Objects and their Fields / Everything is Present Tense (by Michael Lawton)

Luke Drozd asked me to write a text to accompany his solo show at York College Gallery which is reproduced below. Details of the exhibition:

Luke Drozd - Everything Is Present Tense
York College Gallery
1st September - 27th September

Evening opening and drinks: Thursday 13th September, 5-7.30pm.

A while ago I was listening to the song ‘The Mercy Seat’ and it put me in mind of Luke’s work. I can’t remember if it was the scratchy muffled chant of Nick Cave’s original or the stately sonority of Jonny Cash’s cover but I’m not sure that this is important; whichever it was, it seems like an odd association and I remember it did at the time. Odd that my mind summoned Luke’s work from this song, from either Cave or Cash, different generations of confused Christian boys fascinated by the contradictions of man, bloody drama, heavy skies and brooding romance. I see them as embodying a kind of burlap-sack realism, a world away from the assemblages, sculptures, found colours and joyful doodling of Luke Drozd.

I can remember the passage, it’s from the first verse:

‘I began to warm and chill 

To objects and their fields,

A ragged cup, a twisted mop

The face of Jesus in my soup

Those sinister dinner meals,

The meal trolley's wicked wheels,

A hooked bone rising from my food

All things either good or ungood’

It makes more sense when written out, for one I can well imagine Luke making all these things, even using them in his work; it reads like a detailed media list for one of his sculptures. I can imagine him telling me he bought a packet of soup because it had a picture of Christ on it. I can actually imagine him making a Mercy Seat, and to be overly literal he warms to objects and their fields as he chooses and arranges them for his work.

More importantly there is the sense of equivalence in this list; ‘all things either good or ungood’. Materials used despite their heritage, in a practice where everything becomes equal and has its materiality interrogated via making. As viewers we are expected to make the links for ourselves and if we can’t find them we look at the elements for what they are and for what they have become.

And actually this equivalence makes this incongruous coupling of a song about frying on the electric chair with this artwork; sometimes elegant, sometimes beautiful, sometimes sophisticatedly belligerently stupid, appropriate, (in its way it is quite fitting.)

Today tags like sacred and profane no longer seem useful, anything might inspire devotion or offend, everything is equivalent; it is about how it is used. Everything is present tense.

Others (by Kit Merritt)

What follows is taken from a piece by Kit Merritt that can be seen in the exhibition 'Powerless Structures' at Schwatz Gallery.http://www.schwartzgallery.co.uk The exhibition runs 19th January – 25th February 2012. Private view is Wednesday 18th January 2012, 6 – 8.30 p.m

 

 

ii.i

Double aspect, with the interior window dressed in heavy woven green fabric,

the right pane accented by a diagonal streak of old crusty food remnants.

 

When I moved here, it was rumoured there was a recovering junky or alcoholic

living there. I never saw anyone, just intermittent lights on.

 

A year or so later, the first real signs of life were a couple with a young

child, who had their older mother living with them. In the summer, before

curtains were fitted, I’d see the old woman sat on the sofa, which faced

across the room. The child, who must have been three or four years old stood

in front, holding her hands and jumping, jumping up and down. I don’t know

how long the old woman stayed, though it must have been a rather cramped

existence for four people, though it always seemed a much more wholesome

alternative to some of the other occupancies.

 

After a while, a platform was built across the window, obscuring most of the

view in. On top, became a double-bunk, the mattress level with the top foot of

the window. The sheets always unmade and occasionally, on hot summer weekends,

a long, pale, idle limb would be visible, running along the width of the

window, tapping or twitching along rhythmically to music I couldn’t hear.

 

The thick green curtain went up and remained pulled. Shortly after, a tin

take-away tray appeared lodged between the mattress and the window, its thick

creamy contents spilt down the inside of the glass. After not moving for a few

days, it began to irritate we. How could someone neglect to notice they lost

their dinner in bed?

 

Eventually, the tin tray disappeared, maybe the curtains were opened. The

white food-slop remained, turning from cream, to yellow, to orange, baking in

the summer sun. It is still there to this day, the green curtains are never

drawn and the windows are never open.

 

 

ii.ii

The couple with the window boxes and the indoors shed, were friends of mine,

so there was little to speculate, that I didn’t already know about them. They

lived directly opposite and never put up curtains, neither did we, so our

close proximity allowed us an uncommonly intimate existence. I’d admire their

closeness and affection from my washing up position by the window. We’d

frequently wave to each other, we occasionally caught one another in the nude.

Most of our communication consisted of notes stuck in the windows.

 

They left last spring. I was sad to see them go, but excited to see who’d move

into their slot. I wrote window notes to the new guy, he wrote back a few

times. He unpacked, hung artwork, got the projector screen working again, then

bought curtains, which remain drawn most the time. Occasionally we shyly wave

to each other when the curtains are pulled back. The plants in the window

boxes have all withered and died.

 

 

ii.iii

Another double-windowed place, with brown curtains and empty window sills. The

curtains are fading from the bottom up, with frilly watermarks. I assume its

always been the same people, its always been the same drawn brown curtains.

The lights are always on late into the night. A couple of cats occupied the

window sill when I first moved in, but the tenants only become apparent by

night, when thin slivers of light slip between the curtains. There are

saucepans hanging on a rail and a patch of golden shining spots made by a

tangle of fairy-lights somewhere on the other side of the room. I think there

may be a table in the middle, which sometimes has the outline of two or three

people sat round it all night long.

 

The windows are left open sometimes and I think thats where the occasional

shouting and even less frequent sex noises come from, though sound does

strange things in these buildings.

 

 

ii.iv

Another curtainless window shrouded with improvised veils, this time, with a

selection of hung shirts and sellotaped posters. It used to be a studio for a

very hard working (or quite nocturnal) artist. The lights were always on at

night; she’d work past midnight, but never, to my knowledge, sleep there. For

a long time I thought there were two people, the artist and a model, a very

still model. Eventually I realised the model was a life-size photograph. It

had been stationed in the window perfectly still for longer than was humanly

possible to retain a fixed pose. The window figure was quite unnerving at

times, generally, nobody ever appears to be looking back from the other side.

 

At some point, someone began sleeping there. The men’s shirts hung from the

top of the window and then an easy chair in front of it. A tall skinny white

boy was there for a while. He would brush his teeth whilst wandering naked

round the room, idly playing with himself. There was also a youngish black man

there with him sometimes, but always sat on the far side of the room, on a

hard-backed chair, up against the wall. Sometime there were more visitors,

sometimes dinner parties, I think there may even have been a karaoke night.

