Mulled Vine

The gentle afternoon stroll had turned into a rigorous climb, but I persisted and was finally rewarded with the end: a narrow ledge adorned by only a small cairn of stones. The view was breath-taking, stretching all the way along the Kentish Weald to the South Coast where Hastings and the ocean beyond could be dimly made out in the late afternoon haze. I sat down, dangling my legs like a child over the precipice and eating an apple, while below me in the valley the shadows slowly lengthened.

It was soon time to turn back, but I sat transfixed as the evening approached and scattered the sky with stars like pixie dust. Then the moon rose in languid incandescence, a sadly smiling visage that offered a familiar comfort. I stood up and gazed at her, my Queen Of The Night, aware of the pain in my changing body and the howl that was welling up inside and would soon be sent forth, irresistably, into the night skies.

Grey is the colour of my heart,
brimming with unwanted brokenness and sadness.

Perhaps a brighter dawn will come,
to dapple my sorrow with an orange loveliness?

Perhaps.

“You seem to have a spring in your step this morning,” she commented dryly.

I nodded, smiling, “Yes, woke up with it sticking out of my foot; most peculiar.”

“Doesn’t it hurt?”

“Not really, but it does mean I’ll need to buy lots of new shoes … or a drill.”

She paused frowning, “It’s not fair, you know … it makes you seem taller.”

I nodded and gave her a ridiculously joyful grin before bounding off in search of something interesting … like breakfast.

It was so unusual to see a female hitchhiker along the little country road on my daily commute to Penshurst that against my better judgement I stopped and offered her a lift. She looked at me appraisingly for a moment, wondering perhaps whether this suited, pot-belly of a man was any sort of threat, but then got in, having been won over by my engaging smile no doubt. She must have been around twenty or so, a beautiful, pale young girl in fashionably torn denim and a T-shirt that reminded me of dusky sunsets, but it was her eyes that struck me most, dazzling me with an emerald, almost snake-like intensity.

“Where would you like to go?” I asked, wrenching my eyes away.

She looked at me for a long time without speaking, and then smiling coyly, dragged a gentle finger slowly along the inside of my thigh and replied, “Where is the wind blowing today, stranger?”

I wasn’t sure whether I or the SatNav could answer that, but threw caution and my dull briefcase to the wind and drove off.

Sometimes I feel like a rug: square, warm and comforting, but more often than not walked all over and unappreciated.

What would it be like to pull the rug from under her ungrateful feet? Would it be better without anyone to walk on me at all?

I know I’d miss the smaller, gentler feet.

I guess I’ll lie here a while longer and think about it, rug that I am.

I came home today to find that the hamster had eaten Geoffrey, our kitten.

Impossible you say? but I tell you it’s true – it lay there on its side in the hamster cage, looking very smug, cheeks bulging with one very unhappy but alive kitten which I managed to rescue and calm down with a plate of cream.

I should have known something like this would happen when I found Geoffrey locked in the hamster’s roller ball the other day, but Amanda my wife told me not to be a daft egit, and she’s always right.

We’ll have to put the hamster down I guess, but I’m not going near it – the critter is looking at me with unusually beady eyes.

“Amanda, could you come here a minute please?”

Aaron sat awkwardly at the back of the chapel, his bulky, inappropriately clad frame bathed in a rainbow of dusty colours. He did not want to be here but he had promised her he would say good-bye. A ghostly minister droned on about life’s passing and hereafter glories, things that neither he nor Aaron really believed in. She was dead and that was that – dust to dust. Form dictated that they should be here, but it was empty, a vestigial residue of more superstitious times. Aaron walked to the front where the coffin lay enshrouded in candlelit mahogony, silk and flowers, and leaned over to kiss her cold lips, one last time.

I closed the hotel room door with a sigh and went through my usual routine: checking out the view from the window, unpacking, adjusting the air con, taking a long hot shower, raiding the bar, and finally lying down on the bed flicking distractedly through the TV channels and thinking about getting another job; Hilton had done it’s best with the room, but it was still largely indistinguishable from the hundred other such rooms I had lived in, apart however from one striking peculiarity: a dusty oil painting hanging on the wall above the TV.

I switched off the TV and got up, intrigued, gazing intently at the richly textured painting of a beautiful young woman in white muslin walking along a lonely, misty beach, against a distant backdrop of the sea and a pretty little cottage nestled in the dunes; and I felt myself strangely drawn in, captivated by the beauty of the setting and the graceful motion of the young woman.

And then, suddenly, my world went dark and for what seemed an age there was nothing … until light reappeared and she was there above me, an impish smile on her lips, extending her hand to help me up. I stood shaking, the roar of the ocean in my ears, struggling to comprehend this dreamlike state.

She continued to hold my hand and then showed me a little cameo on which was engraved a curious picture of what looked like my hotel room. I reached for it, but she just skipped away, laughing gaily, and threw the cameo into the surf before beckoning me to follow her.

The great human domino experiment got more media attention than Simon Henslop had anticipated, and not surprisingly, for a 6 mile long snake of naked humans stretching all the way from Buckingham Palace, through the royal gardens to Piccadilly was quite a sight. Why, even the cranks and generally opinionate had left their soap boxes to watch the spectacle, and being a fine day, an unusual thing in itself in England, the crowds were out in droves, while an enterprising Sun reporter handed out cards to promising buxom lasses in the line, offering Page 3 spreads.

Noon came and Simon Henslop stepped up – amidst amidst a flurry of flashes and smiling at the crowds – to the first person in line, a tall, rather enviably well-endowed man with a broad, barrel chest, and pushed him over. The man fell backwards, knocking over the middle-aged woman behind him, who in turn fell backwards, and thus was started the Great Human Domino Experiment: one by one, ten by ten, hundred by hundred, until a seamless snake of falling humans wove its way along history … at least until suddenly it stopped.

The crowds gasped – there was a broken link – while Simon Henslop stood, stunned, unable to speak, to grasp the end of his dream.

A hairy little naked fellow tapped him on the shoulder, “I say, Mister Henslop, sir, I’m terribly sorry, it was my fault, but I was desperate for a pee. Any chance we could start again?”

The autumn leaves raced ahead of the icy breeze, jostling for position like noisy children, swirling around my feet before skipping on in joyful exhuberance. I stood alone on Southwark bridge – disturbed only by the occasional scurrying commuter – dreamily watching the murky waters of the Thames flow by, while nearby a boat advertised Exciting Day Cruises, but now floated, groaning against its moorings, its solitary flagrope clinking mournfully against the railings.

My reverie was interrupted by a soft, plaintive, “Hello?” – I looked down to see a young man dangling from a bunjee rope, a few feet above the water – “Any chance you could help me?”

I stared at him for a minute, then shouted back, “Sure thing! Hang on!”

Smiling at my own joke I then proceeded to unhook the rope from its fixing on the bridge, and as I watched him fall into the water, spluttering some unrepeatable words, it occurred to me that these Londoners are a very strange lot indeed.