On Shifting Sands
Winning Entry by writerEVQEELQIIS
The company Christmas party was in full swing, people had saved clothing stamps for months so that they could celebrate in their finery. She stood at the edge of the room, her long blonde hair beautifully arranged, her smart suit standing out amongst the other office girls' attire, looking around for the face she wanted to see.
If she had been asked what attracted her to him she would have given the answer that he was reliable. Reliability is probably not the most romantic way to choose a life partner, but to her reliability equated hard-working, promotion, money and a life she greatly desired. An escape from the slightly suffocating attentions of her parents. The only flaw she could see was that his adoration, steadfastness and reliability had only presented itself to her in the form of letters. She had met him once (or maybe twice) in person, when he visited the head office from his lowly country branch, and he had asked if he may write to her. He did write, and wrote every day- a letter filled with compliments and affection and peppered with the doings of his mundane life. She knew she did not want to live his country life with him, but he was well thought of and there was an opening in head office, he could easily move to London and they could live their life there.
She looked around, it seemed he was not here yet. Impatient to dance her eye settled on the office clerk, much less reliable, much less steadfast, but a lovely dancer none the less and a Londoner through and through. She smiled, stepped forward and stopped as she felt a tap on her shoulder and turned to see her steadfast admirer...
He walked up the sandy beach towards her, a squirming, dark haired child in his arms, sandy and damp from swimming in the sea. He placed the child beside her, smiling into her face. It was the light that caught her, the bright, calm Cornish sun creating warmth on her face. She turned to look at the welcoming beach hut behind her, and felt a feeling welling in her, an understanding this was her life now. Not in London, but here, in this dull, quiet county. Confusion...
And back to the dance. A time to choose, perhaps. Right here, right now was solid and real, her bedrock. Maybe if she stepped towards the office clerk she would see her future life with him.
One step...
A baby is placed into to her arms. Sweet smelling, tiny and oh so warm. She, herself is cocooned in an armchair in an immaculately tidy room. She has a sense that this house belongs to her. She can not work out who the baby is though. Looking up, horror fills her mind as two faces, identical to her face, but much older, look at her. A shake of the head, and it becomes clear, and she stares at the face of her great grand-daughter cuddling in her arms, her heart flooded with joy, just for a moment. And has this life been, full of adventure, excitement, bright lights and big cities? Is this the life she wanted? A photo on the wall caught her eye, the steadfast, reliable man. And the memories of this life suffocate her; respectable, filled with care, mediocre. A life lived well.
The sunlight spills through the conservatory roof, this soft, calm sunlight of the Cornish skies, beloved by artists- not the grey, exciting, noisy light of London. She wonders how she had ever left that city. But honestly, she must still be at that dance, this is just an all engulfing daydream. She can still choose. Back, back , through these softly dancing, shifting memories of a life she does not want to live.
She forces her brain to snap back to the present, to the party, with the chatter and the music and the dancing. She forces herself to ignore the reliable, steadfast man and turn to the clerk. With a smile he holds out his hand to step on to the dance floor.
One step....
"Ahh there you are. I bought you a cup of tea. You were daydreaming again."
A lady in a nurses uniform is standing by her chair offering her a cup. This time the armchair is hard and uncomfortable, her back held straight and her feet raised on a small footrest. A blanket is draped across her knees, decorated with ribbons and buttons. The room is filled with old people, maybe filled is the wrong word, six or seven others sit there looking at a television screen. The screen is huge, and in colour, from this distance she can not quite make out the pictures though.
Gently taking the proffered cup, she collects her thoughts, this does not quite feel like the life she would have expected to get. The sunlight streaming in the window is clear and bright, definitely not London. Still the same life. Still the life she did not want. The wave of emotions, pull her back to the dance, to try and conjure the life she desires.
Over and over, the bedrock of that moment of choice falls away and the memories flood back in, each feeling more real than the last. Almost as if this life has already been lived. Each shifting moment feels as if she has lived it, the fleeting joy she feels holding these future grandchildren and great grandchildren always with an undertow of disappointment. Then, a grasp at happiness, to get back to the dance and start again, then dragged away as another memory pulls her into the current, away from the dance. She wonders how she must appear to the others at the dance, standing there, immobile as these moving memories of a life she has not yet lived, and does not even think she wants to live, engulf her. She must choose.
The teacup tumbles to the floor, spilling its contents over the carpet. The impact makes hardly any sound, certainly not enough to be heard over the sound of the television in the day room of the nursing home. The staff will remember her, the residents maybe not, as their own memories twist and turn, shift and squirm in the confines of their now much muddled brains. But she will not care, she has found her way back to that one solid piece of bedrock in her life, to the choice she made many years ago. She has chosen differently this time.
