ECHO 28/2/06


A and L, an Ozzie couple, have moved into the house and it fills with the stench of his grass smoking – it stays in the nostrils, a present sweetness –

A, 30 going on 21, is the son of an archdeacon and he has a large tattoo on his right leg proclaiming ‘Son Of A Preacher Man’ – he is a hip-hop devotee and talks constantly about the new turntables he is about to take delivery of - he smokes constantly, is addicted to the stuff – and with my history I recognize the signs: the poor communication skills, the mood swings, the furtive behaviour, the devotion only to smoking at any given opportunity whether it be first thing in the morning before work or for the entirety of the evening – a day off work is seen as a full day to smoke and get stoned – the need comes before anything else it is the priority around which everything else is balanced – and it affects his relationship with L – with him in a permanent stoned state the way he relates grates against her sparky computer-whizz kid personality, she is stifled by it and that is evident – they rarely go to bed at the same time as A sits up on his own in his smoking den rolling joints and watching late night TV – Christ I remember the pointlessness of it all, the solitary malaise and funk of getting stoned alone, the feelings of separation and stagnation, of becoming distant from oneself, and of the constant fear and paranoia – what is A running from? because that is what it is really about when you smoke that much, subsuming some unresolved anger or despair – tension rises between them as L berates A in front us in the kitchen last evening, he raises his eyes and leaves the room – this only their second night in the house –

snow and a bracing wind this morning – I watch the dead leaves from last fall spiraling, caught in the corner of the garden fence – the naked tree rocks fiercely in its upper branches where Blue and Great Tits and the occasional Robin plunder the fresh buds, tiny green morsels – A enters the kitchen in a white bathrobe his eyes puffy with post-stoned morning lethargy built up in his sleep -

- - - - - -

My father goes back into hospital unable to breathe properly – I spoke to him only a few days ago and he sounded weak, heavy with infection and wheezing – it’s a very troubling situation – my Mother in turn is losing her voice through stress and worry – questions of mortality at the back of my mind throughout the day –

ECHO 26/2/06

She tells me the story of F over breakfast. F had been a school friend in the 60s and died a few months ago after years of alcoholism. Her family were no longer traceable (a brother, who had two aliases, eluded the police; all other immediate relatives were dead). Brian her lover, also an alcoholic, had died of throat cancer four years before. F was left with her cats and a friendly hairdresser who would visit once a month to cut her hair, and who it was had found F’s corpse slumped in an armchair. At the time the police were unsure as to whether or not she had taken her own life. However, at the inquest in Winchester, the doctor’s report made it clear that it was a combination of cirrhosis of the liver and hepatitis that had killed her. She had no effects of any worth, having spent all her money primarily on drinking; her clothes were borrowed or cast-offs passed on by friends. She did spend some of her income on her cat as the creature was found to be in good health. What was ultimately most tragic was that this woman, a wreck at the end of her life, had been a staunch anti-Apartheid journalist in South Africa for fifteen years, and had been imprisoned for what she had written. She had achieved something powerful with her life and talent. Had shown huge courage, bravery and commitment. How did she end up dying alone? What led her to a place of such despair having been someone of such strength? Was it simply down to the alcohol addiction? If so what had caused her to use it that way?

The details and the bigger picture of a life. Reconstructing it appeals to me. Why? Primarily because no one else was there to celebrate it. Her funeral had been attended only by a handful of school friends and some professional mourners and a few nuns. Because that final solitary part of her life must have been so painful, agonizing, and presumably full of hidden grief.

I wonder what happened in South Africa during her imprisonment. Something tough that never left her? Perhaps she was the victim of, or witness to, some of the beatings and torture that went on as part of the justice system or the violence perpetrated elsewhere? Something difficult to deal with in the long run? Maybe a friend or friends were killed? I think back to my visit to Robben Island and know that anything was possible in that time. Sad too to realize that in the end her life had only moved from one cell to another, that she became as much a prisoner of addiction and place in the UK as she was a prisoner of conscience in SA.

