I was waiting at the bus stop on Brixton Water Lane for a number 3 when I noticed two men standing near me. They were waiting for a bus together, standing near each other, whispering and giggling. They were just like schoolgirls. At first I paid little attention to them; immature men are no rarity. However, my attention was solicited by extraordinary regular interruption to this manner: every minute or so the silly sniggering would cease, they would turn away from each other slightly and stare with a stern face at the pavement or hold their hands over their eyes as if with a headache. These calm interludes would last only a few seconds and then one of them would usually poke the other and mumble something apparently hilarious. I thought perhaps they were hangover and these bouts of silliness were the fatigued laughs of one who remembers the outrageous exploits of the night before. That would explain the serene intermissions: headaches and nausea are certainly a common hindrance when one wants the party to continue the morning after. But the sheer mania, the excessively jubilant, almost unnatural, bursts of uncontrollable giggling suggested something more than just a happy hangover. I suspected that they were under the influence of mind-altering drug, perhaps mushrooms. I am however, hopelessly ignorant in this field having had very few experiences myself so I shall speculate no further, leaving the description at that: it seemed to me more than just a hangover.

The bus arrived and I boarded it followed by these two men. I took a seat upstairs and opened my book and I was soon lost within its pages. Not five minutes could have passed before I was disturbed by the voice of an African woman. She was addressing the seated multitudes, a bus packed with people. I could not see her. She was downstairs but her voices carried upstairs clearly.
“Good morning Ladies and Gentleman, I’m talking to you on behalf of Jesus Christ. I’ve come here to tell you how your sins can be alleviated. I have come here today to tell you that you must have a personal relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ…” The woman continued in this manner.

One of the men who I had scrutinised at the bus stop was in a seat right next to the stairs. As the African voice downstairs was droning on about ‘the Lord’, ‘redemption of sins’ and so forth, this man half stood up, leaned over the stairwell and shouted “We don’t want to know!” in a heavy French accent and sat back down with a grunt of self-satisfaction. The preachers voice continued without the slightest pause or change of tone, as nothing had happened. On noticing this, the Frenchman sighed heavily, expressing great irritation and leaned over again to shout “We’re not Christians! We don’t want to know!” At this, his friend who had sniggered with him at the bus stop began to snigger again. This provoked a sparse wave of sniggering throughout the bus. The Frenchman joined in with another smug guttural emission. But still the sermonic tones floated up clear and unencumbered. I was now unable to read my book. I shut it and observed the following with a mixture of mild irritation and intrigue.

The Frenchman engaged in some melodramatic huffing and puffing and then repeated his attempts at silencing the preacher with the same heckles as before “We’re not Christians! We don’t want to know! … We don’t want to know!” His entreaties went completely unheeded. Those that had formerly sniggered with him on the top deck were beginning to lose interest in the frantic Frenchman and settle down under the auspices of their new self-appointed priest. Refusing to become a compliant member of her congregation, the Frenchman rallied his inner troops and let fly a further volley of ammunition. “Come on… leave us in peace!” he whined, “We don’t want to hear what you have to say!” I marvelled at his apparently uninhibited ability to speak for the whole top deck of the bus: it was always ‘we are not Christians’ or ‘we don’t want to hear it’. He continued shouting for some time and the African voice downstairs remained astonishingly unfazed by it. It was almost as if it were just a recording of some preaching. The thought crossed my mind that it might actually be so. For all we knew it could be, it didn’t look to me as if the Frenchman could actually see his antagonist: whenever he leaned over to hurl abuse down the stairwell his eyes didn’t appear to be trained on anything in particular.