If she had been asked what attracted her to him she would have given the answer that he was reliable. Reliability is probably not the most romantic way to choose a life partner, but to her reliability equated hard-working, promotion, money and a life she greatly desired. An escape from the slightly suffocating attentions of her parents. The only flaw she could see was that his adoration, steadfastness and reliability had only presented itself to her in the form of letters. She had met him once (or maybe twice) in person, when he visited the head office from his lowly country branch, and he had asked if he may write to her. He did write, and wrote every day- a letter filled with compliments and affection and peppered with the doings of his mundane life. She knew she did not want to live his country life with him, but he was well thought of and there was an opening in head office, he could easily move to London and they could live their life there.
She looked around, it seemed he was not here yet. Impatient to dance her eye settled on the office clerk, much less reliable, much less steadfast, but a lovely dancer none the less and a Londoner through and through. She smiled, stepped forward and stopped as she felt a tap on her shoulder and turned to see her steadfast admirer...
He walked up the sandy beach towards her, a squirming, dark haired child in his arms, sandy and damp from swimming in the sea. He placed the child beside her, smiling into her face. It was the light that caught her, the bright, calm Cornish sun creating warmth on her face. She turned to look at the welcoming beach hut behind her, and felt a feeling welling in her, an understanding this was her life now. Not in London, but here, in this dull, quiet county. Confusion...
And back to the dance. A time to choose, perhaps. Right here, right now was solid and real, her bedrock. Maybe if she stepped towards the office clerk she would see her future life with him.
One step...
A baby is placed into to her arms. Sweet smelling, tiny and oh so warm. She, herself is cocooned in an armchair in an immaculately tidy room. She has a sense that this house belongs to her. She can not work out who the baby is though. Looking up, horror fills her mind as two faces, identical to her face, but much older, look at her. A shake of the head, and it becomes clear, and she stares at the face of her great grand-daughter cuddling in her arms, her heart flooded with joy, just for a moment. And has this life been, full of adventure, excitement, bright lights and big cities? Is this the life she wanted? A photo on the wall caught her eye, the steadfast, reliable man. And the memories of this life suffocate her; respectable, filled with care, mediocre. A life lived well.
The sunlight spills through the conservatory roof, this soft, calm sunlight of the Cornish skies, beloved by artists- not the grey, exciting, noisy light of London. She wonders how she had ever left that city. But honestly, she must still be at that dance, this is just an all engulfing daydream. She can still choose. Back, back , through these softly dancing, shifting memories of a life she does not want to live.
She forces her brain to snap back to the present, to the party, with the chatter and the music and the dancing. She forces herself to ignore the reliable, steadfast man and turn to the clerk. With a smile he holds out his hand to step on to the dance floor.
One step....
"Ahh there you are. I bought you a cup of tea. You were daydreaming again."
A lady in a nurses uniform is standing by her chair offering her a cup. This time the armchair is hard and uncomfortable, her back held straight and her feet raised on a small footrest. A blanket is draped across her knees, decorated with ribbons and buttons. The room is filled with old people, maybe filled is the wrong word, six or seven others sit there looking at a television screen. The screen is huge, and in colour, from this distance she can not quite make out the pictures though.
Gently taking the proffered cup, she collects her thoughts, this does not quite feel like the life she would have expected to get. The sunlight streaming in the window is clear and bright, definitely not London. Still the same life. Still the life she did not want. The wave of emotions, pull her back to the dance, to try and conjure the life she desires.
Over and over, the bedrock of that moment of choice falls away and the memories flood back in, each feeling more real than the last. Almost as if this life has already been lived. Each shifting moment feels as if she has lived it, the fleeting joy she feels holding these future grandchildren and great grandchildren always with an undertow of disappointment. Then, a grasp at happiness, to get back to the dance and start again, then dragged away as another memory pulls her into the current, away from the dance. She wonders how she must appear to the others at the dance, standing there, immobile as these moving memories of a life she has not yet lived, and does not even think she wants to live, engulf her. She must choose.
The teacup tumbles to the floor, spilling its contents over the carpet. The impact makes hardly any sound, certainly not enough to be heard over the sound of the television in the day room of the nursing home. The staff will remember her, the residents maybe not, as their own memories twist and turn, shift and squirm in the confines of their now much muddled brains. But she will not care, she has found her way back to that one solid piece of bedrock in her life, to the choice she made many years ago. She has chosen differently this time.
Featured Entry by QueenC
Life in the Buda hills was easy. Each morning, the family concierge woke her with a military whistle while Mari, the village girl, twirled around (without underpants because she's so poor, according to the countess her mother), plying her with bread, Jam, butter, and eggs.
Father was a judge. When his chauffeur had a day off, he drove his bottle green government car with a tank full of petrol just for fun. Her horse, Palinka, grazed in the meadow at their summer home, prancing as if he were a Viennese show stallion. In the fall, schools last day arrived too soon. Admiring her new hat in the mirror Bunny graciously accepted the class prize for religion. Sister Clotilda reminded the girls to hold onto their Christianity. Which meant as Bunny thought about it that hiding Jewish children was a good thing but flirting with German officers was bad. Bunny Esterhazy an aristocrat already knew the difference between right and wrong. Not like the girls who met the German soldiers on the Danube’s dark banks for chocolates and silk stockings.