Wine from 11a.m. So she was a wino. Something slightly more feminine about that than say whisky. She could, as many alcoholics are, be capable of great charm that would be subsumed by an abusive, volatile personality when visited by friends or when talking on the phone.

Something was being gently revealed as the story was told – something elusive yet important and fascinating, sad as it was. I became curious to know what fears she had and what, if any, ambitions still made her daydream. She was highly intelligent after all. Who was the husband she married for three weeks in SA? Why did his brother when contacted by the authorities about her death claim he had paid for the funeral and wanted reimbursing when in fact it had been a Council burial as there was no immediate next of kin to pay for it?

Three places - two weeks, February

TRACK OF THE WEEK

Wandering Soul - by Kate Rusby from the album The Girl Who Couldn't Fly

ECHO 24/2/06

The Flaneur

Some sinister essence through Heron Quays, Canary Wharf, then on towards Limehouse and Shadwell where the seeds of history are more present, brief glimpses through the modern veil something parting, time travel occurring if you take the time to look – a pub called The Artful Dodger, grim, blackened front –
Investigating that area around Greenwich and Deptford and across the river into the Isle of Dogs – inevitable constant reminders of history – the Ravensbourne River close by, bridged first in 1830 – someone once said that the process of investigation was always more interesting than the result, outcome or final story –
Tia Maria cake from Hammersmith Farmers Market in the snow –
A tramp (dirty grey beard, stained pale blue coat, carrier bag) crossing a modern plaza square (little fountains dotted here and there) at an angle to a pretty young businesswoman on her way to work; he can’t take his eyes off her legs – Pavarotti sings ‘M’appari’ on a radio which accompanies the scene – the tramp eventually clashes into a chrome chair outside a café at the edge of the square –
The flaneur is a dying breed, if not dead already; too much fear on the streets to encourage that free roaming – but still that aptitude for walking and observing along an unplanned path, taking note, trying to absorb aspects of place, to allow them beneath the skin; to understand what lies in the brickwork, the people, the historic ‘stain’ with all its repetitions and reasons why certain things happen in a place, even why they have always recurred and attracted certain people or groups or activities – perhaps the flaneur is a vestige of the nomadic, scratching away at the sedentary; by necessity an eccentric governed by this obsession to resurrect archaeology and populate it with the cross-references of fact both past and present and fiction - the closest now is the psychogeographer, far more covert and occult in his/her activity – though perhaps even that behaviour is the influence of the modern city or the times?

ECHO 23/2/06

One Day’s Preoccupations:

Mangy-tailed fox, beautiful face, crosses the road 8am on the Pepys Estate heading into the giant warehouse opposite; she waits on the pavement in full view, fearless, watching the buses pull up at the stop and commuters climbing aboard – a discarded morsel has her eye and she will wait until she can slink over and retrieve it –
Natural mystic – on the tube she reads a print out about the Gospels, a call to hear them, and with a yellow highlighter pen she marks: Luke – on the front page of the dailies the image of a bombed Shi-ite shrine in Sammara, Iraq signals civil war – millenarian times –
The Itinerant – freedom at the expense of security – heading for another crossroads with dust of the road behind –
Buster Keaton, Harry Caul (The Conversation), Adrian Monk – outsiders trying to be understood, reaching out in their individual ways only to be thwarted in their attempts –
Teodoro, the character I’m playing at the moment, is the same – something protected inside which at the same time he is desperate to have cracked open and revealed –
My father’s health, my mother’s ability to cope in the long term and the geographic distance I am from them – I wonder if I shouldn’t move to Italy for a little while after the job in London, help them out, look after them both? –
Snow comes, acute –
I don’t want to use any old tricks in the production, in playing Teodoro; don’t want to rely on repeating anything easily accomplished –
I wonder who Rebecca was – her name is on a sticker stuck to a wardrobe in one of our new rooms here – was she young when the family moved in, and then grew through her teens here, watching the tree in the garden grow from her window, the occasional limb lopped off when it got too near the house? Maybe she had her first boyfriend or girlfriend during this time, sauntering over to the little park behind the house, arm in arm, to sneak a kiss and cuddle out of sight of her vicar Dad?

