The Object of All Studies by Daniel Cullen

 “I feel dazed and dopey, my mind a blur of ideas and images”, writes Julia Bell at the outset of Radical Attention.1 She is describing a state of digital overwhelm, one which might be considered the inverse of the reading state,2 and which leaves her feeling that she has “lost [herself] somewhere, zombified by the machine.”3 Walking to a nearby park, she realises that rather than writing, as she had intended, her day had instead “been spent in a black hole, scrolling through webpages and social media accounts looking for – what?”4 As she pauses, and begins to observe her environment, she notices that all those in her vicinity appear to be similarly afflicted, entranced – “Scrolling, texting. Necks bent, shoulders hunched”5 – by their own virtual worlds.

This state, and its discontents, will be familiar to many readers. With the relentless acceleration of online life over the last decade arising from the ubiquity of social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, anxieties of a ‘crisis of attention’ have become commonplace. These have been expressed in a number of forms, from the personal essay (Andrew Sullivan’s ‘My Distraction Sickness – and yours’6) to books from Silicon Valley insiders (Jaron Lanier’s Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now7), and even major documentaries (Netflix’s ‘The Social Dilemma’8). Regardless of form, sociologist Richard Seymour notes that “the complaints are almost always the same: users end up constantly distracted, unproductive, anxious, needy and depressed – yet also curiously susceptible to advertising.”9

Radical Attention weaves together various, overlapping facets of these phenomena into a long, meditative essay. Adopting a creative non-fiction approach, it draws on sources from a range of disciplines, including literature, psychology, education and philosophy. Roughly demarcated into seven sections, each opens with an epigraph, taken from the works of authors such as Virginia Woolf, Margaret Atwood, James Baldwin and bell hooks, with the text of the essay set out in short bursts of a handful of paragraphs at a time. Jumping breathlessly between topics, perspectives and temporalities, while maintaining an internal sense of narrative, the book intuitively accommodates the diminished attention spans of a distracted readership.

In setting out her defence of attention, Bell, who teaches creative writing, takes inspiration from the thought of another teacher, the French philosopher Simone Weil (1909-1943). Weil was unequivocal about the virtues of attention, writing that “Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer. It presupposes faith and love. Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.”10 She saw the process of paying attention as an end in itself, yet emphasised that this process required significant effort and great patience to undertake. For Weil, learning how to be attentive was “the object of all studies.”11 Amid the maelstrom of connectivity, Radical Attention seeks to convince the reader of the urgency of cultivating their own practice of attention.

* * *

Concerns over the fraying of attention spans are not solely a product of the digital age. In accounts of early Christian monasteries as far back as the fourth century, for example, the Latin term acedia was used to describe a spiritual state in which religious devotees suffered from an inability to pay attention. Translated from its original Greek, the term denoted a ‘lack of care’ about one’s life, involving a persistent boredom or listlessness which “left one yearning for distraction and continual novelty, exploiting one’s petty hates and hungers”12 – a description which aligns remarkably closely with present day accounts of the state of digital overwhelm.

But if the perils of inattention have long been observed, Bell sees a major shift resulting from the explosive uptake of social media platforms. “It is no accident of design that these platforms are leveraged to distract us,” she states, “rather it’s the logic of a system whose purpose is to capture our attention.”13 As such, Radical Attention is rooted in a critique of the forces of contemporary capitalism underpinning the social industry. In this view, aspects of everyday life are subject to a continual and expanding commodification, through which the platforms hijack and monetize users’ attention. “The collision of emergent technologies with the current form of deregulated, increasingly anarchic and rapacious capitalism has accelerated social change at a sometimes dizzying pace”,14 she writes.

That attention, in the form of data, can be transformed into an object of monetary value is demonstrated by the vast commercial success of many Silicon Valley companies, including the social media platforms. During 2020, Facebook alone collected revenues of $80 billion.15 But this success rests on the readiness of users to dispense of their attention – be it unthinkingly, reluctantly or happily welcoming distraction. The paradox of this shift is that attention is conceived of as an extractive resource for the benefit of the private companies which operate the platforms, yet for the user it is assumed to be entirely dispensable. The implication of this is that from the perspective of the individual, their attention is considered to have no intrinsic value.

This commodification of attention is founded on a behaviourist model, which seeks to direct users’ actions along specific paths. Many of the features which have now become core parts of these platforms, such as the ‘Like’ button pioneered by Facebook, use methods of reinforcement inspired by research in behavioural psychology. Such features rely on users’ susceptibility to be influenced or ‘nudged’ towards certain behaviours – returning regularly, checking for updates, interacting in set ways – through the exploitation of psychological vulnerabilities. This background leads Bell to articulate what she sees as a core ethical questionfor those contemplating the possibility of resistance: “Are we to accept that we are simply manipulable brains at the mercy of our neurobiology, or are we individuals with free will?”16

* * *

As much as it is a book about technology, one of the principal concerns of Radical Attention is the future of subjectivity. In the platforms’ behaviourist model, Bell identifies the imposition of a new mode of being that leaves little scope for private selfhood. In this context, she fears the replacement of human freedom with increasingly automated behaviour. What arises among users, she writes, is “a semi-automated for- profit personality which is constantly being nudged and notified and prompted. … Maybe one day there will be a generation who won’t question the notion of automated human behaviour, but will accept, wholeheartedly, the idea of technology telling them what to do, where to go, monitoring and measuring every aspect of their lives.”17

The cost of this emergent automated selfhood, as she sees it, is the preservation of individual subjective experience. “Where now is the space for [the] private self? For the private reckonings, thoughts, musings, fleeting fantasies?”18 Bell asks. Other authors have recently expressed similar concerns about the implications of contemporary digital life. Philosopher Justin E.H. Smith writes of “the forces that would beat all human subjectivity down into an algorithm”, with the human subject “vanishingly small beneath the tsunami of likes, views, clicks, and other metrics that is currently transforming selves into financialised vectors of data.”19 Richard Seymour meanwhile states that social media platforms “have demonstrated that our everyday lives can be commodified, provided we consent to their darkest corners being flooded with light.”20

Rather than foregoing the exercise of freedom and deferring to the convenience of automation in such ways, Bell advocates the protection of individual subjectivity. She quotes an excerpt from Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, in which one of the characters, adjusting to seclusion after spending extended time in the company of others, is described as returning “to being oneself, a wedge-shaped core of darkness, something invisible to others.”21 In The Private Life: Why We Remain in the Dark, psychoanalyst Josh Cohen describes this ‘wedge-shaped core’ in an individual’s interior as a ‘mute spot’ which constitutes “the very source of creative life.” Intrusion into this private space, he suggests, is “is the most profound violation a person can experience.”22

* * *

The wider implications of these transformations extend beyond the level of the individual. “As more and more aspects of our social and professional lives are conducted online”, she writes, “the [online/offline] distinction begins to lose meaning.”23 With the crumbling of this online/offline divide, she sees the increasing blurring of the barriers between private life and public life. What happens online becomes more closely entwined with public life, with “increasingly strange and dystopic” effects.24 “Our attention lies on a new frontier between the public and the private”, she claims, to such an extent that “it must almost be at the level of our consciousness that we decide whether we are in public or in private.”25

To understand the nature of the spillover from the platforms ‘IRL’,26 it is necessary to focus on the body – and it is this which becomes the true foundation of the analysis of digital life set out in Radical Attention. Bell describes users of social media platforms as often being overcome by “convulsions of outrage”27 – a visceral, physical feeling. The analogy of the convulsion is an apt one, evoking the vision of an extreme, yet apparently involuntary, takeover of the body. William Davies describes the dynamics of social media crowds in similar terms, as “amenable to waves of feeling, which seize its members in ways they don’t expect and can’t always easily explain.” Davies terms these waves ‘somatic’ phenomena, which, though mediated by technology, pass from body to body in sequence.28

The great irony of this, as Bell points out, is that online technologies initially promised increased communication and connection with others without the need for physical proximity – transcending the corporeal. Instead, however, she sees the body as being hacked, hooked, hijacked by the technologies. Consider, in this regard, the intensely physical nature of the descriptions of the state of digital overwhelm. And Bell emphasises the inadequacy of digital technologies in recreating human connection in the absence of the presence of others. She observes the flourishing of an ‘epidemic of loneliness’ – reported to now affect 20% of adults in the UK and the US – and comments that “Our bodies don’t just crave touch, we actually need it – the soothing effect of another body on our own.”29

* * *

At the heart of this book is the story of the troubled collision between technology, subjectivity and embodiment in the digital era. “The technology that is supposed to free us from the flesh has actually done exactly the opposite”, she argues: “Rather than being liberated by technology, we have become weirdly trapped in the interplay between it and our biology.”30 These developments present a significant challenge to the historically dominant conception of the relationship between mind and body, drawn from the philosophy of René Descartes (1596-1650), which has influenced Western thought since the seventeenth century. Whereas in the Cartesian model, the rational thought of the mind was paramount, and feelings and sensations of the body regarded with suspicion, today these boundaries appear untenable.

Ideas of the absolute separation of mind and body had never entirely held up to scrutiny – not least when the role of the nervous system, mediating the junctures between the two, began to be better understood. But Davies argues that the dynamics of new digital technologies have further dissolved these conceptual boundaries, as evidenced in the notion of waves of somatic phenomena passing between platform users. As a result, he writes that “the categorical division between ‘reason’ and ‘feeling’ no longer functions, because Descartes’ idea of the disembodied rational mind is dead.”31 In turn, the implications for subjectivity are that “in place of Descartes’ strict separation of mind and body, there is instead an image of a human being possessed of instinct, emotion and calculation, all fused together.”32

Such transformations are of particular significance for liberal democratic political systems, which are founded on Cartesian ideals of the human subject. Davies notes that where marketing and technology companies have lead the way in engaging with the power of feeling and sensation, political systems have been slower to respond. This is a concern which Bell echoes, writing that “The terms of democratic engagement are radically altered by this new arrangement.”33 She references the spread of disinformation and propaganda through social media platforms, which has generated significant turbulence in political systems worldwide in recent years. It is clear, however, that these disruptions are only further symptoms of the changing dynamics of public life, driven by the underlying forces of technological change.

* * *

Faced with the challenges that these digital transformations pose to both private and public life, how might one respond? A popular recommendation, which Bell firmly rejects, is the adoption of mindfulness, such as through meditation. She describes mindfulness as a passive solution which seeks only to control digital distraction and its attendant anxieties – the kind of ‘life hack’ which might be advocated by Silicon Valley executives. Taking particular issue with this corporate enthusiasm for mindfulness, she presents the ap- proach as insufficient for the problems at hand. It cannot, she contends, “solve the ethical and intellectual questions posed by the unsettling reality of what technology, as it is currently utilised, is doing to the organisation of society and to ourselves. To the reasons why we might be anxious.”34

In place of mindfulness, the reader is advised to adopt another approach: the concept of ‘radical attention’. This is a “more radical, active kind of attention”,35 which is presented as an explicitly embodied practice. Returning attention to one’s body, she argues, “allows us to reconnect to the parts of ourselves that have been outsourced to the screen.”36 Rather than accepting metaphors of technological dualism (‘the software of the mind running on the hardware of the body’) she insists on the importance of understanding that human consciousness is inextricably rooted in the flesh. This can be understood as a call for readers to reclaim their bodies – in all their “mutable, strange, contingent and. mysterious”37 realities – from their hijacking and their manipulation in the interests of private companies.