 

The tenant changed again, a single man. On bonfire night we had a party and so

did he, but his one had dinner with speeches and clapping and dancing. Despite

rarely seeing more than one person there, the space is now dominated by a

large dining table, though the view is mostly obscured by the posters, flags

and shirts in the window.

 

 

ii.v

A smaller window, which looks to have been replaced over the years and

partially bricked up to the halfway point. Its a window onto a bed. Heavy

swathes of cheap market-synthetics in purple velour and faux zebra skin. The

one occasional sign of life is an outline of a body, pressed against the

glass, from behind the folds of the zebra skin curtains.

 

Once she appeared as real limbs from inside the fabric den. Two white skinny

arms brandishing a can of expandable wall foam, meticulously reworking old

cracks in the window frame, ready for winter.

 

 

ii.vi

The ones with the blinds; white, starchy, semi-opaque, non-descript. The

lights are always on after dark and are equally bright and even and nondescript.

The most remarkable feature of the place is this idea of stark,

white cleanness, as perceived from outside the blinds, at a discord with the

rest of the building. Looking down on the window sill, there’s a modest

succulent in a terracotta pot on a terracotta plate. A tall thin blue vase and

two glass jugs, one inside the curtain, one outside. Then a green canister,

maybe a soda-stream, maybe one of those nitrogen things, intended for chefs,

but mainly found at student parties and festivals.

 

Beyond this, there have only ever been silhouettes. Propped rectangular

boards, a heater on wheels. A desk, a chair and a hunched figure over a piece

of machinery that looks like a sewing machine.

 

 

ii.vii

One window is a new double-glazed one, the other is one of the original

frames, with peeling, sun-bleached green paintwork. The new one is draped in

brown sheets, the big panes always open, even in winter, the old one has three

slides stuck in a vertical strip down the right pane, on the window sill

there’s an old carved wooden figure with raffia hair. Inside there’s a man

with the dog, only ever visible in the green window. I know the dog’s name,

but not the man’s. Sometimes he’s (the dog) scouting round the yard when I

come back. The place looks like it always has, though I don’t remember who was

there to begin with, only the changes:

 

Two years back, some guy in the car park said his cousin was going to be there

for a while. The two young girls that appeared shortly after for the summer,

announced their arrival by pulling down all the sheets from the windows. The

windows were flung open, music was playing, there were frequent parties and

laughter till dawn. They cleared the bit under the mezzanine that fills the

left window and draped it with delicate whites, floral dresses and lacy

smalls. The two girls apparently became just the one; maybe they were never

home at the same time, it was hard to say. Whoever was there took to wearing

less and less round the space, dressing and redressing by the window for

anyone who happened to be watching - mostly us upstairs, not that I could see

who else was looking.

 

There was also an increasingly frequent visiting boyfriend. One Sunday,

ironing in the window, I witnessed her sucking him off on the sofa. They never

seemed too concerned, or aware, of the vantage point from one floor up.

 

Winter returned, as did the various sheets and rugs to block up the windows.

New piles of old boxes. The girl(s), the fun, the frolicking and the floral

fabrics disappeared. Now there’s the guy with the dog. We wave and exchange

hellos in the yard. Whilst I still had a cat, sometimes we’d force the cat

and the dog wave to each other. He has a sofa and a desk by the window, where

the sheets are pulled back to let in the light. He sits at the desk on a

computer, sometimes late into the night. When he’s here, he can see me, when

he’s on the sofa, he can’t. On the sofa, he’ll play guitar, sometimes there’s

other people and sometimes they’ll all be singing. By day, the dog sleeps on

the sofa for the most part.

 

 

ii.viii

One window, never catches my eye. Its a struggle to go beyond a physical

description: Old green frames, the window is shorter than it is wide, by

design, rather than a later bricking-up job. It draws a blank, a real closed

door. Tight, off-white, slatted blinds, always drawn. Unremarkable by day,

occasionally lit with a glowing light by night.

 

 

ii.ix

A big plastic drain pipe runs under the window ledge, which has lost all but 3

of the red brick tiles. Faded wood revealed from the patches of paint loss on

the worn wooden frame. A thin wire trails out from under the left panel and

disappears from view into our building opposite. Theres a moulded plastic

window box balanced on the remaining ledge, containing other smaller empty

plastic plant pots.

 

Inside the thin beige linen sheets are old and sad-looking, the drapes, a

little tilted, so the horizontal seams ride up to the right. The bottom right

corner is drawn back revealing a dark triangle into the otherwise lightless

space.

 

 

ii.x

Another one of the original windows, old faded paintwork framing equally old

faded curtains, sagging and neglected, the lining patterned with various

watermarks and stains, creased and crumpled, probably intended for taller

windows than the ones they occupy. To the far right, they are pulled back a

fraction and the fabric is curled round revealing woven stripes of dusty

orange, cream and yellow, some reclaimed 70’s home design.

 

The curtains remain shut at all times, with the right corner providing an

opening through which the occupier accesses the ledge, which acts as a pantry.

It currently holds a jar of something yellow, another jar of something brown,

with a handwritten label, a 6-egg egg box and a double-bagged Costcutter bag

which looks to contains a few more items.

 

Lights come on in the evening, revealing life, though bodies are never seen.

Sometimes the outline of large frames and stretchers are propped against the

windows.

 

 

ii.xi

From this angle, you can see where a thick layer of dirt and pollution has

built up along the tops of all the white double glazed window frames, though

the insides are smartly dressed with mahogany coloured wooden slatted blinds.

The right blinds are raised higher than the left ones. Below the blinds are an

assortment of well kept potted plants; a small spider plant on the far left,

and aloe vera and a large indoor succulent in the right window. The only

visible section of wall is covered with white printed stars on a blue

background, like a small section of the American flag, blown up big. By night,

soft lamplight filters out onto the roof below.

 

We always referred to them as Du-du-du-du-dum-duh. That sums up the one and

only repetitive tune that creeps up and through the open windows, drowning out

music on the radio and quiet conversations. Its the practice space for a band

and - as mentioned before - sound travels oddly between the buildings, making

some particular noises more penetratingly close than they physically are. I

hear them much more than I ever see them, and the only real clue to their

whereabouts, is the slices of rhythmically nodding bodies holding instruments,

as spied through the wooden blinds.

 

 

ii.xii

A single dusty pane, with the original green, peeling wooden frame. A rather

dark space, always lit up, with yellowy light streaming out the undressed

window. Inside there are men sat at desks, with computers, all day and all

night. They rarely seem to talk to each other, sat facing the walls on the

left and right, backs turned to the middle of the room. They are older than

anyone else in the building and busier than everyone else, though what it is

they are doing is a mystery. It involves closely watched computer screens and

talking on the phone. The only furnishings other than the fold-out desks and

office chairs, are a couple of cluttered shelving units, piled high with small

yellow cardboard boxes and trailing wires.