ECHO 22/2/06

The Harp of Erin is still a drinking pub – I was wrong - by day it looks like it is abandoned (grilles over windows, boarded doors, advertising posters on them) yet from 6pm it is open – clashing at the edge of reality – inside a woman drinks alone at the brightly lit bar, hair in a tight ponytail, fingers wrapped round a cigarette – two Nigerian men in duffel coats, collars turned up against the cold, drinking stout and talking fast – a large blonde woman in her early 40s stoops over a pool table at the back – banners are strung along the ceiling and around the glass shelf over the bar: Union Jacks, Jamaican flags, Nigerian, Cameroon – from the street the whole is over-exposed by the bright lighting, almost cinematic – it is a forlorn place, tucked into a corner of the world – its exterior of pink and white seems comical now, mutton dressed as lamb.

ECHO 20/2/06

New journey – The Harp Of Erin, forgotten 1930s pub, decorated like a large pink and white iced cake – McManus and Son (Builders) know the place well, their fathers before them used to dink in there – up to Harnworth Quays, huge corrugated steel edifices, ministries of public opinion, churning out The Daily Mail and the Evening Standard – Neptune Street comes like a wave before Jamaica Road – a young office worker finishes her make-up on the bus, brushes on cheeks, pouting lips at her reflection in the windows – through Druid Street and past Crucifix Lane, the smell of pagan and rotting Christianity – I wonder then if I still have the power and faith to create what is necessary over the next few weeks here in London, rehearsing a new character only half formed on paper, a sketch – a lone red telephone box stands in the midst of a desolated building site – signs proclaim ‘urban serenity’ in Wimpeys Watergardens condominium near the Arbuckles, Pizza Hut complex – nearby the Osprey Estate is degraded to the point of becoming dark matter and imploding, presumably taking all urban serenity with it when it goes - the grey areas of morality near Waterloo in the lee of the Eurostar station – a commuter talking into his hands free overly loud so we all know his business, Phases of Gravity held in the palm of his hand almost religiously, a biblical attempt – any journey into the unknown or along an unfamiliar route is bound to be a process of accruing information, direction, deletion, and reassessment, changes in tack and environment; it requires one constant whatever journey it may be: patience; marry that with an open-minded ability to leave ones preconceptions behind, and you will arrive at a good destination (except, that is, in rush hour in the metropolis) – the bloody arms of Parliament loom silently, unannounced, upon us as we cross Westminster bridge; the breath of heartache and lies still vividly upon it: the bleeding Iraqis, the families of dead service men and women – meanwhile the tourists still come to sample it digitally, take home their little record of history and tradition, the evidence of age without wisdom – and not far away New Scotland Yard has removed all evidence of itself; all the adverts to join the force, all banners and signs, all phone numbers and across every street level window bomb-proof curtains have been drawn – strange coincidences then of meeting old friends and recent acquaintances -

ECHO 19/2/06

Early Sunday morning in the city – Deptford High Street and the Kentish girls are heading homeward in their 4x4 Ravs and their Mini Coopers after a long night out, stereos playing loud dance music; one stops to pick up a hitch-hiker, black guy carrying work tools and a hard-hat – the newspapers are laid out by the Asian couple that own the little general stores, being the only shop open at 7.30am – magpies are like different creatures here, not shy and guarded like their rural relatives, instead these here wait close perched on railings and fences almost at eye level and watch you wander past without flying away, chattering – the buildings in the area are a mix of blemished ageing edifices and, further back from the main road, London low-rise ‘50s and ‘60s flats – the older properties have a tarnished grandeur: stucco and plasterwork decorations and embossed details of leaves, wreaths, filigree curlicues and porticos now flaking; some have corner turrets capped with ornate spires or weather-vanes or copper-stained slates –

