13 London’s Burning
The fire burnt brightly in the distance, flames leaping into the air, licking the night sky like a hungry cat at a saucer of milk. A plume of dark smoke filled the air making the blackness of night darker still. A sense of foreboding had hung over Adam all day; in meetings, at lunch, on the phone, he’d been unable to fully concentrate, worried by the idea that he’d forgotten to turn the iron off after pressing his shirt that morning. Throughout the day he’d been preoccupied by visions of the iron still plugged in to the extension cable, getting hotter and hotter and eventually doing what? Exploding? Tipping over and starting a fire?
And now as he cycled home, the cold wind in his face, he could see the fire that must have been caused by his forgetfulness earlier in the day. He felt sick to the belly as another fire truck sped past him, its blue lights illuminating the night sky and the sirens deafening all those around. He simultaneously tried to speed up and slow down, desperate to get home to find out if it was indeed his house ablaze while thinking that there was nothing he could do now. Tears flowed down Adam’s face, he tried to convince himself they were caused by the bitterly cold weather rather than the worry but deep down he knew the truth. It wouldn’t be long now before he’d be turning into his street to see the commotion and desperation of the fire fight.
But before he could get there he was stopped by a police cordon. No one was going near his street, it was guarded by a burly uniformed officer making sure everyone knew this was a no go zone.
Adam got off his bike and wheeled it up to the policeman.
‘I’ve gotta get through, I think it’s my house that’s burning.’
‘I very much doubt it’ the copper gave him short shrift.
‘It is, I live in this street and left the iron on this morning.’
‘That’s as maybe, but unless you live in a factory I think you might be okay.’
The words were like chocolate for the ears, like a massage for the brain, untying the knots that Adam had tied himself into.
‘Streets gonna be closed for a while so better find something else to do.’ The copper’s voice had a small smile in it, amused by the sudden transition from worry to relief on Adam’s face. Adam walked away pushing his bike feeling a little bemused but very relieved.
14 A Nightingale Sang
London seemed busier and more hectic than ever. The rain fell in fits and starts making the headlights blur in the early evening darkness. Artificial lights had replaced the gloom of daylight, bringing a brighter feel to the grey city.
People jostled and harried for position on the pavement like Olympic race walkers at the starting pistol, but the race wasn’t for gold and glory but for home and the warmth and safety of their own private castles. The roads were near gridlocked, traffic was bumper to bumper, moving occasionally but mostly idling, pumping out toxic fumes for the race walkers to ingest. A helicopter buzzed overhead giving a traffic report to a local radio station, while a siren wailed in the near distance in the vain hope that it could beat the traffic.
This was Piccadilly Circus. In the mind’s eye of a child it conjured up an image of magic and wonderment; a circus? In the centre of London? Wow! How many children have fallen into that trap? The London of childhood was a mystical, magical world of streets paved with gold, the bells of St Clements and birdsong in Berkeley Square. But the only gold you were likely to see were a thousand cigarette butts strewn at entrances to offices, you’d be lucky to hear the bells over the building works and as for nightingales in Berkeley square well none sang when I went there, they may have coughed and spluttered, their lungs ruined by the pollution, if indeed any birds still existed at all.
There was no warning, lights didn’t gradually go out one by one, it was sudden and total. Everything, from the neon lights to traffic signals to the small transistor radio playing Capital FM in the barber’s shop, died all at once, like someone had clicked their fingers and blown the fuse. Of course the lights from the cars, buses, vans and trucks still lit the streets, but across the centre of London life froze. Hair was left half cut, tattoos uninked, meals part cooked and beers half poured. People emerged onto the already crowded streets to see what was going on but no answers were to be found there. Deep beneath the ground passengers used mobile phones to provided emergency lighting on dark, hot, airless trains while they waited for further announcements that never came.