 

 

Some thoughts on stationery (by C Hazell)

Stationery can feed the imagination with its plethora of writing materials, clean adhesives and eye catching neon’s.

It also, one must add, reigns it in and tidies it away.

---

I order stationery on Fridays.

An office has an insatiable appetite for stationery. Along with the regular weekly consumables are the special requests from my co-workers.

On this particular Friday there was a Blue Colarado Foolscap Box File amongst other items.

I flipped through the thick glossy stationery catalogue – ‘box file yes’...’colarado... yup’....’blue...ok’

With one index finger simultaneously pinning down the vast publication and underlining the item’s code, I used the other to type:

-           9021367, return tab, a click of the mouse and the box is ordered.

A seamless unity between man and machine!

 What followed next was something of an ‘eureka’ moment. This blue file and a piece of writing I had read earlier in the day about an ant attack had now become united by the term Foolscap.

Foolscap.

Forgive me for misunderstanding but I had assumed, carelessly I admit, that the Foolscap signified a fool’s cap in this particular writing blog?  

Yes? No? Who knows. But this is far more likely: -

-          Foolscap: an archiving brand.

therefore

-          Foolscap Files: an archive of writing.

 The image of the dunce’s cone- shaped hat has now been replaced with a dignified filing system. A hush of embarrassment ensues while the change over takes place.

---

 

Power Scissors

 One would be foolish in thinking that a pen is simply a pen.  Here are some of my favourite products that seem to belie the common notion that stationery has a limited capacity:

 

Pens – A LIFESTYLE CHOICE 

BIC Atlantis Stic Ballpoint – Underwater cities, ancient Greece...this is the pen for dreams, adventures and historians

Bic Soft Feel Clic Grip

Uni Jet Stream SX-101 Ballpoint – be blown away by the force!

Penac Soft Glider Ballpoint – Sunday afternoons, letters to friends, time and a pot of tea

Penac Chubby 10 Retractable Ballpoint

Penac Sleek Touch Retractable Bullpoint – the Carte Noir of pens

 

 

Post – TO GUARD AND PROTECT

New Guardian Gusset Envelope

Paper Tyger Security Envelopes – the scarecrow of the urban jungle

Plempix Damper

 

 

 

Accessories – INNOVATIONS IN THINGS YOU NEVER  KNEW YOU NEEDED

Tipp ex Pocket Mouse Correction tape – now you never need be without your correction fluid

Rapesco Puffa See Through Half Strip Stapler

Lipped Paper Clips – clamping down on the document like hunger bites into its favourite sandwich (granary bread, mature cheddar, mayonnaise, tomato, black pepper)

Fellows Earth Series Stackable Letter Tray – the desk is an ocean, awash with adrift papers like lost souls. Cultivate! Build! Give the papers a home, a stackable one.

 

--- 

Stationary. Stationery.

Stationary = static, still, like a latent car.

Stationery = paper, office supplies and the like.

e becomes opposed to a

Stationery is rarely stationary.

Stationery has migratory characteristics.

 

---

 

Renmark - Plastic (by Jon Mann)

Renmark

Rosa sits opposite me at the table, facing away - side-saddle on the short bench, her dark curls falling one way, just one shoulder favoured with the weight of her hair. The swaying, the rising and fall, mirror the curves of her head, its elegant, youthful, lilting moves. She gazes absentmindedly at Clive in his cot to her side. I flick the paper to contrive a movement of her head towards something else, but it stays put, and rests in free-fall. I drop my eyes back to the paper, not part of her now. A few blocks of text hover on the page, glazed, and lay undisturbed, a few more, then I stop and look up again. Her head is down now, in that curiously overt, introspective way - she has left her daydream and wants to be seen to be daydreaming now - I know the difference, I am cunning this way. I glance at the boy as he dozes indifferently and decide it would be good to have her eyes away.

“They say he may be Nordic... His features...”

She looks up and seems pleased this was directed her way. A child still - I can see the wall through her rib-cage.

“The Somerton man. Norwegian, they say”

I knew a Norwegian once, or at least a Norwegian looking one, and it seems like him, it must be him. He was a soldier, and by my side or thereabouts in those wet, hot lands. I remember him sweat like us, and fall the same way we fell, be a loving home to those piercing, siren swarms. His white Caucasian neck ageing quick with the red-brown burn, thickening because it needed to, a wet ham joint ready for its turn, ready to go. Well, weren’t we all! ...and did I see him lying there, apart? No, because he dressed up nice and felt like lying down, and that spot on the beach is far away from our green and beautiful, humid surrounds, where we tried to fight so well.

“Have you seen the photo? ...Though you may be better off not... I think I know him”

From Renmark. It was green and beautiful there, the paradised fields of fruit, row on row. God’s hand is in this work, the orchardist knows - his warm damp land and soil, and the abused river at the centre of it all. The Norwegian was there too - I'll recall his name in time. We worked parallel lines, at the same rate. There are never-ending views in this country, some make the head bow or force sight away, some mean you’ll not last long if you can't escape, but, caught alone, the repeated, regular lanes of that place - so much good! - are piled so high and wide that the good itself is pushed away. No horizon line, the same limitless lanes each way and the uneventful sky, atom dust or galaxy-high - your notched edges and wrong insult this rigid, scaleless trap. Get back to the Norwegian and his centre-parted hair, keep your eyes on his face through the gaps in the leaves and the sweet air.

He was at Nadda too, that scrub maze - he found me there, after my afternoon nap, and I'm grateful for this. I was annoyed at first, because I liked it there, it was warm and comfortable, and a dream of clear, mountainous air was broken by his Scandinavian face, his recognisable call, his gentle touch on my shoulder and the crisp, blistered skin layer.

“Wake up now, it's the best thing to do”

“It's not too late for food and... Your axe is still with you I see! Let's get back shall we”

I'll do the same, return the favour, touch him gently on the shoulder to avoid a scare and repay his words of kindness over so many a year. Karl... Karl! Let's get back shall we? Ah yes, that's his name, I'm sure I'm right. Karl Gudmonsson is the one lying down, this good friend of mine - we fought in tropical and desert climes, saved eachother’s lives more than once before and walked green, god-favoured lanes in Renmark even before the war. I must see him quickly, and show the truth - I think some people, for a reason I cannot know, are saying he is from some other foreign land, but this can't be true, for the man is Karl, he is not from Wales or even England, that confusing place! An Englishman named Carl with a K - no it cannot be. I must visit him in his shirt and tie and closed eyes... tensing though, somehow, as if he is hanging upside down - maybe they did, for he was never as puffed up as that, not holding his breath and waiting to die.