The cultivation of radical attention is more urgent than ever, Bell insists, in the face of the overwhelming collective challenges of the present, from climate change to racial and gender injustice. She urges readers to “get off the net and into the streets and the classrooms, to offer up new, practical solutions to the common problems we all face. We are going to need to find new ways to come together, rather than succumbing to the fake pressures of our online identities.”38 That the actions she proposes – taking to the streets, debating in classrooms – involve physical proximity reflects the fact that this practice is not intended to be undertaken solely in isolation, but also in connection with others. Bell cites the wave of Black Lives Matter protests during 2020 as an example of the possibilities of in-person protest to counter abuses of power: “a loud reminder that bodies matter.”39

* * *
The reader is being encouraged, then, to join together with others, in person, to practice the art of attention. And at heart, Bell sees this act as the basis of her own pedagogy. In the classroom with her students, she is “trying to instil in them attentive practice, a capacity for concentration, so that they can make connections, think, and engage in the kind of deep reflection that good writing, but also good living, demands.”40 But it is striking to consider that if attention is indeed to so central to the mission of pedagogy, the proliferation of distraction generated by digital platforms may be said to constitute its own form of poisonous pedagogy. Within the chaos of vitriolic disagreements between social media users, writes Seymour, “No one is learning anything, except how to remain connected to the machine.”41

The fundamental distinction between these two pedagogies might be understood in terms of their different attitudes to learning. In her book Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life, the philosopher Zena Hitz draws on two concepts from the writing of Saint Augustine, the vice of curiositas and the virtue of studiositas, which assist in elucidating this. Rather than ‘curiosity’, curiositas is translated as the ‘love of spectacle’, which Augustine saw as a disordered drive for knowledge. Hitz refers to the internet as often “a cesspool for the love of spectacle”,42 a source of experience simply for the sake of experience, rather than with the object of any deeper purpose. Hitz characterises curiositas as contentment with the surface of things, and refers to the compulsive use of social media as “a screwed-up longing for communion. We want to stay at the surface with others.”43

The concept of studiositas, meanwhile, is translated as ‘seriousness’. This is not intended to imply dullness or severity, but a more meaningful love of learning which goes beyond experience. Hitz explains this as “a desire to seek out what is most important, to get to the bottom of things, to stay focused on what matters.” To practice this virtue involves self-examination: “to ponder one’s dissatisfactions, to discern better from worse, the possible from the impossible.”44 In this juxtaposition of spectacle and seriousness, the significance of a practice of attention in response to the problems of digital distraction becomes clear. Where the teaching of the art of attention in the classroom seeks to nurture students towards being studiosus, the reinforcement of distraction taught by the platforms actively encourages users to be merely curiosus.

Beyond the urgencies of the present political and environmental context, consideration of these philosophical distinctions clarifies the importance of a practice of attention for the life of the individual. To be continually trapped at the surface of things by the dynamics of the social media platforms has serious personal implications – as reflected in the sheer frustration in so many contemporary accounts of digital overwhelm. But the reader of Radical Attention is neither advised to delete their accounts, nor provided with solutions for the reprogramming of their attention. Instead, they are left with something more valuable: a sense of their own agency as an embodied subject, a perspective from which to assess the competing pressures making demands on their attention, and a call to turn this back towards a deeper love of learning.

Daniel Cullen (https://www.clippings.me/dcullen) is an Oxford-based writer and researcher. He is currently studying Creative Writing at Cambridge University, with a focus on creative non-fiction, and is a former Birkbeck postgraduate student.

1 Julia Bell, Radical Attention (London: Peninsula Press, 2020), 12.
2 Mairead Small Staid, “Reading in the age of constant distraction,” The Paris Review, February 8, 2019, https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2019/02/08/reading-in-the-age-of-constant-distraction/. 
3 Bell, Radical Attention, 13.
4 ibid, 12.
5 ibid, 13.
6 Andrew Sullivan, “My distraction sickness – and yours,” New York Magazine, September 16, 2019,https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2016/09/andrew-sullivan-my-distraction-sickness-and-yours.html
7 Jaron Lanier, Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now (London: Vintage, 2018).
8 “The Social Dilemma,” Netflix, accessed 5 January, 2021, https://www.netflix.com/title/81254224
9 Richard Seymour, The Twittering Machine (London: The Indigo Press, 2019), 72.
10 Bell, Radical Attention, 30.
11 ibid, 110.

12 Seymour, The Twittering Machine, 200.
13 Bell, Radical Attention, 43.
14 ibid, 78.

15 John Naughton, “All I want for 2021 is to see Mark Zuckerberg up in court,” The Guardian, January 2, 2021,https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jan/02/all-i-want-for-2021-is-to-see-mark-zuckerberg- up-in-court
16 Bell, Radical Attention, 45.
17 ibid, 76.
18 ibid, 46.
19 Justin E.H. Smith, “It’s All Over,” The Point Magazine, January 3, 2019, https://thepointmag.com/examined- life/its-all-over/

20 Seymour, The Twittering Machine, 104.
21 Bell, Radical Attention, 46.
22 Josh Cohen, The Private Life: Why We Remain in the Dark (London: Granta, 2013), 9. 

23 Bell, Radical Attention, 71.
24 ibid, 71.
25 ibid, 103.
26 ‘In real life’.
27 ibid, 68.
28 William Davies, “The funny side of politics,” OpenDemocracy, April 9, 2019, https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/funny-side-politics/

29 Bell, Radical Attention, 27.
30 ibid, 75.
31 William Davies, Nervous States: How Feeling Took Over the World (London: Jonathan Cape, 2018), 223. 
32 ibid, 131.
33 Bell, Radical Attention, 70.

34 ibid, 106.
35 ibid.
36 ibid, 119. 
37 ibid, 115.
38 ibid, 120. 
39 ibid, 121

40 ibid, 113.
41 Seymour, The Twittering Machine, 74.
42 Zena Hitz, Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2020), 135.
43 ibid, 143.
44 ibid, 144.
 

 

 

 

 

Mr Howard’s Girls by Abigail Seltzer

 

The year I turned fourteen, Mr Howard took the top set for maths. He was one of four male teachers at Carpenden High School for Girls but the only one anyone ever talked about. He wasn’t traditionally good-looking. His wavy hair was slightly too long, his fleshy nose a little too large for his face, his mouth an incongruous pink rosebud, but many girls found him irredeemably sexy because of his reputation. Legend was he had once drawn male genitalia on the whiteboard and pointed out the parts women should handle with care due to their extreme sensitivity, but we didn’t have phones back then, so no one had proof.

There was an expectant buzz as we filed into class for the first lesson of term but it proceeded in a disappointingly conventional manner. He took the register, distributed textbooks and told us which page to turn to, then began writing algebraic equations on the board. As his arm worked up and down, I fixed my eyes on his shirt sleeve. Before I could stop myself, I had him in swimming trunks, kissing me. Next thing I knew, we were lying on a beach, gazing into one another’s eyes. When I refocussed my attention, I had no idea what he was talking about and had to ask Lauren what we were doing. 

After that near miss, I saved my daydreams for the bus journey home or the quiet times before I fell asleep, when I would run my hands over my body, pretending they were his. 

In the meantime, maths lessons remained focussed and mundane. We pressed on through factorisation, linear equations and surds without a hint of impropriety. As a class, we felt let down.

It wasn’t until the week before the Christmas holidays that we had our first real ‘Mr Howard’ experience. He had set us a maths test featuring questions on Christmas food and drink to mark the festive season. There was a lot more chatter than usual and as we worked, someone asked, ‘What’s Strega, sir?’

‘Italian liqueur,’ he said. ‘It means witch. Any of you tried it?’

‘We’re too young to drink, sir,’ someone else called out.

‘I don’t believe that for a moment,’ he said. ‘Are you telling me not one of you has had a Bacardi Breezer or a Smirnoff Ice?’

We exchanged guilty glances. Most of us had. 

‘Next you’ll be telling me that none of you has ever tried smoking.’ He looked at a girl who had been caught with cigarettes a few weeks before. ‘Or boys.’

A stillness fell over the room.

‘Don’t tell me you don’t think about boys,’ he continued, looking around the class with a complicit smile. ‘At your age, you ought not to be thinking about anything else. Unless you think about girls. Which would be a great waste for us boys.’

Before anyone could react, he had turned back to the board.

‘Right,’ he said, drawing a series of curved lines. ‘Let’s make a start on parabolas.’

Those few minutes derailed my Christmas holidays. I spent long, solitary hours in my room, dreaming up increasingly steamy scenarios starring Mr Howard. We were on a school trip overseas, and when the rest of the group left without us for reasons that were never clear, we had to share a double bed in the only remaining vacant room in the hotel. He invited me to stay late after school and when we were alone in the classroom, he told me he couldn’t resist me and pressed his body into mine. As I became bolder in my fantasies, I added detail, a tongue here, a finger there, using my body to play both parts.

When we went back to school, I avoided all eye contact with him in case he could tell what I’d been up to. One day as we were working on an exercise, I caught a whiff of aftershave. He was crouching beside me.

‘It’s okay to look at me,’ he said in a low voice. ‘I don’t bite.’ Then he stood up and zigzagged his finger over my calculations.

‘Well done, Beth. Absolutely right.’ And he walked to the front of the class.

When the lesson finished, everyone wanted to know what he had said to me in private. 

‘He was just checking my work,’ I said. No one believed me.

After that, I made a point of keeping my eyes on him but the effort was so great that I didn’t always listen. Sometimes I would tune in to find he had ‘done a Mr Howard,’ and instead of talking about linear inequalities or quadratic equations, he would be expounding on the pros and cons of condoms or extolling the sensual pleasure of slipping between clean sheets.

One day just before half term, I surfaced to find the whole class sitting in silence, pencils down, as he surveyed us with the lop-sided smile that figured so prominently in my daydreams.

‘Probability,’ he said. ‘How probable is it that any of you will remember anything I’ve taught you?’

A few girls giggled, uncertain whether this was his way of introducing a new topic.

He scanned the room, letting his gaze rest longer on some girls than others.

‘How probable is it that you’ll fall in love? Get married? Have children?’

Our eyes followed him as he walked from one side of the classroom to the other.

‘And how probable is it that any of that will make you truly happy?’

He stopped pacing and sketched an arc in the air. 

‘Imagine yourselves, if you will, twenty years from now. You’ll be in your early thirties. None of you, I hope, will be a virgin by then.’

He let his words sink in.

‘The thing about sex,’ he continued, as if he had been talking about it all along, ‘is that you girls aren’t taught enough about it. You learn the mechanics but nothing about the reality. In my view, you should be seizing every available opportunity to find out. Because in truth, it’s a natural and pleasurable act between two consenting adults, male or female. So don’t waste too much time on algebra and trigonometry. Learn something really useful. Learn all about yourselves. Get to know your bodies. Find out what stirs you and what leaves you cold. Experiment. Make mistakes. Above all, never feel guilty about anything you do with another human being, as long as it’s what you both want. If you can follow that advice, you will dramatically increase the probability of your future happiness.’

He paused, arms folded.

‘Masturbation.’

I felt as if he were speaking to me personally.

‘If you don’t know how to do it, find out.’

There was a movement to my left. Lauren had her hand up.

‘Please sir,’ she said, ‘could you tell us our half term homework?’

He smiled. ‘I just did.’ Then he went to the board and wrote rapidly in untidy capitals: PLEASE REVISE CHAPTERS 1 AND 2.

The squeak of the marker pen was the only sound in the room. 

When he was done, he turned around, marker pen in hand, and said, ‘For those of you looking for a less exciting time, I suggest you do this.’ 

At lunchtime, we sat in a huddle in our form room.

‘Perhaps we should say something to Mrs Drew,’ said Lauren.

But we all talked her out of it. We didn’t want to be the ones who put a spoke in his wheels. 

After half term, Miss Jordan took us for maths. Mr Howard had taken ‘a leave of absence’ for personal reasons. Lauren swore blind she had said nothing.

I next came across him during the Easter holidays. I had spent the afternoon in town and was waiting in the rain for my bus home when a dirty blue car with tinted windows pulled up and the driver wound down his window. Mr Howard was wearing an open-necked shirt and a pullover, and I could hear classical music playing on the radio.

‘Beth,’ he said. ‘Can I offer you a lift?’

I was faintly surprised he still existed.

‘Thanks, but it’s probably out of your way. I’m going to Hillers End.’

‘Not at all. Come on, hop in. It’s filthy weather.’

I was cold, wet and fed up. I scuttled round to the passenger side and climbed in. The car was warm and smelt of pine air freshener. He gave me a quick sideways smile.

‘You looked like a drowned rat.’

He took a route I didn’t recognise but I assumed he was avoiding the busy main roads. He asked how I was and how school was going, then lapsed into silence. I was happy not to talk. After a while, he pulled into a lay-by overlooking open countryside and turned off the engine, killing the music so that the only sound was rain drumming on the roof of the car. He twisted to face me, one hand draped over the steering wheel. 

