A Tall Dark Stranger Came to Poop

The sun streamed through the light cotton of the curtains in dust-spangled beams onto the dark wood of the bed, cotton sheets tangled with a discarded robe. The air was perfumed with the memories of lovemaking. She awoke, and stared dreamily at the ceiling, a faint smile drifting across her swollen lips. The pressure in her bladder caused her eyes to cross charmingly, and she swung her strong thighs over the mattress, and walked to the toilet in tiny clenched steps, the curve of her buttocks catching the morning sun as she quickly managed to rid herself of the now-processed Moet. She flushed.

Yeah. You read that correctly. I recently had to read a romance novel for, erm, research purposes. I may be scarred. It occurred to me that these cookie-cut paperbacks never have scenes like this. Fact is, most people, when they wake up, go to the loo. They don’t drape themselves meaningfully over plump pillows and eat truffle-based chocolates in a provocative manner. They wee.

Watch:

His jaw was tight and angular, as solid as the carved corner of a gabled roof, and set in a stubborn slant as he creased his brow. He thought back to the night before- how the candlelight had danced over the table in the restaurant, glinting off the crystal wine glasses and the polished silverware. He chewed his sensuous lower lip as he remembered the perfectly presented food- the livid red of the lobster, the delicate buttery taste of the artichokes. Regretfully, he also recalled that his palate was unsophisticated, and no match for the splendid mix of rich foods. His manly belly gurgled under a tangle of course hair, and he jumped from the bed in one smooth leap, his strained calf muscles rippling as he dashed to the exquisite porcelain that was his morning throne. A shimmer of sweat punctuated his relief as the liquid remains of the rich food burst forth from his insides, a runaway train of effluvium which was now set on a journey that would end in the dazzling azure waves off the sun-bleached coast.

Probably not going to catch on anytime soon, but sometimes it’s important to inject a little reality into the romance. After all, we all have to face this moment at some point. The point at which our bodies, so appealing to the opposite sex, betray us with a healthy dose of nature.

Just keeping it real…

Here, There and Everywhere

She’s someone you’ve never met. And someone you see everyday. She’s a woman who lives a life of dignity and yet humility. Who is sometimes brazen and able to stare down self-proclaimed experts and authorities, and yet sometimes vulnerable- she cries tears of self-doubt and sadness for the things she wishes she could change in the world.

She’s showed great dignity when dealing with the loss of loved ones, and bravery in the face of struggles which would overwhelm anyone else. She’s passionate about the way music and words can change lives, and has a heart covered with the scars of the times she stood in the gap for people going through battles.

She’s got altars. Places of sacrifice where, at times, she has placed her career for the sake of her children, and, at other times, placed her relationships on the line so that she can work to provide for them. The altars are places where she comes to remind herself of the sacrifices she has made in order to serve those whom she cares about.

She loves to laugh, sometimes when laughter is the only solution other than weeping, and can draw a smile from the faces of those around her by the strength of her personality alone. She’s a lover. Of life, of nature, of people. A lover is exposed to the danger of losing their solitude, but she, well, she does not hold back, and gives herself fearlessly, not selfishly, and she is conversely a reward to others and to herself.

At times she has carried, and at others, has been carried. She is the sum of all her memories and hopes for the future: she never gives up. She inspires other people to be better themselves, and yet does not suffer pride.

She’s out there, changing the lives of those around her, just by living life to the full and never giving up.

This composite woman is someone you may recognize: if you’re a woman, you see her everyday in the mirror. Different facets at different times. If you’re a man, you see it in your daughter, your partner, your colleagues, your friends. I see her everyday in the woman I love, and I’m quietly in awe of her, which is the only appropriate response. She’s inspiring. She’s incredible. She’s you.

To K. With love.

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She Came In From The Storm

It was horror movie rain. A wall of water that fell like a stage curtain across the front of the house, causing the asbestos sheeting on the roof to drone like the static of a thousand broken TV sets. The hiss of the occasional car outside as it surfed through the puddles only added to the sense of isolation.