Far from creating a party atmosphere like the blackout in New York, the London version caused anger, frustration and resentment. People impatiently wanted to get home and this wasn’t helping. As time went by rumours spread like wildfire. The one that seemed to have the least truth but gather the most momentum was that this was the work of Islamic terrorists. ‘They’ve taken out a sub-station’ someone said with absolutely certainty.
‘And now they’re coming with machine guns.’ Suspicion spread, the threat could come from anywhere, anyone. People eyed their neighbours with mistrust; moving away from the different towards the safety of similarity. Fault lines formed, normal everyday people creating angry hostile mobs, ready to defend themselves from the enemy within.
Then, more gradually than they went off, the lights began to reappear, an abandoned hair clipper buzzed in a deserted barber’s shop, the transistor radio crackled into life, train drivers told their scared passengers that they were waiting for clearance to continue, while huge neon signs began to illuminate the night sky again and a million lights from a million abandoned offices floodlit the battlefield of London’s streets.
With the return of the light came the return of rational thinking. People looked embarrassed, ashamed, shocked at what had nearly happened.
People crossed the no man’s land with nervous smiles hoping the uneasy truce would last and build into a more comfortable peace. The rain got heavier and those Londoners making their way home hoped that it would wash away their shame.
15 The Text Message
Kat threw her phone onto the sofa and watched it bounce off onto the floor, she left it there, went it to the bathroom, sat on the toilet and let the tears roll down her face and drip onto the floor. With her knickers round her ankles she swore to herself that this was the final straw and that she’d end the relationship, but she knew deep down that she’d sworn that to herself many times before and here she was sitting on the toilet crying over the same bloody man she’d wasted so many tears on. It’d been 3 years and she was still playing the other woman, still being let down at the last minute more often than not.
She heard the phone buzz on the hardwood floor of the living room but she had no intention of answering it, she wouldn’t let the bastard have the satisfaction of smooth talking her way back in to her affections. She’d make him stew for a while, not let him build his bridges, yet.
Of course she’d known he was married at the outset, so she only had herself to blame. He’d spun the usual yarns, Claire doesn’t love me, Claire doesn’t understand me, we’re only staying together cos of the kids. She’d loved it at the start, the naughtiness, the illicitness of it all. She also liked the fact she had a relationship without the responsibilities; she had all the good times and none of the man flu. But now it was getting troublesome; despite trying not to, she’d only gone and fallen in love with the ‘roach. She’d told herself not to, but that was easier said that done. At the beginning she was glad when he had gone but now she missed him when he wasn’t there, at the beginning it was all about the sex but now she wanted company, reassurance, companionship.
She was washing her hands as she heard the phone buzz again, this time telling her she had a text. No doubt a corny apology she thought to herself. She went through to the kitchen and opened the bottle of wine she had in her fridge for precisely these occasions. But these days she found herself replacing the emergency bottle far too regularly for her liking.
She took her glass through to the living room, flicked on the TV and settled on the sofa, scooping the phone up along the way in one graceful movement. She
still had it. What soppy nonsense would the amoeba have come up with today she wondered.
But it wasn’t his number, it wasn’t a number she recognised. She tentatively opened the message and immediately wished she hadn’t.
‘Hi Kat, thought you might like to know I know about you and Tim.’
Shit it was from Claire, Kat felt butterflies in her stomach. She’d dreaded this moment. Tim had obviously cancelled because he’d been caught. Kat wondered if to read on, what vitriol would Claire be spewing via SMS. She took a deep breath and carried on.
‘but do you know where he is tonight? I thought you might like to know about Tim and Ella. Stay tuned.’
What did she mean? Who was Ella? What was Tim and Ella? Why stay tuned? Kat felt uneasy, who the fuck was Ella? How the hell did Claire have her number? Her phone buzzed again, this time an MMS. The penny was beginning to drop for Kat. She looked at her new message and there was the unmistakable figure of Tim draped over a woman that was neither his wife nor his mistress.