‘You know I’ve been dismissed, don’t you, Beth?’

My heart started to pound. ‘We guessed as much.’

He stared out of the window. The label of his pullover was sticking up.

‘I’m very fond of you, Beth. I’ll miss teaching you.’

The rain was even heavier now. The windscreen was a wall of water.

‘Right,’ he said. ‘Best get you home.’

But he didn’t switch on the engine.

‘How old are you now?’ he asked.

I was sure he must know. ‘Fifteen in November.’ Suddenly, fourteen sounded too young.

‘Have you had sex yet?’ he said, reaching for the ignition. He could have been checking my knowledge of polynomials. 

I blushed deeply. In all my daydreams, this was a scenario I had overlooked.

‘Don’t be embarrassed.’ He seemed surprised by the idea. ‘You’re a pretty girl. Pretty and clever. That’s a winning combination.’

He gave a fleeting glance at his groin. So did I. He saw me looking. 

‘Mind of its own,’ he said, apologetic.

I had never knowingly been in the presence of an erect penis and in the midst of my confusion, I was disappointed it was not more evident.

‘Want to cop a feel?’

He made it sound harmless, an educational experience offered to a precocious student.

‘Go on. Got to start somewhere. Might as well be me.’

He leant back to make access easier. I rested my hand on something rod-like that was much firmer than I expected, quite unlike a body part. It felt like it could do a lot of damage.

‘Want to try something else?’ he said.

‘Like what?

‘Like this.’

He closed his eyes, and placing his hand on top of mine, began to move it up and down, moving it faster and faster until he let out a sudden gasp. As soon as his grip loosened, I took my hand back and massaged my fingers.

He opened his eyes and said, ‘In the glove compartment. Tissues.’

He undid his trousers, reached inside and mopped himself up, then screwed up the used tissues and dropped them at his feet.

‘Oh, my sweet little Beth,’ he said as he zipped himself up.

‘Did I do it right?’ I asked. I was acutely aware of my inexperience and felt he must be judging me.

He smiled as if I had said something funny. ‘Yes, you did it right.’ He reached out and stroked my cheek. ‘I really should get you home.’  

He wiped the steamed-up windows with his elbow and switched on the engine, Classical music filled the car.

We didn’t talk again until we reached Hillers End.

‘I’m the next street over,’ I said. ‘You can drop me here.’

He brought the car to a halt and looked at me with his deep-set grey eyes.

‘If I were you, I’d get straight into a nice hot bath,’ he said.

When I got home, I ran up to the bathroom and locked the door. I looked in the mirror to check if my face showed any visible signs of what had just happened then undid my trousers, placed my hand inside my knickers and rubbed myself.

After the Easter holidays, Lauren told us she knew why Joanne King had not come back to school.

‘She slept with Mr Howard,’ she said. ‘And now she’s pregnant.’

I felt a murderous pang of jealousy. Joanne King was seventeen. It was completely legal.

I didn’t see him again for another twenty years, at a probability and stats conference where I was giving a paper. He approached me during the coffee break, wearing the tentative expression of a fan hoping for a precious moment with a favourite celebrity. His hair, now flecked with grey, was still a shade too long and I could see broken veins on his nose. He wasn’t as tall as I remembered, but I had mostly seen him standing at the front of a classroom. It felt odd to be able to look him in the eye.

‘Dr Bremner,’ he said. ‘I don’t suppose you remember me.’

‘Of course I do. How are you, Mr Howard?’ I kept my voice neutral and polite.

His face lit up. ‘Well.’

‘Are you still teaching?’ I couldn’t imagine that he was.

‘Semi-retired. I do a bit of private tuition here and there. In the end, I had enough of schools. But I’m so pleased you’ve made a career in mathematics. You were an outstanding student.’

‘Was I?’

‘Oh, yes. You really made an impression.’ He took a sip of coffee. ‘Tell me more about yourself. Are you married? Children? If you don’t mind me asking.’

‘I have two boys. And you?’

He shook his head. ‘Nothing that lasted, I’m afraid. Probably for the best.’  

His attention wavered. One of my graduate students, Elisabeta, had come up and was waiting patiently for a moment to intervene. I noticed Mr Howard appraising her rapidly, his eyes sliding over her breasts and legs before looking at her face.

‘Sorry to interrupt,’ she said. ‘Tim Lowther needs a word.’

Something in the quick sideways glance she gave Mr Howard suggested she had felt his scrutiny.

‘This is Mr Howard,’ I said. ‘He was my maths teacher at school.’

Her expression stayed cool.

‘Amazing.’

He smiled, late middle age indulging youthful language.

‘I’m very proud of her. She was one of the best students I’ve ever taught.’

His eyes darted towards me, encouraging me to admire his performance. 

‘Tell Tim I’ll be with him in a minute,’ I said.

As Elisabeta walked away, Mr Howard’s eyes followed her, then he turned to me and said, ‘It’s been so good to see you again. Perhaps we’ll bump into each other at another conference. I like to keep my knowledge up to date. Even though teaching has changed beyond recognition.’ He smiled again. ‘O tempera, o mores. We live in different times.’

‘Indeed, we do,’ I said.

‘Is it progress, though?’ he asked. ‘What do you think?’

I was sure he remembered the car journey we had taken all those years before.

‘I don’t really know.’ I felt a faint echo of my fourteen-year-old excitement alongside my adult revulsion.

He leant in and touched me lightly on the arm , saying in a confidential tone, ‘Forgive me, but the coffee’s got to me.’ He put his cup on a nearby table but instead of heading for the gents, he stopped next to Elisabeta and whispered something into her ear. With a sharp laugh, she took a step backwards. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a card. As he walked away, she tore it into little pieces and dropped them into an empty cup. When she saw me watching her, she came over.

‘Bit of an old perv, your teacher,’ she said. ‘Was he always like that?’

‘I don’t remember. It was a long time ago.’

‘We had a teacher,’ she said. ‘We called him Mr Handy.’

For a moment we stood silent, then she said, ‘Don’t forget to see Tim.’

Mr Howard had reached the swing doors leading to the lobby. I was seized with the urge to run after him, yelling: How many girls? How many schools? but my fourteen-year-old self had questions that were just as pressing: Was it different with me? Was I special?

The following year, I heard he’d been charged with indecent assault. He got a suspended sentence.

 

Abigail Seltzer is a Scottish writer based in London. She has been published in the 2013 Lightship anthology, Storgy, Visual Verse (as Alex Petrie) and Charlie Fish/Drabbles. She is now working on the novel she started on the Faber Academy six month novel course in 2019. She completed Curtis Brown’s short story course in 2020.

HOW TO FEEL A SENSE OF RELIEF AND/OR JOY… By George Parker

How to feel a sense of relief and/or joy when you are stuck in a small flat and unable to go anywhere, see anyone or doing anything interesting

By George Parker

 

Let a house plant with little leaves dehydrate then water it very gently. Stand close and breathe out slowly through your mouth. Watch how it trembles.

 

Call someone you don’t want to talk to but should. At a time that you hope they won’t answer. Count seven rings and then hang up. Quickly.

 

Find a recording of wood pigeons on the internet. Curl up comfortably with a view of roof and sky and listen to them coo. Make the shape with your lips.

 

Take a pillow and blanket and place them on your kitchen floor. Lie down, wrap yourself in them and look up at how big and spacious the room seems.

 

Use a felt tip pen to draw a picture of people on the wall with your eyes closed. Place a little red sticker next to your artwork to show that it has been bought.

 

Pick up a tangle of something that seems impossible to untie. Do not put it down until every knot is undone. As you pull apart the last one, mutter, “That’s the way to do it”.

 

Strain to read a good book as the light fades. Wait until it is nearly dark, and the page is brown, letters blurred. Turn on a small lamp near your shoulder.

 

 

 

George (ina) Parker is based in London and studying for an MA in Creative Writing at Birkbeck. She is Head of Creative Content for an International Children’s Charity.

The Man in the Red Cap by Duncan Grimes

I can see him holding on to the far buoy with his head leant back, staring out to the horizon. I watch his bright red cap bob between the waves as I sit in my lifeguard Kayak. Paddle across my lap. Swimming shorts dampened by the sea. 

It’s been three days now. 

“Seth,” Colin booms from the shore, pointing towards the man. “Go and bloody check on him then.”

I’m there in less than thirty seconds. 

“You OK?” I slam the paddle into water to stop and circle him. 

“I’m fine,” he replies. 

His face is tanned and weather-beaten with loose dark red skin around his jaw. A lop-sided grin creeps out the side of his mouth, revealing a chipped front left tooth. Sun block congeals on his grey stubble. 

“Do you need help getting back to the shore?” I ask. 

“I’m good here,” he smiles into the distance. “Thanks.”

“Are you cold?” I angle my head down to try and catch his eye.

“I’m ok.” His blue goggles give nothing away. “Thanks for asking.” 

“You’ll be colder than you feel.” 

Colin’s asked me to push him on this. He says not knowing their own body is what kills people out here. 

“I’m good.” He bites his bottom lip. 

“No panicked feelings?” Colin wants me to explicitly ask this one now. Says sometimes people don’t even know how scared they are. 

“Nope.” He lets the saltwater lap up into his face as he angles his head up to look at me. “I’m going to stay out here till sunset and then make my way in.” He then turns back and stares into the distance. 

I follow his gaze. Maybe I’m immune to the view but all I see is blue. The ocean a slightly darker shade to the sky. Silhouettes of tankers mark the horizon. 

“OK, well I’ve got to give you this.” I dangle a whistle on a red string in front of him. “So you can alert us if anything changes. Things can change quickly at sea.”

“Really?” He looks up at me. His red swimming cap creases as frowns. 

“It’s my boss,” I nod over to the shore. 

I feel awkward as he looks me up and down. “I’m just doing my job.” 

“Health and safety, eh?” He takes the whistle and tuts as he puts it round his neck.   

“Something like that,” I say.  

It’s not how Colin had put it. “I’m not having some nutcase drown on me,” is how Colin put it, “losing me business.” Colin’s an old school local who knew my Dad back in the day, although we’ve never spoken about that. He gave me this gig when I finished school couple years ago and let me take it back on my summers in between Uni. The most capable swimmer in town gets it once they’re 18 unless Colin thinks there’s something up with them. I guess that’s been me for the last few years and it’s done me well enough. 

****

After a week, the crowd at the Boar’s Head started to notice him. Not your regular blow-in, but not yet a settler either. 

Blow-ins pass through for day or two. Hoping the fresh sea air with blow something away. Settlers hang around – not local by name or accent but they start to feel familiar enough. Some of them get accepted into the Boar after a while, but others stay on the outside. Something about them reminds us that we live at the end of the line.

The Boar’s Head sits at end of the harbour arm with rusty boat parts hanging from the low ceiling, heavy black wooden doors, and small green windows. Old currency and photos are pinned to a corkboard behind the bar. 

I think there’s a photo of my Dad in there – hidden under the sun-curled images of drunk middle-aged men with red faces. He was a settler – a city guy who came for something and found it for a while before leaving when I was seven, which I’ve been told to feel lucky about over the years. We don’t have photos of him at home but sometimes I can picture his face – crooked teeth, blue eyes and light brown hair down to his collar. I don’t think about it all that much – it doesn’t really matter what he looked like fifteen years ago.  

 “I saw him out there again,” Alf says hunched over the pump. “Yer man with the red cap. I’ve got Colin in here moaning about him last night. Wants rid.”  

“Yeah.” I take the pint of pale and Alf waves my money away. He’s like this for the first one. I don’t come in all that often, so I let it slide. 

Questions come from around the L-shaped bar. What does he want out there? Does he chat? Is he lost? Does anyone know he’s there?

“He doesn’t talk much,” I say. “But I don’t ask much.” 

“He’s out there for hours,” a voice comes from the end of the bar, “it’s amazing he can stand it. The cold water with no wetsuit.” 

“It’s amazing the kind of pain the body can withstand,”  The old major passes his empty to Alf.

“That’s true,” Alf smiles as he re-fills. 

I take my pale and sit with my old school friends Jenny and Tom. We squeeze around three low stools and a dark wooden table. The sailing trophy cabinet towers over us as Jenny nurses a coke, having driven over. Tom’s got a pint of pale. 

