MOVED TO TEARS

MOVED TO TEARS

"You cannot, sir, take from me anything that I will more willingly part withal – except my life, except my life, except my life."

1st movement: Vivace

Busking

A young busker entertains a subte audience by playing a little-known percussion instrument, called a hang drum, developed in Switzerland at the turn of the millennium. All are entranced, but one man in particular is moved more than most. When the busker finishes, he walks along the aisle seeking remuneration for his art. Some give a little before he reaches the moved man, who empties his pockets, then his wallet and goes on to look in his bag for further funds until he has no more money left to give. The busker, along with the travelling public, is stunned as the man then proceeds to strip, giving literally everything he has to the busker, except his body, except his sorrow, except his life. The moved man then takes his leave, and trudges off into the night. 

2nd movement: Grave

Bridge

A crying man stands on the edge of a bridge, poised to jump, when a young busker descries him and quickly starts to play his instrument, a hang drum. The crying man stops and decries him, moved.  

The Imaginary Sister

The Imaginary Sister

Desperate, deprived depressive times

A cautionary tale against the dangers, perils and pitfalls of DIY psychotherapy

“Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.”

Reader's Digest, 1957

Allen Saunders

Fin de siècle Swindon

The turn of the century Swindonian screw 

One day, Vince, an old college friend, finally invited me to his house, whereupon, at last, I met his slightly younger sister, Suzanne-Antoinetta.

I had heard much about her, much that I had liked. Perhaps I liked what I heard so much because I thought that if she had some defects of her own to deal with, I might have more luck with her. I felt that there was more of a chance that we might get on, that she may not be utterly repulsed by me - as people usually are - and, who knows? She might even like me. She seemed to me the female version of me (or at least how I used to be, as if the old me had been reincarnated in the form of a young woman).

I had been told that:

·She not only looked like a female version of her brother (who himself looked a little effeminate, the main difference was their height and hair length) but she also seemed to religiously follow the dictates of his taste in literature, as if she was a quietist nun or sister, silently worshipping him like a saint.

·She was a committed and kinky self-flagellator, and (like Des Esseintes’ mother in Joris-Karl Huysmans’ À rebours) a fulltime agoraphobe, who rarely left her boudoir, let alone the house, “immobile et couchée, dans une chambre obscure”, “a chronic invalid, who never left the precincts of a shuttered bedroom”.

·She was terminally depressed, she never spoke to anyone, she had been institutionalised in a psychiatric unit some years ago and wanted to kill herself.

So it seemed odd to me that when we entered the house, she came down the stairs asking, “Does anyone want to give me a hug?” Her brother didn’t look very keen, but reluctantly gave her a quick one anyway before pushing her away, whereupon she looked desirously at me.  

“Do you like hugs?”

“Yes,” I replied, “although I’m not accustomed to them, giving or receiving.”

“So you’re a desperate, deprived depressive like me?”

I was. And with that, she flung her arms around me and, with her mouth covered by my shoulder, the muffled words could be made out, just about:

“I feel so sad today, so sad that I think I may have reached so far down to the bottom that the only way is through the other side.”

These enigmatic words worried me, and gave cause for caution and hope in equal measure. Was she on the way up or was she feeling well enough to end it all?

“Can you come up to my room?”

I looked at my friend but said nothing.

Suzanne-Antoinetta, judging by her brother’s indifferent reaction (which she was indifferent to) went on:

“I don’t think he’ll mind if I steal you away from him for a while.”

And she was right. 

***

“as a stranger give it welcome.

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,

Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

Act 1 Scene V, Hamlet

 William Shakespeare

As they went to her boudoir, Mrs Fennel, their mother arrived home. She was a cognitive-behavioural psychotherapist, but had hitherto been unable to cure her own daughter of the melancholic malady that Suzanne-Antoinetta had suffered from for many years. Parents can only rarely teach or cure their offspring, once they have past childhood.

“Alright son? How is she today, has she come down yet?”
“Yes, but now she’s gone back up, with a strange man?”

“What! How’s that? What’s she doing with a strange man? I haven’t seen her with a member of the opposite sex - who wasn’t a relation - since she was at secondary school.”

“Maybe that’s the problem.”

“Who is this strange man anyway?”
“Don’t worry. He’s Rich, but not in that sense, or any other sense than the strictly nominal, so don’t get too excited. He’s just a “friend” of mine from college, he’s harmless. They are so depressed alone that they will make each other happy together. The last thing she needs is a Don Giovanni or Giacomo Girolamo Casanova de Seingalt, who will just fuck her today and fuck off tomorrow. That would destroy her. This guy’s so desperate that he’ll probably love her forever, or until death anyway. She’ll probably end up dumping him, which would be great for her self-esteem. He could cure her because he’s the only person on this earth who is as big a loser as she is.”

“Do you always speak so well of you friends behind their backs?”

“Yes, I do. I had successfully kept him away from my friends - except for occasional lapses, freak accidents and accidental encounters; instead, I let him linger outside on the street while I went inside their houses to see them. But there was no great problem to fear anyway when they did meet, because he doesn’t get on with anyone, and nobody ever likes him. Thus, he never became established as a member of any of my numerous groups of friends, none of which do I invite home, for obvious reasons. Eventually, I stopped mentioning my sister altogether, I even started to claim that I didn’t have one, and denied that I did if anyone suggested anything to the contrary, correcting them by referring to her merely as “my imaginary sister, that’s what you mean, isn’t it?” I’d say to them. Prior to that, when I mentioned my sister to anyone, which was very rare in any case, and never intentional, normal people just thought she sounded like a weirdo, or they felt a vague sense of pity for a couple of awkward seconds before we swiftly returned to more important matters. But not with him. When I told him I had a sister, that was enough to brighten his gloomy face. But when I described all the problems she had, his eyes lit up like a fully functioning furnace and an upside-down arched smile made such a strange shape of his mouth of the like I never thought possible on this pre-eminently sombre sulker. I could see that he wanted to meet her, and that he would wait for an invite instead of asking me to set it up. So I told him that it wasn’t a good time for her, that she was too ill, that meeting such a morose individual as him (only looking for a psychiatric suicidal case study to reduce a person to) might make her worse. But today, he asked about the Kurt Vonnegut novels he had lent me, as a sublimated way of pleading to be introduced. So I invited him here. Before I could even go to my room for the books, she came down the stairs. Usually, she looks out of the window to see if anyone’s coming home to avoid them, but today it seemed that she came down on purpose, perhaps out of curiosity, because of this strange man I was accompanied by.”