Dream of South London and the pop groups of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s – Squeeze, The Jam – I am on a playground swings with an unidentified mate; we are raucously singing ‘Going Underground’ and ‘Another Nail In My Heart’ as we swing back and forth – we're dressed as snappily as possible for the time: black stay-press trousers, white shirts and a Harrington and duffel coat; my mate - lets call him Haggis for old times sake - has a trilby on, loafers and white socks – there is huge energy and fun emanating from us - we are no older than 19 years, 20 max – a female friend passes, we've known her for ages since school and after – black jumper and scarf, ponytail, drainpipe jeans – she shouts something when we say hello, scolds me angrily then yells that she is getting divorced already (from another mate of mine) and bursts into tears – I jump down from the swings and tell her I’m sorry – she looks fit to collapse so I take her off to a Turkish café a short walk away; we sit outside and she tells me all about the arguments, the coldness, the fruitless attempts at making it work, the bullshit that my mate has been giving her while he’s been off with other girls – she cries on my 19 year old shoulder and I wonder what it’s all about this growing up lark, she’s only two months older than me and now she looks lonelier than an OAP – somewhere ‘All Around The World’ by The Jam is playing on Radio 1 –

That odd sensation of waking up in a new home – the unfamiliar noises that you isolate in the dead of night and try to work out what they are and where they are coming from – eventually they will become commonplace and thereby virtually unnoticeable, but for now they are present: the clunking of the boiler and the ensuing throbs and pops of the central heating; the shifting of floorboards as they expand or contract to temperature – the disorientation of unknown place and presence – and then where I sit and write in a room at the front with the blinds down, pinned to the wall handwritten on a faded scrap of paper is this quote:

'I said to the man who stood at the gate "Give me light that I may tread safely into the unknown," and he replied "Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God. That shall be to you better than the light and safer than a known way."

ECHO 18/2/06

Home like some odd, raggedy palace on the high road eastwards, not far from Marlowe’s haunt, the river a whisper on the other side of a council estate where it branches into muddy creeks and inlets still populated by warehouses and shady alleyways – far lights and balconies – a room facng the road with exposed wooden floorboards throughout and Victorian fireplaces tiled green still cold – a large annexe where the diocese used to hold their meetings and Church dances and which we hope will become our play and party den – the attic space is full of junk and old wooden beams – Pol does so well all day, suffering from almost incapacitating pains and back problems she carries on with barely any complaints pulling at the cases and boxes and bags (our meager possessions this time round), shuffling a new space to make it home – meanwhile we find our feet in the city once again: the totality of people, the hurried and the harried, the spatially inept, the attitudinal street boys n’ gals and hoodies and skaters and gangstas all pursing their lips in some strange universal challenge or trying to stare people out with iron gazes – and then there is the river here, with its one –eyed spies and swindlers, the charlatans of the north bank watching, waiting, asking questions of the south with an arch smile and a nod to the past – strange too that I know this place from before, to be familiar with it from almost a decade ago, the doors and the tavern behind –

ECHO 17/2/06

Setting to move back to London – trepidation, but now things become wide open again – working again which I need to do and some sense space – the only task is how adaptable we will be to the changes? Dramas are forming as disparate people claim territory and little governances of the house, domesticities, power games – still, elsewhere the stars were out, the pub warm and friendly with its spike-haired locals reeling back home along Toms Town Lane or falling into the River Arrow -

ECHO 16/2/06

Abu Ghraib prison coughs up its ugly memory once again as more images of abuse of detainees are released – sordid, bloody sequences – harrowing – the motions of a prisoner bashing his head in anguish against a huge steel door that he has been strapped to – dogs snarling at prisoners – naked men tied together or being knelt on by US soldiers – smears and pools of blood – I wonder if the history of that place is inescapable, that it is passed on to a legacy of evil kept alive by the US Army and Government, a legacy that the US is condoning and seemingly prepared to expand upon in turn making them blatantly no better than Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship – do they believe that they are morally faultless since 9/11? That horrid episode is an excuse for sanctioned behaviour like this? In which case are they not tarring the memory of those people who dies in the Twin Towers? Surely their suffering and their families suffering should not beget bestial torture in their name? And that justice and truth become empty rhetoric in the mouths of Bush, Rumsfeld, and Cambone? Are not the people of Iraq also worth that honesty if they are to have any faith in the attempt to bring them some sense of self-governance? Can you blame them for anger when the history of a place like Abu Ghraib is being brought back to life? Why would anyone want to model themselves on killers and torturers in the name of democracy? How is it that the neo-cons are blind to this?

