Any Cake?

Don't mention headaches or they'll write you up in a different book altogether, son.

2009-12-11T18:11:00.003Z

A blithe attitude and a ready quip will only get a chap so far when his arm doesn't work and he can't tell which one. Try dropping the needle onto the record with any kind of grace with that on your plate and then send me a postcard. Just don't say Wish You Were Here.

Still in the wash of the wetting of the books

2009-12-11T18:03:00.002Z

Undrowning the study an ongoing concern. Didn't realise it was water at first; just thought the books were floating in the air and turning their own pages. Strangely comforting. Nostalgia, most likely. Science scant help.

How many summers can I sell you?

2009-12-03T10:50:00.002Z

The handle comes off the mug and the mug just floats away. Even the once-nice thought of sending us up here with warming evidences of whence (tooth brushes, biscuit tins, Eagle annuals) has cooled to cold and I often see the ladies and gentlemen of the crew crying now. Off in quiet spots, of course; no mention of it afterwards.

Crawling out to the compromised arm of the ship on Saturday nights to play the jukebox in the lounge there becomes more dangerous with each try. If only Saturday night came around more than once a week. But even the thought of a little dance on a tuesday, say, or a thursday evening, brings nothing but objections from some of the more committed members of the crew, along with earnest wax-crayon scribbles in glass notebooks and a variety of hard looks.

If only I could catch the eye of SFC Hood. Then we might form a little caucus, a little quorum of our own and scramble out to the lounge with a pocketful of change. But she hasn't taken off her helmet for quite a while now. Nor touched her food. Nor moved.

Managing to send back a few snaps at least

2009-10-15T12:28:00.002Z

Obviously I would have preferred a picture with all three of us in it, but someone had to hold the camera. The letter I had included with the photos was largely blacked out by the censor, but there was just enough sense left in the thing to allow me to piece together what I was trying to say to myself.

Smoke Signals in the Night

2009-09-24T14:56:00.002Z

DoctorProfessor Nyfenfork, in perhaps a bid to make me more compliant, has moved my house closer to the hospital.

And it almost worked! There was me, thinking that nobody noticed me climbing out the window after lights out, shinning down the drainpipe and legging it into my own kitchen for a cup of tea (the water in the house is so much more palatable than that at Saint Feasance's) when all the time I should have been alert to the fact that this was probably exactly what he (and Blackmann) wanted me to do.

But dash it, it's my own house; my own cups and spoons; my own cupboards and my own jamjars. I left the kitchen light off- the flame under the kettle cast more than enough light for me to feel comfortable; relaxed, even- especially when I thought about all the nurses clambering around outside, trying to be quiet as they spied on me, getting more and more vexed as they failed to establish even what room I was in (I don't glow anymore).

So I made a pot of tea and let it draw. The view from the kitchen window was different. How could it not be? If Nyfenfork had brought the garden along with the house then he mught have had a chance of bringing me around. But he hadn't, and all there was to look out upon was the walls of the hospital. This, however, comforted me. I had another biscuit from the tin.

As my eyes adjusted I began to be able to make out that the nurses, dressed in commando gear or not, were beginning to get steadily less stealthy as the night wore on and their patience grew thin. They were hardly even bothering to conceal themselves anymore.

Cheeky little faces in the dark, all scrunched up and serious. When I saw one of them yawning, I quietly put the kettle on again. Then I placed the biscuit tin in plain view on the table, and waited.

I could hear them talking out there, but I couldn't make out what they were saying. Then: more silence. After a few minutes of this the kettle boiled and I made a fresh pot of tea. It had been drawing for a couple of minutes when I heard the quiet knock upon the front door.

I took in a breath, let it out, and stood up. I was in no hurry. Then, with my hands in the pockets of my dressing gown I sauntered casually out of the kitchen and along the hall, all the while pretending not to see the eyes watching me through the letterbox.

I opened the door and made a good show of being surprised to see half a dozen nurses in commando gear standing there looking sheepish. Of course I asked them in.

It was warm in the kitchen and they were cold. They rubbed their hands together and eyed the biscuit tin. First one, then the rest, took off their balaclava helmets. "A vast improvement, ladies!" I said, pouring six cups of tea and giving myself a hot drop. Two or three of them smiled, shyly, whispering yes pleases or no thank yous as I offered milk and sugar. No-one refused a biscuit.

