It wasn’t very big but it was still bigger than expected. I put it on the table and listened for a while. The sound quality was excellent and the volume satisfyingly loud. However I fear it might be defective. It left filthy smudges on the tabletop, and when I searched for an off switch it bit me.
Now it’s hiding under the settee and it appears to be leaking
__________
Notes:
1. Written on September 23rd, 2016
There was a woman whose mother had died giving birth to her, and who thereafter lived alone with her father in a cottage in the woods. Although her father loved her very much, the sadness he felt for his lost wife whenever he looked at his daughter overwhelmed him, and for the rest of his life he never spoke to her without weeping.
On her 18th birthday, her father died and she was left alone. She ran outside and went into the woods and wept there under the stars.
While she wept a cat came down quietly from the branches of a tree and sat on her lap and said to her, “It breaks my heart to see someone so sad. Let me grant you a wish, so that you may know happiness.”
The woman thought of her father, weeping without his wife. And she thought of the mothers and fathers of her friends, and how much happier than her father they must have been, for she never saw them weep while talking to their children. So she said to the cat, “It must be companionship that stops one being sad. I don’t want to grow old on my own.”
The cat said, “So is that your wish, to not grow old on your own?” And the woman wiped away her tears and nodded her head. “And so it is and shall be,” said the cat, and it climbed out of her lap and was gone.
The woman felt no happier, although no sadder either. She went back to her cottage and went straight to sleep, expecting to find there beside her in her bed a husband when she awoke. But in the morning she was still on her own.
She scolded herself for believing in dreams and wishes, and resolved to find a cure for her unhappiness herself. That afternoon she went into town and chose for herself a husband. He was a sailor, and spent 11 months of every year at sea. Every January she would see him to his boat, and every December, after almost a year on her own in her cottage, she would welcome him back. And while she seemed not to age a day while he was away, he looked older by the year.
When he came to retire she appeared no older than 25, and more beautiful by far than ever, for her beauty was now complimented by her kindness and her wisdom. Yet he by now was aged and weak, his back bent, his hair grey, and his features set in a permanent scowl of discontent.
During her long years of marriage she had learned to love being alone, for it gave her the freedom to think and to dream, and to learn and grow wise. When her husband came home for good, by day she tended to his needs without complaint and with a gentleness he was not necessarily deserving of. At night, while he slept, she would step outside into the woods and take a moment for herself, for in the day she felt at times more like a servant than a wife. She could feel her life ticking away with each moment that passed in his service.
On the morning of her 70th birthday she noticed her first grey hair, and that very afternoon her husband died. For the first time in ten years she was alone. She ran outside and went into the woods and wept there under the stars. While she wept a cat came down quietly from the branches of a tree and sat on her lap and said to her, “I granted you a wish once, so that you would know happiness. It breaks my heart to see you so sad once again.”
“I am not sad, although you granted me no wish,” she said. “I am on my own again, and happy for it.”
“I granted you no wish?” said the cat. “Yet you are not old.”
“Old? Look at this grey hair and tell me I am not old.”
At that moment the sky cleared and she saw the cat clearly in the moonlight.
“Dear cat, my friend,” she said. “How is it that you are still so black, with not a grey hair anywhere upon your fine furry coat?”
“I grow not old, for I keep myself to myself, and am always on my own.”
And with that the cat climbed out of the woman’s lap and went on its way and was gone. And the woman was left on her own to ponder the wish she had been granted all those years before.
They say she is still out there somewhere in the woods, more beautiful than it is possible to describe, and although she is on her own she is not alone, for she has herself. She waits now for no-one, and shall never let you see her, no matter how long you look.
__________
Notes:
1. Written in July 2014
My mother died last week, which was sad, I suppose. She was a hard person to love, my mother, though, so in many ways it was a relief.
Anyway, for a week or so after I sort of wandered around in a daze. Shock, I expect, and also that I wasn’t really sure what to do or how to do it. I spent so long on the phone telling everyone she was dead that for awhile it seemed like this was it now, for me, forever. Just sitting here at my desk ringing people up and going, “Do you remember [mother]? Well, she’s dead, I’m afraid. Sorry about that. Did you know her well? Yeah, oh, yeah, yeah, I know. I know. Sorry. Yeah she was, she really was. But still she’s my mother, and, well… I just thought you should know.”
I’m not sure even the vicar bothered to attempt to console me, to express in any way a sense of regret.
Anyway, I thought yesterday that it was over, after the funeral was done and she was safely buried and I’d cleared away all the uneaten buffet stuff from the table I’d set up in the living room and everyone had gone home and there was no need for them to ever think about her again.
But this morning I came down stairs and there she was, sat at the kitchen table, eating some toast and marmite, biting through it toothlessly with her dry papery lips.
“I thought you were dead,” I said.
“I was,” she said. “I spent the last week in heaven,” she said. “Nice place, really, except for all the cats.”
“The cats?” I said.
My mother didn’t like cats.
“Yes, the cats. Cats everywhere there was. Every cat that ever lived. Millions of them, sitting around. Sitting on everything,” she said. “Well, every cat that ever died, I suppose.”
“And…?”
“And what?”
“Why are you here, mother? You’re supposed to be dead.”
“Well, you know how I feel about cats.”
Everyone knew how she felt about cats.
“So I left. Told God it was either the cats or me. He chose the cats.” She took another bite of her toast. “He reminded me a bit of your father, really.”