“I'll take the bus down the coast, down Military Road... Although... I could wake early on and walk - it can only be two hours or so...”

I become agitated and stand up quickly, move to the windows and crane my neck to the side to peer through the narrowed frame. I can see the sea from here. I catch Roma looking at me, and I shift my eyes but keep my face on the sea. Both her tiny pale hands are on the table, clasped - her index finger distractedly flicks the webbing of its twin - what can she be worried about that silly girl? She doesn't say a thing! I reply with the same, simple nothings. She traps me in this - my unthinking agitations have changed, through her absent, silent gaze, to an awkward pause - I'm stuck with the end motions of their stuttering forms. I stay by the window to show that I'm formulating a plan, when I know I have one anyway - I'll be up early, claiming a trek, then go somewhere safely far and take the bus to Somerton Town. That way I'll have time to walk around, sit in the spot where he laid down, remember the long orchard shade and the wandering shadows that formed on our arms. My deception pleases me and I play at being calm - I smile at the morning light, look back to her and change the subject to something unattached. Yes, I'll visit him once more, cool and calm.

--

I follow the man four paces behind, trying not to match step. His shoulders drop to the left, just so, as if ducking under a shelf - low, flat strides he floated on, seemingly trying to hold his eyes at a fixed height. The hips and below were all that moved, even the arms in tow were unusually still - weakly interacting halves of composite craft! His split form wound down the dark and lime green hall, the sparsely placed lights showing barely anything at all, save the old wooded panels like splintered bark, soon ready to fall. A sight to see, maybe - a dust cloud in this forlorn grid and its unmoving dead air would be like a frozen, small war in hallway lights, photographic time transferred to life.

The more I see the back of this man, the more I have to fight his style of walk, I hold my shoulders straight just in case and bounce high, low, high, to show that I'm not. The more I think of it, the more I'm enjoying this walk - there's not much of it, of course, and we’re heading for a frozen corpse, but the clean and dull decay of this place and my knowledge of a secret thing to make me the one who solved it right is enough. These are the times when I feel less dead myself, when I can, I think, switch between layers and peek out, see the view around and about - from darkened cell to windowed room, with a view to roll up and eat just out of grasp.

“This way please. Watch the step”

His uniform is ragged and he seemed annoyed, but my army pension keeps him polite. He said as I arrived I'm the one hundred and fifty-first one - one hundred and fifty truthless before the truthful one! I understood his weary eyes, I have those eyes too - I showed him my card and he raised them to mine, placed both tan hands flat on the page and dropped his brow, then back up - an almost imperceptible forward dip of the skull. Two tours. I'm sorry to take your time, I say - he looks back to the form.

“The paper mentions us again today, mentions the lady we had in yesterday. You'll forgive me for earlier? It's becoming quite strange”

I gesture it's nothing, ask the lady’s name - he swivels the paper a neat turn, shifts it my way - Thompson? Funny, the man you have there is Thompsen, you have my word...

He reaches for the door - a different one now, metal I think, with a curved chrome handle I've seen before. It's a windowless thing - I suppose it has to be - and there are two distinct clunks as the handle is pulled up. A slide and a snap, then a weightier fall of some mechanism probably sat in the wall - come in! it seems to say, I have something for you. The words pass me by and head back up to where we’ve been - I turn around to catch them move but all I see are the spheres of evenly spaced lime green, not quite touching, interrupting the straight hall with their swollen and diffuse forms. The man stands calm by the door, handle poised, with a look that equates to mine in his shaded eyes. I stand too, hold his patient gaze, and it seems as though we could stay this way forever - there is wisdom in this wait, I'm sure there is wisdom in silence and nothing while we wait.

I think I know now what I'll see. It peaks around the corner at me, from a distant place. I can't quite make it out but I know it's there. It's the haze at the far line of those green lanes. The indeterminate edge of those Arab sand plains - it calls me then as now and I pause before I move, but I know that I will keep going on. The door fans out as I pass through and the cold air is like a thick layer scared to leave, I feel it move from my leading leg to the back of my head. It's a soothing, cool balm on my face, but it soon moves my mind to realise that I'm home again - this is the inevitable way, the warm is not even real... not real at all. The cold swallows my all, and I feel a hole open up in my forehead - the skin and bone peel back fine and dry, there is no bleeding in this room. The fat organ exposed recoils at first from the fluorescent light but soon adjusts and aims its narrow beam at the white cloth in the near-centre of the room, draped over curious peaks of toe and belly and head - as it hangs still on the edge, the arm is suggested for a tiny part of its length. My forehead hole lets in the rigid, freezing air, and the pink brain starts to struggle, and tremble away - it knows its path though. The man mumbles something - this way? but the increasing shudders make my ears dull and fade. It knows its path and I follow slow, arcing towards the peaked sheet and its glowing shape.

The man curves around the opposite way and meets me at the flat metal table where my friend lays, it's funny, I think, that they found him this way - politely preparing himself for this room and the day I would come and see him, and give them his name. It's a nice thing to do, to know the rigour coming and be as thoughtful as you, to be aware of how you'll look as a corpse, to think things through. I smile an endearing smile his way, aim it at the face and its draped, white shade - my brain through its window of peeled skull case looks intently as well but the unease and increasing vibration of its pink flesh alarms, it shakes loose a bitter, metal taste that filters slowly through my nose and throat like metal filing dust. The spit thickens and seals my tongue slow with a gluey and useless clicking paste, but this stupid face stays set in the previous shape. They seem to exist in different states and I look at them both in astonishment - what this makes for the man to see must be a sight and he seems to be thinking that something isn't right - motions the corner of cloth he has raised back to the clear metal table edge and makes to step back round to the door, his eyes fixed on mine. I manage to raise a hand and force the features of my split face to reform calm. I think I say I'm fine but the gummy air in my ears and around makes only my heartbeat and sick stomach loud - they both work fierce to an awful time and heat up my insides, bring the temperature driving up and sweat to my broken brow. It sits and freezes in its place, plasma soup in a shell of ice. The open brain makes its nauseous signal louder and louder now, it seems, shines its straight beam to the covered face of Karl... Karl Thompsen in his polite sleep. The man, now back facing me, moves his mouth to shape something I cannot know, but it seems from his moves and eyes that he is asking me if I'm alright, or do I want to carry on or something along those lines. I nod, and quickly withdraw the full move, trying not to let my brain fall out, and he reaches for the cover again - the corner by the head - he sends a final look in a questioning way and as I agree he adds a hand and pulls the sheet down. The beam snaps off and the view reframes.