Florinda

2009-09-24T14:28:00.003Z

All of the trainees holidayed in Garma. Or at least they did so eventually. Both together and, increasingly, separately. Many of them retired there, whether they know it or not. Such details are impossible to check, particularly in the off season. Sightings of the lady in the yellow dress continue to be recorded, however. The weather is the same as ever.

The waters are said to possess certain properties conducive to the mental peace of those most extremely affected. I have a postcard of the hotel on my bedside locker still. Even now, I could walk there. And the crunch of the stones on the beach beneath my...Why am I seeing space boots when I look down at my feet?

One can check in for a single night or for a longer stay. It might have been Logan who first...But now I'm thinking about boots again. Crunching along the shore of- Wait a minute: They don't have water on the moon. Nor would I be able to hear the crunch of my boots, out there. This is the sort of confusion I have to keep quiet about, if I ever want to walk out through that gate. So a moment's thought brings clarity: I'm not the one wearing the space suit. It's those two chaps following me along the beach at what they imagine is a discreet distance, put up to this by Dr Blackmann, no doubt. And if I'm walking along the beach in Garma, then this must be the past. Oh, thank god.

Sandor

2009-09-10T10:52:00.004Z

Clink of paintbrush tipping against the side of a jamjar full of water as it's dipped. Sunny morning, this. The blooms on my skin are quiet. It's difficult to remember, of course, whether upon this particular occasion I have escaped into, or out of, the hospital. Certainly the old familiar bits and pieces seem familiar, but familiarity's like that.

Sound of the brush being swished in the water. The thought occurs that if I sit up I should be able to see what he's painting. Which thought of course comes clattering along afterwards like half of the Crazy Gang hurtling onto the stage and tripping over the other half: Brush means a hand to hold it. Hand means an arm. Arm means a person. A person means, well, that there's another person in here.

Tink, tink again- the sound inflected with a roundness rather than a pointedness- as the excess water is tapped off the brush. Well, comes a not unwelcome thought, this corpse won't sit up by itself. So I give it a try.

He must have heard the groaning as my defamiliared bits managed at last to move in concert. All I could see was an easel, over near the window. And I had an impression that there was someone standing behind the canvas mounted on that easel, artisting away.

Tired from the sitting up, I rested awhile, holding on to the bars and remembering that, yes, I receive my care in a cage. But the familiarity with which that thought asserts itself makes me immediately distruct it. Either way, there are bars.

Speech is still some distance from being possible. Fine. I just want to look. There's the jamjar, resting on the window ledge. Flutter of sun ripples through it, throwing little white spots onto the floor. Then a hand reaches out from behind the work in progress and dips the brush to clean it again. Only...

...The water was and remains clear. Even after another dip. "Don't worry", the painter reassures me. "You're not imagining things. I'm not using paint."

Which fact he proves by making both of his hands visible to me. No palette. He had what looked like a duelling scar on his face, however. But I was more interested in what he was painting.

"You know very well what I'm painting", he said, as I finally realised that I had not, in fact, asked any question. "And you know why I can never use paint on my brush."

I began to guess what he was talking about, and for a moment I was back in BERG-1, tootling out to where it's not even safe to think about tootling to. If we even ever tootled there.

"Oh, you did", said the painter. "And such things you saw. Here, I've painted some of them."

So he turned the blank canvas towards me. It's funny the way we give familiar (that word again) names to things we have no names for. I'm thinking of the chaps in the trenches, calling this bit of muck Piccadilly Circus, or that rock Gibraltar. Which I hope goes some way to explain why I can only describe what he had painted for me as the grasses of Soho Square burning as the red water of Bury St Edmunds erupted through them from the caverns of Bermondsey below; a night scene, this, lit by the fifth moon of Clapham, idling above. Scattered throughout, oranged by the flames, were numerous examples of the things we jokingly called buses (until such time as they ceased to be a joke) walking about on their...well, they were sort of like legs.

"I'm sorry", the painter said. "I've upset you."

"No," I managed, speaking for the first time in months. "Not at all. It's just...nostalgia, I suppose."

"I understand, Victor", he said. "You don't mind if I refer to you as Victor?" Of course I didn't. Victor was a familiar name. "I understand, Victor", he repeated. "We all get homesick."