“Well, that is quite a turn of events. I can’t think where all this might lead, but I can’t see how she could get any worse, without her actually killing herself.”

“Which would be an improvement at any rate, for all concerned, for a defunct depressive is infinitely easier to live with than a finite living depressive.”

“Oh don’t say such things. But my mind’s at rest if you think he’s alright for her, even though I don’t like the things you say, you are usually a good judge of character, even if your judgements are always so severely censorious.”

At that moment, the strange man came down the stairs, alone.

“And, what happened? Hello, nice to meet you by the way, I’m Mrs Fennel.”

“It’s nice to meet you too. Um, I feel somewhat sworn to secrecy on the matter. Even if I am not a professional psychotherapist, I probably should follow the codified dictates of standard ethical practice,” he carried on in a whisper, while pointing for them to all go outside via the front door, “but as I want to help you help her, I will tell you, even if I do feel like a treacherous spy.”

“So?”

“Well, I was quite disappointed because she is not quite the depressive I was told about, and consequently expected. But I quickly realised that being with a depressive like myself would be as depressing as being with myself all the time, so I quickly perked up, and so did she, saying that for the first time in her life she didn’t feel alone. She wants me to cum again, I mean, come again, to come around more often that is, in fact, what she really said is that she wants me to move into her room with her.”

“What?”

“I tried to explain that it was not a decision for her or me to make but yours, as you are the owner of the house. Tell her I said this when she asks you, because she will soon, after I leave. The problem is that she took this as an excuse, and felt that I was rejecting her. Thus, I told her that I would come down and be nice to you, as she suggested, so that you will like me and let me stay. So here I am, despite thinking the idea to be ridiculous and unwelcome to your ears.”

“Why ridiculous?”

“I wouldn’t have imagined anyone would want me here. Why would you - or anyone else for that matter - let a strange man live in the boudoir of your depressed daughter?”
“A good point, but we are desperate, and haven’t any conventional avenues left to try. You seem to suffer from low self-esteem yourself, thinking that we wouldn’t want you here.”

“No, I have no self-esteem at all; I feel I was merely being realistic.”

“Well, if no one objects, let’s have a trial period and see how it goes. If all goes badly, as least we can say we tried. What’s the worst that could happen?”
“She could kill herself.”

“She may well do that anyway,” interjected Vince, “it’s what we’ve been waiting for.”  

“Don’t listen to him,” contested his mother. “So it’s agreed. Now what do we need? Where will you sleep?”

“She wants me to sleep with her.”
“In the same bed?”
“That’s her idea.”

“But won’t that lead to…?”

“That’s the idea,” interrupted Vince, “she’s sex starved. She’s living a life of involuntary chastity, it’s a surprise she hasn’t killed herself on live television yet like Christine Chubbuck (and with that name who can blame her), or at least it would be a surprise if anyone let her appear on TV. In any case, the cameramen would have to bring all their equipment to the house, otherwise she’d have to actually leave the house to go down to the TV studio. A good banging will do her some good, it might knock some sense into her, hopefully without knocking her up, as the love child of those two is the last thing I need or this house needs or indeed the world as a whole. She’s even started coming onto me, trying to seduce me with alcohol, cheap wine from a carton and the like, it was most upsetting, and insulting, boxed wine indeed. Am I not worth more than that, champagne at the very least, what does she take me for?”

“Why did you never tell me that, sonny boy?”

“Attempted incest! It’s not an easy thing to tell a mother about, is it?”

“I suppose not. But she’s a virgin.”

“That’s the problem;” said Vince, realising that Rich had gone quiet and red in the face, who asked “is there something you want to tell us?”

“It already has…”

“What?” Mrs Fennel asked.

“…led to sex.”

“What! Why didn’t you mention that earlier?”

“It would have sounded a bit rash.”
“It still does.”

“As rash as the sex you had, now that was quick,” added Vince derisively, “and I did wonder what became of the belt you were wearing. Why did you even remove it? You can pull down your pantaloons without taking the belt off, you know?”

“It does sound rash,” Rich said (choosing to ignore Vince’s sarcastic inquisition) while thinking to himself, as if burdened under the weight of something heavy pressing down upon his mind, “Oh belt up will you, Vince!” before finishing his sentence “but on account of what you’ve just told me, Mrs Fennel, it seems that desperate times deserve desperate measures.”

“And what would these measures be?”
“Well, one plan I had kind of goes against what we have all just agreed upon here, because I told her that I didn’t think you would want me to move in, so Su suggested that:

“I could move out, and thus we could live together without the need of anyone’s approval.”

To which I asked, “How would you afford another place, without money or a job?”

“I could get a job,” she replied.

“But that would mean you would have to leave the house, both to look for a job, and then actually do the job.”
“Not necessarily, I could work from home.”
“Doing what?”
“I don’t know - what jobs can I do from home?”

“I don’t know.”
“I can look it up, and find something.”
“Ok, do that.”

“The problem with that plan is that it is utterly unrealistic,” said Rich to the mother.

“You don’t say,” added Vince flippantly.

“But at least we have something that is motivating her so much that she is considering doing things that normal people do, for a change. My plan is to work with her interests - but we will have to be patient, and take things slowly…”
“That’s rich, coming from you,” again added Vince, with his customary vitriol.

