In the grounds of the Children’s Benevolent Trust was a large pond, cupped by willows on three sides, creating a curtain of green and willow-white. It was under this curtain that the warden Mrs Chattenoire hid her refrigeration unit – a small diesel engine that pumped heat from the pond, leaching it of vital centigrades. As a result, there was always a layer of ice on the surface – thick enough to hold the first few steps of a curious child, but thin enough to crack and swallow them whole.
“That ice” chuckled Mrs Chattenoire, “is mostly malice.”
Archives: October 2014
Anthropomorphic
He’s a tetchy old bugger.
He bloody hates commuting you see. All those wide people and men with overspread knees and headphones susstattering at you when you haven’t really woken up yet.
People who turn the page of the newspaper noisily. Man he really gets riled by that. Every flick and crack of the page is worth five or ten heartbeats a minute.
He’s not good when he’s hungry either – it seems to irritate him and nudge him towards the spleenventingly unfuckingreasonable.
Once he’s had breakfast he begins to behave like the world wasn’t invented for the sole purpose of pissing him off. Until he sees the morning’s emails.
Emails. They breed overnight. You leave two or three of them sitting in your inbox and by morning there’s fifty six of the little buggers all clamouring for attention. Needy little chicks all beak-wide-open cheeping at you begging for you to feedmefirst.
You can’t just kill them all. Control A Delete stamping on the nest with your boot and crushing the chirpy wormgobblers into a silent pulp because it’s not polite and it’s cruel and there are rules about that sort of thing.
Old grumpyboots is unconbloodyvinced. He’s pretty certain that an email that isn’t a reply to one he sent first is bloody spam and deserves to die. Left to his own devices he’d sit there hitting DEL fifty six times, and the best I can do to prevent him is to let him fire off one really massive over-reaction to some perceived slight.
That done, he’s got time to bubble up some proper resentment against the idle little bastards who rock up at nine o’bloody clock in the morning when you’ve been there for an hour and a half already and then potter around having a piss and getting a coffee and logging on and don’t even start being bloody productive until gone half past.
Then a morning of fuckwittery and dumbuggery as a never ending stream of people who haven’t got a fucking clue book his time just to torture him with their stupidity.
By lunchtime he’s got hungry again so he stops being quite so reasonable and his instinct control gets a little weak.
A good lunch calms him down some, provided he doesn’t eat at his desk and catch up on the emails again – usually the replies from the idle buggers who weren’t at work yet when he wrote to them before nine o’clock.
The afternoon’s often a little quieter, some of his pent up fury is wrapped up in tackling the afterlunch snoozies, but by five the pressure’s built up again and it needs an outlet and if you let him he will target you and everyone else and most of all himself until he’s spent and the day is done.
I’d like to think that that tetchy old bugger was my alcoholism – my addiction, and that he was somehow someone else entirely, but that’s not true. That grumpy bastard’s just me, unfettered and furious. All I have to do is to remember to check the locks every day.
Wrestle
Nonunhappiness. A deadened, dulled state of existing not living, where the horror of unhappy is avoided at the cost of happy.
Two thirds of the way through every romantic comedy is the part where it’s all going wrong, where I hug a cushion and yell “No ! No ! No !” at the screen and my wife laughs at me for taking it all so seriously.
But without the cushiongrabbing moment there is no heartfilling, triumphal “Yes !”
Wrestling against the edges of emotion is pinning your life to the mat shouting “Submit !”
Through gritted teeth I shout “No ! No ! No !”
Quest
Sir Charles sat upright on the stool allowing Knipe his valet to tilt his head back and forth and side to side as the razor scratched and slid across his jaw. Knipe’s fingers tugged at his skin, stretching his face into comical clown shapes and hiding his jawbone under sheets of skin and jowl fat. The towel around his neck smelt freshly laundered, the shaving soap the same blend his father had favoured and Knipe’s father had lathered before him.
Knipe wiped off the last of the soap with a clean flannel into which he had poured cool water and a few drops of lemon oil before handing Sir Charles a fluffy towel with which to dry his face.
“Thank you Knipe. I shall take breakfast in the conservatory.”
“Very good sir”
Knipe placed the towels and flannel into his enamel basin, slotted the razor into his apron pocket along with the soap dish and drew the strop over his shoulder. He headed downstairs to let chef know Sir Charles was ready for breakfast and where it should be served.
His master walked as purposefully as he always did towards the conservatory. The sun was shining, and he felt like sitting amongst his oranges, lemons and olives. A little part of Hampshire rich with the trees of Spain and memories of dark eyes laughing.
He was fondly lost in a long time ago when Sanders came in with his tray.
Swiftly and neatly, he placed the cutlery on the table – a steak knife and a fork, the salt and pepper at nine O’Clock and a glass of water, an apple juice and a strong, black French coffee from twelve to two.
The warmed plate with poached eggs on one slice of granary toast, halved; its flattened edge parallel to the table edge and, as Sir Charles sat, the simple, heavy cotton napkin addressed to his right hand.
“Excellent Sanders. Good man”
Sanders dipped his head in confirmation and silently left the room.
Two shots of black pepper for each egg. One each of salt.
Sir Charles sliced decisively diagonally across each egg, the edge of his mouth curled upwards at the sight of the rich, golden yolk spilling into the channel cut into firm white eggflesh and across the toast. The steak knife then cut clean through the corner of the toast, capturing a neat edge of egg and as his fork pushed through the right angled triangle of toast created he registered the satisfying depth of the toast and its pleasing colour and crunch. Chef had taken care not to let poaching water sit on the egg and wet the toast.
He drank deeply. First the water, then the apple juice and, once the egg was finished, the palette cleansing coffee. He cleaned the edges of his mouth with the napkin and pulled the last bit of egg white from between his front teeth with his tongue.
Standing, he threw the napkin down across the plate and breathed in the mixed citrus oils of his indoor garden. Today was going to be a good day.
As for the rest of the unruly world, he was less sure, but the quest for perfection had started well.