Later that week the family decamped to lake Balaton. The sound of bombs sending her mother out of her mind. One late afternoon, she walked on the sandy shore self-assured in cork shoes, waisted culotte shorts and a chiffon blouse with a ribbon. She adjusted her ribbon, letting the cool Balaton breeze graze her cheeks, feeling as secure as her family’s thick Buda hills manor walls. She thought of the German silk stockings the girls from school bragged about. How vulgar they seemed now. A faint hum broke her thoughts. She squinted over the lake to see a black rubber boat, slicing through the waves, engines droning. The travellers looked like the Russian soldiers she’d seen in the Newspaper reports from the eastern front. She turned to call her mother—who had just looked up. As the boats red star clarified mother fainted onto the lawn, and father yelled from the doorway, “Get the car!” At that moment, her world broke like a string of pearls. Her fiancé the young pilot suddenly appeared and spoke quietly to her about the unfolding invasion. If he and Bunny were to be married, he stressed she and her entire family must leave in the next two hours. At sunset gripping a small bag of family silver Bunny, her family and an entire flight squadron stuffed themselves into a Red Cross truck. The cocky young pilots in their khaki suits sitting with her spoke of nothing but the brutality and rapes inflicted by the Russians on civilians. She blocked their horror stories out only to then see forced labourers close to their truck shot down for being slow by German officers. One of them a Jewish person wearing the yellow star fell against the truck. Why didn’t’ t they stop and at least challenge the Germans?
Overwhelmed she sobbed.
At the end of the drive she thought only of her friend Vera still in Budapest. She had not been able to say goodbye to her absolute best of friends! And that was such a rule of friendship— to say goodbye, to give a hug and a farewell
On the fifth night of their retreat from Hungary, for the price of the family silver they managed to find a place that had five people sleeping together in each bed. Lying next to a soldier reeking of sweat and her father snoring she had to distract herself with memories of Palinka. But on this journey things shifted quickly. And at 6am American troops knocked on the doors of their lodging and blasted out, 'Hitler has killed himself! At his side, Eva Braun'. Her fiancé hid his gun, and her father quickly put away his Judge photos. The desperation of their situation sank into her mood. The manor was no longer; her grandmother had been shot and raped by the Russians because she would not give up her jewels. There was no going back.
As winter set in day after day they competed for bread, vegetables, and eggs. She was now quite thin. Every day the pilots sniggered and boasted about their gains on the black market. But she did not join them. Now she had become an artist and walked everywhere with a drawing pad and pencils. ‘Hey, baby, how about sketching my girl so I can look at her? see cute ha?
Bunny jumped at the American GI. She pointed to his carton of Cigarettes and emphasized ‘for those.’‘Fraulein, I’ll only give you US dollars.’ She started to draw from his girlfriend’s photo. This well-fed girl had glowing skin lipstick and a chiffon blouse over her curvy form. Bunny was hungry and yesterday she had accidently come across her father stealing corn at the tightly run local market. Ever so quietly he had slipped the ears into his grey satchel. He turned and saw her. Putting his finger to his lips he grabbed her arm and said, ‘look calm.’ Maybe if father could steal, she could as well. She needed to survive and here it was like a job. Yet she despised this very thought because it put her on a par with the undeserving poor. She preferred genteel poverty.
She had handed over her sketch to the now smoking GI, grabbed his bag and ran onto the next train. The GI yelled and tried tracking her for a while but gave up and went back to his post. Vienna was full of displaced persons out of their mind with hunger.
Inside his bag, instead of cigarettes, Bunny found four vials of Penicillin. Penicillin had the highest value of all the black-market items in the sick city of Vienna. US Military police boarded the train and started to flirt with her. 'Hey, baby! Schnaps??'. She blew them a kiss winked and then covered the bag with her jacket.
At Vienna Neustadt, she hopped off and walked to another open-air market where a large woman in a dirndl sold eggs, butter, and bread.
‘I want all the eggs and butter you have and Jam!’
Nein Liebling!
But look, I have these. You need these, is that not, right? See over there, the pharmacist. He would pay you a lot…
'No kidding, Penicillin! Over here, Sarge! You're charged, baby'. As they drove her off, she saw the now familiar poster saying, ‘Pay ration prices only; buying on the black market is a crime.’
Dam! Up until this arrest she was the only one in her family and amongst the pilots who had managed to escape going to jail. Last week father paid for coal with stolen cigarettes and ended up doing an overnighter. And the week before, her mother travelled to Baden Baden to sell black market jewellery to the Mayor of that town. Mama had spent three nights in jail.
And now she had lost her first place.