Eventually the exhausted Frenchman appeared to give up. The oration downstairs was calmly persisting. I joined many of my fellow passengers in turning to watch the Frenchman, we were all curious as to his next move. Had he given up? Would he sit quietly and relent? He hunched his back and sat with his legs twisted uncomfortably like a sulking schoolboy.
“The lords is part of your life whether you know it or not,” continued the voice, “He is loving you always. Let Him into your life and love him in return. Your reward shall be eternal.” The voice paused for a short while and the Frenchman wriggled out of his unwieldy position and jumped up to lean over the stairwell and shout something. I saw his lips open, I saw him inhaling, planning his abuse. But the voice started again, apparently before he had thought of anything to say:
“Now ladies and gentleman I want to ask you some questions.” she began again “Who controls your life?”
“Myself!” the Frenchman barked.
“Who controls the devil?” said the voice, still in perfectly untrammelled tone.
“I do!” he screamed, daftly. A few laughs were heard scattered about the top deck.
“Who controls the world?”
“Nature!” he offered at a less frantic pitch.
“Do you want to go to heaven?”
“No!” he hollered loud and steady, pleased with his chance to retort to such inane questions.
“Do you want to go to hell?” asked the voice, and this time I thought I detected a more inquisitive quality in her voice.
“Yes!” He spat, beaming at his own rebellion.
After a pause the voice warned almost pleadingly “But hell is eternal damnation… fire burns your flesh and guilt engulfs your mind… forever” there was pity in her voice. Now, of course, I knew it was not a recording. The woman downstairs was just very good at ignoring hecklers. He had finally got to her though.
“I don’t care,” he said quite softly, in a voice that seemed really not to care. “I’m an atheist” he boomed proudly, “ none of that bullshit is going to happen to me!”
“God is willing to forgive non-believers” the voice resumed its former insuperable manner and finished what she had, apparently, written down or prepared to say originally “In the name of the father…”

The Frenchman was now sitting contentedly with his arms crossed, smiling and nodding mockingly at the preacher’s words. Concluding her lecture, the priest of this rolling church said “thank you very much everyone and I will see you again soon my friend”. It was clear that she meant the Frenchman. Accordingly, he waved his hand in a dismissive manner and mumbled “Yeah yeah yeah…”

Thought One

A man enters a room through a door. A chair and table are the only furnishings in this otherwise empty room. A solitary light bulb, unornamented, hangs from the ceiling, lighting the room. He pauses after a few steps and turns hesitantly back towards the door. He reaches out and pushed the door. It swings shut. A sign is made visible on the door. It says ‘You have entered the minds of others.’ The man appears to read it. He shrugs and walks over to the table and chair. His right hand carelessly strokes the tabletop and his left hand clasps the backrest of the chair. His eyes roam the room but swiftly return to its only inhabitants – the table and chair. He shrugs again and sits down on the chair placing his hands neatly on the table in front of him. A few seconds pass in which no movement is visible in the room – except the slightest twitching of his left eyebrow. He pulls a face. It is an inscrutable grimace that might denote boredom. Lowering his head he lifts his hands to his face and props himself up with his elbows resting on the table. He appears to be thinking.

Suddenly he leaps up from his seated position and grabs the chair, throwing his forcefully against the wall. It beaks into a number of pieces with a loud smashing sound. Not stopping for a moment the man recovers what remains of the chair and hurls it yet again at the wall. This time the animation and vigour is perceptible in his movements, perhaps a certain enjoyment. His face remains stern and unwavering. He gathers the various bits and pieces that used to form a chair and places them in the corner in a neat pile. Walking to the centre of the room he stands with his hands on his hips and appears to contemplate the table. Only two seconds pass before he leaps forward athletically and lands with both feet on the table. He immediately begins jumping up and down with his feet together, effecting a violent assault on the main structure of the table. Loud creaks prelude the abrupt snapping of the surface on which he is bouncing. The man falls with the table as it snaps and collapses landing in a heap with half the table on either side of him. Apparently unharmed, he gives a sigh, possibly of relief, and springs to his feet.

The two halves of the ta

Sherlock Holmes was not what I expected. He’s addicted to cocaine. He’s as haughty and vain as can be, treating Watson like a fool when Watson is really far from a fool. But my biggest surprise came when, Watson being exhausted, Holmes takes up his violin and says “Look here, Watson; you look regularly done. Lie down there on the sofa and see if I can put you to sleep.” He then proceeds to play Watson into a marvellously comforting slumber. What an extraordinary man.