“I hope to cure her melancholy with her interest in the selfsame thing. I plan to fight melancholy with melancholy. When you feel your own sadness in something outside of yourself – whether in the music of Shostakovich, the art of Edvard Munch, the literature of Pessoa, or in another person, in someone else - you no longer feel so sad, or else you find “the comfort in being sad”, as Kurt Cobain ironically sang. Instead, one can find the sensation of a joyous communion that reduces, if not completely destroys, one’s sense of estranged and embittered isolation in the world. Melancholy doesn’t have to kill you, sadness itself can save your life, by finding it and indulging - even dwelling - in it. Paradoxically, as it was for Cioran and Nietzsche – for whom the “thought of suicide is a great consolation: by means of it one gets through many a dark night” - suicide becomes less of a threat and more of a comfort blanket, perhaps even the only thought that enables one to carry on living at all.

I heard her listening and singing along to the sullen and sombre Songes and Ayres of John Dowland, especially Come Again …

“All the night my sleeps are full of dreams,

My eyes are full of streams.

My heart takes no delight

To see the fruits and joys that some do find

And mark the storms are me assign'd”

… and a more modern moroseness of The Smashing Pumpkins’ Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness and Gene with their mirthless metropolitan London Can You Wait?

“My kith and kin

I have sinned

I didn't hear the siren”

I listened intently with pain tinged bittersweet memories as she recited poesy I also knew by heart, having studied it at New College , Keats’ meditative Ode on Melancholy:

NO, no! go not to Lethe, neither twist  

  Wolf's-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine;  

Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kist  

  By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine;  

Make not your rosary of yew-berries,         

  Nor let the beetle, nor the death-moth be  

    Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl  

A partner in your sorrow's mysteries;  

  For shade to shade will come too drowsily,  

    And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul.   

 

But when the melancholy fit shall fall  

  Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,  

That fosters the droop-headed flowers all,  

  And hides the green hill in an April shroud;  

Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose,  

  Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave,  

    Or on the wealth of globèd peonies;  

Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows,  

  Emprison her soft hand, and let her rave,  

    And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes.   

 

She dwells with Beauty—Beauty that must die;  

  And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips  

Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh,  

  Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips:  

Ay, in the very temple of Delight   

  Veil'd Melancholy has her sovran shrine,  

    Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue  

Can burst Joy's grape against his palate fine;  

  His soul shall taste the sadness of her might,   

And be among her cloudy trophies hung.

I saw …”

“Yes, tell me, I haven’t been allowed in there for years,” Mrs Fennel asked curiously.

“If you let me finish, I’ll continue. I saw, from her boudoir book, record and art collection that she is mesmerised by anything on the subject of melancholy. The room stuck me at first as a catalogue of melancholy, like a miserable museum or even mausoleum of morose masterpieces, or a ghastly gallery within a mirrored hall of horrors. Covering the dark, gloomy walls - and the obscure, blackened shut up windows - were grotesque images of torture, suffering and cruelty. On one wall were exhibited the 104 illustrations of melancholic martyrdoms by Jan Luiken in Het bloedig toneel, of Martelaersspiegel der Doops-Gesinde of Weerloose Christenen, die om 't getuygenis van Jesus haren (hun) Salighmaker geleden hebben ende gedood zijn van Christi tijd af tot desen tijd toe (The Bloody Theater or Martyrs Mirror of the Defenseless Christians who baptized only upon confession of faith, and who suffered and died for the testimony of Jesus, their Saviour, from the time of Christ to the year A.D. 1660). Facing that, oxymoronically, asymmetrically, distortedly reflected were displayed Dürer’s depressing Melencolia, gloomy Goya’s Los Desastres de la Guerra , Edvard Munch’s darkly desolate Melancholy, Odilon Redon’s raw Mélancolie and À Edgar Poe (Devant le noir soleil de la Mélancolie , Lénore apparaît)/To Edgar Poe (Before the Black Sun of Melancholia, Lénor Appeared). She is akin to Julia Kristeva writing Black Sun: Depression and Melancholia, which Su told the local library by phone to order especially for her and then post to this address, for a small fee. It is a book that she has still not returned, and perhaps never will. Not that anyone else in Swindon would want to read it, nor is anyone here - throughout the entire Borough - even capable of really understanding it, either emotionally or intellectually, as the populace is far too provincial for such matters, myself included I add wistfully, lamentably even.

For me, at least, Su is a chronicler of melancholy. She notes down every mention of suicide on TV and radio, she cuts out pertinent articles in magazines and papers, providing the context and sources with scholarly specificity and pedantry. Similarly, I filled up whole notebooks - or the backs of bus tickets - with references to this suicidal subject that I overheard being discussed on bus journeys or by passersby on the street. She is a modern, female incarnation of Robert Burton, a veritable anatomist of melancholy, owning numerous editions of The Anatomy of Melancholy - if not all of them. It is her bible (if she has one) just as it was mine, during college – it was the only true friend I ever had.

Therefore, I will find events outside, in the real world, which will interest her so much, that she will be motivated to venture forth to them. I will inform her of these activities, and say that I will attend them, to provide a sufficiently juicy carrot to attract her. It is because she never steps outside that she knows nothing about the existence of fascinating things out there, beyond what can be dreamt of in her pouting pessimistic philosophy. But once I introduce, and accompany, her to the world, she will not have to face it alone, and eventually she may even be able to live in the world alone (instead of in the bed of her head) if she wants to.”
“And why do you think this plan will work?” asks the mother.

“Because it is based on experience, not vicariously, not upon other people’s. Suicide is no laughing matter, I once tried to join a volunteer group called the Samaritans to help the suicidal, but they wouldn’t accept me, they deemed it suicidal to enter me into their ranks. After that rejection I felt more suicidal, and then even more so when I realised that there were no others groups I could go to for help, because they would recognise me if I went to their building, or even if I phoned them - so much for trying to be a Good Samaritan. Anyway, at least I was able to finish the free training course they provided before finally rejecting me, thus providing the knowledge that is deemed, by them, to be essential in order to save someone’s life. Now, finally, I have the option to use the same knowhow to save someone else’s.