Jenny plays with the gold locket around her neck as she talks. A gift from her grandmother that I recognise from my bedside table when we were seventeen. Her pink trainers bounce as she talks about moving in with a man eight years older than her. He works in sales and owns a place in the new estate by the big Tesco. Tom updates on lads that have joined the army and his brother who’s been sentenced to three months. He was unlucky by all accounts. He won’t go the way of their father. Tom says he’s sure of that. 

“How’s Cambridge?” They ask. 

“You know we have to wear cloaks to dinner,” I say. 

“No way!” They laugh. “Cloaks.”

We’re distracted by the old boys’ speculation. What sort of pain would lead a man to do that to himself every day? Running away from something. Could be war – we see them down here. Lads who’ve been in Afghanistan or Iraq. Could be gambling. That can ruin a man. Could have set his family on fire by accident when he was drunk. 

“Could be any and all of them,” Alf says. “We can only hold what we can hold.” 

“All this drama when you’re back,” Jenny angles her head towards me. “Why do you think he’s out there?” 

“Don’t know,” I look up at the keels and ropes dangling from the ceiling. “Why do you two think he’s there?”

I look at Jenny, then Tom, then back to Jenny. 

“Just some fucking freak, isn’t he?” Tom gulps his pale and Jenny looks down at the cigarette stained green carpet. 

****

It’s grey today. The sky and the sea match the stone harbour walls.

I watched him swim out around noon. He always looks the part. Red swimming cap. Sleek, fitted blue goggles. Whistle around his neck. Alternate breathing on every third stroke. His arms are short, but he looks to have the strength and technique to do a few laps of the course, yet he stops as soon as he gets to the far end buoy. Slaps his hand down onto the metal base and hangs off it with one hand. Let’s his body move with the tide. 

It’s been two weeks now. 

“All ok?” The saltwater splashes my face as I circle him mid-afternoon.  

“All good, friend.” He leans back against the buoy with his lop-sided grin, “Usual answers to the usual questions.” 

I laugh as I circle him. Unsure if I want him to take me more or less seriously. 

“I’ve got a new one,” I say. “Does anyone know you’re out here?” 

“Well,” the man laughs, “I expect most of the town knows by now.” 

****

Like all the towns on the coast, you drop in and climb out through one narrow road. Cars hide in the crook outside Mary’s store and wait for each other to pass. 

Mary sells semaphore bunting, shell ornaments and whimsical prints alongside regular groceries that people actually want. Something went on between Mary and mum when Dad left. I don’t know the details, but she’s always keen to tell me how well I’ve done, and she never asks after mum.

“He’s headed out there again,” Mary whispers into my ear as I place the choc ice on the counter. 

“He’s there every day,” I rummage for change. 

“You need your energy,” She pushes the change and the choc ice back towards me. Mary doesn’t charge locals. With her place on the hill and this shop, she’s not short of money. Only reason she keeps it open is to gossip.

“Thanks,” I start to turn around. 

“What do you think it is?” Mary grabs my arm and crouches down towards the counter. Her eyes dart towards two Asian tourists inspecting the bottom of a church made of shells. “The man in the red cap…he’s staying in my shepherds hut up on the hill…. I’m sure your mum has told you…”

“Yeah, she mentioned something.”

“I’ve barely had a conversation with him, but I wouldn’t call him unfriendly.” Her bright red lipstick gathers in the corner of her mouth.

“Right,” I say. 

“Do you know what I mean?” 

“No,” I say. 

“I ask if he needs anything,” Mary straightens up and raises her voice as the tinkling bell confirms the tourists’ exit. “He says no. I’m fine. But it’s the way he says it. With this friendly crooked smile.…do you know what I mean? What’s a man with a smile like that doing swimming out to the far buoy all day every day?” 

“He does smile a lot.” I catch the shards of chocolate as I bite into the choc ice. 

“Have you asked him?” 

“Why he smiles?” I say between bites. 

“Why he’s there,” Mary stares at me over her crescent-shaped glasses like I’m hiding something from her.

“No,” I glare back. “Have you?” 

“It’s not my place.” 

“Well.” I think about saying that it is her place because he’s literally staying in her place, but I don’t. Instead, I ask, “Does it matter?”

“Don’t you want to know?” She leans into me. “I mean you’re out there every day in case something happens…. I don’t see why you don’t have a right to know.”

No, I thought, I don’t want to know. 

****

It’s spitting rain and the choppy sea skittles over the rocks and foams into the bay. Fishing boats bounce against each other in the harbour.  

I watch the kids ride the small waves on the shoreline. They’re not to go past me. 

Red cap turns up later than usual. Nods at me as he ambles out on the tiny pebbles and dives into the water once he’s at waist height. 

I nod back and watch him plough through the waves and past the first and second buoys before slapping his hand down on the final one. He takes his usual position. Clings with his right hand and lets his body sway in the waves. 

I wolf whistle him to check he’s ok. 

He turns towards me. Waves slap him in the face. 

I give a thumbs up. 

He gives a thumbs up back. Same lop-sided grin.

It’s been a month now.  

****

“Can’t believe you actually live here,” My Uni friend Claire looks over one shoulder at the red, blue, and yellow fishing boats clinging to the harbour on moss coloured ropes. Then, over her other shoulder, at the shallow turquoise bay lit up by late afternoon sun. 

“Well I sort of live in between here and Uni,” I say as I watch red cap climb out of the water and grab his towel from the rocks. 

Claire and her boyfriend Gavin have walked the coastal path from his family holiday home four or five bays over. Gavin’s at a different college to us – we’ve met a few times but don’t remember anything about each other. He doesn’t act or sound like he’s from here, but he carries himself like he belongs anywhere. 

“Will you come back here?” Claire looks at the rusting lighthouse on the other end of the harbour, “After we graduate?” 

“And do what?” Gavin butts in. “These places are great for a week or two but…I mean, you know.” He nods at me like I understand.

“I don’t know what I’ll do,” I see tankers on the horizon in Gavin’s mirrored sunglasses. 

“I know,” Claire cups her hand over her eyes and blinks at me. “Terrifying isn’t it?” 

“Yeah,” I smile. “I try not to think about it.”

Claire smiles back as she scratches her ankle. She’s walked too far in pumps. 

“I told you the whole walk over.” Gavin bounces his trail-running shoe on the harbour floor. “We’ll be fine…my Dad can help you out with internships… or you can travel… I mean with our degree.”  

“This guy,” I nod towards the man taking off his red cap. I’ve never seen his hair before and it’s longer than I expected. Mousey brown and grey curls fall to his chin. “He’s been swimming out to the far end buoy every day,” I point to the swimming course. “Then just hanging on to it for hours. I mean like 5 or 6 hours.” 

“What?” Gavin screws his face and looks over his shoulder at the man. 

“I check on him every day,” I say. “But he’s content to just stay there bobbing in the water, looking at the horizon.” 

“Really?” Claire turns to face the bay, “Is he ok?”

“He says he’s ok.” 

“He can’t last out there,” Gavin shakes his head as he turns back to me. “The water’s too cold. No way he can stay out there all day.” 

“He does,” I say. “Then he walks away like nothing has happened. Same lop-sided grin on his face.” 

“Not possible,” Gavin shakes his head. 

“It’s true,” I say. 

“He looks happy,” Claire says as she watches him button up a white linen shirt.

“He does, doesn’t he.”  

“Happy?” Gavin screws his face behind his mirrored sunglasses. 

****

The late morning sun bounces into my eyes as I watch the regulars power round the course. It’s an impressive sight. Ten people ploughing into waves with such purpose. Neatly angling their heads for air.  

Each of them mumble “hi” to red cap when they pass the farthest buoy. 

“Don’t fancy joining them?” I shout over once they’ve passed. 

“No,” he laughs at me and turns towards the horizon. 

I follow his gaze. I want to know what makes him smile, but I just see a tanker and a couple of sailing boats. And blue. A lot of blue.  

“What you looking at?” I ask. 

“Blue mostly, isn’t it?” He shouts into the distance. 

Almost two months now. 

****

We all cram into the Boar on the last Saturday in August as jobs start to wind down. A few longer term caravaners try their luck. The swimmers and fishermen are in. 

The man in the red cap is the talk of the night – how has he manged it? Every day for two months? No wet suit I hear. I reckon he’s special forces or something. I reckon he’s killed a man with that stare out to sea. Reckon he’s had a breakdown. Doesn’t feel anything anymore. Could just be bad luck. It’s not one thing but it’s a mountain of bad luck things. Something’s made him think that the only thing that’ll heal him is the water.

“Stop making out like he’s interesting!” Colin slams his palm on the bar. “He’s given me a headache all summer long.” Colin necks his first pale and nods at the empty, “If anything happens to him, the Council will be all over me.”

“What do you make of it?” Alf nods to me as he pulls the pump, “Must be a headache for you too.” 

“At least I get some company out there,” I smile.

“It’s no joke lad,” Colin grabs the full pint of pale. “Your old man was the same. Everything was a joke to him. Never took his life here seriously enough. Don’t head that way.”  

I turn to Colin but he won’t look at me. He motions to Alf to pour me another one even though I’ve barely dented my first. I wait for him to say something more, but he just stares behind the bar towards the corkboard.

“We’ll get some beers into that brain box of yours Seth,” Alf slides the pint in front of me. “Give you a good send off before you’re back for Christmas.” 

****

“Seth,” My name bounces around my head. “Seth.” My bedroom door rattles on its hinges. “Wake up Seth! Colin’s asking for you to go in. The young girl from the village over has called in sick.”

“Yeah,” I croak. 

“Full day’s pay for a couple hours he said,” mum speaks through the door. “I’ll put some breakfast on.” 

I prop my head up and wait for the scent of sizzling bacon fat. 

My room is changing. The walls have been sanded free of blue tac marks and primed for a lighter shade of white. We decided that Oatmeal White will be warming in the winter and would catch the sun in the summer. 

The bed I unclasped Jenny’s bra on will stay. The desk that I learnt irregular French verbs will stay. The Nintendo Dad bought me will go. 

“I’ll get going with that painting next week,” Mum lets the egg slide off the pan onto my plate.  

I rip yolk open and spread it over the bacon.  

“Nice people. Outdoor types who walk the path in decent shoes. That’s what I’m hoping for. People who keep to themselves.” She sits down and pours herself tea from the pot.  

“Yes,” I gulp my tea. “Only those with breathable waterproofs are good enough to take my place.” 

“No one’s taking your place,” Mum places her hand on mine. 

“I know I was just…”

“It’s your room whenever you want it.” She moves her hand away and clasps her mug. “Anyway, the world is just opening up for you…I mean Cambridge…where did that come from? Your father wasn’t a clever man, and neither am I…. you don’t know what you’ve got ahead of you.” 

“Still another year to go.” I fill my mouth with beans, “I don’t like to think about it to much.” 

“I guess he’ll be out there again today.” She gulps her tea, “Hope I don’t get people like that staying….I mean Mary says he’s no trouble…but it’s the thought of him out there and why he’s doing it….that’s the thing isn’t it?” 

“He looks lost,” I say. 

“What does that look like?” 

“It looks like staring blankly at the horizon and water lapping into your face. That’s what it looks like.” 

****

I watch locals and blow-ins clamber in off the rocks as the high tide covers the bay in the late summer evening. 

Then I hear red cap’s whistle. 

I can see him. The usual position. Head back against the metal base of the buoy as he looks out to the horizon. I checked on him at the start of the shift and got the usual responses to the usual questions. The usual lop-sided grin as he let the saltwater splash his face. 

I’m there in thirty seconds. 

“OK?” I ask. 

“Could I grab a lift back?” He winces, “I think I’ve tired myself out today.” 

“You’re tired?” I feel my heart bounce against my chest.

“Yeah.” He grins, “I’ve been out here a while. You know that.” 

“How you feeling? Cold? Panicked?” I ask. 

“None of that.” He shakes his head, “All the usual answers to all of that.” 

“OK,” I throw him a float as my heart returns to normal. “Wrap that around you and grab on to the back of the kayak.”

His body weighs me down as I slowly bring us back to shore. I feel Colin’s eyes through the binoculars. I hear the chatter of the Boar’s Head in my ear.