Bunny put her head out the car window and shouted, 'The cost of living is too high’ to which a passerby pressed cigarettes into her hand. Here cigarettes were more important than clothes, horses, houses, silk stockings and even religion.
She would now get out of jail early for the price of five cigarettes!
Two years later walking past the immigration officials in Australia she vowed she would never do anything unlawful in her new homeland.
Father was a judge. When his chauffeur had a day off, he drove his bottle green government car with a tank full of petrol just for fun. Her horse, Palinka, grazed in the meadow at their summer home, prancing as if he were a Viennese show stallion. In the fall, schools last day arrived too soon. Admiring her new hat in the mirror Bunny graciously accepted the class prize for religion. Sister Clotilda reminded the girls to hold onto their Christianity. Which meant as Bunny thought about it that hiding Jewish children was a good thing but flirting with German officers was bad. Bunny Esterhazy an aristocrat already knew the difference between right and wrong. Not like the girls who met the German soldiers on the Danube’s dark banks for chocolates and silk stockings.
Later that week the family decamped to lake Balaton. The sound of bombs sending her mother out of her mind. One late afternoon, she walked on the sandy shore self-assured in cork shoes, waisted culotte shorts and a chiffon blouse with a ribbon. She adjusted her ribbon, letting the cool Balaton breeze graze her cheeks, feeling as secure as her family’s thick Buda hills manor walls. She thought of the German silk stockings the girls from school bragged about. How vulgar they seemed now. A faint hum broke her thoughts. She squinted over the lake to see a black rubber boat, slicing through the waves, engines droning. The travellers looked like the Russian soldiers she’d seen in the Newspaper reports from the eastern front. She turned to call her mother—who had just looked up. As the boats red star clarified mother fainted onto the lawn, and father yelled from the doorway, “Get the car!” At that moment, her world broke like a string of pearls. Her fiancé the young pilot suddenly appeared and spoke quietly to her about the unfolding invasion. If he and Bunny were to be married, he stressed she and her entire family must leave in the next two hours. At sunset gripping a small bag of family silver Bunny, her family and an entire flight squadron stuffed themselves into a Red Cross truck. The cocky young pilots in their khaki suits sitting with her spoke of nothing but the brutality and rapes inflicted by the Russians on civilians. She blocked their horror stories out only to then see forced labourers close to their truck shot down for being slow by German officers. One of them a Jewish person wearing the yellow star fell against the truck. Why didn’t’ t they stop and at least challenge the Germans?
Overwhelmed she sobbed.
At the end of the drive she thought only of her friend Vera still in Budapest. She had not been able to say goodbye to her absolute best of friends! And that was such a rule of friendship— to say goodbye, to give a hug and a farewell
On the fifth night of their retreat from Hungary, for the price of the family silver they managed to find a place that had five people sleeping together in each bed. Lying next to a soldier reeking of sweat and her father snoring she had to distract herself with memories of Palinka. But on this journey things shifted quickly. And at 6am American troops knocked on the doors of their lodging and blasted out, 'Hitler has killed himself! At his side, Eva Braun'. Her fiancé hid his gun, and her father quickly put away his Judge photos. The desperation of their situation sank into her mood. The manor was no longer; her grandmother had been shot and raped by the Russians because she would not give up her jewels. There was no going back.
As winter set in day after day they competed for bread, vegetables, and eggs. She was now quite thin. Every day the pilots sniggered and boasted about their gains on the black market. But she did not join them. Now she had become an artist and walked everywhere with a drawing pad and pencils. ‘Hey, baby, how about sketching my girl so I can look at her? see cute ha?
Bunny jumped at the American GI. She pointed to his carton of Cigarettes and emphasized ‘for those.’‘Fraulein, I’ll only give you US dollars.’ She started to draw from his girlfriend’s photo. This well-fed girl had glowing skin lipstick and a chiffon blouse over her curvy form. Bunny was hungry and yesterday she had accidently come across her father stealing corn at the tightly run local market. Ever so quietly he had slipped the ears into his grey satchel. He turned and saw her. Putting his finger to his lips he grabbed her arm and said, ‘look calm.’ Maybe if father could steal, she could as well. She needed to survive and here it was like a job. Yet she despised this very thought because it put her on a par with the undeserving poor. She preferred genteel poverty.
She had handed over her sketch to the now smoking GI, grabbed his bag and ran onto the next train. The GI yelled and tried tracking her for a while but gave up and went back to his post. Vienna was full of displaced persons out of their mind with hunger.
Inside his bag, instead of cigarettes, Bunny found four vials of Penicillin. Penicillin had the highest value of all the black-market items in the sick city of Vienna. US Military police boarded the train and started to flirt with her. 'Hey, baby! Schnaps??'. She blew them a kiss winked and then covered the bag with her jacket.
At Vienna Neustadt, she hopped off and walked to another open-air market where a large woman in a dirndl sold eggs, butter, and bread.