Alternately, perhaps more common sensically, I should utilise my own personal plan a posteriori, for it is how I cured myself - as the common proverb runs (which was quoted by Jesus of Nazareth no less) “Ἰατρέ, θεράπευσον σεαυτόν” (“Physician, heal thyself” Luke 4:23). Even though I cured myself quite by accident, by finding fascinating events in the outside world that interested me, I am confident that I can purposively apply this plan with positive results. I heard about a concert of John Dowland Songes and Ayres next week. Perhaps I can start with that as the first deadline.”  

“Ok, well get started then. Work your magic. Maybe we should go and tell her the good news: that you can stay.”

They merrily make their way up the stairs and open the door to find her with a fixed and strange smile on her asphyxiated face, while her naked, belt-bruised body swings from the belt that she had tied around the top of her bookshelf.

Upon a single sheet of paper, also hanging from the belt around her neck, read the words:

Death is what happens to others while you’re busy making plans!

The Restaurant of porking paths

Museo del Jamon



On a rare, grey gloomy day, with Cambalache in the air, we trotted in with our snouts held high.

If a group of cannibalistic pigs decided to set up a burlesque house-cum-Spanish tavern for cabaret and dining, it might look a little like this. There was no singing – thankfully, though it seemed like there should have been – just plenty of scoffing sounds, not quite oinking (they were too busy with the business of eating).

With its old world, wooden charm and varnish; and, at least partial, privacy from the prying eyes – of those waiting on, and waiting at other tables – a must for any piggish diner.

It was much more stylish than our pigsty, pig-stylish you could say – for posh pigs. Alas the same cannot be said of the clientele – it was full of foreigners feasting on all things fleshy; all that was missing was our communal trough.

When asked about their pork portions, they told us:
“9/10 greedy pigs prefer their pork from the Museo del Jamon.
This ham will have you squealing with delight, and will make you squeal with piggish pleasure.
We’re addicted to the piggy. Who said religion was the pork of the people – pork is our opium.
The best looking piece of pork I’ve seen since Miss Piggy; just don’t tell Kermit – he wasn’t on the menu; you’ll have to go to a French restaurant to eat him.”

Being pigs, we ate sea food, we’re not cannibals.
As for our meal – we’ll leave that description in the capable trotters of our preferred blind porkteno piggy poet, who wrote a poem about dining in this very restaurant:

The Old Restaurant and the Sea


Ravenous fish caught by fishermen’s bait,
Enormous cylinder shapes of pasta
Swimming around the oceanic plate.
Teeming with a pescados plethora
Aromatic seafood fresh from the deep;
Unusual herbs with flavours sublime.
Rare is this treat, as it’s not very cheap.
Artists created this seafood shoreline,
Nautical noshing and nausea free,
To fill your mouth with the taste of the sea.

J.L. Porkers


http://www.lonelyplanet.com/competitions/review/

TARNISHED

They met in Central Kampala, near Kintu Mbiti’s birthplace.  

Sehr Tariq was born in Lahore, but moved to work in Kampala when she was offered a job with a textiles business owned by Akram Tariq, one of her cousins, who was born in Uganda. Her job involved a smattering of secretarial, typing and receptionist duties, along with some accountancy work - all of which she found a frightful bore.

Kintu had been employed by Akram to drive the textiles to and from factories and retailers, before relaying the accounts back to the office. This is how they became personally acquainted.

It was a cosy little three bit operation that thrived for a number of years, until they both started to sense the bad vibes reverberating evermore profoundly, making their stomachs churn faster as time went on. They had considered leaving, wither they knew not, even before the country became overshadowed by an apprehensive atmosphere, which had been cast by a grotesque, larger than life figure - larger at least than most of human life forms to be found frequenting Uganda’s impoverished backstreets, urban slums of Namuwongo and rural dwellings.

On the forth of August 1972, the "dukawallas" (a colloquial epithet for entrepreneurial Asians) were starting to be kicked out by Idi Amin, or God, if you take an Idiot’s word for it (as they privately joked), who had created this tsunami of Indophobia - a term Sehr had always loathed, claiming that she wasn’t even Indian. Kintu decided that he would try to get out as well, being unwilling to part with her. As an unmarried pair, without British passports, they had to make do with West Germany.

Although they didn’t speak any German, both of them found low paid jobs working on the curve of the “blue banana” in the Ruhrgebiet region, living mainly in Dortmund, before vainly hoping for better times in Düsseldorf. They worked in various factories and warehouses that littered the green valley, going where and when they could find work, which was always hard, heavy, smelly, and noisy – on top of all this the hours were long. He was fed up with receiving dirty looks from dirty workers. Meanwhile, she was starting to wish that her parents hadn’t named her Sehr, on account of all the jokes this bred, none of which could she understand until it was finally explained to her by a kindly female shopkeeper that her name meant “very” in German - but at least that was the one word she would never forget.

Looking for other, better, easier jobs proved unsuccessful, but they were starting to burnout. They talked endlessly of moving on, going elsewhere, travelling on to other countries, and no longer restricting themselves to cities nearby, like Düsseldorf - not anymore. Their dreams of leaving did not come from the temptation prompted by anywhere else on earth, but merely the increasingly unwelcome responses they were receiving from the far right corners of their newfound homeland.

Occasionally they found death threats, in poorly written German-English, which had been thrown through the window - or a dog turd, meticulously placed through their letterbox.

“You haven’t been ordering that dog shit again have you Kintu, how many times have I told you now?”

“Sorry love, but now, at long last, I’ve finally completed my faeces species collection.”

They made light of it. They knew this was better than being scared, or trying to do something about it, that would only make things worse, even if they did know who it was. They felt as though it could have been anyone or everyone they had never met there. However, there’s only so much time one can tolerably go on living and working without being driven to act upon the overwhelming desire to escape from worry. Worrying about what will happen next, what will they come home to, will the window fitter rip them off yet again, if he turns up - and if not, will they have to sleep in their freezing cold house with a window missing for the night again? At least all this would make her case more sympathetic when asking Akram for help.