TRACK OF THE WEEK

San Michele Arcangelo - from Birds & Church Windows by Ottorino Respighi.

ECHO 15/2/06

Scattered feathers, pale at the edge of a field – a bloody bloom on the soil; an extraordinary mark of death in early Spring – a Sparrowhawk inevitably borne down from above onto an unknowing Woodpigeon – despite the stillness here now, it can still be imagined, the energy left behind in that wide circle of feathers and down with the dash of gore is enough to provide one with an image of the moment of impact –

Images released of British soldiers (boys) smashing Iraqi teenagers over their heads and bodies with thick riot sticks, pummeling the writhing boys on the floor hidden behind a wall and a voice accompanies the activity, a voice from behind the camera full of glee and enjoyment at the scene as if it is simply an innocent schoolyard ‘bundle’ –

A storm beats at the window all night – doors crack and panes of glass shatter – when the day finally breaks it is clear, almost magnified -

ORNITHOLOGICAL CHECKLIST

Redwing – 20+ Goldfinch – 3
Long Tailed Tit – 8 Goldcrest – 2
Buzzard – 1 Fieldfare – 10+
Grey Wagtail – 2 Greenfinch – 2
Green Woodpecker – 1 Lapwing – 20+
Yellowhammer - 2

ECHO 12/2/06

My Papa taken into hospital with pneumonia, apparently mild but it is putting his heart under strain – not long after I get this news I wander the house feeling lost and with a sense of dread – imagery of oxygen masks and desperate breathing, these kinds of horrors – I stop at the window at the top of the stairs, it seems an apt place to come to rest and I don’t know why at first, but I’m attracted to the raw wooden sill and frame, it comforts me – I watch cats and blackbirds shadow each other in the garden; or else eating windfall apples at the foot of the tree, their soft innards exposed to the drizzle and turning brown – funny that last evening, dining out with Pol’s parents, we talked at length about my fathers pride in his work and achievements, his history and the communities he grew about his restaurants in the UK – even though his passing seems unlikely today or in fact as a result of this sudden illness, I know that I have to deal with the inevitable and it saddens me – I take a long walk this evening out to the River Arrow, the drizzle still falling; a great sense of peace and warmth out in the meadows, of silence and reflection – the worry of the day lifts and a small, sharp pebble in my boot digs into my foot and keeps me in the present, stopping my mind from dwelling on possibilities, the scenarios of grief – symbolism was everywhere: dense, impenetrable trees dripping, almost sweating, in damp folds and soft mossy places; a shallow stagnant pond by the name of Grey Lady Lake hidden in a wood with dark twisted objects just beneath the water – for a brief time I have premonitions and anticipations, as if at every birdcall or rising of crows from their roosts, someone might try to get in touch with me with bad news –

ECHO 10/2/06

Big wooden barriers, slats burnished to a metallic sheen by the weather – in the Southwark Diocese offices we meet a friendly woman and a wiry, thin bishop who peers at us through thick glasses – London seems void of people today, there are empty spaces where people used to be, and it feels strange (again I have that feeling of it being at arms length from me, veiled) – I recall Karl Wallinger in his studio, I wonder what he’s doing now after all that speed and activity, up there high above the city, gazing back in time – many dead flies on the windowsill, ornately splayed legs, thorax curved over to touch the head, caught in the afternoon light, swallowed by dust – all these young film-makers and TV Drama students come in with their little digi-cams and hide behind the pop-out LCD screens, mumbling their way through their sessions, a lack of expression, a lack of communication, surely storytellers should be able to communicate?