“Who did?”
“God.”
“Are you sure you were in heaven, mother?”
“Well, where else would I have fucking been?”
So, anyway, now I expect I’ll have to spend the rest of the week on the phone again, telling everyone that I told that she was dead that she’s alive again now. I’m really not looking forward to having to explain this to the council. Or the inland revenue, or whatever they’re called now.
Actually, she’s going to be bloody furious when she finds out they’ve cancelled her pension. And how few people turned up at her funeral. How no-one even ate the sandwiches I’d made and that they’d all ended up in the bin.
Maybe I should let her call everyone.
__________
Notes:
1. Written on June 30th, 2016
About ten years ago my brother bought an old farmhouse a couple of miles up the road, out towards Mayland somewhere. It’s bloody wonderful and fucking massive. It’s almost enough to make me wish at some point in my life I’d bothered to find myself a job and earned myself some money. Almost.
In the garden, if you can really call a load of old fields and yards a garden, there was (and still is) a ruined old stone barn, or shed or whatever, with just the walls left standing – no roof, no door (although he’s since put one in), no glass in the windows. The walls are about four or five feet high, although there’s a couple of bits where they’ve cracked and broken and fallen in and there’s only maybe two or three feet of wall still standing. I think maybe a tree must have fallen on it at some point. Or someone rode a tractor into it.
For some reason, instead of putting empty bottles in the recycling bin, my brother would come outside and hurl them into this old barn, steadily building up a mountain of cracked and broken and smashed up bits of glass. After a year or two of this, one time when I was round there I asked him why he did it, why he kept on doing it, and his answer was that he liked the sound of smashing glass. That he had always liked being allowed to drop bottles in the bottle bank when our dad took us over the tip when we were kids.
I’m not sure I ever remember going to the tip with our dad.
A couple of years ago I was walking in the woods a few miles from where my brother lives, and from the top of the hill you could see down to where his house was, and the glass all shimmered and sparkled there in the sun like he had a barn filled with jewels. Or with water.
After that I was always a bit scared some birds would land in it thinking it was a pond and end up slicing themselves to shreds. Or I’d remember the time one of our cats almost had her paw sliced off climbing trough a broken window, and I was endlessly glad every time that I thought of it that at least my brother didn’t have any cats, and didn’t live near enough to anyone that did.
But there was always foxes I could worry about, and badgers too, although I had no idea if badgers could climb walls or would even want to if they could.
Last year he invited me over for bonfire night and I when I got there he was up a ladder, wearing some old fireman’s gear, and pouring petrol over the side of the barn and onto his big pile of glass. Ten years of glass all piled up there as if it’d had just been waiting all this time for this. He climbed down the ladder and took it back to the house, and came back with a big ball of cardboard covered in something that resembled glue, all thick and yellow and strangely horrifying looking. He lit it with his lighter and hurled it over the wall and just managed to turn away in time to shield his eyes from the whoomph of heat as the whole thing burst into flames.
It burnt for hours. I have no idea how much petrol he must have poured in there. I’m surprised the initial fireball didn’t blow the entire barn up like some sort of Hollywood explosion. I suppose it was directed upwards rather than out. Although I was stood miles back, cowering in fear on the far side of the yard, and I could still feel the heat of it for a second or two as it caught, could feel it pushing me back like a shove to the chest.
Then it settled down and we watched it burn into the night. At some point the wooden door caught fire and burnt off its hinges, crashing down suddenly sometime towards midnight, which made my brother jump so violently he dropped his glass of beer and spilt it all in the dirt. It’s a shame the glass didn’t break really, for reasons of symbolism, and rebirth.
The next morning there was a solid river of glass that had flowed out of the barn and into the yard, the soot burnt black onto it all, and into it, maybe, too. A ridiculous mess that I have no idea how he ever cleaned up.
And everything stunk for fucking days.
__________
1. Written on November 15, 2014
China Mieville, having been evicted from his flat, walked for a while, picked a house at random, and moved in.
He emerged in the moments when the inhabitants of the house were asleep or absent, and when they were up and about he slept in the roof space above the porch like a bat.
The family that lived there only discovered his existence because they had had an internet security webcam system installed, which used motion sensors to take pictures of burglars if they were broken in to, and they usually only switched it on when they were at work or on holiday. One night they forgot to turn it off, and in the morning the system emailed them some photos of China Mieville in the kitchen, eating weetabix straight from the packet, entirely dry.
It took them a few weeks to find where he slept. When they finally confronted him and asked him what he was doing in their house, he began to recite a history of socialism that went on for several days.
“That doesn’t answer our question,” said the mother.
“That [socialism] doesn’t answer anything,” thought the father, and he decided there and then to vote conservative at the next election.
He had actually voted conservative at every election since 1997, but fabricated himself a new excuse each time. You couldn’t call him a conservative, he would say, internally, to himself, just because he voted conservative. He wasn’t an arsehole. He was just worried about the economy.
When people asked him who he voted for he used to say the lib dems, but since 2010 he’d tell them that he wasn’t really political and hadn’t had time to vote.
The son neither said nor thought anything. He didn’t even know who China Mieville was. He didn’t even even care.
China Mieville, having been evicted from his roof space, walked for a while, picked a house at random, and moved in.
__________
Notes:
1. Written on July 23rd, 2018
2. I woke up at about 4 am and wrote this
3. I am not sure why