Sehr had been reluctant to ask her cousin for any more favours, but when the desperate prospect of unceasing perspiration and persecution finally dawned upon her, facing up to her squarely and unstintingly as she stared blankly at her reflection in the mirror, she knew that she had to ring him.  

Then was their winter and its discontents

Akram said that he would look into the possibilities, and spoke with immigration, who said they had to make a claim. This was eventually accepted, which enabled them to live and work there, for a time, until a renewal must be made.

Akram asked them to visit him first, where he lived in London, and then he would suggest what they should do next.

Now the coast was clear. After quitting their jobs, and saying goodbye to their one friend, the local German woman at the corner shop, they both left, heading for a relatively receptive, if reluctant, England, to start a new life.

She was pleased about the new opportunity to start again and perhaps make more money, which they would soon need were they to survive much longer.

Akram told them that London was too expensive, even then, but he had some friends who owned a property in a western Town, and were looking for occupants - it was cheap enough for them.

They settled in a boomtown called Swindon. There wasn’t much to do there except pay the rent, but at least you could find a job there to do that, which was not something you could say about many parts of Britain when they arrived during the freezing fag end of 1978, the winter of discontent. For them, however, the economic factor failed to hit them quite as hard as the climatic, freezing cold, northern sea wind chill factor. This was something they’d never experienced before, and never wanted to again. They even considered moving somewhere warmer - anywhere, in other words, they thought at the time. Soberly, they remembered where they came from and why they left. The couple appreciated being two of the luckier ones, realising that many people don’t get the opportunity they had been given. So instead they learnt quickly to grin and bear it, by adopting the British can’t complain attitude - and more importantly, they bought a powerful heater and a thick warm blanket.

They found jobs quickly enough. He worked with all the insecurity that comes with agency temp work. On top of the meagre pay packet that came with this newly procured employment, he was rewarded with the opportunity to involuntarily learn and memorise, more so than any other part of the Town, in more mind numbing detail than either desire or necessity dictated, the entire cold, grey, detached, prosaic urban landscape and topology of, the aptly named, Commercial Road district.

Despite already being the mini metropolis of Northern Wiltshire, there wasn’t much use in Swindon, at that particular time, for the variety of languages he spoke, which included his native tongue, Luganda, and his dominion over the trading talk of Swahili.

She found it difficult at first to find any work, even though she was relatively more educated than Kintu. She also brought three languages with her, Urdu and Arabic, which she found to be of more use than her lover’s. Her multilingualism eventually helped her find a job in a community centre, which served a predominantly Asian subcontinent immigrant population. Thankfully, it was close to where they lived: a small, but cosy, red-bricked terraced house.

In landmark terms, it was between the bus station and the county ground. Cartographically speaking, however, their house was situated in an area North of Fleming Way, which dribbled below a broad neighbourhood. This was closed in at a right angles by Corporation Street, the notorious rouge Manchester Road, and (any driving football fans nightmare) County Road, which led to any drivers worst nightmare - not to mention that of cyclists, pedestrians, pets and unsuspecting stray animals as well, of course I’m referring to - the world’s most famous, and only,  magic roundabout.

When Sehr started teaching some local women English, she found that - even though they had lived there for years, if not decades - some of them barely spoke a word. This was a challenge, but with a little help from the rest of the class, she eventually made some slow progress. She also knew enough Arabic to teach other Muslim women from a variety of different countries. Even though the class was open, in theory, to men, they never turned up, preferring to be taught by other men at colleges, or privately. Sometimes there was a problem when the women were from India or Bangladesh, not only because of the geopolitical tectonics - which the couple never had much influence on anyway - but also for more cultural and personal reasons. The students thought less of Sehr for having moved to Uganda in the first place, a sentiment shared by some Pakistani women as well, but when they found out she was actually living with a Ugandan, they were somewhat shocked. However, at least this made the lessons a little more exciting than phrasal verbs. There’s nothing like a bit of gossip to get even the most silent sari adorned southern Asian woman’s tongue wagging like a post-coital panting pouch. Moreover, she encouraged it, she told them:

“As long as it’s in English and directed to my face, I don’t care what you say about me.”

Slyly, she knew such an invitation to indulge would quieten the rumours more than asking, or demanding, them to stop talking about it.

However, Sehr did refrain from making it public when she became pregnant out of wedlock. When the bulge could no longer be hidden underneath endless lengths of attire and cloth, she decided it was time for maternity leave. She worried about what would happen to the child when it was born. They had a playgroup at the centre, some of the time, but she was reluctant to let the class find out about her babe in arms. She spoke with Kintu when she got home, and decided that they should get married - as quickly and as secretly as possible.

They hoped this marriage might make things easier for them financially, as they had never been rich, and they may well need help with money in the future. He had certainly never been well off, and the reason she went to Africa was to work - this is never the healthiest sign of economic fortune. The problem they found hardest to deal with was the social stigma, which followed from just being who they were. The couple found they now had many more to deal with. The ones they had brought with them, plus their newest additions. These were placed upon their shoulders after their arrival, by the minds of others.

It may lessen their stigmas, by ridding of at least one of them, but stigma is such that it becomes like the Lernaean Hydra. As soon as you chop the most pernicious and visible head off at any one moment, another one starts to attack you just as quickly, until the one you chopped of swiftly grows back to attack you again. That’s if you’re lucky. Else, they all strike in unison, devouring you alive while struggling helplessly underneath the bulky weight of its body. 

Sadly, despite their Herculean efforts, they could not quite match the efforts and divine heroics of Heracles’ and his nephew Lolaos.

On account of some minor, if frightening and insulting, abuse received in various Parks they had visited in the Town - as well as, oddly enough, most other parts of the provincial Town beginning with the letter P - they preferred not to stray, in solitude, too far outside of their comparably cosmopolitan region encircling the community centre. Only so many times could she be subjected to the P-word once a day. She mused:

“At least it makes a change from the D-word.”