ECHO 8/2/06

Who knows of Samashki in Chechnya? Who made any noise about it in the West? About the degradation of morality there perpetrated by the Russian army, by the ‘new’ Russian leaders? Who knows that the small town was shelled perpetually for months? That civilians were targeted before any strategic, historic or symbolic target; that the occupation force regularly entered the town on foot or in tanks in the supposed search for Chechen rebel fighters and instead laid waste to houses, torching them, bombarding them, maintaining a cordon of fear. But more than that, fuelled by the cocktail of drugs (Promodol and Dimedrol) issued in their first aid kits, the soldiers shot civilians point blank, not just men of fighting age but women, children and animals too. They opened up hiding places and burned people alive in them, pouring petrol in and setting light to them with a match or a grenade. It was even reported that a child was lynched and his body remained hung from a tree with a sign around his neck that reminded the population that ‘The Russian Bear has awoken.’

Hypocrisy begins at home.

- - - - - -

Panic and fear, anxiety riddling my body at 2a.m. Can’t sleep; lie waiting for it to return or for the dawn to appear whichever comes first. Mind creates a maelstrom of images and concerns amounting to overload: time passing, where is my life going; the grip of failures; money worries; immediately, the fear of having to drive the M40 later in the morning on little or no sleep – feel my self literally shrink and shrivel –

Eventually, behind the wheel, I see the dawn and it comes on glorious; a slow, visual rumble of burning pink at first, a gross ember. Then somewhere near Banbury the sun breaks the horizon and blinds the East-facing, burning off any thin cloud and gradually summoning blue –

ECHO 7/2/06

Something in the harsh glare of halogen lamps almost bleached but still maintaining its form – something pushing at the boundaries, beyond the norm, beyond predictable (is it possible?) – a blast on paper seeking out the darkest corners and throwing in light: open, vibrant, scintillating; of bare flesh, legs in unison, glossy lips, eyes of cats – beyond lethargy, tiredness – swept along by anarchic seeds, adventure, whip cracks in the street – taking a long hard look at what I’m carrying around with me, where I’ve been; more than faith, beyond belief; at the edge of things, borders, places of physical change and places that are aspects of the self – the allure of the historic, greatness through smut

Images from where I’ve been:
A plastic woman removes religion from a top step with crack pipe;
Liberal humour in cinema foyer displays self on red carpet;
Commuter woman displays underwear in high heels and neon blue;
A four digit hand at the edge of a frame tinkers with sneaker laces;
Fourteen buckets of ice on the back seat of a taxi;
A naked woman rolls on oily green tarpaulin;
Celebrities in dream states replace their respective images in Polaroid versions of themselves to cut out and keep.

ECHO 6/2/06

Karachi, Baghdad, Jakarta, Gaza City, London, Denmark – the noise is coming on loud, the volume turned up fullest into the red – everyone is demanding blood, and blood is what they will get – ours and theirs – Christian and Muslim blood, the Dark Ages are returning and we are at the behest of the elites on both sides in this decision – 2000 years means nothing, has taught us nothing about achieving a higher goal, an example of respect, education, progress, tolerance, humanity – all the words written, all the images, all the knowledge is being debased –

Meanwhile:

Michelle sits in Burger King in the Kingfisher Shopping Centre with a large paper cup of coffee and a Whopper for lunch. Black two piece, short skirt, hair back in a tight ponytail, the secretarial look is perfected. She gazes out of the window onto the mezzanine where the pushchairs and the OAPs roam; her hand ponderously placed on her cheek like she’s forgotten something. Why this underlying sense of dread or fear again? Where does it come from? It is a question she asks herself often these days, gazing into next doors garden from her first floor flat or, as now, arranging to meet her best friend for lunch; she’ll bring her three-year-old and they’ll all laugh for an hour before Michelle goes back to work in the reception at the recruitment agency fending off advances from the local lads and silly questions from the Eastern Europeans who’ve just arrived in the area looking for a job.

