as the argument went along – a physical pang in his chest, an acute and aching pain, a frustration and tension that felt like something from childhood. He wondered how she really felt, whether she felt anything similar, whether she really thought this was a necessary, relevant argument or was she caught in the midst of it purely through emotion and drunkenness. Peter had also felt incredibly horny throughout – just knowing she was so angry with him that she would physically repel him if he tried to lay a hand on her that drove him mad. He knew throughout that this would all just guarantee make-up sex in the morning. That had not really made the situation better for him – it did not dispel the tension and needling frustration. He had still just wanted it to be done with. And eventually it was.

Sat awake now, the clock showing 6am, he felt groggy and spaced out, probably still intoxicated, but he felt good. He looked over again at Anita lying there next to him, motionless and felt a sudden surge in himself, an overwhelming sense of affection and warmth. She brought out in him a deep desire to make sure she was okay; he had thought at first that it was an instinct to look after her but he soon realised this wasn’t even necessary, she was quite capable of looking after herself, probably more so than he was. This was something different; he just wanted to make sure that she had someone who could be there for her when she needed them.

He wanted to be the kind of man that Johnny Cash and June Carter sang about in those songs of theirs – someone who had found a love that had made him strong and right. But, just like in those songs he wanted to acknowledge his own weaknesses too; there was no sense in pretending he was something he wasn’t. Peter Godfrey was many things; lazy, cowardly, neurotic, but he was always honest about this – often too honest and too forthcoming on the subject of his own failings, but it was better than being delusional or in denial about himself. He wanted nothing more than to be able to say, yes, I’m imperfect but yes I can be strong when I need to be, when the right person needs me to be. He just didn’t realise how far away from this he was right now.

He wanted Anita to be the right person though. He knew already, had decided it, that he was in love with her and he could genuinely feel that she too was in love with him. He did not want to let her down as he had let women down in the past (or as he imagined he had; often he had not been at fault, just with the wrong woman). He wondered if arguments like the ridiculous one they had had last night were necessary, whether they were part of a process that would disappear as she began to trust him more or if they were just a permanent fixture that acted like a vent for emotions and insecurities. He felt they were wrong; they were unnecessary, part of a problem that he could fix. Peter Godfrey spent too much time thinking he could fix problems or people. He had not yet grasped that there was no way for one person to fix another; they could only do that themselves. He was on the right track though, thinking that he should just be strong for Anita, a permanent, solid thing in her life that she would always know was there, that she could always lean on and rely on. Of course she needed this, of course she wanted this. Who wouldn’t?

He also needed to learn that she could be the same for him, that he should be capable of giving in to his weaknesses sometimes and not be ashamed of it, that if someone truly loved him (as Anita was starting to, something deeper than simply being in love) they would accept this and just let him be himself. In that way he would relax and he would begin to change, to become more like himself than he had been capable of being before. This was what Peter needed to accept more than anything, that it was acceptable to be himself, instead of wishing he could transform himself into other people, or parts of other people’s personalities. He needed to realise that the best path for anyone was to embrace their own nature and come to terms with it, not to torture themselves with fantasies of changes that they could never make. A person content with their own nature, balanced and at peace would be capable of embodying any aspect of themselves they needed to at the time – they would find all they needed within themselves and realise that everything they’d ever aspired to or wished for had been there all along.

Anita was stirring now, maybe woken by Peter sitting up in bed and just watching her. She made some adorable little sleepy groaning noises and her hips swung slowly around as she stretched herself out. She pushed her hair out of her face and looked round to Peter. Her eyes were all gummy with sleep and puffed up. She sniffed and smiled at him. She seemed oblivious to the fact that the last words she had said to him before she had gone angrily to sleep had been “oh, shut the fuck up, dickhead” and he didn’t give care anyway. Her sleep face, her warm body next to him, her smiling, gorgeous lips; this was all that he wanted or needed right now.

She pulled herself up to him, not sitting up but snuggling into his side, her face against his chest and belly. He could smell perfume and stale booze on her and it was intoxicating. He put his arm around her shoulder and with his other hand stroked her hair away from her face. He smiled down at her.

“Did I get very drunk last night?” She asked him.

 

Three Films Reviewed

I watched three films in the last twelve hours, none of which I had seen before.

First up:

McCabe & Mrs Miller

Released 1971, Directed by Robert Altman, Starring Warren Beatty and Julie Christie.