‘I want all the eggs and butter you have and Jam!’
Nein Liebling!
But look, I have these. You need these, is that not, right? See over there, the pharmacist. He would pay you a lot…
'No kidding, Penicillin! Over here, Sarge! You're charged, baby'. As they drove her off, she saw the now familiar poster saying, ‘Pay ration prices only; buying on the black market is a crime.’
Dam! Up until this arrest she was the only one in her family and amongst the pilots who had managed to escape going to jail. Last week father paid for coal with stolen cigarettes and ended up doing an overnighter. And the week before, her mother travelled to Baden Baden to sell black market jewellery to the Mayor of that town. Mama had spent three nights in jail.
And now she had lost her first place.
Bunny put her head out the car window and shouted, 'The cost of living is too high’ to which a passerby pressed cigarettes into her hand. Here cigarettes were more important than clothes, horses, houses, silk stockings and even religion.
She would now get out of jail early for the price of five cigarettes!
Two years later walking past the immigration officials in Australia she vowed she would never do anything unlawful in her new homeland.
Featured Entry by safemouse
Let’s start with when I joined the army. That seemed like a steady job but the day I enlisted the Prime Minister said such and such a pariah state were a clear and present danger and we went to war. I did okay. I was caught in a roadside ambush but I wasn’t too attached to that arm anyway.
That same year I was orphaned and used a pat on the head to buy a cheap house in rural Norfolk. Life was almost idyllic. I admired the Victorian sturdiness of the village school, the awesome medieval carpentry in the parish church roof kind of blew my mind, as did the 15th century rood screen- which somehow survived the iconoclasts. The lighthouse was a blast too. It was a locale that made one misty-eyed about olde England and Shakespeare and centuries-old country pubs.
As for my little house, well it was built too well with room to swing any size feline in. You know, solid. None of your cavity wall this and breeze block that. Real bricks, a cosy bay window and an old-skool toilet that flushed whatever I was clearly full of into oblivion. I just can’t shut up about the plethora of things I liked about the place but I should mention the sticking point was the house, bungalow if you prefer, fell into the sea. Well it was a particularly windy year, I must say. The coastline normally retreats by a metre per annum but it can be several more, so I've discovered.
You can take the Bible literally, sometimes. Do not build a house on sand. Take that as a metaphor, if you will, concerning certain choices made in my life. Anyway.
Eventually, the insurance coughed a house up in Stockton-on-Tees. Shortly after I married, and then the ground seemed to move from under me again. I was suffering short-term memory loss vis-à-vis the improvised explosive device and my wife took advantage by telling me we weren’t married and it wasn’t my house. Well, how was I to know?
It had all started so well. Take our first night. We were in bed surveying each other’s bodies like they were rich unchartered territories, which a Gen Z might frown upon as a colonial turn-of-phrase. Yet, how else could I describe that quietly electric sense of cards laid on the table when one is first au naturel?
“You have exquisite areolas,” I said to her.
“And you,” she replied, “just about have an adequate cock.” As she said it, a lorry thundered past, rattling the window frames and muffling her words.
I don’t know, that amused us at the time. And when I kissed her, that seemed to wrap the moment in a little bow. And yet I tend to think the moment- however sweet- foretells a bitterness that appears to lie outside its bounds. DNA is in every one of our cells, wedding photographs reveal marriages will sour and I’m not sure our kissing that night was all that. Looking back, I remember her kind of wincing and I just brushed it off. Now that, is building a house on sand.
So that was a bit of a setback. And for a while I lived in a caravan. Quite the come down from a 3 bed semi. Even one on a floodplain in a rough area. But the thing about caravans, they’re little worlds that re-write the rules of space. You think Pluto is small, a dwarf planet in the celestial sticks, then you see it beside its moon, Charon, and Pluto seems correspondingly large. Then you see a computer simulation of Charon beside most solar system moons and, crumbs! Charon actually holds its own. If it smashed into our planet it wouldn’t be bye bye mankind, or dinosaurs, or small mammals. No, bye bye Earth. And that’s how it goes with caravans. Those little pods cocooning itinerant night owls in Japan made mine look rather airy.
The only trouble was I was a willing worker on an organic farm, the caravan came with the work and it wasn’t a permanent arrangement. More like 10 days.
Happily, on my lunch break I won the lottery and decided to have a baby. Not an easy thing for a man of my age, but on the back of this lucky break I thought I'd give it a shot. Don’t judge me, you may find yourself playing supermarket sweep with your life when time is running out. Everything is fine until you’re 59 and then you start wandering onto Thai bride websites. But I wasn’t quite there. I was for tapping hastily tapped in telephone numbers and one contact in particular was delighted my luck was in. It was ‘your girl’ Jessica Party and she definitely made a case for nominative determinism.