The Murderer

2009-09-08T16:22:00.002Z

Inside the corridors the outside of the garden blends with the wallpaper as the window is surmounted, overcome and eventually blotted out by the things growing in at me.

Do you think there's really fire in those fire buckets?

2009-06-16T14:47:00.002Z

It's very quiet in the hospital. The sheets have all but dissolved. They stick to me. The doctors are embarrassed and will not discuss what went wrong. The tiles are loose. I can listen to anything I like on the radio. But broadcasts from the moon don't reach us here. The cities recede. Oh, and the little model of my home I've been building under the bed turned out to be the real thing.

The heart is, after all, made of meat.

2009-02-18T13:53:00.002Z

Trains stopping at a station as yet unbuilt. Waiting for what? There was a chocolate machine, however, which seemed to have sprouted from the earth (Ha!) or perhaps that was just the impression given by the coarse local grasses tufting around it, making approach in search of sweets a matter for caution. Even I could tell that the blades of that grass were like swords and would make rashers of any poor sod silly enough to venture too close with his penny.

Which reminded me that chocolate costs money. The girl waved from the window of her compartment again. Had she had any change? Had I asked her about that? Of course I must have. And her answer must have been no because there was nothing in my pocket. The engine made an impatient noise.

Time was of the essence (Repetition?- Ed). The grass was on to me too. Even as I took a deep breath prior to my first attempt on the chocolate machine, it threw up new shoots and shook out new blades. If I am wounded in this attempt, I thought to myself, she- dear heart- will summon help and then I'll be exposed as an escapee. What a time for it to start raining pennies.

Cutting omelettes out of the wounded.

2009-01-26T21:19:00.004Z

There is a trench in the hearts of men that is never unflooded, never unoverrun by the things that live in the soil that covers the things we so hastily bury. There is a time and a place but they rarely synchronise. The escape attempt will have to be made the old-fashioned way, since we can no longer trust our watches. And chum- dear old chum- I think that thing that ran me a race and chased me back across No Man's Land (of the heart?- Ed.) has only gone and caught up with me. And more. Worse, I mean. I think it's found a way in. To. Me. Pals?

Quietly given gifts; fingers hardly touching

2009-01-26T20:50:00.003Z

Bouncing on the bed in her boots. Sunshine falling crossways through the window, making her glow a little. Glass of milk on the bedside table chi-chi-chinging a bit with every bounce. Pencils rolling. Sheets of paper curling in the same sun mentioned above. Yellowing. Lemoning, rather. When he looked at the yellowing sheets he could smell nothing so much as lemons. Makes a change from fried onions, he shouted to her, above the radio.

"What does?" she wanted to know. Smiling. The ties of her helmet flapping up and down as she continued her bouncing. "Have you got another headache?"

I lied and told her he was fine. "I'm fine," he said. Lovely shade of lemon, though.

"Old watercolour sets," she said, reading his mind. "Rolling up the ends of the metal tubes to get the last of the paint out."

He could only agree. And then a question: Why was she bouncing on the bed?

"Me?" she said, amused, redoubling her bounces, making the odd bits of change jingle in the pockets of her suit.

You, he said.

"Looks like rain," she said, throwing a glance out the window as she went up and down, then returning her attention to the form in the chair in the corner at the end of the bed. "You're able to hold a pencil!" she cried. "Why didn't you tell me?"

It had been meant to be a surprise. Still, no harm done. Now all he had to do was stop snapping the blessed things every time he tried to get a few words down on a sheet of paper before it brittled and...lemoned.

"You know perfectly well why I'm bouncing," she said pertly. "I've gone right off this planet. I'd rather not touch it unless it's absolutely necessary. It's much better up here."

But the bed, he noted, will eventually have had enough. And it will break.

"Aha!" she rejoined. "But there are other beds. And in the longer term, I have great faith in what the Vons and the Vilhelms are doing in the wooden huts we're not supposed to know about."

She was ever an optimist. So he just watched her. Landing on the bed. Springing off again. Aloft for a count of two or three. In the sunlight, as observed. Smiling. Up and down. It all rather lulled him into a kind of gentle doze of the sort that sent his memory skittering about its landscape, forcing all sorts of odd jigsaw bits together, sometimes by force. Yes, he must have slept. Because he clearly remembered the last time her boots had landed on the mattress and sprung her off upwards again. But he had no memory of her coming back down again.

