Hymn

Yellow

We’ve left it languishing outside our front door for a few days now.  We didn’t ask for it and we don’t want it.  It’s bulky, heavy and virtually impossible to use because of the utterly random categorisation they use.  And besides, we’re lazy and we can’t be bothered to move it.  Seems like our neighbours feel the same.  We’re playing a game of Junk Mail Chicken.  How long can we leave them outside, flagrantly lowering the tone of the street, before one of us cracks? 

Out of this World

“I’d like to go in an alien spaceship.  So long as they didn’t do too much to me.  I wouldn’t want to be impregnated though.”  She said matter-of-fact and unprovoked.  "After childbirth, I think I could cope with most experiments."

Scale

I first heard him as I wandered up the garden to add nutrients to my compost bin.  It was an otherwise quiet and peaceful morning but two doors down, the Gothic Trumpeter was practising his scales.  Badly.  Doe-ray-me-fah-so-la-tee-duh.  That last note repeatedly wrong.  In the time it took me to mosey up, encourage my decomposing vegetables and potter back again he hadn’t played it right six times in row.  I understand dogged enthusiasm in the face of obvious inability so this didn’t faze me.

Twelve hours later I’m back in the garden retrieving some implement from the shed and wafting through the twilight, the same flawed musical sequence.  Twelve hours later.  And exactly, I mean exactly, the same mistake.  Perfectly reproduced each time.  I stood and listened.  No variation whatsoever.  Time after time.  And then it occurred to me - maybe it was just a recorded ruse to disguise the fact that he slept through every hour of daylight.  Almost made me fish the used garlic bulbs out of the bin.

Nocture

I pulled up just before midnight.  It was a clear night with a brilliant three-quarter moon - it was as bright as polished silver but utterly silent.  He was just leaving.  All in black, he looked no more than a shadow.  I couldn't quite see if his feet touched the floor.  He looked hungry, the Goth from three doors down.  I think he waved at me, or he could have been wiping away the cobwebs from his recent slumber.  I pretended to look for something in my car.  Doors locked.  He wasn't carrying his trumpet - he wasn't going to practice.

It might just be a coincidence but we have bats roosting in the eaves. 

Battle Dress

Everyone it seemed was curious.  Staring openly with quiet asides to companions.  There, sat in the middle of the hall, was a squaddie in full battle dress.  Desert fatigues. With helmet.  Sat on bulging kit bags. No obvious firearm, but we wondered.  As if a soldier casually out and about wasn’t such a strange sight in these Terrible Times, this one was a girl.  I know.  I know.  People do all sorts of things these days, but still, it felt a bit like seeing Uncle Steve in a dress for the first time.   

Nail It

You don’t get to see much on the Tube.  Obviously being underground doesn’t help but often it’s so cramped you can’t even look down the carriage:  the best you can hope for is a relatively plain shirt or jacket in front of your nose.  If the pattern’s too busy your brain starts constructing one of those disturbing 3D images that eventually form out of apparently random dots. You end up travelling from one side of Town to the other staring at a black and white pineapple floating on a stranger’s back.  Once all I could see from Shepherds Bush to Baker Street was a close approximation of Janet Street Porter’s head bobbing gently off the sleeve of a short Polish man.  Today however, I looked up not down, at the hands wrapped with white knuckles onto overhead handles.  I could see seven or eight hands probably.  Every one had immaculate, I mean immaculate, nails.  Men’s as well as women’s.  Beautifully manicured and shaped, not chipped, not uneven, not a bitten one among them, not a shoddy cuticle in sight, no varnish, no tips, no dirt, nothing but perfection.  Forty-odd fingers and thumbs - all faultless.  Then five ragged, torn and filthy ones.  Mine.

Moth Man

It’s a secret and slightly twisted other world.  Town, actually.  Oh, on first glance it looks normal enough: that’s part of its spell.  It’s like the optical illusion where all the apparently parallel lines aren’t or the waitress with a sticky-out Adam’s apple and hairy hands.  Bands of oriental triplets roamed the high street; geriatric mothers milled around outside bankrupt haberdasheries and none of the dogs had more than three legs.  Just when I thought it couldn’t get any more weird, I was attacked by an imaginary moth.  A great big thing it was.  It landed on my neck before fluttering upwards, horribly flapping its wings against my head and brushing them against my hair.  Horrible.  Horrible.  Horrible.  Except it wasn’t.  I just turned into a madman waving his hands above his head and swatting thin air.  Fitted right in.

Pouring Over the Detail

Come on.  We’ve all done it: stood in silent astonishment at the sounds emanating from a closed toilet cubicle.  Emptying a water butt into the pan from a great height is the only way I can describe the noise.  A pouring of truly mind-blowing volume and duration.  A bladder the size of a swimming pool.  I wasn’t sure whether to applaud the extraordinary feat of it or call a doctor.

Confusion Rains

I’m not entirely sure what you call them.  We used to say “Gypsies” but not any more.  Apparently, some Romanians have made that a trademark, in same way that FCUK and Coke are protected brands with anti-establishment connotations.  “Travellers” doesn’t really fit - it conjures up romantic adventures meandering through exotic locations: this group moves from one municipal car park or recreation ground to another only through the threat of an eviction notice.  A neighbour calls them ‘Dirty Thieving Bastard Tinkers’ but I’m not so sure.  I’ll settle with ‘Caravan People,’ it sounds bland and nondescript enough to please everyone.

They’ve reappeared, overnight, on the disused side of the Cattle Market car park.  A dozen caravans and mobile homes.  And swarms of children. 

A large group of men stood around a car deep in animated discussion.  Children played in small groups around the site.  Some chased dogs or pigeons.  The three young girls nearest the edge were skipping.  They all seemed completely oblivious to the torrential downpour that made millions  of raindrops explode on the wet ground and filled the air with heavy drumming.  My sodden trousers stuck to my legs, my shoes leaked and the pathetic excuse of an umbrella merely channelled the water into streams that unerringly hit my face and neck.  They didn’t seem to notice a thing.

As I looked, I saw a train of kids running across the camp.  One wore grey leggings and a bright red puffer jacket.  Over by one of the mobile homes, another cluster, and amongst them, a slight girl in grey leggings and a bright red puffer jacket.  Obviously imagining things, I looked back to the first group; they were still scampering around but as I scanned further, there was a third girl, identically clothed in grey leggings and a bright red puffer jacket in the doorway of a mobile home.  The mildly unsettling aspect was that I could never see any more than one of the girls at a time.  And that made me feel as though I was bit part in a surrealist film.  Again.

Pegs

“Ooo! New clothes pegs!”  And the saddest thing?  That wasn’t sarcasm, I was genuinely excited.  Someone, please, shoot me now.