Identity Crisis

In this world of computer banking, plastic money and internet shopping we are constantly being reminded to protect our pins and guard our passwords. Well I’m not as good on my pins as I used to be and if I have more than one password to remember I'm completely stuffed. Identity theft is on the increase. Imagine my surprise, therefore, when I find that my identity has been stolen by none other than that great British institution BT. Or was it Cellnet or O2. They do seem to keep changing their own identity. What do they have to hide? Perhaps it's to sidestep the number of complaints? 'The in trays are full again. Time to re-brand.' That thieving little prancing piper has disappeared and quite probably is wanted for theft all around the country, if my experience is anything to go by.

I've had a mobile phone account since the time you had to drive to within 20 miles of Manchester to ring someone up. Provided they also lived in Manchester or London, that is. The trouble was, they have always had my name down as Mike. Looking back this doesn't seem so bad, although my name is not Mike. There was always an element of confusion when I had to speak to anyone about my account. After several years however, and during one of these confusing conversations, when I was asked to confirm my name, I decided to explain that although they had me down as Mike, my name was in fact Dave. Perhaps I didn't explain it very well. Perhaps the computer system didn't allow first name changes. Perhaps the administrator was having a bad day. Suffice to say that my name is no longer listed as Mike on the mobile phone account. I am now known as Unknown. Every month I receive a statement addressed to Mr. Unknown Carr. Worse than that in fact, they haven't even spelt unknown correctly, missing out the first n. I’m a lost soul wandering the shadowy basement tapes of the computers of a corporate machine. A nameless fish in a faceless pond.

My first thoughts were to correct this error but this would inevitably involve another of those conversations, probably preceded by a good deal of button pushing and listening to Enya. On the other hand, I thought, perhaps there could be some advantage in being Mr. Unknown. It does have a certain mystique to it. International man of mystery - Mr Unknown. Maybe I could even one day become referred to as 'The Great Unknown.'

Perhaps I would be able to open a bank account in the name of Unknown. They wouldn't believe me of course but I could take in my mobile phone bill to confirm my name and address. There must be a benefit to be had. A credit card perhaps? I could run up some horrendous bills and simply deny all knowledge. I'm sure others must have played the system. Johnny Cash for example. "Let’s see now - concert at the Hollywood Bowl. That'll be three hundred thousand dollars, please. Just make it out to Cash."

I thought about ordering a gravestone in the shape of a mobile phone simply bearing the word 'Unknown'. In Paris the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is visited by thousands.
‘The Tomb of the Unknown Mobile Phone Customer’. Well you can’t argue it doesn’t have a ring to it. But there again, I can’t see it being much of an attraction.

To be quite honest, I'm surprised that the post office actually delivers my phone bills. I suppose I could send them back marked, ‘Unknown at this address.’ If I wasn't already paying by direct debit, that would be worth a try. Still, the court case might have been interesting.
The case of BT verses the Unknown.

I wonder what the passport office would make of it. I might get some strange looks going through customs. On second thoughts I'd probably find my house swarming with MI5 officers if I tried to obtain a passport under the name of Unknown. Or worse still, wind up in some eastern jail trying to explain it away. "It was all a big mistake - honest. Just ask BT. Ring their call centre - India something or other isn't it?"

No - on reflection, I can’t actually think of any real benefit to being completely nameless and obscure.

“Hello, BT? - I’m more than a number in your big yellow book. My parents gave me that name in good faith. It’s mine and you’ve no right to take it. I want my identity back. What? OK I’ll hold.”