Oh grace no. A fragment passes and with a click my gluey tongue is wet again, too wet, the spit starts to pool under it, a pool of oily sick warning, and I gulp it back - no time to breathe. I see a thin grey mask of face shape but no face is there, heat and cold co-exist, but at the place where they meet... my forehead snaps shut with an icy crack, I feel my eyelids twitch as it does and look to the man to check this is real, but he doesn't move at all - the lights start to dip low from the edge of the room to the faceless grey and as they do, the mask starts to slip and fall. The cold is my home and I'm being shown the way back there. So slowly though... I can't take this withering, crushing pace, the dark gets ever close and I worry that it will end and I'll be left in the dark and cold with... The mask drops to the floor, quiet and slow, and I'm clear about it all now. I feel sleepy, shut my eyes and go.

Renmark - Plastic is part of a larger work in progress.

Workplace Fire Safety (by Matthew Breen)

 

As the fire safety video entered its thirty-ninth minute, Brian started to reassess the meeting room they’d been in all day. It had a high corniced ceiling, walls a pale buff colour, and plenty of space all round for the purposes of the training session. Brian thought about where the room was, in a converted townhouse, on a street in the middle of Spitalfields. Altogether it was much less drab than he’d thought it would be, which led him on to their facilitator.

The facilitator was a flash and bright young man called Wyn, W-y-n, which Brian knew to be spelt so as it had appeared in the first slide of the morning’s presentation. Wyn: he’d typed it out in big purple Comic Sans for their benefit. Brian initially guessed he’d done this just to deal with any doubt or indeed merriment they might have harboured on the peculiarities of his name, but at lunchtime, as Brian had sat in the sunshine, he had realised that it was Wyn’s way of poking fun at the fact that everyone went into these training days expecting them to be horrendously corporate and dull. In Wyn’s hands, the day’s programme had become this weird, self-loathing thing. When going through his flipchart of statistics, Wyn forewarned that this was the part where he’d bombard them with meaningless facts and figures; and when bulletpointing the fire evacuation procedures essential to every workplace, he’d said he hoped they were listening at the back, or else they’d have to do some role-play to liven things up. This was met with titters, or at least good-natured exhalations, though in reality there was no back. It was just the four members of the sales department, all sat around the oval table: Carl, Sunita, Brian, and Liz, who was head of department.

 

‘…I know what you’re thinking at this point,’ said the presenter in the video in his dour, Estuary way. He was fiftysomething, smart-suited and tieless and with salt-and-pepper hair across his head and chest. The top three buttons of his shirt were wide open. The video’s subtitles had introduced him as Grant Neasden, Media & Entertainment Personality. Brian wasn’t good with names, but better with faces, and almost certain he’d never seen him before.

'…Fires, surely they’re just something that happens to other people at other workplaces, right?’ Course that’s what you’re thinking, because that’s what everybody thinks.’ A sombre pause. ‘Right up until it happens to them.’

Grant Neasden, Brian noted, kept referring to himself in the script. ‘I want you to…’ ‘…so keep that in mind for me,’ and suchlike. It made Brian think about Liz, and how she delegated tasks in the department. It was known as the three-faceted approach. When giving instructions, she would explain 1) who the task was for, 2) why it needed doing, and 3) how it would benefit their shared workplace. Liz also tailored the way she spoke to each individual in the department. Brian had been observing this for months. Girlish camaraderie with Sunita; a kind of familiarity—not flirtation, at least not a discernible flirtation that might reflect badly on her—with Carl. And with Brian, Liz reserved a respect particular to him and only him. She had a habit of ccing him into emails that he really didn’t need to be cced into. He’d concluded some time ago this was her way of saying, ‘I value your experience, which is of course far greater than mine.’

Brian flashbacked to his last catch-up with Carol from HR, when she’d asked him how he’d found his (then) new line manager. What he’d done, without any premeditation, was tap a hand down on Carol’s desk, and make an emphatic point about what a fantastic manager Liz was. Carol had nodded eagerly. In fairness to Brian it was hardly a lie. Everyone knew Liz was good with her staff, something her predecessor Gordon certainly hadn’t been, which was why Gordon had been got rid of, and she’d been promoted. Liz didn’t hide in her office or insult people like Gordon. Liz was a people person. She knew how to handle people, how to motivate them, how to direct them, how to reprimand (but only when necessary, which was hardly at all with ‘her fabulous lot’), how to address issues, and how to focus on key zones of potential development in each of them. Even after the 2009 Christmas party, when she drank too much, kicked off her shoes, and danced across the three tables they’d all pushed together in the corner of the Pitcher & Piano at four in the afternoon; the way she openly discussed her antics the next day, and joined in with everyone’s mirth in the staffroom—

A stray cough led Brian back to his colleagues, who were all watching the DVD. Carl was leant back, and had given in to his habit of opening his mouth, baring his teeth in a weird animalistic freeze-frame, and using his tongue to prod at each tooth in what seemed to be an order meaningful to Carl alone. Molar, canine, molar, incisor, incisor. Carl’s tongue tapped at them like piano keys. For reasons unknown, Brian’s imagination was hearing the five-note melody from Close Encounters. Bah-bah-bah-baah-baaah. Sunita was chewing her hair. This, she always did, but having now absolved herself of all self-consciousness she’d worked enough of it into her mouth that it ran taut along her jaw. As she did this she also pulled her necklace around her chin. The little locket at the end twitched beneath her lower lip. Liz had her jotterpad out, and was writing page after page of notes. She wore horn-rimmed glasses, like Brian’s father had done in the Sixties. He registered the seat she’d chosen, the one closest to Wyn—and saw Wyn was looking straight at him. Brian pretended he hadn’t seen, and went back to the DVD.

Grant Neasden was now in conversation with a woman of forty or thereabouts. As the camera closed in on her face, Brian’s first assumption was that she was a burns victim. Then he felt bad, as he realised she simply possessed the shapeless, waxy features of an obese person struggling under the heat of a studio lamp. The subtitles reappeared, reading Valerie Gough, Workplace Fire Survivor.

‘We're a family business,’ said Valerie Gough. ‘Me. Me brother, Richard. Me dad. His brother Trevor...’

She spoke with a broad Lancashire accent. It was the sort of earthy, prepossessing burr that Southerners like Brian dearly wished they had because it would’ve made them sound more trustworthy, and in Brian’s case would probably have bagged him more accounts over the years. She also spoke in such a way that it seemed she’d never heard of conjunctional words such as ‘and’ or ‘with’ or ‘then.’ Was she incapable of stringing complete sentences together, he wondered? He felt guilty about thinking this, given that something tragic had happened to her, as she was no doubt about to explain. And he was feeling bad already about the burns victim thing anyway. The Northern accent, Brian thought, was probably only trumped by the Irish accent in terms of implicitly bestowing moral integrity upon its speaker. He then started to consider if he could categorise all the various Northern sub-accents in order of charm and insinuated decency.