They laughed.

When they had first arrived, they found the sense of humour too dark for their taste, but they had soon come to find use for it. Sometimes it’s more efficacious to fight fire with fire than with something wet, like water.

Not to imply that Swindon is the most racist place on earth, far from it. They could have been worse off, in a big city or countless other grim Towns up North, especially when the riots really kicked off in 1981, the spring and summer of our discontent. But they had to deal with the people around them, as we all, unfortunately, must do.

He’s afraid of Virginia Woolf

lupus est homo homini

Virginia Woolf Society
7pm
1st Thursday of each month
@ Friend’s meeting house

October

Hmm, looks interesting, what day is it, Thursday? And the date is? Let me see, um…what is it, must be, well his birthday was on the, oh shit, that bastard Howls, always preying on my mind, forget it, now, where was I…so, 1-2-3-4-5-6-7, yes, it’s today. Good timing, for once I find out about something before it happens, good. Now, what time is it? Six, no time for a bath; well, it’ll be a bunch of crusty old men anyway, as usual, um, what’s the time again? Six? Shit, where the hell is this place anyway - Friend’s meeting house? I’ll have to check, where’s a directory? Maybe I’ll just ask someone, um, she doesn’t look very friendly; maybe not. Well, maybe it’s that place on Station Road, I’ve got time anyway.
*
-Good evening dear, you look like a lost little lamb that’s strayed from the herd, are you looking for the pack of wolves?
-Sorry? Wolves?
-Yes, Woolf’s, get it?
-Ah, yes, so this is the place.
-Indeed it is. You can call me Miss Lovell.
And you are?
-Fearless, Alfred Fearless.
-Are you indeed, well, come along; meet the rest of the girls.
*
-Let me introduce a new lamb for the slaughter; or perhaps we should refer to him as our “little lamb laid on the altar”. Get it, girls? Ha ha ha! Don’t worry your pretty little head about that boy; it’s just one of our little private jokes. Now girls, don’t be afraid, he’s Fearless, but we can call him Alfred - can’t we Alfred. We’re all friends here.
-Uh, yes, OK.
-Don’t be shy. So, what do you think of our virgin?
-Sorry, I, yes she’s, um…who?
- Fearless and witless…you know, the Woolf woman, our Virginia.
-Oh, yes, very thoughtful, flowing with ideas, a font of wisdom…
-Oh my...You’re just drowning us here with your clichéd aquatic metaphors, quick girls, “To the lighthouse”.
*
-So, lamby-kins, what did you think of my talk, I haven’t scared you off, have I?
-Uh, no, no, I was a bit in the dark, to be honest, a bit lost at sea, you could say…but you illuminated it, with your flashing rays of light.
-That’s it; I’m putting you on a strict metaphor detox diet for next month. Leave the lyricism to our Lady Lupus. Moreover, we’re doing “A Room of One's Own” next month, so get reading. Well, must dash, twas a pleasure.
-Yes, bye then. But I thought that was by a man, E.M. somebody…


November
-Hah, our black sheep has strayed again.
-Alright? So, I’m the only man again, then; is this a women only society (as it’s so unpleasant to be locked out)?
-Very good, but sometimes “it is worse perhaps to be locked in.” So my little lamb as white as snow, what did you think of her little “essay.”
-Yes, it was very sad, the thought of all that wasted talent.
-Yes, don’t you just hate yourself?
-Sorry…but is she’s being serious here? It seems a little naive, epistemologically speaking, looking for Truth, Facts. Thus Spake Nietzsche: “only interpretations…”
-Oh my wooly little friend, she was being ironic; you know? Showing the naivety of the “narrators,” I use the plural, for obvious reasons.
-Huh…and all this about Queen Austen, I never understood all that; subtle sustained irony, so I’m told. She wasn’t a patch on Willy!
-Oh, you are a lost little lamb aren’t you? Silly Billy…but I don’t think we should ask: could women have written the plays of Shakespeare, given his opportunities? Instead, we should ask, could a man have written the Novels of Austen, given her restrictions?
-Well…I think that you’re just ripping off what Woolf wrote about Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy: that if he’d “lived at the Priory in seclusion with a married lady…however edifying the moral lesson, he could scarcely, I thought, have written WAR AND PEACE.”
I think we should ask: what if chimpanzees were given £500 a year (or perhaps bananas, or even nuts, whatever they like, after all, you can’t think well or write well, if you haven’t dined well), and a room of their own (not to mention a typewriter - or laptop, or notebook, pending their astuteness)? Would they come up with the works of Shakespeare? I think not, but perhaps those cheeky chimps could churn out the wooly, waffling works of Woolf.

I also think that Woolf’s works are just a load of elitist ramblings anyway. I’m glad she killed herself. Shame she didn’t drown herself earlier; stupid, loony dyke!
-I say…well, there goes our wolf in sheep’s clothing.