16 Mum’s Christmas Gift
‘I’ve finished my Christmas shopping.’ My mum looked so proud announcing the news to me and my brother.
‘Mum? It’s only the 7th September!’ The tone in my brother’s voice reflected the look on my face.
‘I know but I decided to buy you all the same thing this year. So it was easy.’
‘All of us? Even the kids?’ Luke asked.
‘Yep all of you’ she said.
My brother and I exchanged glances wondering what on earth would be suitable for 35 year old men, their spouses and their under tens.
Luke and I chatted briefly about it on the way home but then the conversation was forgotten about until Christmas morning.
Our house was the usual rush of excitement, the kids tearing paper off presents and getting more hyper by the minute. I wonder if that is why adults drink at Christmas - to try to replicate that innate magic that somehow we lose along the way. I thought nothing could bring those kids down from the cloud 9 they had been inhabiting since 6.30 that morning. But I was wrong. Unwrapping mum’s presents certainly brought them down to earth with a bump.
Nothing says Christmas like dental hygiene. We stared at the four near-identical electronic toothbrushes with a sense of bewilderment. Why had she bought us these and why had she been so proud about it?
Luckily Mum was at Luke’s place so she didn’t see the puzzled expressions across four confused faces. I wondered how good my brother’s family’s acting skills had been. Thirty minutes later I got a text from my brother- No merry Christmas or anything, just straight to the point.
‘Toothbrushes? Why?’
I smiled to myself and shot back an answer.
‘I was thinking the same, ask her?’
But he never did, he was too scared, so it was left for me to get to the bottom of it a couple of weeks later.
‘Loving my toothbrush mum.’
‘Oh that’s good, I’m glad you like it.’
‘Interesting idea for a present though, what made you think of it?’ I smiled at my own subtlety.
‘Well, my neighbour Julie has one.’ My mum lived next door to a single, 30 something, high-flying, go-getter, who my mother admired as she made me and my brother look like we were meandering down a path to mediocrity.
‘She uses it all the time, at least twice, sometimes three times a day and she seems very happy with it. I can hear it through the walls. Very happy indeed.’
17 The Smoking Ashtray
Dave rubbed his eyes and looked again, it couldn’t be could it? Germany was a vast country, over 350,000km squared, over 80 million people. Of those 80 million he only knew one and it seemed that she was sitting opposite him right now, right here outside a café on a blustery day in Augsburg. But he must be imagining it; he must be so keen to see her that he was hallucinating. Why would she be in Augsburg, a small provincial town in Bavaria? As far as he knew, she lived Hamburg - 450km away.
Dave didn’t come to Germany often, but every time he did he did he thought of her, that ‘little girl lost’ he had dated all those years ago. They’d never officially broken up, she’d gone back to Germany and they’d kind of lost touch, without ever really finishing it. He often wondered what happened to her, whether she had found that something that he had been unable to give her.
Now he watched the woman opposite, she was talking on the phone in German, animated, smiling. It certainly looked like her smile. He remembered how his Silke never really smiled in English - although she spoke it perfectly well, she never really smiled in it. She’d occasionally laugh and sometimes you might think there was a smile but it wasn’t real, not like her German smile. He’d seen a different person when he’d travelled with her to Germany, smiling, laughing, joking, no longer the lost soul. Was he looking at that person now?
The woman opposite used her little finger to brush the hair from her eyes and now Dave was sure it was her, he’d watched her do that 1000 times before while reading the Independent, while watching TV, or while smoking one of the million cigarettes she’d smoked in the short time they’d been together; always the little finger, always the left hand, always the right ear.
Now she lit a cigarette, inhaled and blew the smoke down her nose. His heart skipped, his stomach flipped, his imagination hadn’t blipped; that sealed the deal. He had to go over there, but what would he say and what if it wasn’t her?
Just then the waitress asked him if he was ready to order. He didn’t want to take his eyes off his girl but he looked up at the waitress and then down at the menu and tried to pronounce the kartoffel dish he had decided on.