I am heading out to the superstore Tescos at the edge of town (Oakenshaw), and as I pull into the slip road heading toward the car park an Audi TT slips in ahead of me. Silver bodied with a pale red cabriolet soft top and either side of the number plate two silver Playboy Bunny symbols. I reckon that the guy driving this must believe himself to be some kind of super stud, but as the car takes a right hand bend ahead I see that the driver is actually a woman: late forties, serious blonde highlights, and a fake tan that makes a Seville orange look bleached by comparison – she guns the motor along one of the routes to parking spaces and slips effortlessly between a couple of family saloons. When she gets out of the car she checks to see how many people are looking at her. I am guessing she owns either a series of local body-health suites or hairdressing salons. At a guess I’d say her name was either Natalie or Tracey (with an ‘e’).

- - - - - -
Daylight and life – this is what she says she needs before her nightshift starts, so we go for a little circular walk – school’s out for the day so the road is full of cars and 4x4s, and hurried pockets of children and parents who all (can’t work out why) look vaguely scared – maybe it’s just stress – through the council estate at the end of the road, identical houses, where men collect cars that don’t go anywhere and bags of litter remain at the foot of trees and shrubs and big sisters walk their little brothers home – beyond this, numerous derelict and abandoned low lying factory pre-fabs are set back from the road, evidence of local 1960’s manufacturing hey-day long since dormant – arranged at the rear are some large machines removed from the gutted buildings, now rusting, and old lemon-yellow office furniture worn out by time and the weather – we go in to the brand new breeze-block and steel Leisure Centre, a friendly girl in a bright yellow sweatshirt and jeans shows us around the facilities: the new (empty) pool and gym hall, the changing rooms, even the barely touched drinks dispenser is a new feature – a man in his early fifties sits alone in the viewing room overlooking the pool, staring at the soft ripples on the water there, he doesn’t move as we pass by and I cannot work out what he’s doing there but either he’s a pervert waiting to watch anyone who arrives for a swim or else he’s meditating in the peace and quiet and warmth – once out of there we head back, the wind whips across the adjacent playing field and we roam along narrow alleyways between housing estates that remind me of being a teenager and losing my virginity in one on a summer’s night . . .

Cathedra (R101)

In the morning they are with ashes
Afloat, sucked within the skeleton
That titan cross-hatch of girders
Char black with experiments

Gargantuan shoulders hunched against the wind
Change colour with the cries of memory
There in their perpetually gaping mouths
Gazes turned to altitude trails flailing

More, the ball of flame to the earth echoes
Hydrogen light bodies trying to spread their wings
In shadow play - sequenced brothers of the land -
Historic comets falling for progress –

In the evening, creature forms
Wrestle with the notorious landscape
Lumber like invading alien warhorses


Cardington, Bedfordshire 2000 - 2006

ECHO 5/2/06

The couple still managed their love life despite the covert need to accomplish it without the parents overhearing or discovering them. For the woman, in fact, it became something of a thrill – the prospect of being caught aroused her even more.

- - - - - -

A man alone in his car driving at breakneck speed through the night. No longer knowing who or what he is – just going, leaving whatever past he had behind him or at least trying to – his successful partner, stability – now he loses all sense of fear and mortality and instead of heading home, guns the accelerator and follows the road wherever it will take him – he no longer feels he can provide or give, that he is not the equal of her, that his opportunities are limited and predictable – all night he goes, just the white lines and the darkness beyond the halo of the headlamps, briefly he stops at ‘Rumblin’ Tums’ café – eventually he ends up at the coast, a small fishing town – he has no idea if he is North or South but here he stops and books himself into a hotel with the notion that he might start afresh without burden of the previous ‘him’ – the blind funk, the absolute terror of jealousy and failure, of an inner loneliness turning itself into solitude in fact a call to be found -

ECHO 4/2/06

A mature woman’s aversion to ‘things’;
Feeling removed from the world due to symptoms of a heavy cold - lethargy and barriers and the inability to speak, which in turn causes familial strife;
Knowing that my parents are leaving the country and returning home soon brings back latent feelings of abandon and singularity;
The word ‘failure’ etches itself into the past 24 hours;
Cars become places of serious discussion.

