Turnaround
The Nectary weasel watched the sweaty cleaner with his wet carnal eyes, his rascal eye went darting from side to side whilst Clara Newt-Eyes waited. The promise of canary eel stew did not warm them and their boat, the Tanya, crewless, was unready to sail despite it being Newcastle year. But there were nasty lace curtains on the windows and he only saw Tyne cereal and not the true Newcastle spirit.
In The Garden of Eden
I suppose I should begin by confessing that I am uncertain as to the ground upon which their relationship was founded. I suspect that it was on a lower level than that at which spoken language is deemed a pre-requisite. They were of "The Beautiful People" and, until they grew bored of each other's beauty, language would be of little importance to them.
I say "of little importance", but clearly they did have some need of it, for they had made the effort, and in doing so had created, I suppose, a thing of beauty, albeit one unappreciated by and, if I may say so, largely incomprehensible to the rest of us.
He was German, she was French and neither spoke nor understood the other's language, but both could speak a little English and it was in this "little English" that they communicated. Herein lay the beauty and horror of their relationship, for when one made a mistake, the other learned it and, as time passed by, they each compounded the other's errors until at length after a period of no more than a month or two, they had created something totally new and totally unique to themselves.
They should have been left to enjoy what pleasures surely awaited them between the sheets of the little bed they knew so well in the flat they had rented together in town and that unending pleasure would have been theirs today had they not fallen to the temptation of Summer in the countryside on a cheap campsite full of Englishmen.
At first we laughed to hear their vain efforts to make themselves understood to their neighbours in a language whose similarity to the Queen's English rested upon one or two odd words incorrectly used. Then the skies grew rather darker in their Eden as each came to recognise imperfections in the other. Words, phrases which meant so much to them meant nothing to the native speakers with whom they had believed themselves to be at one. That phrase he had taught her, that line he had learned from her, all vain, all devalued now, all gibberish and understood by no-one. They were naked and the beauty which had once bound them so tightly together, neither could see any more.
She left first, early one afternoon to catch the train home to her parents house in the country where everyone spoke French He stayed no more than a couple of days after her departure picking up one or two new words of real English as he waited in vain for her return.
And when they had gone we stayed and slithered amongst the apples which littered the campsite for we, after all, were not beautiful.
The child in the manger
Anna yesterday, lovely again, pretending it was her birthday and that she had brought the chocolates - she fooled me for a moment. How young she is and from her I would take the child's sweets and in return I would give her the view, that wonderful view which only comes with age and experience. What mountains we could climb were we given the powers of both the young and the old.
Heavy Wings
And then I could hear them again, at first hardly, then as my footsteps quickened that slow, heavy beating of distant, then not so distant wings. Then they were upon me.
So often these wings have beaten in the darkness and I have not known what they were, never seen the wings, only heard the beating the beating.
These are savage birds with claws and tearing beaks and dawn is very far behind us and the sunset far beyond.
The Long March
It was not what I had envisaged. Some easy stroll along the valley where trains would run had been my picture taking in the magic scenery missed by so many when steam was king. I had brought no boots and the clothes I wore were for a Sunday party with children and the vicar offering tea.
Within an hour and clad in what clothes they could lend me, the mud had overwhelmed me and legs which had once tired after a day's march were hard pushed to carry me beyond the hour. When we stopped to eat a snack on the summit I little knew how much further we had to go and how unwilling would be those legs to take me there.
After the Attack
After the attack we peered through the smashed and shattered windows now held together by thin sinews of wire at the still smouldering remains. They had come during the night, three of them, armed, as always, with a few stones, a stick or two with which to swagger and the knowledge that they would probably never be caught. We peered as the camera had peered across the dimlit stage of the road where they had performed and though they were long gone, we could see them, dimly.
The camera had it all, the three of them, two children and a man. Whilst the adult searched for more stones, the children pelted the windows and when at length they gained acces, they set the bomb which would burn away so much of what was important to us.
Opening the mouth
To have resorted to this when all the doors were open and the voices of those strange passers-by could be heard even above the noises of the house would have been foolish: I could not have done it then.
So why now, why open the mouth now? Maybe it's the lack of respect, maybe that contempt which seems to pervade every area of modern life that has prompted me to move, maybe something much less admirable. Maybe that dark figure who waits in the shadows beside the kitchen door, who never makes a move nor speaks any word I can hear or understand will find something in these words to move him, something for which he has been waiting for so long. And maybe, hearing what he wants to hear he will, in time, open the door which has been closed for so long - and shall I go through it?
Anna this morning - beautiful, her hair dancing on her shoulders and that russet jumper she wears. What should we make of that? Where should we let that take us? There are so many roads beyond the wicket gate, we cannot take them all, there simply isn't time.