Fin

Rubbish men

One night, a man named Baz Sura heard the sound of the rubbish men driving by his street. It was late; it’s common for them to do that during the night. They used to do it earlier, at 11 or so pm, but he had just realised that they had been doing it much later for months now.
This prompted him to forget about the book he was trying to write, and indulge in some idle revelry.
He dreamed, fantasised even, of wandering the streets late at night when all was so rarely quiet, with no people or cars to disturb neither him, nor the still of the tender, silent, sleepless night.
What was odd about these imaginings was the presence of the rubbish men. Their faintly heard presence was still perceivable as they passed by; their discordant banging had still not yet slipped away from the subconscious theatre of silence, and the solitary scene that was being dramatised upon a stage within the memory muscle of his cerebral cortex.
He watched them with his mind’s eye as he followed them, from a distance mind you, to avoid the sight, sound and especially the smell of the rubbish-filled lorry.
He thought to himself, as he was always alone, that he might go after them, but he decided it was too late now; they had already been and gone; or bin and gone, rather. Well, he would never track them down now anyway. So instead, he decided to wait until the following night, and be ready for them. He knew not for what purpose exactly; to see where they go, out of idle curiosity. It’s hard to say. Sometimes one must fulfil a dream and uncover the nightmare first, before one can move on from it, and get over it.
He was pleased that something like this had come up, just to take his mind off things, to take a break, and not have to think about his writing for a while. The writing wasn’t the problem; well not the biggest one anyway. He never experienced writer’s block, quite the opposite in fact; he wanted to know how to block the writing runs when it poured down upon him like an English hailstorm, or a Maharashtra monsoon. He sometimes considered ways of constipating his compositions, and wondered what kind of literary laxative he had consumed to enable prose to pour forth so fruitfully and futilely from his plastic pens. More than this, the literary thorn in his side was the unenviable and unedifying endeavour that is editing. Trying desperately to meld together all manner of miscellaneous fragments, from many different places, that don’t really belong together, until they are buried into the pages of a book and stored.
He carried on struggling with his editing ennui while looking forward, excitedly anticipating the night to come, as if he were a boy again at Christmas time, when the myth of Father Christmas was still enchanting, instead of delusory and disappointing.
On that sour note of unmelodious memory, he decided that he’d had enough. He mentally clocked out and turned in for the night, after a long session of banging and pounding his fingers upon the keys.

When he awoke from his token nap, he felt like venturing outside. Just for a few moments, mind you; but even this was a rarity for him. He didn’t want his usual Spartan inmate breakfast, consisting of leftover stale bread and almost clean tap water. Today he wanted something he could taste, which was high in calories, a heavily sugared snack treat that might give him enough energy for the long night of moon walking ahead. However, not something so indulgent that he would have stomach problems later, as finding a clean public toilet during the day is hard enough. If you think the city by day is an open sewer, you can imagine that when night finally falls and spreads its blanket of darkness upon the snoring millions, the city becomes even more of a public toilet. Who is going to see, and what would that do about it anyway? Still, it is odd to find someone shitting in public. I only remember ever seeing it once at a train station in Mumbai; but it was a child, and they are always forgiven for everything. They haven’t been socialised yet; at the tender age of a toddler they haven’t even learned to be disgusted by faeces.

He went to a small supermarket nearby to see what he could find. He still fancied something sweet, chocolaty; maybe a mousse, like the Chambourcy hippopotamus mousse he used to like as a child. Or a double chocolate gateau, like the ones he annually ate surreptitiously at Christmas time, when the other family members were busy watching soap operas and extended Christmas specials.
He knew he’d regret it; but when he found such a gateaux, he couldn’t resist. No hippo mousse though, as he used to call it; they don’t make those here, he lamented.

After reluctantly paying at the checkout, he made his way back home, stored his purchase safely in the fridge for later, and went for another light nap before his big night out on the town.
*
Winter had just started, so by the time Baz woke up it was dark already.

The dark and damp night was being forced by the seasonal boss to work unpaid overtime. This pleased the night none too much. The temperature had already warmed up as far as it could reach. Besides, during its graveyard shift, one of the perks of the job for the working night was freezing people, giving them colds, watching people kill themselves from depressive seasonal affective disorders, or from jumping off of bridges onto brick thick ice, thinking the water would drown them, only to be killed on impact. Even successful suicide attempts can be as accidental, unintended and moronic as unsuccessful ones.
Even funnier than this, however, was observing OAP’s as they froze to death in their beds.

Baz quickly got ready, and waited for the rubbish men to come and stink up the neighbourhood, as they did every night.
When he heard them, he made his way down to watch for the direction they took, before following them slowly.

So few people traipsed the streets that the direction he was heading in seemed to make it obvious to other masochistic and/or misanthropic night strollers what he was following. A drunken man even shouted something at him. It sounded like he said:
“If you’re so keen on walking with the rubbish men, why don’t you become one, they’re not fussy, they might even hire you.”