We partied everywhere. In clubs and casinos and, when times were hard, a multi-storey car park. Come to think of it, she didn’t attend that one. That must have been a solo effort. I think it was the day I checked my online account and discovered I was overdrawn following a cheeky January sale purchase, seemingly a part payment. She walked out my life wearing one shoe I paid for. Maybe another client of hers paid for the other.
What happened to the child idea? I don’t know. Dreams are money pits. Birth rates fall in uncertain times.
I suppose I should have realised £10000 is not a big win. Not these days. My online acquaintances kept telling me it wasn’t ‘A life changing amount’ and I should have invested it in blockchains and non-fungible tokens. But as is so often the case in life, the goalposts keep shifting.
See, when I was a spring chicken property was the hot stuff, but now it’s an unrealistic prospect for many of us. One has to think tech shares, crypto, drop shipping, answering questions on Quora, selling your soul on YouTube. But by the time one wises up and realises where the money is everyone wants a piece of that cherry, like those homeless Chinese singing into their smartphones in underpasses.
Something has to give.
When you’re as slow as I am, you never catch up with life. Still, I always believe there’s something around the corner. Call it manifestation, if you will. And I was right. I’d only walked two blocks when I saw her. Was it her? I think it was. Yes. It was her. It was Gladys.
“Sandy!” she said.
“Gladys,” I said.
“Sandy!” she said.
“Yes, it's really me. I'd forgotten the sound of my own name,” I remarked.
“Where were you?” Gladys exclaimed.
“Well, last night I slept under a bush. But I was as snug as a Golden Snub-nosed Monkey.”
“I've told you not to go wandering off,” she said, mad as hell.
“I’m sorry, I’ll try not to. It’s been, what? 30 years?”
Gladys continued yelling at Sandy, a small girl standing behind me.
So I metaphorically went to Specsavers and continued my search.
I was crossing a busy road when an ambulance swerved. I felt like the luckiest man in Britain. If you’re going to get run over, who better? True, I didn’t survive but the mortician, what a lovely man...And he washed and ironed my top for me. Fun fact, the one with the slogan ‘My life fell apart and all I got was this lousy t-shirt.’ Bit tight on me, but an old favourite.
Yes, they did a splendid job of making me look presentable. My entangled familiar, the ex-wife came to identify the body. A Russian lady, Novosibirsk way, bit of a princess complex. She asked to be alone, then leant over my corpse and kissed me. Tongues, everything. No wincing. There’s guilt for you. And after she’d given me the best French kiss of my life- my death, I suppose- she walked towards the door, then turned back and slapped me.
And told me off for the state of my garage.
“It’s disgusting, it’s filthy, it’s vulgar. I’m going to take a picture and stick it on your coffin. I listened to your fake promises for so long. You said you’d tidy it!”
“I made a start,” I replied. But she didn’t hear me.
Well, it’s true reader. I did have a garage on the matrimonial property containing an old Austin Allegro and a few other knick-knacks. But I paid her £50 a month for it when I temporarily moved out and she insisted it was no trouble. Now she was standing alone berating my corpse for having a messy garage. A mausoleum of man cave dreams now scattered on time’s tide. She said it was making her hair fall out and ruining her life.
The truth is, we hadn’t spoken in years. She was a mercurial sort but naturally had her good points. She spoke French fluently, she was kind to tortoiseshell cats and her life had obviously not gone to plan.
Then she knelt down and threw her arms around me, sobbing. “Can’t you see you abused me, Malachku! Your stuff was everywhere.”
Malachku! Malachku? I began to think my wife might have been Czech. You never really know someone, do you? And in truth, I didn’t. Ours was a whirlwind romance. Or she was a Couchsurfer who refused to leave, depending on your POV. But time can digest toxic relationships. Normality is for the birds. I knew that. When life gives you lemons they end up going mouldy in the fridge so you’re ahead of the game if you can use just one of them.
Speaking of which, I wanted to say, ‘Do a boot sale, pet. And sell the car? Open an Instagram account called Cash in the Garage, for heaven’s sake.’
‘No stupid advice please, just try and understand,’ she said, as if she heard my thoughts.
The Allegro didn’t miss a beat, of course. I just didn’t feel confident driving it with one arm. Not until I got the hydragas suspension fixed and the prosthetic arm I bought off Temu working properly.
But yes, things were looking up. For her, at least. I see myself as a sort of matchmaker cos she ended up dating the mortician. And that appeared to be going well. But he was actually a serial murderer.
When he was chopping her up into pieces the cat walked in tail high and curling slightly, sniffing the air and placing its dainty paws together.
Anyhoo, how am I writing this, you might ask, if I died. Well, I am certainly in decline. But I haven’t been clinically dead long. If you actually study these things, like, have you read Lucid Dying by Dr. Sam Parnia? Well then, you know that the lights don’t always just go out.