Papa Oscar Echo Mike

Mike was a Romeo, I met him one November
Looking for a Juliet as far as I remember;
He was a kind of Alpha male, who drove a Ford Sierra,
I prefer a man in Uniform but they're a good deal rarer.
He said he liked my dancing shoes and would I like a Foxtrot.
We checked into a cheap Hotel and soon he found my hotspot.
I read him like an X-ray but he held me fascinated;
He could have won an Oscar but the film would be X rated.
I started craving spicy food from India and Nepal;
I put on weight, a Kilo; that's not like me at all.
Victor at the Golf club said "My boy you'll have to marry her."
Mike screamed and threw his arms about just like a Zulu warrior.
He said "You see, I'm not quite ready yet to be a Papa."
I called him a Charlie and he called me a slapper.
But it takes two to Tango as I really ought to know;
I Delta blow for women's lib and told him where to go.
He joined a Yankee sailing crew, leaving for Quebec;
My scathing cry of 'Bravo' seemed to Echo round the deck.
He runs a place in Lima now, it's called the Aztec Bar,
Drinking Whiskey, playing cards - I said that he'd go far.

Cossacks

Three flicks of scarlet dulled by snow grey breath,
Three gradual paladins drip with grizzly death;
Three ululations twisting through the wind,
Three doves to pacify, bring the melting spring.

Once far too often, cossack tipped his lance;
Once on a dream-wave peace fought with chance;
Once through a bow of light scattered bands
Hope's glow rekindled a time shattered land.

The Last Judgement - Bosch

Squat hooded rider, whip in hand astride
The giant red robed rat he drives through hell;
Panniers of petty sinners either side
And everywhere is death’s rank, putrid smell.
As Christ sits calmly judging all who died,
Evil destruction tolls the ghastly knell.
A hopeless clamour as the wrong abide
To hear the human clapper strike the bell.

A wheel turns, so the clockwork crone partakes
Of flesh from souls, the judge smugly forsakes.
Smoke from far, dying cities fills the air,
Where patient ravens thrive upon despair.

Hacked off limbs and heads lay side by side,
Cruel demons chanting, calling all are welcome
To this acrid waste, hope cast aside;
A nether land with hideous tales to tell;
A place where pilgrims learn the price of pride
Eternal damnity for promised souls that fell.
For those who failed the judgement and were tried
Amongst the grotesque evermore shall dwell.

conjunctivitis

Conjunctivitis

My heavy lidded red eye
Reminds me of the bull’s eye
I tried to dissect at school; but couldn't.
It was the lashes which made me heave.
Grotesquely, pathetically human,
Winking at me in its tray of brine.
The smell of dead eye balls lingered
In the class lab for weeks.

My swollen eye weeps all day,
Tissues like blotting paper
Soaking up tears.
While its twin stares, unmoved,
Embarrassed with this
Over spilling of grief.
Not sure what to do
With this surfeit of emotion.

It feels as though grit
Has scorched the surface,
Worse than having my feet
Desanded,
Or having a bath with
Sunburnt shoulders.
My lashes sticky and encrusted
Become inseparable in sleep.

I imagine an almost painless
Operation.
I tip my head and with a
Gentle nudge my wounded eye
Slops, blancmange like, into
A glass blue cup of eye solution,
Like a tired pedal boat
Bobbing on a sleepy lake.

I wait a while until the
The stinging ceases,
Let the lotion ripple
Its lullaby of love on all
My woe and weeping.
Patient, I will bide my time
For tenderness to travel and
Dissipate the darkness.

Gently my eyelid closes
On the empty socket,
Of a temporary night.


Jacqueline Pemberton

Black and White

It’s black and everywhere is white.

Or is it white and everywhere is black?

I can’t figure it out. It’s black everywhere and it’s white everywhere.

I look up and it’s black. I look in the distance and it’s dark, nothing is clear, but white specks are floating into my vision. They scurry, form shapes, re-form and disappear, only to be replaced by more phantom figures. I look down and it’s white everywhere. My feet stumble in the white.

The white around my feet crumbles and swallows my feet as I try to move. I breathe out and my breath clouds, mixing with the swirling phantoms. It is snowing and it’s very late at night and I don’t know where I am going. What am I doing? What am I about to do?