After his initial response of bemusement blossomed into the blooming blues of comprehension, a fuming and furious feeling of being insulted followed, which stained his sensitive soul until he remembered a line from Seinfeld: the episode when Kramer remarked that bums were always walking the streets, so why not strap something on to them.
This cheered him up no end. After a few chuckles to himself, he finally realised why he was here: he wanted to see where the rubbish ended up.
He had some vague idea that it would go to some landfill site, somewhere out of town. He had learnt that much about the practicalities of the governmental policy from the environmental campaigning he had done as a younger man.
He realised that they would not drive as slowly when going there, as when collecting the city’s crap piles. This made his plan pointless.
Unless, that is, he plucked up the courage to ask them if he could tag along; just to see where it goes. He knew he might have to offer his services in return, not to mention being thought of as eccentric in the extreme; but this was no more than he was accustomed to anyway. He thought; what the hell!
He hadn’t been on a journey for years now. He was adventure starved; but sadly, this was the only scrap he could find in the bins that lined the streets with filth.
He had often dreamed of working like this; only aboard a ship, instead of a moving skip on wheels.
He wanted to work on a cruise liner, and sail the earth like his colonial forefathers did; even though he had once read some campaigning materials co-produced by War on Want and the ITF (the International Transport Workers' Federation). Amongst these included a report entitled Sweatships; the first chapter, of which, was called “Dream vs. Reality.” He knew which one he preferred. Like the tidal rhythms thrusting the vessel hither and thither, a myriad of musings ebbed and flowed in his mind. He dreamed of serving semi-naked octogenarian yuppie millionaires piña coladas upon a windswept upper deck. These sundrenched dames, drama queens, and cancer-kissed crinklys, sprawled over their sun bed royal thrones and wiggled their burnt, sweating bodies for him to feast his starving eyes upon their flamed grilled, sizzling and salivating juicy fleisch, like a snorting porker who’s just won the truffle “lotto!”. The presence of these perspiring, polygamous poly-Gammys, and sugar Playboy Gammys turns the term Sweatship into something of a double entendre.
Later, while serving them Ragout de Poulet a l’ail en vinaigrette chaude followed by biscuits aux amandes, the wily old women would whisper their room numbers in his ear while the bosses were taking their umpteenth power nap to shelter from the boiling and baking afternoon heat of the reflected ocean sun.
Such reality-checking reading material gave him the disillusioning impression that employees are treated little better than kidnapped Indian slave children, who are sent down to illegally mine minerals. Cruise workers were confined to the dark and insalubrious lower deck, cooped up like: an overweight school of sardines “Packt” in a shrinking “crushd tin box”; the NBA MVP annual award ceremony in a midget pensioner’s bungalow; the fat English wrestler Giant Haystacks slumming it in a bad poet’s bedsit; or Dharavians.
Such was his idle romanticism, not to mention his overactive use of simile. However, such oceanic, orgiastic and octogenarian obsessive dreams could only survive among his psyche’s fantasies because he had never tried it. If he did, his illusions would soon sink like an indolent sailor, when he discovered the over salty taste of a scurvy-suffering, sea sickening life on the ocean wave.
Instead, he preferred to get lost in his delusory desires as he dreamed of stopping off on tropical Polynesian Islands. Fuelled by the inspiration of Paul Gauguin’s pure, primitive paintings of the equally erotic and exotic Polynesians; he yearned to be castaway and washed up on distant shorelines, to be resuscitated by bronzed and brazened beauties before being rested, relaxed and reposed in their cosy wooden shacks.
But alas time was running out, and he could get to grips with their native tongue; so back to reality he came, as there were things to be done. Things he’d rather not do.
He romanticised about wandering the streets alone. Not having to beg smelly rubbish men if he could help them cover themselves head to toe in other people’s crap.
Nevertheless, that’s what he did. After much reluctance and procrastination, I should add, fatigue finally forced him to assert himself, and “assay the power” as Lucio rhetorically urged Isabella, in Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure.
His request was initially met with suspicion and disbelief, swiftly followed by utter indifference.
There was room in the wagon, so they didn’t give two hoots about what ass perched on it.
This was the gist of their mannered response.
He felt he should talk to them, lest he felt rude, not because he wanted to. However, they seemed so eager to get on with their job and get to sleep, that they looked unapproachable; for which he was thankful, as he too was beginning to tire of this tawdry trip to the tip.
After holding his nose for over half an hour, he was anticipating a long awaited and welcome breather; but, to his despair, his nostril hairs only sensed and found was unfair, foul, “fog and filthy air.” As he hovered through, he could conclude only one thing: the smell was ghastly.
He regretted not bringing with him something more to cover his nose, as all he had with him was his scarf. However, what he needed was an oxygen mask, or a gas mask; like the one his grandparents used during the war. He saw two of them at their house and wanted them because they were Disney specials and had the faces of “Donald Duck und Mickey Mouse. We’re all living in America.”
Even during this moment of bourgeois selfishness, Baz was still able to spare a thought for all the Mumbaiker gandi basti children he had witnessed, both on television and in person. Viewed as animals by higher castes, these children are forced to navigate their way through nauseating haystacks hoping to find the illusive needle, thread or anything else of value, to recycle and sell, like those fictional furry, protruding nosed species The Wombles of Wimbledon common – the preferred children’s programme of Baz’s infantile years in Britain. These Indian children, who are frowned upon and looked down upon as mere beasts by their Brahmin supposed superiors, have to scavenge for anything edible, they are perceived as Palaeolithic savages, or Pigs and mongrel dogs routing for Italian perigord truffles in the Tuscan woods on a dewy, dawn of a summer morn. Crouching down on all fours these so-called Slumdogs crawled, amid the ruined, remains of old slagheaps, which had been mutated and moulded by modernity into kitchens and kiosks for the untouchable infant Dalits, who had to live on and off these foul and malodorous mountains of waste land, literally.
He was more than ready to head back now; but he saw how much rubbish they still had to empty from the muck machine.
For a second he feared that they may leave him there, resenting him for just covering his nose while they just got on with their dirty day job. So he rolled up his sleeves and decided to muck in. He grabbed hold of one bag at a time, and placed it where they were throwing theirs. He imagined they were mocking him, even if he spared no time on witnessing it. They suspected that he wanted to get the hell out of there as quickly as possible, just as they did; rather than being foolish enough think that he was exerting himself purely as a token of his gratitude for this smelliest of nights out. They didn’t care. Any help with getting this shitty job over and done with quicker was always welcome.
He took a brief moment to scour the rubbish-strewn landscape. It seemed like a visual trick, in this less than velvet half-light. He couldn’t decide or make out what he saw.
Had the million different kinds of muck been turned into a golden order, or was it still just an endless collection of scrap waste? He looked, and then looked again, each time seeing the alternate view, never seeing the same one twice.
The smell was still there, he thought, even though he couldn’t smell it anymore. For a second he desired to stay there for just a little longer, to watch as the sunlight started to emerge from the clouds, and through the warm hot air steaming from this city-sized scrapheap.
However, his temporary colleagues unceremoniously reminded him that this wasn’t a guided tour, and that they all had wife-warmed beds to go back home to, and didn’t want to be farting around this shithole all day for nothing.

Their work was finally done, for another day anyway; while his labours would begin again, as soon as he returned home. He looked back once more, longingly, at the golden tide of trash shimmering in the sunlight. He dug his nails hard into his arm trying not to cry. He knew the rubbish men had more than enough material to satisfy their work weary whimsy. So he pulled his cap down as far has he could to cover his eyes, slowly trudged heavily footed towards their escape vehicle, flopped down on the seat and bowed his head down low.

They scrambled for their seats and drove back to the city. They would be back tomorrow. Fortunately, for all concerned, Baz Sura would never set his eyes upon this rubbish nor this suburban underworld for the underused ever again; and more importantly, it would be the last time that his averted nostrils would so quickly grow accustomed to the inhalation of this putrefying and un-poetic wasteland.