I like Robert Altman films. I haven’t seen enough of them, but just from The Long Goodbye, M*A*S*H, Short Cuts and Popeye (yes, Popeye) I know that I like his films a lot. Though McCabe & Mrs Miller demonstrates all the typical traits of a Robert Altman film it is technically a western, set in a frontier community in the late 1800’s. Altman’s style of shooting, for those who don’t know, involved a free flowing collaborative interaction between actors, camera and director. Dialogue is often unclear and obscured, just like it can be in real life. Performances tend to be quite naturalistic. He uses a lot of his stock actors in this film, including Rene Auberjonois, Keith Carradine, Michael Murphy, Shelley Duvall and John Schuck, many of whom did multiple films with him, creating an ensemble cast that worked together more like a theatre company than a film crew. Altman’s style grew out of the late 60’s and early 70’s, an exciting and formative time for American cinema and art and along with Scorsese and a few other key directors Altman shaped American cinema for decades to come. Whilst this style may seem commonplace now it was not so at the time and this would certainly have been a drastic departure for a western. Its impact can certainly be seen a couple of years later in Peckinpah’s Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid. The film is about the relationship between McCabe and Mrs Miller, one that starts off as a reluctant business partnership and then becomes something else, though what that something else is exactly is never expressed as the narrative revolves around two major points; their inability to express their feelings to each other and McCabe’s disastrous decision to turn down an offer to buy out his interests in the community that they have built together. You know from early on in the film that this isn’t going to end well; the main characters are not going to suddenly find themselves able to tell each other how they feel and McCabe is not going to find a way out of his bad situation. In most films (see film 2) this would normally mean you are in for little on the way of emotional impact because you’re going to be sat there thinking ‘I knew that was coming’ all the way through. Instead Altman uses this fact to drench the film in a tension and poignancy that counterpoints his style of filming; the naturalistic performances just convince you to care for the characters even more and the unsentimental treatment of their plight(s) give the story its dramatic tension. You know exactly what the fate of everyone on screen will be but it doesn’t stop you screaming out for them to act differently to save themselves. Warren Beatty is at his best in this period, shortly after Bonnie and Clyde, a couple of years before The Parallax View and Shampoo. He invests John McCabe with a vulnerability that belies his confidence and looks. McCabe is a man who isn’t quite as smart as he would like to be but just smart enough to know that this may get him killed. Julie Christie is equally as effective as the initially caustic Mrs Miller (exactly what English accent is that?), letting her character soften through the film, not through any character change or development but through the slow revelation of different aspects of her. There really isn’t any development of character in the film; rather people just go on acting like themselves no matter the consequences. The stand out performance of the film though comes from Hugh Millais, an English actor who plays the man sent to kill McCabe. He only really gets dialogue in one scene but that scene is genuinely chilling. The film is beautifully shot by Vilmos Zsigmond, the cinematographer responsible for a ridiculously great number of films including The Deer Hunter, Deliverance, Close Encounters of The Third Kind and The Long Goodbye. The soundtrack (which immediately separates this film from other westerns of the time) consists of several Leonard Cohen songs used thematically and sparsely and very effectively. It’s a great all round package; great looking, great sounding, well acted, well written, well edited. It’s a great film.

Secondly:

Cemetery Junction

Released 2010, Directed by Stephen Merchant and Ricky Gervais, Starring Christian Cooke, Tom Hughes, Jack Doolan, Felicity Jones.

I like Ricky Gervais a lot. I’ve just spent two weeks of my life looking like a lunatic as I’ve been listening to his podcasts and laughing out loud whilst walking to work or through town. I couldn’t help myself; they were just that funny that I had to laugh. Which makes this all the more difficult. I suppose I made a mistake in watching Cemetery Junction directly after watching a Robert Altman film. By the time of McCabe & Mrs Miller, Altman had his craft down pat. This is the first time Merchant and Gervais have directed a motion picture. I enjoyed Gervais in the weirdly uplifting and depressing Invention of Lying and I liked Ghost Town a lot. Not so keen on Night At The Museum. He certainly acts well in the film, in his cameo role as the main character’s father. His scenes actually lift the film up a little, which only really goes to point out that it needed lifting. The trouble with the rest of the film is that resembles McCabe and Mrs Miller in one important way; you know exactly what will happen at the end of the film within ten minutes of watching. Unlike McCabe and Mrs Miller, from that initial ten minutes to the final credits there is little in the way of genuine tension – it hits all the beats you would think it would and then gets to the end. And that’s about it. It’s a coming of age story (first warning sign) about a young man and his two friends. Freddie has started work at an insurance company to try to make a little headway in the world whilst his dad and his best friend Bruce still work at a factory. What kind of factory I’m not sure, there just seems to be a lot of sharpening of things going on. Bruce lives with his alcoholic, unemployed dad because his mother left years ago and he resents his dad for this – he’s the tough guy who gets into fights because he is angry. Their friend Snork is the fat, stupid character who rounds out their comic trio. It’s a bit like Last Of The Summer Wine in reverse. Freddie finds that his former childhood sweetheart is not only his new bosses’ daughter but engaged to the horrible manager who is training him in how to be evil enough to sell life insurance to people who don’t really need it. But they might need it. You never know. Even if I read that last paragraph I’d know what was going to happen by the end of the film. SPOILERS!!!!! Freddie gets the girl and doesn’t become evil. Bruce stops being angry and stops resenting his dad. Snork gets a girl despite being the fat, stupid one. They all come of age. All on the same day. Odd coincidence. My sarcastic tone is not entirely deserved. I enjoyed this film. It is funny and it is touching in parts and for a British film it is head and shoulders above most fare. It is nicely shot, nicely written, nicely edited. Unfortunately nice doesn’t always cut the mustard. In both The Office and Extras Gervais and Merchant managed to take characters right up to the limit of sentimentality and obviousness and then seemed to magically avoid being genuinely mawkish or stereotypical. Maybe the biting wit or unrelenting misery of those two shows is what’s missing from Cemetery Junction. The only time the typical Merchant/Gervais humour rears its head properly is in the scenes around the family table in Freddie’s’ household. The banter between his parents and his grandmother doesn’t pull any punches – the film is set in 1973 and reflects the times accurately, including all the ignorant, hateful spite of working class people in fear of change. When Freddie begins reading National Geographic one mealtime his mother quickly flashes “we’ll not have jungle tits at the breakfast table”. It’s funny and it’s horrible at the same time, and that’s the line that Gervais and Merchant usually walk very, very well. It feels as if they have simply taken too much effort to make this film seem like a real film, like a big, proper movie and in doing so they have compromised their style. Technically they have also fallen into one of the simplest traps of filming a period piece; everything looks new. The main characters live in a run-down street with pristine, shiny Minis and Anglias in every driveway. Having lived through the seventies I can clarify now, everything was dirty. Despite the gripes I wasn’t bored by this film. I didn’t find myself wandering off to get a bag of crisps, forgetting that I was watching something. It entertained me for an hour and a half. But it didn’t grab me in the way a truly good film should do. There are no big complaints about Cemetery Junction; it just feels like a first film done by directors who can do better next time. Oh, and it’s worth watching just for Karl Pilkington’s cameo.