ECHO 3/2/06

The students walk into the room. They are young, none older then 21. I’ve forgotten how young that is, how awkward you are in the world. Most are incredibly shy and not very good communicators. Some play ignorance like a fashion accessory, some just wear a shell. It’s hard to get the scenes we are working on and examining full of energy, to motivate them and therefore us in the process; with two exceptions throughout the entire day. I am surprised, saddened, and by the middle of the afternoon, bored. I trot off in my mind, filling in gaps and watching swans come in to land at approximately the same height as the university building we are in, their heads extended and pushing onward in unison. We take a break as dusk begins to turn the light in the room. The students thank us sheepishly and leave. I recline across three chairs, tired and at an end, a cup of instant coffee (which I hate) propped on my chest. The other actor-cum-lecturer comments that all the scripts this afternoon have had a prostitute in as protagonist; she wonders why it is that these youngsters have such a preoccupation with the seedier side of life – because it’s what they know from the TV and because it makes for ‘good’ drama material, easy drama material. We enter into a discussion about evil. Had we ever experienced true evil? Silence for the first time all day as we pondered the most interesting question we’d had to deal in that time. She answered that fortunately she didn’t believe she had. I answered that I had. And it had been a surprise because it wasn’t singular, it wasn’t personal, it was very much a collective experience of events in one particular place. I had seen it in faces and heard it in voices and felt it at the end of numerous fists. She was curious where it had been, but I couldn’t bring myself to reveal the location and I won’t here either. You’ll know it if you end up there.

ORNITHOLOGICAL CHECKLIST

Grey Wagtail – 3 Heron – 1
Pied Wagtail – 4 Goldfinch 25 +
Song Thrush – 3 Moorhen – 3
Mallard – 4 Red Kite – 1
Lapwing – 6 Redwing – 10+
Coal Tit – 1 Jay – 4
Green Woodpecker- 1 Buzzard – 1
Kestrel – 8 Sparrowhawk – 1
Wren – 2 Fieldfare – 20+
Greenfinch - 2 Nuthatch - 1

ECHO 1/2/06

In High Wycombe of all places, five flights up discussing journalism and bad theatre – realisation – a moment, there with concrete domes stretched out toward those singularly suburban hills – the truth is a difficult beast to master particularly when you are trying to write about something beyond the self – what gives a writer the right to presume that he/she could write about an issue in the rarefied atmosphere of his/her own home/workspace? If a playwright sits down to write about (for example) the US/UK invasion of Iraq, what truth can they be expressing other than second hand info and guesses?

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ROYALTY

The man walks proudly along the street in this satellite village. He walks at a pace very much his own. The village allows him that. When he moved away, years ago, to Brighton – alternative cosmopolis - he was beaten up for the way he looks, the way he crosses gender. But here, in the non-descript village where he was brought up, he is left alone; observed, yes, but left alone.

When I am introduced to him he is on his way to the shops. I have seen him do this daily. His hair is swept back from his forehead and completely bleached. Through his eyebrows are three metal studs and ring piercings. An elegant black, embroidered velvet coat, hangs heavily down to his black leather DM’s and is finished with black fur collar and cuffs. His fingernails are painted black; and he carries a black and white cow skin handbag. His face, slightly puffy, is whitened with powder, enough to change his natural skin tone; his eyebrows are neatly plucked. He does not walk so much as glide along the street, his head held high. He doesn’t say very much, doesn’t need to.

The only people that give him grief, and make him flinch with the memory of the Brighton beating, are the three lads who charge up and down the street on their mini-bikes in the early evening, hammering the air with the incessant, thin whine of their motors and throwing the occasional taunt at him as they pass. But they dare not touch him - no one does - for fear of being ostracised.

- - - - - -

Polluted nose and throat from Monday’s exposure to London.

This is a place of men in vans, with huge paunches and steely eyes.