The Big Issue seller was short and fat like a baby pigeon, if you’ve ever seen one. Squab is the word. He had hesitant black curls in a ring around a gaping bald patch. In a forlornly weathered woolly jumper he stood at ease, for it fitted him so well. His torso and abdomen gelled together in one ovoid mass. With gnarled trainers and elderly trousers he stepped back and forth to keep the blood flowing. His face presented a pitiful smile. One got the feeling he was good-natured but at the same time forcing his smile. This impression was backed up by his spiel. At frequent Intervals he would throw an empty handed arm in the air and lift the splayed magazines slightly in the other hand. His stance thus prepared, he would summon the booming roar “Plee-sss buy a copy” followed usually by some mumbling “what a great read…” to a particular pedestrian in close quarters, or some such unconvincing inveiglement.
As I sat nearby watching him at work he gradually became more desperate. His “pleee-ss!” became more wretched and pathetic and his eyebrows lifted and drooped down on either side of his face like a sad cartoon character. He started bellowing, “you get to help the homeless and it’s a marvellous read!” But as his desperation became more and more theatrical, his presence became more embarrassing. Part of me sorely pitied him and wanted to buy a copy of his magazine but another part of me just wanted to get up and leave the area.
I stayed however, only to witness something at once hilarious and appalling. His painfully forced smile faltered momentarily as a dreadful thought appeared to cross his mind. Then, after sucking up enough air to furnish his next aural barrage, he let it rip: “You buy the magazine, I get money and I get my heroin. Then we’re all happy!”

Dunlop: Chapter I

Hello. I am a fictional creation. As yet I have no name. This line of text embodies the entire history of my existence. One might say I was just born. Where am I? I am on this very page. My name is Dunlop. It just came to me. I do not object to this name. I suppose I cannot object to it. That is, not unless my creator makes it so. He might have me do, think or feel anything for I am fictional and that is his prerogative.

I wonder where you are at this moment. You, the reader of this text. The reader of my words; words coming from my as yet un-described mouth. I have only one definite feature so far, my name. I am quite excited about my existence. It is just coming into fruition now. What allows me to be excited? Me, a mere name on a page, an insignificant constituent of reality, where are my thoughts? But then, where are yours? In your head? That is as much a guess as to say that my thoughts are in the page. Open a brain and rummage around as much as you want, you wont find any thoughts. The same goes for this page. But who is to say what exists? Well, my creator for one. He’s deciding what exists. I am a ferret. A talking ferret with soft white fur. Does this surprise you? I would imagine not.

You could be anywhere. You might be reading this in a roof garden in New York, United states. You might be sat on the toilet, you might be in a plane flying over Bulgaria, or you may well be bouncing on a trampoline trying to read this sentence, its all possible. I am a talking ferret. My name is Dunlop because I was found in a tire. Who was it that found me? It has been decided not to divulge this piece of information. You and I will never know whom it was that found me in that fateful tire and dubbed me Dunlop. Probably the first word they saw after picking up my tiny form and cradling me. Do you realise that you can stop reading at any time? You can thrust this paper aside, go off and do something else; you might even go to the pub for a pint. I am told this is an enjoyable pastime for many humans. I’m not sure who told me this or when it was but I have little choice about what I say. It just seems to arrive at my lips. I would guess that my creator would prefer you to read on.

Something should probably happen soon, something a little more tangible than ramblings and musings of a fictional ferret. It appears I am now going to tell a story. The story of my life. Not from the beginning though. I shall begin it sometime soon after that fateful day when I was discovered curled up in a tire. Curled up eh? That’s a new detail; where did that come from? Perhaps I was getting into the storytelling mood and I added that myself. Perhaps not. So I was in a turnip field. That is where I shall begin. I was out sniffing for lunch. Sniffing the air to see what it had to say to me, to see what it might tell me about life. Make a sandwich. Do you feel like one? Or perhaps you are not in the vicinity of sandwich making equipment or ingredients. Perhaps you are in the park; maybe you’re even trying to read these words while cycling, though I doubt it. But I suppose you could be on a tandem, you could be the second person and so not be required to steer and be alert. If only there was a tandem designed to accommodate the anatomy of a ferret, I would love to sit at the back and read while cycling. A splendid idea. (I bet you’re pretty spooked if you’re reading this for the first time and you are in fact sitting on the second seat of a tandem!)

Goodness me, I have gone off the point completely. The whole idea that someone might read this just intrigues me. It’s strange to think of the irreversible direction of my communication. I mean, its all one way, you can’t reply. Well, not soon enough to have me respond on this page. You might write to me. But really I am trapped in this page, no further existence has been granted me. I can’t have an exchange with you. But at the same time, I am talking to you (at you perhaps). But you probably knew all that already. I’ll try and stop being so tedious. Here we go I’ll start again. Dunlop, that’s my name. I’m a ferret and I was found in a tire. I first became aware of myself in a field of turnips. At this point my only historical residue was my name and the raw fact that I was found in a tire. Roaming about in this turnip field, as I said, I was sniffing the air. The air told me numerous things that would have been undetectable to the human nose. Rain was on its way, there was a field of sitting cows nearby, and the barn next to my field was uninhabited. I learned much more from the air at the time but something tells me not everything memorable is worth remembering.