Cool stuff happens sometimes when you lose all vital signs. You meet dead relatives, get a life review, feel like a billion dollars. Sometimes it doesn’t go well. Always read the label. But suffice to say, I am dead and good riddance to my body, which I do not presently miss a bit. For the time being I can only assume my brain is still running the show. Something is still making this thing jive, because I am here or something that feels like me is.
Matter of fact, during the life review we went through every thing meticulously, rather like a 5D analysis of chess. I saw things from her point of view and his point of view and how every little decision rippled through the universe like background radiation. And I began to understand that I am the Walrus.
Yes, we’re all connected. We should all be a little kinder towards each other. So I’m glad I was an optimist because to be an optimist is to be kind to oneself and others but I do regret, just a little, that I might have to come back and do it all again because my life was built on shifting sands.
That same year I was orphaned and used a pat on the head to buy a cheap house in rural Norfolk. Life was almost idyllic. I admired the Victorian sturdiness of the village school, the awesome medieval carpentry in the parish church roof kind of blew my mind, as did the 15th century rood screen- which somehow survived the iconoclasts. The lighthouse was a blast too. It was a locale that made one misty-eyed about olde England and Shakespeare and centuries-old country pubs.
As for my little house, well it was built too well with room to swing any size feline in. You know, solid. None of your cavity wall this and breeze block that. Real bricks, a cosy bay window and an old-skool toilet that flushed whatever I was clearly full of into oblivion. I just can’t shut up about the plethora of things I liked about the place but I should mention the sticking point was the house, bungalow if you prefer, fell into the sea. Well it was a particularly windy year, I must say. The coastline normally retreats by a metre per annum but it can be several more, so I've discovered.
You can take the Bible literally, sometimes. Do not build a house on sand. Take that as a metaphor, if you will, concerning certain choices made in my life. Anyway.
Eventually, the insurance coughed a house up in Stockton-on-Tees. Shortly after I married, and then the ground seemed to move from under me again. I was suffering short-term memory loss vis-à-vis the improvised explosive device and my wife took advantage by telling me we weren’t married and it wasn’t my house. Well, how was I to know?
It had all started so well. Take our first night. We were in bed surveying each other’s bodies like they were rich unchartered territories, which a Gen Z might frown upon as a colonial turn-of-phrase. Yet, how else could I describe that quietly electric sense of cards laid on the table when one is first au naturel?
“You have exquisite areolas,” I said to her.
“And you,” she replied, “just about have an adequate cock.” As she said it, a lorry thundered past, rattling the window frames and muffling her words.
I don’t know, that amused us at the time. And when I kissed her, that seemed to wrap the moment in a little bow. And yet I tend to think the moment- however sweet- foretells a bitterness that appears to lie outside its bounds. DNA is in every one of our cells, wedding photographs reveal marriages will sour and I’m not sure our kissing that night was all that. Looking back, I remember her kind of wincing and I just brushed it off. Now that, is building a house on sand.
So that was a bit of a setback. And for a while I lived in a caravan. Quite the come down from a 3 bed semi. Even one on a floodplain in a rough area. But the thing about caravans, they’re little worlds that re-write the rules of space. You think Pluto is small, a dwarf planet in the celestial sticks, then you see it beside its moon, Charon, and Pluto seems correspondingly large. Then you see a computer simulation of Charon beside most solar system moons and, crumbs! Charon actually holds its own. If it smashed into our planet it wouldn’t be bye bye mankind, or dinosaurs, or small mammals. No, bye bye Earth. And that’s how it goes with caravans. Those little pods cocooning itinerant night owls in Japan made mine look rather airy.
The only trouble was I was a willing worker on an organic farm, the caravan came with the work and it wasn’t a permanent arrangement. More like 10 days.
Happily, on my lunch break I won the lottery and decided to have a baby. Not an easy thing for a man of my age, but on the back of this lucky break I thought I'd give it a shot. Don’t judge me, you may find yourself playing supermarket sweep with your life when time is running out. Everything is fine until you’re 59 and then you start wandering onto Thai bride websites. But I wasn’t quite there. I was for tapping hastily tapped in telephone numbers and one contact in particular was delighted my luck was in. It was ‘your girl’ Jessica Party and she definitely made a case for nominative determinism.
We partied everywhere. In clubs and casinos and, when times were hard, a multi-storey car park. Come to think of it, she didn’t attend that one. That must have been a solo effort. I think it was the day I checked my online account and discovered I was overdrawn following a cheeky January sale purchase, seemingly a part payment. She walked out my life wearing one shoe I paid for. Maybe another client of hers paid for the other.
What happened to the child idea? I don’t know. Dreams are money pits. Birth rates fall in uncertain times.
I suppose I should have realised £10000 is not a big win. Not these days. My online acquaintances kept telling me it wasn’t ‘A life changing amount’ and I should have invested it in blockchains and non-fungible tokens. But as is so often the case in life, the goalposts keep shifting.