Transcriptions Automatiques

2008-11-25T13:26:00.003Z

CYLINDER 34

(The patient settles himself into the chair. This appears to take some time. Sounds of unspecified discomfort can be heard)

Professordoktor Nyfenfork*: Take your time.

The Patient: This isn't my room.

Professordoktor Nyfenfork: In your own time, tell me where you think you are.

The Patient: You know very well where I think I am. Rather, where I know I am.

Professordoktor Nyfenfork: I would just appreciate your telling me again. We have plenty of time.

(There is no immediate answer from the Patient. Then what sounds like scratching can be heard)

Professordoktor Nyfenfork: Are you uncomfortable? Have I come at an inopportune time?

The Patient: The spines on my arm hurt.

Professordoktor Nyfenfork: How long has this been the case?

The Patient: Let me have my calendar back, and I'll hazard a guess.

Professordoktor Nyfenfork: In due course.

The Patient: My watch, then.

Professordoktor Nyfenfork: I'm not sure it would even fit around that wrist of yours anymore.

The Patient: Then just hold it up where I can see it. I have eyes, don't I?

Professordoktor Nyfenfork: Yes you do. An embarrassment of eyes. I'll need your permission to remove one. For investigative purposes.

The Patient: You've never asked my permission before.

Professordoktor Nyfenfork: Someone signed those consent chits.

The Patient: Well it wasn't me.

Professordoktor Nyfenfork: Please. Do not waste my time.

(Here the exchange ends. It may continue on another of the many as yet uncatalogued cylinders found in the Professordoktor's cabin aboard the Hindenburg II. Notification of such discovery to follow at such time when and if etc.)

*Professordoktor HJ Nyfenfork (dates unknown) was the third of the four Registrars at Saint Feasance's RSF Hospital, succeeding Major JH Cornelius and Lady Otteline Shanks, and preceding Sir Oliver Haddo (HOGD). In the interests of clarity, no attempt has been made to reproduce the Professordoktor's disctinctive accent in the above transcription.

In the vile train station of the heart

2008-11-24T14:10:00.004Z

All we were trained to do was dismantle things, of course. So in the absence of any other instructions I took the bed apart, and then the parts of the bed apart, and then the parts themselves. The question now is how to store them. I have no tags to tag the parts, nor waterproof pencil with which to mark details on the tags. No paper at all. I'm concerned of course as to what may or may not be possible if I'm called upon to put the bed back together again at short notice. And, apart from the fact that I have learned nothing and recorded absolutely nothing from the exercise, what if- even if I do manage to reassemble it more or less soundly- a girl, for instance, jumps upon it and is injured?

Blast from The Un

2008-11-23T12:59:00.002Z

Somebody has been writing my diary again. I could quite easily make this impossible for them (I could better conceal the book, or destroy it) but then how would I discover how this sentence ends? Answer me that, my clever-lad-who-lives-in-some-but-not-all-mirrors!

Put Your Message In A Candle And Light It

2008-11-20T10:59:00.002Z

Just one little bottle of oxygen left, boys. Down to stubs of pencils. Rattled around the galley looking for crusts and found a few. Stale. Nice and crunchy, though. And while crunching, this thought: How did a rocket this size get inside the hospital? Without breaking any windows, I mean. And am I to trust the information that we are inside the hospital, on the third floor, in a largish room formerly used for dancing? Dancing by who? To what music? If I could hear the music I could hazard a guess at the year.

And the empty space-suits, clipped and closed and helmets on, laid out on the acceleration couches as if their owners were still inside them. They're not, though. There's nobody inside any of these space-suits.

Why must the doctor refer to my upcoming procedure as "Operation Market Garden"?

2008-05-31T12:30:00.002Z

When what more one is really concerned about is that any tampering with the Nazcalizated scars currently and already ensconced upon the noggin with for any could be anything changed- meanings, I mean.

I'm nowhere near half-past way to decoding the current bun(ch) and already here they are want more. Needs must I should perhaps get the razor out sans fuss and cut back the growth up there, then parade myself somewhere high-up, chin up, head washed and let whomsover can read these from above on high read them from above on high.

Behind enemy lines, my arse.