Red

Post my letter in the dark
Written at night
Can’t leave ‘til morning
Out onto street:

My lucubration must
Be dispatched.

Towards the post box in empty street at night
No one else out
Few cars on the road
Motionless and dark

Beneath street lamps
My shadow appears
And stretches out in front
As I move onwards

Street lamps too far apart
Unavoidably plunged into
Darkness at intervals

Sound makes me flinch
My own footsteps

Post box swathed in darkness
In the darkest region
Only ever a silhouette

As I approach
Nerves tighten
Surge faster a few steps
Piercing silence

Thrust the letter into mouth
Muted clunk signals
The digestion of my communication in the bowels

Gloom is so pervasive in this wretched spot
Red is but a guess

This stygian brute
Stock-still for every visit
Swallows my epistles without
A gulp of thanks

The deed is done
I turn and flee
The moment my back is turned my
Mind conjures wild animism:
The sinister pillar reveals
Luminescent white teeth and glowing red eyes
Sprouts legs and creeps silently after

Never look back –
Like a child in bed
Too afraid to lower the
Sheets covering eyes
And behold what might be

Whistling and humming
To keep myself together
Stride swift and steady back home.

I’m so desperate I’d lay the table.

My stiff eye encrusted with salty sleep focuses watery-vague on the screen in front of me and that itch on my back needs scratching but I’m not allowed to stop typing so I keep my head straight like Winston in 1984 who feared the glare of the telescreen would decipher his thoughts by the expression on his face but that itch has gone now so I can rest easy sitting in my room unwatched by anyone/thing with the dulcet tones of a radio humming behind me in the background of my mental-Being which spans throughout the house like a spiders web so I can sense any movement in any room from the slightest vibrations but this is not my only existence as I have my mind set aside in a little jar by the door which leads to the termination of this tiresome punctuation famine. Here we are. Its good to be back, comma, a love thee, I, really, really, love, thee, and, not forgetting you. My full stop. Always waiting for me to finish. Waiting for me after work. You. There’s also: the colon: my friend: I don’t see you often but when I do it’s a good time. Your brother the semicolon is not so close to me; I often feel uncomfortable in his presence; I never quite know what he’s doing and sometimes he won’t leave when you want him to. The question mark comes to some of my parties but doesn’t tend to be problematic; he never seems to have the answer though does he? I suppose that’s not his job. If I ever write anything this bad again, I’m going to throw my self off the top deck of a moving bus! Oh there’s the exclamation mark, only comes round when I’m shouting. I better go and check the timetable on the bus stop; the busses only come once or twice an hour in this horrid town.

They were very trendy but most people just went so they could say they had been. It was rather uncomfortable. The seats were fine, but wearing a blindfold in a concert hall full of other blindfolded people is quite strange. Gultensbien was an eccentric though, he refused to play the piano if he was even one person peeking past their blindfolds: he’d walk off stage and not come back that night. But really, everyone knew this, and having paid £60 for tickets, there were seldom any transgressors. So seldom in fact that Gultensbien became quite confident that none of his fans would ever see him perform. He began coming on stage in his dressing gown and slippers. What did it matter what he wore? That was the whole point: no visuals, the audience were not to be drawn away from the sound of the piano by some florid wallpaper, ornate rafters, or the appearance of the pianist. Eventually he began coming on stage naked. When he was ill he didn’t cancel a show he just sent his nine-year-old daughter on stage and the audience thought they were hearing some of Gultensbien’s new avant-garde compositions. She never touched the piano outside that hall; she wasn’ta pianist at any stretch of the imagination. But £60 pounds for a ticket stayed the price. Gultensbien would treat her to some ice cream afterwards. She did it more and more often. Soon Gultensbien was only doing one night a week himself. She wasn’t the least bit stage-frightened either, ears are nothing like eyes. No one could see her.