See, when I was a spring chicken property was the hot stuff, but now it’s an unrealistic prospect for many of us. One has to think tech shares, crypto, drop shipping, answering questions on Quora, selling your soul on YouTube. But by the time one wises up and realises where the money is everyone wants a piece of that cherry, like those homeless Chinese singing into their smartphones in underpasses.
Something has to give.
When you’re as slow as I am, you never catch up with life. Still, I always believe there’s something around the corner. Call it manifestation, if you will. And I was right. I’d only walked two blocks when I saw her. Was it her? I think it was. Yes. It was her. It was Gladys.
“Sandy!” she said.
“Gladys,” I said.
“Sandy!” she said.
“Yes, it's really me. I'd forgotten the sound of my own name,” I remarked.
“Where were you?” Gladys exclaimed.
“Well, last night I slept under a bush. But I was as snug as a Golden Snub-nosed Monkey.”
“I've told you not to go wandering off,” she said, mad as hell.
“I’m sorry, I’ll try not to. It’s been, what? 30 years?”
Gladys continued yelling at Sandy, a small girl standing behind me.
So I metaphorically went to Specsavers and continued my search.
I was crossing a busy road when an ambulance swerved. I felt like the luckiest man in Britain. If you’re going to get run over, who better? True, I didn’t survive but the mortician, what a lovely man...And he washed and ironed my top for me. Fun fact, the one with the slogan ‘My life fell apart and all I got was this lousy t-shirt.’ Bit tight on me, but an old favourite.
Yes, they did a splendid job of making me look presentable. My entangled familiar, the ex-wife came to identify the body. A Russian lady, Novosibirsk way, bit of a princess complex. She asked to be alone, then leant over my corpse and kissed me. Tongues, everything. No wincing. There’s guilt for you. And after she’d given me the best French kiss of my life- my death, I suppose- she walked towards the door, then turned back and slapped me.
And told me off for the state of my garage.
“It’s disgusting, it’s filthy, it’s vulgar. I’m going to take a picture and stick it on your coffin. I listened to your fake promises for so long. You said you’d tidy it!”
“I made a start,” I replied. But she didn’t hear me.
Well, it’s true reader. I did have a garage on the matrimonial property containing an old Austin Allegro and a few other knick-knacks. But I paid her £50 a month for it when I temporarily moved out and she insisted it was no trouble. Now she was standing alone berating my corpse for having a messy garage. A mausoleum of man cave dreams now scattered on time’s tide. She said it was making her hair fall out and ruining her life.
The truth is, we hadn’t spoken in years. She was a mercurial sort but naturally had her good points. She spoke French fluently, she was kind to tortoiseshell cats and her life had obviously not gone to plan.
Then she knelt down and threw her arms around me, sobbing. “Can’t you see you abused me, Malachku! Your stuff was everywhere.”
Malachku! Malachku? I began to think my wife might have been Czech. You never really know someone, do you? And in truth, I didn’t. Ours was a whirlwind romance. Or she was a Couchsurfer who refused to leave, depending on your POV. But time can digest toxic relationships. Normality is for the birds. I knew that. When life gives you lemons they end up going mouldy in the fridge so you’re ahead of the game if you can use just one of them.
Speaking of which, I wanted to say, ‘Do a boot sale, pet. And sell the car? Open an Instagram account called Cash in the Garage, for heaven’s sake.’
‘No stupid advice please, just try and understand,’ she said, as if she heard my thoughts.
The Allegro didn’t miss a beat, of course. I just didn’t feel confident driving it with one arm. Not until I got the hydragas suspension fixed and the prosthetic arm I bought off Temu working properly.
But yes, things were looking up. For her, at least. I see myself as a sort of matchmaker cos she ended up dating the mortician. And that appeared to be going well. But he was actually a serial murderer.
When he was chopping her up into pieces the cat walked in tail high and curling slightly, sniffing the air and placing its dainty paws together.
Anyhoo, how am I writing this, you might ask, if I died. Well, I am certainly in decline. But I haven’t been clinically dead long. If you actually study these things, like, have you read Lucid Dying by Dr. Sam Parnia? Well then, you know that the lights don’t always just go out.
Cool stuff happens sometimes when you lose all vital signs. You meet dead relatives, get a life review, feel like a billion dollars. Sometimes it doesn’t go well. Always read the label. But suffice to say, I am dead and good riddance to my body, which I do not presently miss a bit. For the time being I can only assume my brain is still running the show. Something is still making this thing jive, because I am here or something that feels like me is.
Matter of fact, during the life review we went through every thing meticulously, rather like a 5D analysis of chess. I saw things from her point of view and his point of view and how every little decision rippled through the universe like background radiation. And I began to understand that I am the Walrus.
Yes, we’re all connected. We should all be a little kinder towards each other. So I’m glad I was an optimist because to be an optimist is to be kind to oneself and others but I do regret, just a little, that I might have to come back and do it all again because my life was built on shifting sands.
Follow us on Twitter
Follow us on Instagram