Thirdly:

I’m Not There

Released 2007, Directed by Todd Haynes, Starring Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Heath Ledger, Richard Gere, Ben Wishaw and Marcus Carl Franklin.

All of the actors I just listed play the same main character, all are named differently, sure, but they are all Bob Dylan. This is an interesting approach to sidestepping the usual route that leads to tedious biopics that never really tell us about a subject as they are too busy constructing a tidy narrative and life just isn’t tidy. This film is non-linear, narratives skipping back and forth in time and between the different versions of Dylan. Little Marcus Carl Franklin is a small child calling himself Woody Guthrie, for instance, hopping trains and talking to hoboes about the protest music of the 30’s. Christian Bale is Jack Rollins, a Dylan just breaking onto the scene, the Dylan who romanced Joan Baez. Heath Ledger plays Robbie Clark, an actor portraying Jack Rollins on screen and then becoming involved in a marriage that rises and falls over the course of the Vietnam War. Cate Blanchett plays Jude Quinn, a Dylan at the beginning of his electric period, possibly the most fraught period of his career. Richard Gere plays Billy The Kid, a Dylan who can’t even play guitar but tries to stop developers destroying the western town he lives in. Ben Wishaw (took me half an hour to realise it was Pingu from Nathan Barley) plays Arthur Rimbauld, a Dylan sat in an interrogation room giving oblique answers to questions that haven’t always been asked. It’s an interesting concept and for the most part it works – any artist as complex as Dylan can’t really be portrayed in the traditional sense. To try to film a linear narrative of his life would be to ignore the complexity of his life and career, the extraordinary way he evolved, made music evolve and then evolved again, over and over. There are some disadvantages to this technique however. I felt a little lost; I know some of the details of Dylan’s career, have seen several documentaries about key periods, but I felt as if I simply did not have enough biographical information in my head before starting to watch the film. Having watched it all and enjoyed it a great deal I still feel I need to look up Dylan’s Wikipedia entry and cross-reference it to the Wikipedia entry for the film to find out who everyone was or who they were meant to be. I often like fractured filmic techniques and enjoyed moving about through time, back and forth several times and also sideways as the stories of the various Dylans began to overlap more and more. The trouble with having six performers portraying versions of the same person though is that some actors are better than others. Cate Blanchett steals the film from everyone else. She looks more like Dylan than Dylan does himself and is portraying him in the most volatile period of his career. She has the best part and she runs with it. She is uncannily good. Christian Bale seems to struggle a bit – you can physically see him trying to act harder. Heath Ledger seems not to be very Dylan-like at all and falls a little flat. Richard Gere is strangely effective, despite being very un-Dylan looking. Ben Wishaw is excellent in the black and white sections where he is simply answering questions that you can for the most part not even hear. Close your eyes and he is Dylan. Marcus Carl Franklin was only 14 when the film was shot and looks younger. Also he’s black. He is quite effective in evoking the feeling of naiveté that I have read about concerning the young Dylan’s obsession with Woody Guthrie, though whether someone approaching the film without that information would think so is unsure. Anyhow, what does it matter if a film makes you want to go and find more information about its subject and then watch it again? This film, by its very construction, becomes the type of interactive, complex object that Bob Dylan’s life and career became, constantly elusive and enigmatic, tragic and ridiculous by turns. If it fails slightly it is only because no matter how you construct your narrative you are still trying to embody as many aspects of a single person in one short period of time, always a nearly impossible task and one that’s bound to leave some bits out. Maybe it catches his cleverness a little too well and his sense of humour not so much.

Don’t agree? Feel free to bitch, moan, whine and argue with me.