“You know we won’t patrol so much out of season.” I take a rest from paddling and look over my shoulder at him draped over the back of my kayak, “Colin will be around but it’s really just for regulars.” 

“Aren’t I regular now?” He takes his goggles off but keeps his cap on. He doesn’t flinch as the sea laps over and into his green eyes.

“Regulars complete the course,” I say.  

“I’ve never really thought of it as a course,” he curls his lip and looks up to the sky. 

I let us drift. I feel I need to come back to shore with something. So I ask, “You not worried? If you keep doing this into the winter the water will get colder and the sea state will turn.” 

He leans his head back and lets it dangle off the side of the kayak as we float with the tide. 

“No,” he pulls his head back up and looks at me. “No. I’m not, but I get the feeling that you’re worried.”

I turn away from him and slam the paddle into the sea. His body slows me down as I scoop water left, then right, then left. I feel the frustration of the town building up inside me. Why can’t he just hold his shit together like everyone else? If he’s got a point to make, no one fucking gets it.

“You know the whole town thinks you’re running away from something,” I shout into the breeze as I paddle fast. 

“What do you think?” He shouts back. 

I stop paddling. 

We stay silent as seagulls squark above and the tide bobs us along. I turn around and look at him laid across the back of my kayak, waiting for me to respond. I suddenly feel a lifetime younger than him. “Aaaaahhh, never mind,” I grin. 

I start up paddling and we soon gather speed as I get used to the weight of his body. 

The smell of sweating moss fills the air as we near the rocks. I can picture my Dad. His blue eyes, freckles across his nose and light brown hair covering his ears. I can feel his hand helping me clamber over the rocks. Thinking about it now, he probably wasn’t very good at judging the tide. It moves quickly in the last half hour of the day and if you’re not local, you can easily get caught out. He wouldn’t have really known what he was doing either. 

Duncan Grimes is a social researcher and aspiring short story writer. He has completed creative writing courses at City Lit and is part of an active writing group in North London. He is working on his first collection of short stories. The stories span the English seaside, London and post-conflict Iraq to explore how people find a place to belong and loss they carry with them along the way. This story is intended to be the first in the collection. His work has been published as part of London literary night, Liars League.

THE GREEN DEVIL: three carbon-neutral poems by Noah Birksted-Breen

The Green Devil

                        three carbon-neutral poems by Noah Birksted-Breen

 

Listen: Running commentary 

(performance poetry)

I run around Hackney Marshes

on 19th October 2020

reading Arne Naess’ “Life and Reason in a Deeper World”

      

 

No comment

 

I always like to do what I cannot do.

 

Trees do not talk.

Rivers do not talk.

Stones do not talk.

 

I always like to do what I cannot Tree.

 

Do do not talk.

Rivers do not do.

Stones do do talk.

 

I always like to do what Rivers cannot Tree.

 

Do do I talk.

I do not do.

Stones do do I.

 

Stones always like to do what Rivers cannot Tree.

 

 

 

The Green Devil

 

 

     We need a walkable human,

     walkable settlements.

 

     From Space,

     Mineral aquamarines and ochres.

 

     Tailings ponds,

     “Maybe a small nuclear reactor would be best?”

 

     “Roses will bloom.”

 

     Indium, neodymium, lithium,

     Steel, silver, copper.

 

     Oily coined term: “climate change,

     solution, solution, solution, solution,

     growth.”

 

     Rare-earth, a

     “high-capacity” dying empire,

     black hole, no light,

     “planet-spanning stuff”,

     Decade Zero.

 

     Death villages will fruit cancer.

 

     Superstition was insisting upon

     a “radical Revolution”.

 

     In pursuit of a lifeless, weatherless sky,

     “Lop off one head of the hydra”.

 

     Face another.

 

 

(Found text from Jasper Berne’s ‘Between the Devil and the Green New Deal’ https://communemag.com/between-the-devil-and-the-green-new-deal/)

 

 

 

Noah is an environmental researcher. In 2019, he co-founded the Oxford Flyingless Group @oxford_policy, while also working on research about reducing academic flying at the School of Geography and the Environment (University of Oxford). He is now helping to organise the Carbon Neutrality Summit in Oxford, Milan and Berlin, 8-10 September 2021. Noah is currently completing the MA in Creative Writing at Birkbeck. In 2019, he was the Hackney Winner of Spread the Word’s City of Stories competition. His creative non-fiction piece, Beef, was published by therealstory.org in 2020. He is Artistic Director of @sputniktheatre

Does Something Terrible Happen to the Dog? by Daisy Henwood

Half way through a story about a child and their canine best friend, I pause to think, “this isn’t going to end well.” There is a peculiar ache to worrying about the fate of a fictional pet, a kind of inevitability that doesn’t quite translate to watching human suffering. Perhaps it’s because (as my mother always says) you can’t explain to a pet what’s happening – you can’t explain that they’re getting old, that they’re sick, that their family is moving away. This is the whole plot of Disney’s Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey (1993); three beloved family pets are left with friends when their owners move across country, and they don’t understand. They vow to find their family, and make, yes, an incredible journey through the Canadian wilderness to be reunited with them. 
 
It’s a story full of peril – bears and river crossings, hunger and the emotional strain of being abandoned and reunited. The climax of this story (spoilers ahead if you’ve not read the book or seen either of the films) is when the young dog and the cat bound over the hill towards their juvenile masters, and there’s a sweet moment of reunion mixed with an awful, sinking ache: the old golden retriever hasn’t appeared over the hill. The oldest child (there’s three pets and three children) looks devastated, as his dad gently tells him, “well, he was old.” It’s a horrible jumble of the pain of a lost pet and a child’s lost innocence, the stoic older-brother-ness of the boy’s sad little face, and the younger children’s elation at being with their own pets coupled with their sadness at their brother’s loss. And then the old dog comes limping up the hill, wearing that golden retriever smile, and it’s all alright again. It’s a saccharine moment of pathos and catharsis. I haven’t seen the film since childhood, and this is the only clear memory I have of it, so affected was I by the possibility that the little boy’s dog wouldn’t have made it home.
 
Because I’d been asking, all the way through the film, does something terrible happen to the dog? This is a question that recurs throughout Sigrid Nunez’s 2019 novel The Friend. The book is about a woman whose close friend dies, leaving her to take custody of his Great Dane in a 500 square foot New York City apartment. It’s a classic tale of reluctant owner turned devoted companion. It’s about the process of grief, and the way we attach emotions, personalities, ourselves to pets, particularly during periods of emotional or physical upheaval. The dog, Apollo, imposes himself on the narrator’s life until she can’t be without him, and she knows she’s succumbed to the thing so many people do: she’s fallen for a pet she will probably outlive. The dog is not incidental anymore, a trick Nunez’s narrator understands: less than fifty pages into the book, the narrator says, “there’s a certain kind of person who, having read this far, is anxiously wondering: Does something terrible happen to the dog?” From then on, you can’t help but wonder, at every turn, in spite of yourself, does something terrible happen to this dog?
Nunez’s novel draws a delicate and contemplative picture of the relationship between a human and their dog. It’s not overwrought, there are no manipulative emotional moments like the end of The Incredible Journey, and in fact we don’t really know if something terrible happens to this dog. Of course, something happens, but it’s unclear whether it should be read as terrible. Apollo’s arthritis becomes so bad he can’t climb the stairs, can’t stand up on his first try, can’t jump up on the bed. He is fading, and we are all watching it happen. The narrator’s solution is to transfer herself and her dog to her friend’s Long Island beach house for the final weeks of the summer. With no steps and no noise, there’s plenty of tranquillity for the ageing Great Dane. Apollo sits staring out at the beach, watching younger dogs and butterflies and, perhaps, he dies:
 
They should watch out for you, o eater of insects. One snap of those jaws would take out most of them. But there they go, heading right for you, as if you were no more than a giant rock lying on the grass. The shower you like confetti, and you – not a twitch!
Oh, what a sound. What could that gull have seen to make it cry out like that?
The butterflies are in the air again, moving off, in the direction of the shore. 
I want to call your name, but the word dies in my throat. 
Oh, my friend, my friend!
 
So the dog is dead. Or perhaps just sleeping, exhausted from the sun. But also definitely dead. Probably. However you read this ending, the question remains – did something terrible happen to the dog? Or did something terrible happen to me? 
That’s what we’re really concerned about. If something terrible happens to the dog, the dog won’t necessarily perceive it as terrible – if the dog is dead, the dog won’t perceive it at all – whereas we, as readers, as witnesses, will feel terrible about the so-called terrible thing that is happening. It’s hard to disentangle these emotions. When the golden retriever doesn’t immediately lope over the hill, are we feeling sad for the dog or for the child? Both, of course, particularly as the dog in question had been so thoroughly anthropomorphised as to be given a voice and thoughts and worries throughout the film. But the both-ness of this feeling is difficult to comprehend, because we’ve so connected the boy and his dog that emotions for one are emotions for another. This feeling is tinged with the question, “how would I feel if I were that child? What if that were my dog?” At the same time, we’re asking “how would I feel if I were that dog?” So much of our fear over whether something terrible happens to the dog seems to be to do with the prospect of having to bear witness, to bear the emotion of the event. While – or because – the dog might not comprehend its dying, we feel it twice over. Once again, Nunez’s narrator understands this:
 
It is widely believed that although animals don’t know that one day they’ll die, many of them do know when they’re actually dying. So at what point does a dying animal become aware of what’s happening? Could it possibly be a long time before? And how do animals respond to aging? Are they completely puzzled, or do they somehow intuit what the signs mean?
 
These are burning questions precisely because we cannot answer them. We cannot know whether our beloved pet knows it’s going to die. We can’t even really know how much pain it’s in. The pathos comes from not knowing and asking anyway, as Nunez’s narrator understands: “are these foolish questions? I acknowledge that they are. And yet they preoccupy me.” 
They preoccupy me too. My own childhood dog is ageing now, and every time I visit my parents, she’s a little slower, a littler stiffer. She no longer runs after a ball, and has trouble jumping onto the sofa on her first try. Has it occurred to her that she’s getting older? She certainly has a lower tolerance for younger dogs now, but then again, she wasn’t that sociable to begin with. And she still trots off along the beach, and gets excited when she goes in the car. She still wants to share our snacks and loves to be where the action is. We explain it away like this. She’s still happy, she has a good life. My dad makes jokes about her dying soon because he’ll be devastated when she eventually does, and my mum trawls through Mary Oliver’s dog poems to find the one she thought would be “right for the funeral.” I pretend the dog’s just fine, and try not to feel sad when she can’t jump up next to me. 
 
I remember how distressing my first pet deaths were. The white rabbit, stretched out and stiff as though running, mum lifting her out of the hutch and explaining what had happened. And the twenty-three-year-old cat who’d been around long before me, mangy and skeletal under the radiator in the kitchen. Like the empty space before the golden retriever, these memories are tense and breathless, and they’re pivotal. We learn to process, to accept, to confront the possibility of loss through the sick cat, the belly-up goldfish. We learn that we will outlive things. 
 
“Does something terrible happen to the dog?” is a question about control. Our ability to answer it, to know not only what will happen to the dog but how and when, gives us a sense of preparedness and assuredness we’ve probably all been searching for since our first shoebox funeral. At the same time, knowing that the dog will die does something to our love for it, gives us a kind of urgency, a desperate affection. It’s difficult to know that a being we love will go before we do, will be small, and grown, and ageing within the space of about ten years, but this difficulty amplifies our feelings. Stephen King, who owns (and is obsessed with) corgis, understands this. In an interview with Nerdette, King explains that he thinks his current dog, Molly, will be his last corgi: “I think I particularly care for Molly because I understand she’s probably my last dog. She’s a year and a half old, I’m sixty-eight, and if things work out the way that I hope they do, we’ll play out at about the same time.” This is the dream, to have exactly the right amount of time with the pet and for neither of you to have to witness the demise of the other. It’s hard to connect this sweet wish to the person who wrote Cujo. Or perhaps it’s easy: something terrible happens to the dog in that one, too. 
 