What have I just done?

Was it right? These things are never black and white.

This is one of my clearest memories of being at North Riding University. The winters were always severe. Snowfalls would sometimes cut off the new campus from the rest of the country, especially, it seemed, at week-ends. Menial staff like cleaners and porters would be trapped, and have to sleep in the main refectory or the chapel till Monday. On this winter evening the snow is more hideous than ever. It is so cold and ice-sharp, it is dry and doesn’t even have the decency to melt on your exposed flesh of your face, till your skin burns and you cannot feel the cold anymore. It dances around me furiously, piling into my eyes as it gathers, onslaught upon onslaught from an unseen black canopy over head.

The centre of campus, the piazza, is totally deserted. Lamps burn pointlessly overhead, illuminating a dazzling, deserted tableau.

I stumble on.

Almost miraculously a figure appears in the distance. Small in stature yet definitely male, he makes his way directly towards me through the driving snow. His hands are thrust deep into the pockets of a duffel coat, though the hood is down and his head is bare in the outrageous blizzard. I can see his close-cropped red hair – coupé en brosse as the French would say, and red stubble of beard – it is the only colour in this monochrome scene.

"Are you Malcolm?" he says, almost conversationally.

"Malc," I nod, correcting. "Call me Malc."

"My name’s Chris. We spoke earlier. Have you taken any pills?" He has the politeness to grin slightly as he asks.

"I can’t remember," I mumble. "I’ve been out in this – " I shrug, indicating the whirling ice-flakes. "It’s been so long," I add after a pause. "Yet, I feel so… hot."

"Are you feeling dizzy?"

"Dizzy? No… no, I don’t think so," I lie. I’ve taken some tranqs, but that’s understandable.

"It’s been five minutes since you called the Nightline office. You said you hadn’t taken anything then. Just that you thought you were going to. That’s why I came out to meet you." He almost laughed. "Lovely night for a walk, eh?"

"No, not dizzy. Just hot. Here," I tugged at the clothing at my neck, "let me take my scarf off."

Nightline was a little organisation run by the Students’ Union. It was there to help member students through the night when ever they had problems, like an essay they couldn’t finish for a nine o’clock deadline, or an impossible finals exam coming up – that would be usually in the summer term, of course, though some schools had mid-year class tests. Also, other problems, like money worries, late grant checks back then, difficulties with parents, fear you were on the wrong course, love affairs running less than smoothly – in fact anything that could disturb the student psyche, a student-based version of The Samaritans. They were said to be particularly keen on helping undergraduates talk through their sexual orientation – nothing like becoming queer to excite the would-be psychotherapeutic volunteers that would stay up all night once or twice a term to run the Nightline service, from the VP-Internal’s office in the Union. Their busiest time, and type of call, though, was always during exams, or the suicide season, as it was known.

I flapped inanely at my coat, trying to find a pocket. "Could you take this?" I said at last, handing him the scarf. I am a personification of confusion.

"Sure."

Despite his casual, amiable manner, I knew he was studying me closely.

"There is something else," I said. "My girlfriend."

"What about her?"

"I think I may have… harmed her."

"Harmed? In what way?" said Chris.

"A bad way."

He remained calm, but it was with a hint of effort, of self-control. "Where is she?"

I told him the room address in the hall of residence at the east end of the campus. Sure enough, his demeanour descended from controlled calm to the edge of agitation. The snow dramatically raised its dervish dance around us as we headed out into the frigid night.

We get to Marion Harding’s room and the door is ajar. We step inside and Marion is sprawled in an ugly fashion on the floor of the cramped bed-sit room. I am all confusion and unable to explain what might have happened. Chris is bent over the body as police from the North Yorkshire Constabulary arrive. I am suddenly the model of clarity and perception. "He did it!" I exclaim. "I saw him strangling her. He’s the one I called you about. Look – her scarf is hanging from his pocket!"