Of course, within, the house was warm and bathed in liquid yellow light, but the weather outside intruded by the force of the storm on the windows and walls.

This was a house occupied by itinerants, drifters: People in between here and somewhere else. The floor wasn’t disturbed by sprawling root systems- no one ever stayed long enough to call it home. The letterbox would clog with notifications of unpaid bills and fines for previous tenants, but there remained little evidence of the people whose lives were loaded off and onto trucks with depressing frequency.

I’d lived there a few months- a place to sleep and gather thoughts after a shift in my circumstances. In a faltering half-hearted way I’d tried to make it homely and accommodating, but it remained a half-way house with a distinct echo of loneliness- and a real one since the high-ceilinged space was sparsely furnished.

But then she came. Her yellow car swishing to a stop at the kerb outside, brakes squealing in protest but powerless to resist the arrival. She came, dripping the storm into the house, the rain washing off the life she’d left behind as she brought in bags and boxes, armloads of history.

And so the house of loneliness became a home. A place for warm embraces and shared moments. Of silence broken by hummed music and running baths, of air scented with the intoxicating fragrances of the perfumes and possessions of a woman.

It was always just a house, until you came, squinting the rivulets of water out of your eyes into the dim passage, bringing with you life and new beginnings…

Spitting out Ice-cream

Playing a movie in reverse. Starting at The End. Finis. Not something you see happen too often in the digital age, but I remember the film reels of childhood, when, after too many seasonal drinks and the locked-in fever of an English winter, relatives would show us old home movies, and then, just for fun, play them backwards. We’d collapse with laughter as a seaside holiday turned into a keystone cops undoing of life- fish would hurl themselves backwards off fishing rods back into the safety of the ocean, and ice-creams would be spewed out of tiny messy mouths, even as the faces miraculously cleaned themselves up.

And so it goes. After fifteen years of marriage, I am divorced. The memories and life created have all been rewound, right back to slipping rings off fingers and reversing up the aisle.

Yet this ending is not the time to leave your cinema seat. No, you should grab some snacks and settle down, for this is the beginning of a new epic. Even in pre-production, this next show is hailed to be a prize-winner, an award-winning cast is set to revolutionise the way we view things. From the reverse movie you just chuckled through, I have three children, whose lives are most definitely progressing. I’m thrilled to be part of that. I also have a new partner, and her role in the movie seems to be one that will have equal billing on the credits. Very happy about that.

So I’m settling back, wondering how the scenes will play out, and how the story will end. I’m not reversing this time. I’m hurtling into the future with the expectancy that things will work out, that in this movie, anything could happen.

Grab your popcorn and your cherry slushies. You won’t be bored. Promise.

Laura Norder

My first real job, I was hired to get arrested. The deal was, I worked for a nightclub as a barman. We didn’t have a liquor licence. What we did have was frequent raids by teams of cops. They’d send in a decoy, who would buy a drink with a marked note, and then the rest of the team would storm in and take all of the booze and money, and arrest the manager. The manager would be fined an admission of guilt fine, and then the club would be up and running again. A manager could get two fines before he had a proper court case, so there was a rotational management team- we took turns in getting bundled into a van, fingerprinted and fined.

It seemed to work, and generally the whole process was done out of obligation on the part of the police. Sometimes they’d even let us know they were going to raid so we could hide the drinks in the ceiling or toilet cisterns.

I was arrested a couple of times. Once on my eighteenth birthday. The next time, I was locked up for five days over a long weekend.

So I served drinks and waited for the police.

That was a long, long time ago. I no longer wait to be arrested, or try and find loopholes in the law. My career path has become legit, like a mafia don.

But I am in the business of arrest. I don’t wear a uniform or sit in an unmarked car muttering into a Dictaphone. I don’t storm drug dens with my pulse battering the inside of my ears and my trigger finger twitching.

I write. My job these days is to arrest you. To let you partake in the criminal pleasures of reading, escaping, learning, dreaming, and then, just when you think you’re getting away with it, to throw you to the ground and in an instant change your life. With words.