After a half-minute of her backstory, the camera zoomed in on a still photograph of Valerie Gough and three men. They were all sat or stood in a cluttered Portakabin office, on whose wall a vinyl banner read GOUGH FAMILY FIXTURES & FITTINGS. Zooming in on a still photograph was a technique known as the Ken Burns effect. Brian had learnt this from watching the extra features on the DVD of Ken Burns’s documentary on the American Civil War his son had given him for his birthday. His thoughts ricocheted to the picture inside Sunita’s locket, which was of her twin sister, who’d died of leukaemia when they were twelve.

 

Brian came to the abrupt conclusion that the reason Grant Neasden kept referring to himself in the video was to suggest he (Grant) was personally invested in teaching them four of them about fire safety; that he wasn’t just an individual of alleged celebrity parachuted in to breathe life into a corporate video. This took Brian on the same mental segue into Liz’s delegation method. The reason he knew it was called the three-faceted approach was because they’d both gone to the same training day, when she hadn’t been head of department. He hadn’t been angry with Liz, when she’d got the job over him. He knew his age would either work for or against him, and, as it turned out, it worked against him.

Valerie Gough explained that an electrical fire had started on their premises in December 2006. They had overloaded a mains socket with an electrical heater, a paraffin heater, various computer cables, and the fairylights that ornamented their artificial Christmas tree. The fire spread across the carpeting, and reached some overalls draped over a chair that were soaked with oils and solvents… The crux of the story was that Valerie’s uncle Trevor had fallen asleep inside the Portakabin, and died of smoke and toxic fumes inhalation in his sleep, and Brian assumed that was the end of it, but—wait a second—Valerie explained that her brother Richard, returning his van to the yard, had dashed in to try and save his uncle. Richard Gough’s instinct had been to fill a bucket of water, and throw it over what had at that point been a small and localised fire. He electrocuted himself.

A sequence of blurry reconstructed scenes that Brian found hard to follow were overlaid by Valerie Gough’s strangled, clucking sobs. He felt bad a third time, because as her story progressed, and the more upset she became, he just grew more and more irritated. He knew that right now he was supposed to be feeling sorry for her because her brother and uncle were dead. But plugging three adaptors into one mains unit and leaving flammable material lying around was stupid. He knew that already. He hadn’t learnt it that day. He’d learnt it before that day. He didn’t need a crying woman in a video to tell him that. Brian balked at hearing his internal voice’s choice of ‘crying woman’ over ‘crying person,’ and suspected he was channelling all his ire towards Valerie Gough as it was now 5.04pm and she was obliquely responsible for the training running late.

Glancing to either side to see if anybody else might have looked irritated about running overtime, Brian became aware of a change in events, which had been nagging at him, but not consciously until now. It was the absence of the sound Liz’s fountain pen made as it moved across her pad. She’d stopped writing. And in the flesh visible between her revolting glasses and the corner of her mouth, Brian noticed a twitching spasm, like the aftertremors of a twanged elastic band; and as she closed a hand over her mouth, and searched for something out of sight beneath the table—a tissue from her bag—she started to cry. Not wanting to react, and reveal that he’d noticed, Brian kept his head motionless, and swivelled his eyes over to his other two colleagues, to watch a chain reaction in progress. By the time Liz was dabbing at her eyes and nose, in full snotty flow, tears were dribbling down Sunita’s cheeks, and she was sniffing and staunching them with her fingers so as not to smudge her mascara, whilst Carl, Carl didn’t seem to be actually weeping, but his face was pink and crumpled as though he were a little boy, his face arranged in such a way that Brian felt was something he oughtn’t ever to have seen, and Wyn had his arms crossed, hands tucked under armpits, expression fierce if simultaneously compassionate, as if to say, ‘They need to go through this.’ Brian now understood why all the flippancy earlier had been worth it, and why Wyn had left the video until the end of the day when everyone was tired and listless. The dilemma, he realised, was whether to ask Liz for a tissue and join in, or to make what he could only interpret as some kind of a stand, and not cry. But all he could do was vacillate, and return to the DVD, to find Grant Neasden nodding at nothing in particular.

 

Eigg Story or This place where nothing happens (by Rosie Carr)

Everything is so clear, now, standing on the edge of this place. One way there is nothing but thick green sea, silent and bristling, open. On the other side are the crofts, tumbling neatly down the valley, hollow plunks on a skeleton xylophone. From this spot, old Tom can squint and see the ferry nearing the mainland. A dog is barking at seals, fat and oily skins rubbing rocks, and slipping through green water. Down on the pier someone is whistling. Tom sees the mouth pushed forward into a round ‘oh’ but the sound of it is carried off on the wind, blown into a tumble of gulls that shriek at the dog. Tom turns from the ferry and the dog to observe his valley once more. He thinks he will always stay here, and his sons and daughters will live here, and he will die here too.

Deep down in the valley, at the slow crunch of the skeletons backbone is Tom’s Croft. Protected from the wind that whips and cracks at the hills there is smog starting to crawl out of the chimney and a flamboyant sunset peels across the sky, gaudy next to the grey house. The smog drifts towards him; it is gloomy, falling thicker than air. Tom begins his decent. He forces a rasped sigh as his boots sink into the ground.

 

On the peak of the cliff a stone cottage hides behind high grass. A woman waits by the window for Tom. She is stepping from foot to foot impatiently waiting for him to do something, and balances on one leg to lean a little further out. She is like a spy, she thinks, hidden behind the glass, peering out at Tom. Her skin is filmy and pallid, from not washing today or the day before. One grubby toe idles in the dust, tracing the indents in the stone beneath. Even old Tom has forgotten her, she thinks. She lets out a hiss through clenched teeth. It is meant as a regretful sigh, but with not a soul to tut and nod in approval the noise slowly expands and then fades around her. The woman thinks how she is part of this place, how she is rooted in the earth just the same as those fine threads of grass that bluster outside her window. Slight and airy in the breeze, but great long stems that fill the earth so far down they are more underground then above it. Out of the window the light is fading, she can see a wisp of dark smoke above the hill, and the fields remind her of dough that cracks as it rises.  