There, on the nightstand, is a sad little epitaph to the recently deceased. Marion’s diary, open at today’s page and, in her handwriting, the note: "Meet Chris tonight." It is there, in black and white.

When I graduated from NRU in Business Studies, it was an easy step to take a job in London, just after the Big Bang of deregulation on the stock market and financial institutions. It was easy to make a killing here too. I dutifully became obscenely wealthy and, as the Eighties segued into the Nineties and the bubble subsided, I quietly stepped back from coke-fuelled trading in the City to semi-retirement in my Docklands flat. The only thing I really lacked was a partner, a girl by my side. But the only woman I had ever loved had turned me down back in my college days because she was already seeing a sociology major called Chris, who, amongst his many good works, volunteered for the Nightline service at NRU. The only woman I ever loved was Marion Harding. I found out, one winter’s evening when my heart could bare the pain of rejection no more, when Chris was on duty at Nightline. I gave her one final chance to reject him in favour of me. She failed to do so and I took the only course of action I could see open to me. If I could not have her, then nobody would. It was a choice as clear as between night and day. Framing Chris was an exquisite bonus. He had the means, opportunity and possible motive – an arranged meeting to break up with him and go out with me, perhaps. He was sentenced to life. Or as good as, in this penal system.

Now I sit in my apartment, staring at the ancient brick architecture and genuine maple floor and gaze blankly across the river, and I wonder what it has all been about. Light floods the open plan room but not my dark secret. How life would have been different with Marion at my side, when there is a knock at the door. Callers are unusual, but I answer just the same without hesitation.

A figure stands there, bent and with lined face. "Remember me?" he says.

No, I do not, and say so. I expect an explanation. There is something vaguely familiar about the close-cropped red hair. He hits me suddenly with something so hard, all I see is a flash of light. Though I know I must be falling, it is as if the floor pivots up to meet me in the back. I am dazed and confused and can find no breath.

"Perhaps you remember this," says the red-haired figure now kneeling on my chest. "This scarf is just like Marion’s. The one you planted on me all those years ago. The one you strangled her with and used to send me to prison for life!"

He is looping the scarf around my neck. I can hardly breathe as it is with his full weight upon my chest, and the blow to the face moments earlier – what did he hit me with? There is blood in my mouth and I feel terribly hot.

"They say life should mean life," he says – I’ve not a clue what he’s on about – "in your case, it will do!"

The scarf slithers around my throat and he tugs it tighter still. I can get no air and my lungs are exploding. At last, I suddenly realise who he is and why is here and what he wants.

Just as everything begins to go black.

Maybe it is what I want too.

The end.

P.S. VOTE FOR YOUR FAVOURITE ENDING!

Someone made the suggestion that this story could satisfactorily end about half-way through this 'full' version, at the point with the text: ' It is there, in black and white' as the final line. What do YOU think? Please leave comments, and a vote, if you have a preference, and we'll find out what the public wants!