As soon as the waitress was gone he looked back to where ‘Silke’ was sitting. But to his horror there was a void, a vacant chair; all that was left of his reunion was an empty coffee cup and a smoking ashtray.
18 The Flash Mob
Say what you like about them not paying their taxes and about them homogenising the high street but Starbucks has its uses. Free wifi, free refills, clean toilets and the pretty girl with the lop-sided smile and black-rimmed glasses behind the counter were enough to make me a regular that summer.
I liked watching them work, it seemed like they turned making coffee into a performance art, a ballet, poetry of movement. When they were busy they asked people for their name and wrote it on the cups in black felt pen, then when the skinny latte was made, the pretty girl would call out the names in her pretty voice making me smile as I watched. It was then I had my flash mob idea.
I advertised on Facebook and Twitter and set a time and date for the masses to assemble in the coffee shop. About 20 people replied and that was enough, it didn’t have to be hundreds of people, just some.
I walked in the café bang on time, it was more crowded than I’d ever seen it. My friend Tim was there, camera at the ready, but the rest of the people were complete strangers. I’d told them I would be in the straw hat and they winked and smiled at me as I shuffled up to the bar and took my place in the queue. Sure enough they were taking names, but when I saw it was pretty girl serving I almost bottled out. Did I want to embarrass her?
I’d thought about using the name Spartacus but that was too obvious. So, instead when she asked me my name I said loudly and boldy ‘Brian’. She smiled her sweet smiled and wrote the name on the cup .The male server was putting the finishing touches to my latte and called out my ‘name.’ That was the cue and it worked perfectly.
The large man at the back of the shop was the first to call out.
‘I’m Brian,’ he sung in a perfect Eric Idle voice and then everyone joined in.
‘I’m Brian,’ ‘I’m Brian of Nazareth.’ ‘I’m Brian and so’s my wife.’
There were suddenly 25 or 30 Brian’s in the room, male, female, old and young. The look on faces of the serving staff was a picture as they went from confusion to realisation that this was a preconceived joke.
As I took my coffee I turned away and said ‘Nah, I’m not I’m only joking, I
’m only pulling your leg.’
19 A Complaint
Dear God,
How are you, I hope all is well. Congratulations on the great work you did with Earth, okay a few things have gone wrong, but not sure we can blame you for that. May I say how wonderful the moon was yesterday evening? I am writing to you with a small complaint that I am hoping you can do something about.
I was lying in bed cuddling my girlfriend last night and it dawned on me that we humans have a basic design fault; two people don’t seem to be able to cuddle each other comfortably when lying down. I know you are the all-seeing-eye so I am sure you know what I am talking about, but I will try to explain just in case you missed it.
She had her head on my chest, my arms were around her and one of hers around me but she couldn’t get her inside arm comfortable at all. Had she put it underneath me, her hand would have gone dead, so she just had to dangle it down the side. There is a certain magnetism between us that makes us want to cuddle, so we tried two or three other positions but there was always the same arm problem.
I realised it’s probably too late for the current model, but is there anything you can do to correct this design fault in the future?
Looking forward to your reply.
John
P.S. Do aliens exist?
Dear John,
Thank you for contacting me, I am glad you like my work on Earth I must admit I am quite proud of it. And yes the moon did look lovely last night, so glad you liked it.
Although I am omnipotent, it is more a monitoring brief therefore I was not aware of your specific problem last night so thank you for outlining it for me.
In fact, you are not the first one to bring this fault to our attention and our designers are already working hard on a way to evolve a solution to it. We hope to put the new model into production very soon.
On another note, I see you say girlfriend and not wife. You know that I take a dim view of this type of behaviour. I hope to see you rectify this matter in due course.
Thanks again for your letter.
Yours FAITHfully
God
P.S. I am afraid I can neither confirm nor deny the existence of aliens.