The gentle fields end at the cottage, where the high grass begins. Here the land starts to curdle with the sea. A sharp vertical fissure the length of a skyscraper falls away to deep water. A trawler rests sleepily on the tide down there, a wide rusty barrel of iron rolling over the water. Gulls swoop as a brazen catch of herring pours across the deck. The glossy body of muscle flaps and pelts at its net, one lucky sliver escapes through a hole in the side and the boy who is watching frowns and memorises the little hole, picks up the sliver and drops it back on top of the rest. The boy watches with taciturn satisfaction as the fish quails and grinds to a slow stop. Now it only spasms occasionally, a nervous echo of animation. The quivers unnerve the boy, who likes things to always be one way or another, not this in-between-life he sees with the fishes.

Once he caught a fish, a beautiful rainbow of colours mixed like petrol on its scales, and it seemed it didn’t belong this far north, and it was somehow lost. He’d watched its hot colours fade as it drowned in the air, which also seemed upside down and spooky because air is what makes you live, not drown. He thought about throwing that one back, that lost fish.

 

It’s darker now; twinkles of electric light appear on the distant hump of mainland as the fishing boat slips into its little bay on the island. Everything is so still, so very quiet, thinks the boy. The hushed water here is just as silent as he imagines the very darkest inkiest fathom of the sea must be, so far down it is through to the other side of the world, this furthest deepest place.  

August (by Michael Lawton)

Seemingly every year in our country sometime in August the weather changes dramatically and we get a window onto wintertime; a week or more of really nautical weather flapping and soaking us. But it doesn’t take; although the trees samba in the wind the leaves aren’t ready to swoon and more often than not it is followed by a warm Indian summer in September.

But when this inclemency is eventually blown away some of the silliness of summer goes with it and we appreciate any remaining sunshine in earnest. We ignore the start of autumn; the equinox and the incipient winter is forgotten or put to the back of our minds as we talk and walk about in shirtsleeves.

Perhaps this ‘winter-glimpse’ in August is the real start of winter - the vanguard - and though we love the sun some of us are refreshed by this. Some see something romantic in the fisherman’s weather, and relish seeing the clouds bolt across the sky.

Emilia was one of these people who liked the cooler weather. The predictability of rain in England was comforting. She had started jogging this summer and she loved running through the damp air, the mizzle invigorating her as she went. She was three months experienced and had graduated from jogging to running. Having found her rhythm she could skim along fairly quickly. Ignoring everything around her and the men looking, some sheepishly sidelong, some unashamedly, at the sway of her breasts.

Running had also aided her adaptation to contact lenses. She’d previously resisted her mother’s urges to switch from spectacles but as she now had a practical reason for doing so she had made the change easily.

She listed this in the benefits of running as she ran, focussing her mind on why she was doing it whenever she felt like stopping. This benefit went hand in hand with another; that she had argued a lot less with her mother since starting running; her frustration was stamped into the pavement rather than spat out in cattish comments. Indeed the air between them was as peaceful as at any time since the death of her father.

As you would expect, this traumatic event, the result of a gnawingly typical gnawing cancer, had far-reaching effects. Emilia’s was a sea of grief and after the tidal wave of sorrow that begot it, it continued to break in waves, as unremitting as the tide, and dominating her fledgling adulthood.

Her mother realised that it was since her husband’s death that Emilia had (probably subconsciously) decided to spend little time worrying about her appearance. Most of her decisions were made, like the switch from glasses to contacts, on the basis of pragmatism. Yes she still was attracted to certain colours or patterns but she cared little as to whether or not they glorified her appearance. Her mother knew she couldn’t explain this in these terms to her daughter, (though she had tried to get Emilia’s older brother to say something). Instead she simply chided her about ‘going about unnoticed’ which simply irritated Emilia.

In simple terms Emilia was petite with bobbed dark hair, and spent most of the time in her glasses. Her fringe fell down straight, tucking itself behind the frames. And as she spent most of her life looking through glass and hair she had a permanent look of mild curiosity.

Unbeknownst to Emilia, not only were there fewer arguments because she was less angry after a run but also because her mother had understood the running as Emilia taking an interest in her looks and reflected a wish to ‘tone up.’

This was wrong. In fact Emilia had started running as some sort of homage to her father who had been a keen runner, and also perhaps as an acknowledgement that she needed to control her grief. She was twenty and because of four years of blind sorrow had arrived at this age unsure of where her life was going.

The running then, was a constant tribute to her father while also allowing thoughts of him to be slightly separated. She had begun the task of restructuring her life. She thought about her dad and she thought about what she could and should do with her life. She had sleep-walked through the rest of her schooling and after earlier promise had done well but unspectacularly so. Since then she had a variety of jobs but none stuck, her sadness had given her a daydreaming aggressiveness that many of her colleagues had not taken to.

On her stereo, onto to which she’d emptied all the music off of the family computer she found herself listening to soft-rock, though she wouldn’t admit this to her few friends; she’d claim to be listening to something edgier. A lot of it was to her dad’s taste, which was one reason for listening to it. But also because it seemed to fit; the pedestrian emoting seemed to suit the pedestrian weather in this pedestrian summer.

She had just started a second job working in a pub; she was now keen to save as much money as possible. She wasn’t sure which direction she wished her life to take but wanted to be able to afford it when she made a decision.

- 

At work Emilia is sitting outside the back of the pub talking to one of her male colleagues, he is smoking. She isn’t, but is taking a break with him. They had helped themselves to glasses of lemonade from the tap and are perched on the barrels that, along with empty gas canisters are awaiting collection by the brewery. This area has been half hidden by a wooden trellis with some desultory shrubs leaning affectedly on its base. It is a pretty wooden structure but within the tarmacadam ground is split where dandelions wrest through, it looks like one of those patches of land that are resolutely not meant to be looked at.

This is their first shift together and they are getting to know one another, dealing in the banal questions about their lives away from work. Her colleague is called Simon. At first he had that familiar tightness in his chest and a higher vocal range because he was talking to an attractive female but in the course of the conversation this has eased a little. He still has a blank whenever he has to think of a topic. He is five years older than her, and though he is trying not to, cannot help but offer advice on her life.

‘I respect your decision not to go “travelling”’

He said, coating the verb with derision.

'I hate that fucking word. Just say you are going on holiday. People talk about finding themselves. It’s daft. You’re just as likely to find yourself nipping to the twenty-four garage to buy fags as you are suffering culture shock on some beach in Thailand.’

‘Yeah…’

She says, deciding not to tell him yet why she hasn’t been away and that she will happily go if she wants to when she has the money. Simon, in an effort to stop pontificating, asks Emilia about her other job.

‘Where else did you say you worked?

‘In The Museum’

She said referring to the local Victorian museum in their suburb on the outskirts of South London. Everybody who had grown up in the locality referred to it simply as ‘The Museum’ Simon had been puzzled by this when he’d first moved down here, arriving from the north of England, but now understood it.