Let me Count the Ways

In age, as in childhood, it seems to me, pleasures are generally of the simpler and more wholesome kind; while those of the middle years are often complicated by emotion and relationships. The pleasures of old men (and I assume old women) tend to be singular, solitary and often incomprehensible to the wider world.
And by way of example I can do no better than draw your attention to the compost heap at the bottom of my garden. More accurately I should say heaps, since I have three of them. Not that I am boasting you understand, but I must admit to a little frisson of pride to think that in one respect at least, I have more than the average man. And as you’ll appreciate, no two compost heaps are alike, so in the unlikely event that I ever get bored with one there is always another available for my delight and delectation.
So perhaps you’ll indulge me while I wax lyrical and count the ways that I do love my compost heaps.
To begin with, I belong to the post war austerity generation; a generation saddled with the conviction that to throw away food, any food, is just plain sinful. One of the consequences of this is that we baby boomers feel compelled to take those bendy carrots , wilting radishes and shrivelled turnips and make them into wholesome, nourishing soup. OK, so it gives gruel a bad name and the family refuses en-mass to go near it and it sits festering in the fridge for the next six weeks. The point is we haven’t thrown stuff away and God, do we feel virtuous.
But if you have a compost heap, and I think you’re probably ahead of me here, there is a guilt free alternative.
All that suspect vegetable matter, those baked beans lying blue and forgotten in some rarely visited corner of the fridge, not to mention the half ton of bruised windfall apples your in-laws gave you; can all be despatched with a clear conscience to the compost heap. Nothing is being thrown; it is all being recycled. You can bask in that ever so pleasant ‘holier than thou’ glow knowing that your new-found Green Credentials are shining out like a beacon in a world of waste.
Now, as far as the maintenance is concerned, there is something immensely satisfying about pulling on the boots and announcing with the air of someone about to set off for the south pole, that your ‘going to turn over the compost heap’ and ‘that you may be gone some time’.
I suppose this is as close as most of us get to being in touch with the land. Even if, like me, your efforts at horticulture leave the garden looking like the Gobi desert with an acid rain problem, you can still produce good compost. All it takes is patience and an awful lot of potato peeling.
Of course, the real pleasure of the heap is to be had in observing its slow, relentless alchemy; the living ferment which lies at its dark heart. It is the irresistible power of infinitesimal organisms toiling in immeasurable numbers; the writhing broil of happy worms and the silent creep of fungi pushing their filaments into every foetid recess.
And after all the rotting and turning over and waiting you get to the finished product which of course is not the pure crumbly tilth you were hoping for. It is full of stuff that shouldn’t be there.
Take avocado stones: in our house avocados are an occasional constituent of salads; they are not what you would call an everyday staple. Yet the heap does not lie. There can only be one explanation for the vast number of stones and that is that someone is living with a serious avocado habit and probably needs counselling as a matter of urgency.
Then there are what you might call the prodigal son moments, the unconfined joy at being reunited with those potato peelers, knives and spoons which have gradually disappeared over the previous year. And of course, there are always the completely inexplicable items like next doors house keys or a tin of sardines or a used condom.
But the thing that really gets me is the corks. Why does my wife insist on putting corks in the compost? They don’t rot. They sit around in the necks of bottles for years precisely because cork doesn’t rot. Of all the organic materials on God’s earth, cork is the one which most resembles the permanence and indestructibility of granite. So why does my wife imagine that putting them in a compost heap for six months is going to bring about any measurable degree of decomposition - particularly when they’re plastic.
Right, having got that out of my system, let me move on to the fact that compost heaps by their nature are always changing, they are never the same two days running. Every time you visit your heap there is something different and fascinating going on. Alright, you’re always greeted by the same friendly cloud of fruit flies but get past them and you could, for example, find yourself with a particularly fine example of pin mould growing on that gravy you disposed of last week. Or it could be a solemn convocation of slugs, gathered one assumes, in quiet contemplation of the inexhaustible bounty of their little four-sided universe.
Then there is always the possibility of something even more exciting. I once lifted the lid off one of my heaps to find a rat. It stared at me and I stared at it in mutual disbelief. Needless to say the rat recovered its wits before I did and scampered off towards the stream. It was followed by a spade which fell pathetically short – a gesture of impotent rage if ever there was one. But before the rat slipped into the water, it stopped and turned and I could have sworn that it raised two claws in my direction.
So, if the preceding encomium has persuaded you to think seriously about the joys of compost, remember; a heap needs constant attention, it is for life not just for Christmas. Personally, as I shuffle off into my dotage I expect my compost heaps to continue to provide me with comfort and companionship; an ever present reminder of the fate that awaits the mortal remains of us all. In fact, when the time comes I think I would like to be buried under my compost heap. For as Genesis reminds us: ‘compost thou art and unto compost shalt thou return’. At least I think that’s what it says.