Arrest isn’t always a bad thing. For a kid drifting away from the too-distant or too-close care of his parents, arrest can redirect his waywardness. Wake-up call.

Same with cardiac arrest- provided it doesn’t leave you gasping like a landed fish, clutching your chest and watching the world fade to a blur, once it’s over, and you’ve survived, you can appreciate sunrises and sunsets, tastes and even pain, with a renewed, almost rebellious, sense of passion.

So I’ll be there. Watching you. Finding out your habits and your delectations. Waiting for the right moment to slip the cuffs over your wrists, and keep you captive in my world for a bit, until you can look at life with an altered perspective. I hope you enjoy the experience.

Fragmented Families Can Be Good

You can have extended family begging you to “stay together for the kids”, but sometimes, a marriage ends. Not always. Some couples manage to find a calm channel through the currents that overwhelm others. Some couples cope with living past each other, others seem to be able to hold hands until arthritis makes it difficult to do so. But when a marriage ends, it’s not the dissolution of a couple when there are children, but an entirely new dynamic of shared responsibilities.

It’s really hard sometimes to think about how many days I have missed of my children growing up and experiencing new things. Sometimes I discover new developments in their lives by default, as they babble happily on about new friends, or a sport they have taken up in the new school term. I manage to mask my surprise and dismay, and look for clues about how they decided to do this, and whether it shows some of their future personality in the choices they are making now.

Of course I’m supportive- anybody would be; it doesn’t make me an extra-special dad because I want to hear about who they are. That’s one of the basic rules of parenting: Listen to your kids. And on reflection, when I was parenting as part of a marriage, huge swathes of time could pass in a blur of breakfasts, laundry and distraction without me noticing a change. Perhaps it’s not so bad, then, that I see them every other week- when they are sick, or sad or talking about something new, I’m that much more able to see it.

It’s a little like maintaining a house- you have a series of spotlights in the ceiling, and one goes out, and unless you sort it out immediately, it can peer blindly down at you for months before you have a bit of home-making epiphany, and find the five minutes it takes to replace the bulb. Or going on holiday and looking at things from a different perspective. Children can be like that. When you are with them constantly, it’s possible to start to miss the microscopic changes, and sometimes even the most fundamental ones.

I’m not advocating spouses separating, or divorced parenting as the better choice, but what I am saying is that rather than sit and mope about what I’ve missed, I’m going to think about all the changes I have been fortunate enough to see, and how my children never look at me as less of a parent because I feel like one. And you can be just as observant within the context of a marriage, of course.

And I do get cross with them, sometimes. And shout, and react rather than respond, and get irritated at mealtimes, and so on… Cos I’m their dad.

Answered Prayers

They came with outstretched fingers, tapping blessings onto the shoulders of the supplicants. They swept around chambers, silence echoing from vaulted ceilings. They moved in a row, a tall thin mass, like a rank of poplar trees dividing a field. Their purpose was defined, their role made meaningful by the hunched shoulders of the morally dispossessed before them.

Their mitred heads gave the impression of a chess set made up entirely of bishops, their slide across the diagonals designed to counteract the halting one-pace steps of the masses. The rasp of their robes against unimaginably jointed meccano legs was in harmony with the dry breathy gasp of the faintest of breezes which crept behind the heavy ancient tapestries like wayward children fearing a beating.

They responded to rules and bells, to chants and incantations. In this room words and gazes were currency, and they were immeasurably wealthy, the impoverished their charges. Without the walls, their power was in the ability to draw the guilty, fearful and desperate through the grey stone doorway and into the place where mercy was placed like a bet on their shoulders.

And yet, despite the menace lurking at the stare-at-your-feet level, where the grey slate was chilled enough to keep haunches of meat cool and fresh, up towards the rafters, the fingers of God pushed rainbow reminders of light through the stained glass, and prayers lifted to mingle with the motes of holy dust which snagged them on their way to heaven.

There were walls. They could not contain what was within.