‘Oh yeah? That sounds alright.’

‘So far yeah, but everybody there has been so nice that every time you meet someone new you think; is he going to be that fucking guy?’

‘What fucking guy?’

‘You know, the arsehole, the jobsworth, the one that you check on the rota to see if he is working at the same time as you.’

‘Well, have you met him yet? Does it have to be a him?’

‘Not yet, and no, it could be a women but I was working with this weird guy yesterday; listen to this.’

She explained to Simon how she worked in the museum’s shop which had the big wooden, glass-panelled doors that you’d expect of a Victorian institution. Lighter and better oiled than every visitor expected, the doors swung back and forth throughout the day and as they did so the rubber seals would kiss repeatedly, filling her days with a puckering sound. Her colleague there, the ‘weird guy’ had observed: ‘Those doors sound like they are kissing.’

Emilia turned to Simon;

‘That’s what he said; do you think he’s flirting?’

‘I dunno; I’m not sure I even know how to flirt.’

‘Ha. Come on, you must do.’

‘Well maybe but I don’t think so.’

I don’t, otherwise I’d flirt with you, he thought, a little nauseous with desire. And he fucking hated ‘that fucking guy’ at that moment, he exhaled smoke deliberately and looked at her; she talked so easily she seemed oblivious. He couldn’t read her windblown conversations as a nervousness she thought was obvious. Despite not really wanting to know he asked the question;

‘Well do you want him to be flirting with you?’

‘No.’

‘Right’

Relief released throughout him. ‘In that case let’s not talk about him.’

‘Right’ she said smiling and he became aware how happy he felt. Their grinning was broken by her,

‘Did you go to university?’

‘I started a Fine Art degree... but I left; I realised it wasn’t what I wanted to do. I was spending money by the bucket load and not getting anything done… Or anything I really believed in. I was more interesting in other things, I was making a film. I’m still trying to do things now, when I’m not working here, or anywhere else.’

‘Will you go back; you can do film degrees can’t you?’

‘Yeah maybe… I’m not sure I’m still into film that much… I’ve got things I want to accomplish first.’

He had a list of these things taped to the wall above his bed. This list was constantly changing as items were added and items erased. He had had to re-write it at least a dozen times in the last three years, each time printing from a master copy on his PC. This list encompassed projects; photography, art, writing. Things he wanted to buy; ‘leather jacket’ was the last thing added in this category. And more ephemeral things, the most non-tangible being a list of mixes of music he wanted to make. The fourth thing on the list between ‘photograph windows’ and ‘regular self-portraits’ was ‘get girlfriend.’

He thought about this list but decided against telling Emilia about it, instead he simply crushed his cigarette beneath his foot;

‘We better get back to work.’

-

Later that afternoon during their flickering conversations, Simon walking down from his station in the top bar into the bottom bar, to her station. He walked down with a piece of paper in his hand. How do you pronounce this, he asked her. Writing ‘Brakhage’ on an answer sheet left over from quiz night.

‘Like breakage.’

‘Yeah brack-age, not brack-har-gay. It’s a bloke’s name. Stan Brakhage. He did a film called Anticipation if the Night.’

‘Cool title.’ She said nodding her head. ‘Why do you want to know? I mean why are you not sure?’

‘I was having an argument with my flatmate about it… We argue all the time. I don’t know why I live with him.’

‘What do you argue about?

‘Everything really: He’s become a bit of a cock since he started going out with his new girlfriend. He’s even started to dress differently. He wears these long coats and classic sunglasses like an American teenager about to go postal on his class mates.’

She laughs appreciatively so he continues, opens up a little.

‘The last time, I know this sounds ridiculous, but the last time we argued was about the band Belle & Sebastian. He says it is wet nonsense, has no edge. I reckon that a band who write songs that your nan can dance to as well as you at a wedding or somewhere like that, and also be ‘modern’ whatever that means. Well, they're a rarity and have a place… Do you know what I mean? Wanting everything to be edgy is ridiculous.’

‘I know what you mean.’ she said, thinking of the music she listened to while running. ‘Does your Nan really dance to Belle & Sebastian? How long have you known him?’

‘Nah, but I can imagine her doing so… Err, five-odd years, we met at uni, he stayed on when I left. He said that we weren’t supposed to be doing anything we believed in at that stage; maybe he was right.’

‘Anyway we kept in touch and now he’s finished and moved to London; because that’s where the art is, you know. I moved in with him because I was living with these wankers before and he is a good friend, just irritating recently.’

‘Actually I’m meeting them tonight; do you want to come along? You can offer moral support if we get into an argument.’

Though she didn’t hesitate, not really, his words to her seem to hang in the air, repeating like an echo, until,

‘Yeah okay.’

His head was pounding as he had asked her, asking her out in effect.

‘Now I’m anticipating the night.’ He said and walked to the toilet, inwardly cringing at this clumsiness, this is how I flirt he thought. God. For her part Emilia simply smiled, which confused him further and made him wonder whether she picked up on what he’d said.

Forgetting about their inner nerves, Simon and Emilia spend the rest of their shift idly chatting, probing at one another's interests, Simon trying to be as amusing as possible, Emilia trying to be as amused as possible. Simon talked about Stewart and Amanda preparing Emilia for any caustic reception. Their shift ended at four and after leaving Emilia at the bus stop, having arranged to meet again at eight, Simon headed toward home. He walked whenever he could, finding relief to be outside, travelling at his own volition in London, a city in which movement is often stifled and shunting.

He was buoyed more than he could credit by Emilia's agreeing to meet him. He
walked with a grin and a bounce, enjoying the unseasonably breeze, he browsed
every shop window he passed.

As Simon wanders home in a state of beatification, he sends a message to his flatmate Stewart, who has just had sex with his new girlfriend Amanda. Stewart was smug and recumbent as Amanda pulled a towel around herself in readiness for a shower. She was taller than Stewart and looked down on him: Now whilst standing over him, but also whenever they talk, and in life in general.

‘I just got a text from Simon. He’s bringing some girl from work to the pub.’

‘Really? I bet she’s some crazy artist goth or some ultra-mild film geek.’

Amanda emphasised this statement by letting it hang in the air as she swaggered into the bathroom.

She’s cold and a bit scary thought Stewart but he revelled in the fact that she had chosen him. He thought her uncompromising rudeness evidence of a discriminating nature and integrity, and the fact that she had chosen to go out with him meant he was special. He lay there basking in self-satisfaction, feeling the semen crispen on the soft hairs on his gut.

-

A couple of miles away Emilia is setting off on a run, the coolness still hanging in the air, hoping to exercise some of her nerves before meeting Simon later.