Back to The Incredible Journey for a moment. Here is Mark Doty on that film in his 2008 memoir, Dog Years: ‘When he watched the Disney remake of The Incredible Journey … I made sure he wore [headphones]. I didn’t want my mind to be infiltrated by those images and their soundtrack, because I knew they’d break my heart. Never mind that my circumstances were already genuinely heartbreaking; I was managing that, somehow, but what I couldn’t bear was the representation of the heartbreaking.’
 
The ‘he’ in this passage is Doty’s partner Wally, who is dying of AIDS. Dog Years tells this story, refracted through the life and death of two retrievers. The irony here, of course, is that Doty’s fear of the representation of the heartbreaking through the film about dogs and their humans is the same representation we experience as readers as we learn about his two dogs (Beau and Arden) and witness, at the edges of the narrative, Wally’s slow death. It is a devastating book. And while at the end of The Incredible Journey we get the “inevitable reunion,” as Doty puts it, his book offers no such resolution: both of the dogs and Wally are dead by the end. 
 
Yet this is not a surprise. The question “does something terrible happen to the dog?” doesn’t quite follow us around this book in the same way, because these deaths are revealed in the first few pages. We know that Wally passed away as early as page four, and the fact that the dogs die follows soon after, though we’re not told how or when. Instead, Doty backtracks, and begins to tell the stories of adopting, caring for, moving around, and losing both dogs, against the backdrop of Wally’s illness and death. The book gives us the sense of control we thought we craved, that we think we want. But because we know, more or less, what happens to Wally and why, we become preoccupied instead with the question: “what terrible thing happens to the dogs, and when?” 
 
A terrible thing happened to my dog. She died in October. She was the first dog I’d ever had. We got her when I was a teenager, and for twelve years she’d been a noisy, untrained, loveable fixture in my parents’ house. My friends loved her, my family loved her, my dog-hating boyfriend was entirely persuaded by her. She was a joyful, unignorable force – which is a kind way of saying she barked too much, loved carrots, and by the end was being made her own cup of tea. 
She was old. Old dogs die. We know this. But I was completely unprepared for her death, despite the months of jokes and conversations about it. She wasn’t sick, she wasn’t that slow, and she definitely wasn’t unhappy. I assumed she wasn’t done with living. But my dad phoned one morning to say that Wilma had died in the night. His voice was small and sad. My mum didn’t speak on the phone. Months later she’s still, understandably, devastated:  something terrible happened to her dog. 
We all knew the dog would die. We always know the dog will die, but in the same way we know we’ll die: we don’t look at it, don’t think too long or hard about it unless someone or something tells us we must. There’s such an impulse to ignore or brush away the impending terrible. Very few people want to know how and when they’ll die, and the same thing goes for pets: in spite of us asking and asking does something terrible happen, I don’t think we really want to know, don’t think we can ever be prepared. And all it really leads to are more questions. What is the terrible? Is it the death, or how we feel about it? Is it the absence of the dog, or of something the dog represents? For Doty, the dogs are signifiers, metaphors for love, for devotion, for the slow death of his long term partner. But they’re also dogs, and this is just as important. Getting too tied up in dogs-as-metaphors is to discount the very real effects they have on our lives. When our dog died, my mum wasn’t sad because Wilma represented her relationships to other loved ones, or to the very idea of death; she was sad because the dog had died and was gone.  
 
Mourning a dog is not part of our grief culture. There’s no compassionate leave for losing a dog, and grieving a pet when hundreds of thousands of people are dying isn’t something to shout about. Nevertheless, the loss of a pet, a dog in particular, leaves a rift. When I speak to my parents on the phone, they talk about how quiet the house is, how they haven’t been out for a walk in a few days, how the entire shape of their day has changed. I think about how loud the dog was, how she’d bark at the postman, steal socks from the radiators, demand a handful of your crisps. She was so obstinately there, so part of it all. It’s hard to explain this to people who’ve never had a dog, hard to refer to the dog as ‘part of the family’ without sounding twee, or deluded. But it’s true. We love them fiercely because they love us fiercely, and they fit in our lives because their life entirely depends on us. 
When Wilma died I started thinking again about my obsession with that question, does something terrible happen to the dog. I started wanting at once to watch all the doggy snuff films and never watch one again. I thought about the ending of Marley and Me – which every dog owner has seen but not every dog owner will admit to – when Owen Wilson holds Marley’s paw and tells him he’s been a good dog. Marley was never a good dog. He was untrained and big and loud. But he was funny and loving and loveable. Most dogs are like this, I think. Mine was. Her propensity to entertain and annoy was boundless and we all loved her, even though she ate windowsills, ripped apart books, and used to hide pound coins behind her teeth. She had character. Was a character. So when something terrible happened to her – because something terrible always happens to the dog in the end – it happened to us too, and we were sad, and we still are. But before the terrible thing happened to us, the dog happened to us.
The end of The Friend avoids tying off the terrible thing, doesn’t need to say how sad the death was but how life ultimately goes on. Instead it just half-answers the question that we don’t really want the answer to anyway. Did something terrible happen to the dog? Yes, and no. So did something terrible happen to us? Yes, and – mercifully, wonderfully – no.
 
Daisy Henwood in a writer, tutor and arts producer. She leads workshops for the National Centre for Writing and Young Norfolk Arts, and has been commissioned by Norwich City Council and BBC Norfolk. She received her PhD from UEA in 2020. She is writer-in-residence at the Wherry School and lives in Norwich.

When All This is Over Go To Pat’s Flat by Shelley Hastings

(15 Guidelines For a Swift Recovery) 

 

    1. Put on that leopard print dress with its elastic rah-rah skirt and low slit on the neck that’s been at the back of the cupboard for two decades. The last time you wore it, maybe your twenty-first, long before kids.

    2. Pull on thin black tights and shiny leather boots with chunky heels. Ricardo should put on that powder blue suit he was wearing when you first saw him. The one that is too tight on the crotch and has a split on the arse. Get it fixed up. No one will notice in the dark.

    3. Get a cab. Don’t walk. The party has started. Little Mo is on the decks, he’s wearing his Moondance T-shirt from the millennium, swaying, can in hand. He whacks you on the back as you go past and starts playing that tune, the one with the piano riff, the classic you all loved when you used to go to Mass.

    4. Leave your coat on Pat’s bed. You can’t find her anywhere. The kitchen is heaving. Sambuca shots lined up on the counter. Mo’s chicken, rice, and coleslaw under foil on the cooker. Paper plates on the side.

    5. Squeeze down the hall. Everyone is grinning, shiny, faces open. The school mums and dads wearing new clothes and smart shoes. There is no need to say anything to anyone. What is there to say? You are all here. Slap shoulders, kiss cheeks, stroke backs.

    6. Make cocktails. Take the watermelon and vodka out of your plastic carrier. The sink is bulging with beers in lukewarm water, the blender on top of the microwave. Find the bread knife and hack at the fruit. Scoop out the seeds with a teaspoon, then use your fingers, pull sweet chunks out the middle, chuck the skin.

    7. Find the ice in the bottom of the freezer. Send cubes skittering across the kitchen floor. Some people kick them aside like pucks, others pick them up, before slipping them down the back of an unsuspecting neck. Slosh in vodka, force the lid. Press hard as the blender crunches loudly. Divide up the pink frothy liquid into whatever you can find: coffee mugs, trifle glasses, coloured plastic cups.

    8. Offer them out. Shai comes up behind you. Her head on your shoulder, her arm around your waist. She is handing out dabs of MDMA from a tin with a cherry on the top and people reach over, dipping in little fingers, making faces like, ‘Oops, yes please.’

    9. Dance. Go to the corner where it’s dark, the rug rolled up. Time warps. Nell appears in black sparkles. Do stupid moves together, point to the floor, her face, the cooker, the sky. Be robots. Be crap at it. Become so hysterical you double up in pain. It’s infectious. Others start. The school mums and Bristolians and dodgy neighbours, some of them too slick, showing off, like they went to robot school.

    10. Shout for Pat. She’s in the hallway, holding a champagne flute. Wearing a snakeskin dress and gold looped earrings. You wait for her robot move but she drops to the floor instead, on the beat, knees bent in a crouch, not spilling a drop of her drink, then straight back up. It is so unexpected and so good. An elastic move. The room roars. Everyone does it, or tries to, but one of the school dad’s legs buckle, his knees in agony. He gets stuck, puffed out. Little Mo drags him up.

    11. Get stoned. Curl up in the mustard armchair with Pat and Nell. Think about how much you needed this. Think about how you love them but don’t say it. Eventually you are so squashed you can’t feel your legs. Push them off. Get a plate of chicken and salad and sit on the counter, your heels kicking the cupboards to the beat. The school dads lose their shit as the music turns to happy hardcore. Heads down, like they’re running a marathon. Hands drawing shapes in the air as they remember some dark club years ago, before they were going bald and doing back exercises.

    12. Watch Ricardo in the corner in his suit, sleeves rolled up. He seems to be looking for something on the ceiling, amazed. Feel deep love for him and his newly mended trousers. He catches you looking at him. Don’t call him over, just raise your glass.

    13. Remove your boots. Unpeel the sticky leather and let your stockinged feet slide about on the melted ice and sloshy muck that’s been trodden in from the garden. Ski to the music. Little Mo turns on a microphone and starts to MC. The school dads gather round the decks. The music is too fast. Pat appears. ‘For fuck’s sake, Mo. This is shit.’

    14. Pull open the patio door. Just as you are about to escape that tune will come on. That Neiked one. The I’m feeling sexual one with its eighties sax solo in the middle. Feel overcome. You know all the words to this one. All the women stream in from the hallway and toilet. Kerry, Shai, Patty, Isha, Sylvia, Hanna, Louise, Nell, and Pat. 

    15. Let loose. Become a throbbing circle of sax playing women. Perform your jazz solo, one leg hitched on the chair, ladders running up your tights. Root down to the ground and way back up, like you’ve been waiting for this moment all your life. Everyone else does it too, in beautiful symmetry, and when it’s done you hold each other up. You are sweating, and on the right side of queasy, so when the tune finally finishes, splash your face and skid out to the patio. Wrap yourself in a blanket and smoke menthols. Watch the sun rise over the sweet summer grass. 

 

Shelley Hastings is a writer, dramaturg and producer. Her writing has been published by Southword Magazine, Galley Beggar Press and Unbound. Her short stories have been shortlisted for the Seán O’Faoláin Prize, The Pat Kavanagh Award and The Writers and Artists Award amongst others.

FISSURE by Val Whitlock

Val Whitlock reading Fissure

 

 

Fissure         

by Val Whitlock            

 

If you could slit the black, sucked-in skin,

you’d find her there, alone in a chasmic closet.

On such a winter’s day it’s full of all the leaves.

They are red and yellow and green and brown

and titian and bronze and ochre and peach

and amber and olive and ecru and fawn

and copper and gold and chocolate and beige

and sorrel and henna and hazel and rust

and auburn and ginger and russet and tan

and tawny and nut and umber and orange

and desolate blue

 

< 

 

She’s a Matryoshka Prune-Shaped Tardis doll.

Who would risk it?

Turning the tops, pulling them off

one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one by

The fear of finding never-ending

Pain

too hard to bear

Yours or mine?

 

< 

 

 

It’s a fat-suit, Klomp-hard, and she’s crammed inside.                     

No give. No flex. No blooming space.

‘Let me out’, she screams in the bleak

‘Can’t you see me in here?’

But after all these years, she’s virtually invisible.

 

 

<

 

 

Matryoshka. ‘Little matron’. Mater. Mother.

A fertility doll.

And all the dolls are her children. Holding hands across kin and clans.

Keep holding tight, my love.

 

 

<

 

 

All those Matryoshka tops

Peeling peeling peeling peeling

But even so, who can ever really

know?

 

 

< 

 

 

When she steps outside the Prune-Shaped Tardis she’s like a colander.

And sticking a finger in a hole in a dyke won’t stop it caving in.  

 

Try to fill the titanic void. Plug up unpluggable holes.

 

 

<

 

 

When

Why don’t you get this?

feels like

why don’t you get this?

 

 

A prune is what’s left.

A handy thing to call upon. For the odd occasion when you need that quick remedy.

Though never a sugar plum fairy.

No comfit.

For her. The dried out. The withered.

The absence of flourish.

 

 

<

 

 

Prune. Never sugar coats it. Speaks its mind.