A Day in My Life

I wake to the naff tinny jazz imitation tune blasting out always slightly too loud from my phone as the little screen lights up with the words “Do Achilles Exercises You Lazy Turd!” Its 9:45am. I levy the forces, enlist all my muscles and haul my mass up into a sitting position. Five minutes of strange and tedious toe wriggling exercises follow by which time my brain has had some time to think over the day ahead. As I get dressed I turn the computer on and encourage it to play me a random selection of music from my digital collection. Collecting my books and papers together I stuff them all in my backpack and go downstairs to make the porridge. Four minutes and twenty seconds as the microwave hums I lean forward against the worktop to stretch my calf muscles, another physiotherapeutic necessity. The microwave bleats and I grab my steaming porridge and run upstairs where my music warbles from the little laptop speakers. I eat in front of the laptop, looking things up on my digital Britannica (the closest thing I have to the internet), writing things like this, perusing my music and just generally computing. This lasts an hour or sometimes much less. Then I’m out of the house and walking up the hill, beatboxing quietly to myself, since my ipod broke. Twenty minutes up hill and I arrive at the prodigious Hartley Library.

My first port of call is usually the computer rooms to check and reply to my emails and perhaps post a blog. An hour slips past much too fast and I begin to feel guilty as there important work to be done. Logging off I make my way up to the fourth floor to the Turner Sims reading room where the English literature is housed. I usually sit by Henry James though sometimes I sit near Hemingway if the sun is flooding in the window nicely. I begin work and my head is down for an hour or so before my first break. I give myself twenty minutes break every hour. In my breaks I usually sit on the floor in the foyer with Ashley who is working somewhere nearby (often in the German literature section, he likes to sit by Brecht or Rilke). I Ashley is not around or we somehow fail to synchronise our breaks then I leave the library and cross the road to the student shop where I abuse their negligence and stand for the full twenty minutes reading a skateboarding magazine which I have no intention of buying. If the magazines are all familiar I return to the library and roam the Russian literature shelves, popping into books about Gogol or Tolstoy and glancing at quotes or illustrations; or perhaps the literary theory isles, or the French literature section, whatever. It strikes me that I never ever see anyone else doing this. There are hundreds of thousands of books at our disposal; we can even take them home if we want! But the only people I see in amongst the book are scanning the Dewey codes on the spines of the books, looking for a book they are obliged to read for their course, a scrap of paper in their hand with their desired code.

Anyway I work like this, taking breaks at regular intervals, eating lunch somewhere in there, until I’m so fatigued as to struggle to discern the words in front of me. It’s probably about six o’clock by then. On my way out I usually pop into a computer room and have one last taste of the Internet. I walk down the hill beat boxing much louder than I dared on the way. Its something about working all day in the library, when I come out I feel so energised, I want to run, jump and dance. One the way home I go to the newsagent and buy a Starbar, my favourite peanut and caramel filled chocolate confection. When I arrive home Andy is usually in the kitchen cooking something and a glorious smell arrests my nose on the threshold. I join him in the kitchen and try my best to emulate his splendid aromatic creations. The radio on BBC 6 we sit and eat together.

As the kettle boils for his after dinner tea Andy informs me that he has to go upstairs and do some more work. Off he goes and I do a bit of washing up before going up stairs myself. Depending on how I feel at this point I either read a book or an old newspaper (I never manage to read the paper the day I buy it), watch a DVD on my computer, write something, play my keyboard, or look up words in the dictionary and write out their definitions neatly on sheet of paper to adorn the walls. At nine o’clock my alarm goes off again with the same message “Do Achilles Exercises You Lazy Turd!” Putting some music on, I obey.

At about ten o’clock or so Andy comes and knocks on my door to hang out, having finished or needing a break from work. This usually involves practicing to spin his basketball on his finger in my room. I join him in this endeavour with my own basketball. This goes on for half an hour or so and then we sometimes walk down to the shop together and buy a couple of cans of beer. When we return, if Andy doesn’t feel the need to work anymore, we watch an episode of The Mighty Boosh, Darkplace or perhaps some other comedy DVD. At around midnight we brush our teeth in the strange double sink of the bathroom, bid each otter good night and retire to our rooms to read. By one o’clock my eyes refuse to stay open any longer and unless the book I’m reading is really gripping I set it aside, turn off bedside reading lamp and slide down into decumbency.