The yearn to expunge. And to cleanse.

 

 

<

 

 

But you can’t put new wine in old wineskins

And the ache to shed a skin. To step outside of it all and start over

 

 

 

and inside the Prune-Shaped Tardis, she wonders if she really exists

 

 

Slice the shrivelled Prune-Shaped Tardis skin

interior            spherical          photo-backdrop white

lightless    weightless    erstwhile      

and centre-slapped

a slopped scribble

a mooning human doodle

she’s not really this screwed up

she’s just drawn that way

 

 

 

Oval Matryoshka

Ova-less Prune-shaped Tardis

 

 

<

 

Where are you all, you figurine family?

 

 

<

 

 

 

There they all are. Lined up in a row.

And here we go again. Pulling off tops.

Nothing inside

Nothing inside

Nothing inside

Nothing inside

Nothing inside

Two pills

 

Do you do it?

Or pin your hope on that last, tiny doll.

Unopenable.

Which?                                           

 

 

 

Lucky seven

or seven ages

end to end

 

this tender night

give me a child  

until she is seven

 

tiny and exquisitely chiselled

and each one that follows

is fashioned around it precisely

 

the same apart from its greater

size and outward embellishment

as if with the finest

of brush strokes

Sunday’s Child

on Wednesday

 

 

<

 

 

Woodentop

she is lumber, shelved

she gazes out from paint-glazed eyes  

gathers herself for the cursory feather dusting.                                 

 

‘I am all hollow,’

her dark insides yowl.

‘Knock would you                  

knock on my temple block

random rhythmic blurts  

make me reel                                                                                     

 

drill will you

drill fine deep holes

in my ocarina head

blow blow you winter gale

fill me, balloon me, smithereen me

make me feel

very very

breathe me some euphony                                                                           

from these cinders’

 

 

<

 

 

she puts on her uniform

ornate and vividly patterned,

glossy, jaunty,

people meet her in the crowd

jovial, smiling

and have no clue

 

 

<

 

 

Once it was so vast inside it was stacked with possibilities.

Prospects. Options.

Rocket Boots.

 

 

Val Whitlock is a writer, counsellor and musician. She has an MA in Creative Writing with Distinction from the University of Birmingham, where she is currently a PhD candidate with a university doctoral scholarship. Her research involves writing a hybrid book which blurs boundaries between poetry, prose, fragments, and other forms. She is also the co-author of five internationally bestselling children’s books on singing, published by Boosey & Hawkes. She gets excited about guitars, books, Stephen Sondheim, and books. She can often be spotted loitering with her greyhound Casper.

FUNFAIR by Michael Eades

There’s a temporary utopia in town. You can see the lights in the distance, flashing through the gaps in trees, across gardens and slate roofs. You can hear the music and the high pitched screams and the hiss of hydraulics through late summer air. 

August, 2020. There’s a funfair on the Common. It is only a small one: a few socially distanced rides huddling well away from one another. But it is definitely there. Its placement has a defensive quality, tucked away at the bottom of the hill down by the High Road, surrounded by a temporary fence. It stops and starts, struggling for custom. Every time I walk past in the morning and at twilight I see the rides squatting emptily, waiting for punters, surrounded by bored men smoking and chatting. 

In these viral times, in a lull in the pandemic, it is optimistic of them to come here and set up shop. In that sense, you might read it as a positive sign. A little flash of returning normality in the midst of a ‘new normal’ defined largely by weirdness. In another sense of course it presents a strange tangle of interconnecting risks. Danger of death from those poorly maintained rides meeting danger of death from infection carried on machinery and candy floss. 

I want to walk out into that fair and take some pictures. I want to put my mask on and move in close enough to hear the screams. 

A funfair is a portal that connects you to different times. The lights, the repetitive music, the conjuring trick worked by the shooting galleries and the ghost train; they trigger responses deep within you: emotions, memories. They allow you to slip through one reality and into another. The sights and sounds come together to create a spectacle, an illusion which, for some reason, never changes and always, always works. 

Walking around a weirdly empty, Covid-stricken fairground on a bank holiday weekend, I can suddenly see how it all works. I can see the breaks and the joins and the gaps between things. Sitting on their rides, bored workers stared into the distance or dance ironically to the music pumping out of speakers. The music is never updated. It is the same music played at fairs for the past twenty years or more. Rave classics. ‘You’ve got to show me love’, ‘It’s Not Over Yet’, ‘Search for the Hero’. A few scattered families are wandering, wearing masks. Rides whirl and climb into the sky with only a couple of punters aboard. Hand sanitizers squirts are compulsory on embarking and disembarking. 

In the looking glass hall of mirrors here I see reflections and refractions of funfairs past. I remember trips to Blackpool as a child. Every year with my grandparents to see the illuminations. The almost panicked excitement of it. The huge scale of the rides when seen from close to the ground. The sense of being inside another world in the dark rides: ‘River Caves’ and ‘Alice in Wonderland’. Experiencing actual, traumatising terror on the Ghost Train. The definite autumn darkness with weird light at the edges, the rich feel of seaside air, the luminous paint glowing and the smells and screams lingering in the car on the way back. 

The filmmaker Patrick Keiller, who grew up in Blackpool, once suggested that: ‘if Louis Aragon had come to England and someone had taken him to Blackpool, he might have been intrigued, and England wouldn’t have been left off the Surrealist map of the world’. 

Wandering through this tiny funfair in South London, stopping to take pictures and jot down notes, I can see exactly what he meant.

Funfairs are portals, ways back to different times. 

I remember going to Blackpool again later, as an adult (or a young adult, a larger child). The excitement felt almost as intense. It felt almost…better. I was there with someone that I loved at the time, intoxicated, happy just to take a day out from the world and immerse myself in a different, artificial one that has stood somehow on the cold lip of the North Sea for more than a hundred years.

When I was there, I didn’t think about the future at all. I didn’t realise that this was a moment that would have an ending. I didn’t realise that the person I was with would become a stranger one-day. I didn’t realise it would turn all turn into nostalgia. 

Fairgrounds, pleasure beaches, funfairs. Trips away with different people over different years. Grandparents, parents, partners who come and go. Different versions of myself, on different rides, with different people.

And then, finally, just me. Just me, walking around a deserted South London funfair with a camera, in the middle of a pandemic, alone. 

Michael Eades is a writer, researcher and curator based in London. His work has appeared in The Mechanic’s Institute Review, The i, and Reflex Press. Michael also runs the UK’s Being Human festival, an annual multi-city festival of innovative, research driven events. He can be found at @DrMichaelEades and www.michaeleades.net.

Who Am I If You Keep Telling Me to Shut up? by Kayleigh Cassidy

Whistling, I gaze through my reflection. This plexiglass doesn’t look strong enough to hold all that water. After a moment, it seems as if a smack of moon jellies are floating within me, and I have a stomach full of UV berets. Even so, I admire the glass. Framed by an ever-changing light feature; the flat strength of it is remarkable. The moon jellies turning pink, yellow, green and blue as the light changes the abyss.

Mum nicknamed me Jellyfish because I was brainless like one. It’s her birthday today. Though I always remember it, I never acknowledge it. But I’m thirty and she was thirty when she passed, so I have a colin the caterpillar cake and a tea-light in my bag. 

In the centre of the moon jellies’ translucent bellies are four luminous horseshoes (gonads, I know), stark against the navy-blue water. That’s how they reproduce. 

Except I can’t see any babies. In a cluster by the glass, the grown-up ones move like the opening and closing of an umbrella. I wonder what rain feels like when you are deep inside water. Is it a thing? 

A sign on the tank reads: Did you know jellyfish are silent? They do not communicate. Just float around and feed. 

I sit down on a wooden bench, my rucksack on my back. I put my hand in my pocket to check the piece of folded paper is inside. 

The pink light fades and the water swirls with diamond flickers of light. Staring at the haunting gloam of the jellyfish, I go to my childhood. Thinking of it – hunger, slaps and too many sweets – my nickname is apt. There they are. Those darling council flat years spent being told to shut up and go away. 

*

“Please, if there is a God, let there be a Colin the Caterpillar cake,” I prayed before running into the kitchen. 

It was my tenth birthday, and I could barely see through the smoke. I heard the vicious growl of Lola (pronounced LOO then LA) and I coughed. Mum, her sisters, her friends – everyone was hers – were sat around the table. Mum tutted and her eyes rolled into the back of her head. What did she see when they turned back there? I wanted to climb on board her eyeballs. Like a voyage to the far side of the Moon, and plant a flag that read ‘Remember to buy Sonata a Colin the Caterpillar cake on her birthday’. 

“Go play,” Mum barked. “This is grown-up talk.” 

There were no seats free, so I jumped onto the side cabinet and perched in the corner by the sink. It was piled high with Sports Direct mugs and dried jam-stained plates. 

“Oh no,” I said. 

My bum was wet. I hadn’t noticed the slippery wet surface, clear and deceiving.
“Shut up!” Mum said. “Can’t you see we’re talking?” 

“I sat in something.” 

“Go away!” Mum shouted. 

If an alien watched our flat, it may have thought my actual name was Go Away. For a long time, I thought it might be my secret name. I even wrote it on my name tag at school. 

I jumped down from the side and walked away, pulling my t-shirt over my bottom. 

“Passive smoke is bad for you,” said Aunt Hilda, her voice splintered like unsanded wood. 

In the hallway, I paused. There was an outline of a person at the front door. They were small like me. The handle turned downwards and swung open. It was Cousin Reenie. She was wearing a pink dress with a little white shrug tied under her flat chest. Her hair was in two blonde braids and a plastic pink handbag was tucked under her arm. She looked older than eleven. That’s why she was picked to play Mary in the school nativity, and I was Sheep Number Thirty-Two. I moved out of Reenie’s way.

“There she is,” Mum said. “Our beautiful little Mary.”

Mum dropped her cigarette into her mug, slapped her thighs and stood up. When Reenie got close, Mum wrapped her arms around her. 

“Your hair smells gorgeous,” Mum said. 

Hanging over the door was our lucky horseshoe, yet what I saw underneath it, through the door frame, made me feel rusty.

“How come Rennie can stay and I can’t?” I asked. 

There was silence. Mum looked at Hilda, Hilda looked at Lola and Lola looked at Beverley. 

“How come Rennie can stay and I can’t?” Mum said in a whiny voice. 

Everyone agreed that that was funny, but they didn’t laugh they cackled. Everything looked yellow, except for Reenie. She was the pink tongue inside the cancerous mouth.

“Don’t forget the dishes,” Mum shouted. “This isn’t a hotel!” 

The kitchen seemed to shake and laugh. Oh gosh, I thought, am I whiny? I’d heard whiny characters in cartoons and disliked them. I used to wish Angelica from the Rugrats off the screen. Maybe that’s why everyone wished me away. I was one of the whiny ones.

Hiding in my wardrobe, I pretended my clothes, falling all around me, were my friends. Yes, I talked to my trousers and, yes, I ignored my one dress. What was I doing wrong? Why was I soooooo rubbish at being human? And (most importantly) how could I be better? The feel of fabric touching my skin was really comforting, like I was an egg in water. I was being held by hundreds and thousands of particles that supported me. I started to sing Happy Birthday to myself. But stopped. My voice was disgusting. I held my throat, aiming to rip my whiny voice box out.

“Hello…” I said in a low voice. “My name is…” in a squeaky voice. “Alright, I’m…” in a voice like a fish. “Yo yo yo, I’m–” in a high-pitched tone.

I stopped when I heard a light click. Opening the wardrobe door, I peeked out. 

“Why are you so weird?” said Reenie.

My room was dark; I never opened the curtains. Darkness was a blanket den, keeping my secrets. Rennie, with a halo of light behind her, looked at my bed. The duvet without a cover, the yellow and caseless pillows. 

“Go away,” I said. 

I twiddled my thumbs around each other. Reenie was like the Sun, too bright and marvellous for me to look at.

“I’ve got a spare lampshade at home,” she said. “It’s a princess one, I’m not sure if you like–” 

“I like princesses,” I said quickly.

There was a light bulb dangling from a wire in the ceiling. Spread around it were my WWF wrestling stickers. 

“Which princesses?” I asked.

Reenie smiled and ran towards me. She grabbed my hands and span me around.

“There’s pink, yellow, green and blue,” she said.

“There’s a green princess?” I asked.

Reenie, with her eyes wide and her lips pursed, nodded her head.

“I’ll bring it round next time,” she said.

When she left, I jumped a million times. A jump, for how many times better my life would be with the princess lampshade. I thought about Reenie. Her kindness and how the adults liked her company. I should be more like Reenie. It was an excellent idea. I wasn’t a jellyfish; I was a leech (they have thirty-two brains, I know). I clicked my nails between my teeth, loving the enamel ping.

 

The next day I knocked on Mum’s bedroom door. 

“Go away!” she said.

There was a thump on the other side.
“I need to ask you something,” I replied.
“I said, GO! AWAY!” 

 My stomach gurgled and the hallway started to spin. I chewed. I heard models chewed gum to trick their brain into thinking they were eating, but without gum I used air. When my stomach stopped, I opened the door. Mum was lying down with cucumber slices over her eyes and a half-smoked cigarette in her hand. I trod on a shiny, red stiletto. The thump must have been shiny. Mum’s room was bright, her curtain rail had fallen down and light split in holy beams through the net curtains.

“When is Reenie coming back?”
“Make me a cup of tea would you, hun?”
“I’m hungry.”
“You’re always bloody hungry.”
Mum swung her arm out and patted the surface of her bedside cabinet.
“Here,” she said, handing me a ten-pound note. “Go get me a pack of fags. Get yourself 

something nice.” 

In my room, I picked up the folded note. 

 

Please let Jellyfish buy the cigarettes
I am very sick and
can’t leave the house and as you know
I am a single mother with no one else to help.

 

Mum had lovely handwriting. A ballet of letters; they swirled like tentacles in water, joining each other harmoniously. I wanted her hand to have and to hold. I didn’t mind buying the cigarettes. Mr Himla was friendly, and he always gave me a warm croissant. If I bought the cheapest smokes, I had enough change to get a big bag full of penny sweets. Foam prawns and bananas for breakfast. Milk bottles for lunch and chocolate jazzles for dinner. 

Walking back from the shop, I had to dodge all the bikes, prams and picnic baskets. Everyone was on their way to the pretty park. That marvellous stretch of land with grass, swings and a stream trickling through the middle. Standing on the crusty green railings, I stared at the seesaw. It squeaked up and down. Two children sat at each end. They were wearing dresses. I giggled noticing that one was flashing her white knickers. In the middle, with her legs dangling either side, was Cousin Reenie. 

Wow, I thought. She has friends. If I wanted to be more like Cousin Reenie, I’d have to start wearing pink and get rid of my oversized khaki combats and Fruit of the Loom t-shirt. Reenie and her friends sprinted towards the roundabout. 

I guess if I wanted to lose weight, I’d have to stop eating sweets. After I finished the ones I had, I’d begin. Chewing chewing gum, chewing air. 

Both girls span Cousin Reenie on the roundabout. 

“Faster, faster!” She squealed.

She sounded like Mum’s handwriting: elegant and tiny. If I was going to be more like Reenie, I had to change my voice. 

 

Three days later, Mum and I were in Peacocks. She had got some tax back and decided to treat herself. On our way to the dressing room, Mum stopped. I was struggling to see over her piled up sequin dresses. We were at the edge of the children’s section. Little polka dot dresses displayed in size order. Smallest at the front, biggest at the back. Mum pointed to a small, fluffy orange top and looked at me.

“I wish you’d wear clothes like this,” she said. 

My arms were numb. 

“Mum, I can’t see. These are heavy.” 

A little girl walked over. She was wearing a lilac dress, with so many bows a Christmas present must have puked on her. She picked up a polka dot dress from the front part of the rail. She walked off like a poodle, wagging her bum.

“She looks lovely,” Mum said. “Like a proper little girl.” 

On the wall was a long rectangular mirror. I could just about see my chubby face and the mousy blonde hair falling in uneven layers around it. A stupid haircut I didn’t want but had to have, because Mum insisted that it looked like Rachel from her favourite program, Friends. I knew it wasn’t Rachel’s hair that made her beautiful. 

“I don’t like those clothes,” I replied.

Mum shrugged and flung the orange top onto the pile. My arms trembled. I held my breath.
“You should hold your stomach in,” she said, patting her stomach. “Eventually it just stays

in.” 

The sequined clothes dropped on the dressing room floor.

 

Two weeks later, I asked Mum if I could borrow her belt to keep my trousers up. Her eyes lit up like candles. That night she cooked a special dinner. Potato waffles, beans and dinosaur-shaped chicken. With it on our laps, we watched Brookside. During the adverts a man with white hair, sang always look on the bright side of life. Mum started whistling. I tried to join in but could only manage some puffs of air and dribble. 

“Love you, Mum,” I said with chicken on my tongue.
“Don’t eat with your mouth full,” she said with chicken on her tongue.

We both laughed and a bit of wet liquid shot out of my nose. I used my hand to wipe it away. Two ladies were sniffing white towels. I recognized them from a program Mum liked called Birds of a Feather

“What did you want to be when you were my age?” 

Mum looked at me. She tilted her head and put her hand on my knee. 

“A wife and a mother. Ridiculous I know but–” 

The doorbell rang. 

“Get that Jellyfish,” Mum said. 

 It was Cousin Reenie and Aunt Hilda. 

“Where’s my lampshade?” I asked. 

Reenie looked at Hilda. Hilda looked at Reenie.

“Who is it?” Mum shouted. “If it’s Avon tell them to go–” 

Hilda grabbed Reenie’s hand and barged past me. I closed the front door. A pile of post had gathered on our doormat. Long thin menus advertising various takeaways, little window cleaning business cards and bills in unopened white envelopes. My shoeprints were on the post. I could see the angular design. The impression I left from the pattern of my sole. 

I ran into the living room. Reenie had my dinner on her lap, chewing my last chicken dinosaur. Mum’s mouth was wide open, and Hilda had her arms crossed over her large breasts. She was shaking her head. I sat down on the arm of Mum’s chair. The second half of Brookside was about to start, but I couldn’t hear anything. 

“Where’s the remote?” I said.

“So rude,” Mum snapped. “Go to your room!”
Reenie, with my last dinosaur in her hand, started crying.
“She told me to give her my princess lampshade otherwise…”
My face flamed. I remembered Reenie whirling me around my bedroom offering and 

promising me stuff. I swallowed but my dry mouth tasted wrong and disgusting.

“I didn’t. You offered it to me.” 

A smile flashed across Reenie’s face. She shoved the dinosaur in her mouth.  

“Give me back my dinner!”

Like a jockey on a racing horse, Reenie quickly chewed my food. I felt my skin transform into glass. My body filled with a rapid of water. Reenie swallowed and stuck out her tongue. Her pink tongue was empty. My glassy body shattered.

“BITCH!” I screamed, before rushing out the door.

Reenie had ruined everything. Instead of my stomach rumbling, it bubbled. Was this how an engine feels when it starts to drive? Key in ignition and BAM power. That’s how I felt stomping up the hallway, like a driver. Until my Mum’s footsteps sounded behind me. I sprinted into the bathroom and locked the door. Mum kicked the door. I said sorry a thousand times. A sorry for how many more times worse my life would be now I’d said bitch to Reenie. I pressed the heel of my palms into my eyes, trying to stop myself from crying.

“Get out here now you little shit!” she shouted. 

I turned the faucet on to pretend I was showering. Trying to remember those golden moments before the bell rang and changed everything, I started whistling. Mum stopped banging.

“We best be off,” I heard Hilda say on the other side of the door. 

“Why did you eat her dinner?” I heard Mum say. 

“What?” Reenie giggled.

“You heard me you little bitch, why did you eat her dinner?” 

My ear was on the door. I was washed over by a surreal sensation. My skin didn’t feel like glass or water or anything.

“Don’t you ever speak to my little Ree Ree like that again,” Hilda said.

“Get out!”

“She’s gone mad,” Reenie said.

“Get out of my house! Now.”

I heard the front door slam. Silence. I got up and turned the tap off. Out of habit, like I’d not heard anything and was doing a big pooh, I flushed the toilet. 

“Sonata?”

I opened the door. Mum was sat on the floor. She looked up at me. Grey streams of mascara on her cheeks. 

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m so, so sorry.” 

She tumbled forward into an aggressive amount of wailing. I sat down next to her and hugged her. My arms couldn’t hold her tight enough. 



*

 

A few weeks later Mum killed herself. I searched the flat for a note. But all I found were empty cigarette packets and that folded piece of paper I always took to the shop.

 

*

 

The sound of crying brings the aquarium back into focus. The moon jellies are clustered in the corner of the tank. They all look the same. The lighting changes from red to white. Their luminescence looks like an ultrasound. I taste smoke in the back of my throat. Mum used to be my aquarium. Now I am hers. She lives inside me. All those moments we never had play, on repeat. I unbuckle my bag. The crying becomes louder. I look towards the archway, there is a little girl. Her forehead furrows. She is wearing jeans, high top trainers and a blue sweat band around her wrist. Her baseball cap is on backwards. Her short hair flicks through the adjustable strap hole. Her sockets squelch as she rubs her eyes. 

“Don’t do that,” I say. “You’ll make it worse.” 

She whimpers. 

“Do you have water in your backpack?”
She nods.

“Can you get it out and drink some? It will make you feel better. Like an aquarium in your  

belly.”

The little girl smiles and quickly unzips her bag. When the gulping stops, she sighs.

“I can’t find my mummy,” she says.
In the tank behind her, the Moon Jellies disperse. The long sheaths of seaweed, sway

in a watery breeze.

“We were walking to see the octopuses. Mummy wasn’t holding my hand because she wants me to be independent, but a big group came in and–” 

The little girl looks constipated. 

“Do you need the toilet?” I ask.

Her bottom lip wobbles and she starts crying again. 

“Don’t cry. There’s enough water as it is.”

The little girl drinks. There is another sign. 

Did you know jellyfish are bad parents? Once they give birth to their planula, they just leave them. Providing no further care. 

“Are you on your own?” the little girl asks.

The water bottle has made a red suction mark around her mouth. 

“How old are you?” I ask.
“Ten.”

“If you wait here, I’m sure she’ll find you. Or we can go to the desk? Get the assistant to make an announcement?”

The little girl sits down on the bench. She looks at the tank.

“It’s funny when you go to a tank and you can’t see the creatures you came to see. It happens at the zoo, too. You have to really look to find them. Especially reptiles. It’s fun if you find them. But not so fun if you don’t.” 

“I’m looking for my mum too,” I say.
The little girl’s eyes narrow. She looks at the tank.
“They look dead,” she says. 

I reach into my bag. I pick up the cake.

“Like ghosts.” She gasps. “Do jellyfish have ghosts?”
My stomach lurches. I scrunch my brows. I’m not sure what she means by ghosts, there are 

so many ways a dead thing can still be here, haunting. I see Mum. I hear my nickname; Jellyfish and feel the rush of all the broken things I couldn’t fix. I leave the cake in my bag but keep my hands inside. Phantosmiacly, I can still taste the smoky odor of when I tried to kiss her back to life.  

Tears well up in my eyes. I nod. 

“A Jellyfish has to make peace with their ghosts. Then they go away.”

Her mouth pulls downwards by the muscles of her pain.
“Mummy!” she says, suddenly remembering what she’s lost.
I offer her my hand. I want to say don’t cry but I can’t. Not now. I can’t tell her not to do  

something. 

 

KAYLEIGH CASSIDY IS A DYSLEXIC WRITER, COMEDIAN AND VISUAL ARTIST WHO STUDIED CREATIVE WRITING AT BIRKBECK. SHE WAS LONG LISTED FOR THE MIR FOLKTALE COMPETITION AND IS A WRITER AND PERFORMER IN HOW TO SURVIVE YOUR LIFE PODCAST. HER WRITING AND COLLAGES HAVE BEEN PUBLISHED BY TOKEN, ROLLICK AND 3:AM MAGAZINE AS WELL AS ERTOPLASTY AND VISUAL VERSE. KAYLEIGH LIKES WALKING AND DURING LOCKDOWN HAS REALLY GOT INTO JIGSAW PUZZLES.