Department of Fish & Teeth

2008-05-29T15:36:00.003Z

There is a man- and nobody will admit to having bagged him in the immediate aftermath- who insists that it is possible to grow the sections we need. One can't tell from the few blurred photographs available just what it is he is doing. Nor can the few pages of his notes to survive the death by Tallboy of the construction tunnels be made to fit any existing pattern of research. The mind seeks to make links, of course, and cannot help but wonder at possible connexions with the reports of one's own eyes and ears to the effect that at least some of the last of the the die-hards to surrender could only be described as factory-made. Which is enough to remind us that each of them- the ones brought under close arrest to the Institution- had a wallet in the inside pocket of his service tunic. And that each wallet contained the same photo of the same girl.

On a lighter note: See if you can guess which one is me

2008-05-27T11:33:00.002Z

2008-05-27T11:01:00.002Z

Every suggestion involved goggles, and trips to the cellar, where he kept the river

"Come, let us wet our whistles in the waters of destiny", cried Norwood, raising his glass. There was nothing in the glass, however, so the toast may not count. And if it does not count, then perhaps we are still at home, and this has all been a most unwelcome dream?

I thought not.

Days and nights in the frying pan.

2008-05-27T10:56:00.003Z

Even in my memory, she cycles away. Squeak of that back wheel I'd long promised to fix for her. Can of oil would probably have done it. And of course she still has my combination lock which, even if I was to recover it, would be all but useless for any other purpose now. To say nothing of her habit of not answering the telephone.

For a start, that's not even him.

2008-05-27T10:46:00.002Z

What? What? Hands? Feet?

2007-12-02T16:06:00.000Z

And of course I shall never forget- three days out of RAF Luna- the moment when Barrett took a crow-bar and tore up some of the plates that made up the very floor of the HMSS Spitfire. You can imagine the panic; an ecstasy of fumbling for respirators and clamp-suits. But here's the thing: Up came the first plate. Were we sucked to our death? We were not. Up came the second, with similar results. Up came the third and Barrett dropped his crow-bar and just looked into the darkness he had opened, as the Spitfire continued on its course to DELETED.

Then he fell to his knees and took off his left glove, even as the lads called upon him to come away from there. He reached into the blackness...and closed his hand around something.Clay. Hard-packed clay. Barrett turned to the rest of us and smiled. "Lads", he said. "We can tunnel our way out!"

Men of this and that.

2007-05-01T10:51:00.000Z

I wonder what they will think when, someday soon, mankind finally sets foot on the moon. Will they find the Sherman tank, do you think? The submarine? And who, alive now, will be able to tell them about the tunnels, the bunkers and the man from elsewhere who walks through stones? Never seen to eat, he was- if he he was- rather a quiet chap, prone to walking. Hadn't the slightest respect for gravity, of course. Spooned a couple of girls from the village, I hear. Hence the lead-lined ambulances nine months later.

Egg and bacon in a lighthouse of your choice.

2007-01-11T12:17:00.000Z

Grateful as they were to be sitting in Woomera rather than Moscow, they would still insist on black bread and acorn coffee for breakfast. They had no problem with our beer, however, taking to light ale with gusto and gradually replacing their old marching songs with such gems as 'Roll Out The Barrel' and 'My Old Dutch'. Whilst in their cups they would occasionally succumb to reminiscence and amaze us all with stories of living nervous systems maintained electrically in saline solutions or human eyes attached to cine cameras instead of ground lenses. A roll of film was instanced to support the claim that the picture quality was far greater than anything hitherto achieved by non-organic optics, and I have to admit that the case was well made. Who knows what leaps might have been made- placing Britain in the forefront of the field- if the unfortunate man in question had not taken to secreting various acids in a tin cup, gradually filling a bath tub with same and then, quietly, with no more fuss than an unexpectedly fond handshake all round, slipping naked into the liquid?

Kiss Me Deadly

2006-12-07T12:13:00.000Z

Alright, chaps. Take all the water out of that sea and put it in these cardboard boxes. Make sure you assemble the boxes correctly first, of course. Some favour a line or two of sellotape along the joins as a precaution; others cite the same some silly, going so far as to say that they weigh the day ill when the chill wind of "just in case" shall pause us on our march to space where by the grace of Hay we shall live to toast another day. Or night. Bright. Very bright in here. What time is it? How many, and what are we actually even counting?

A long line of chaps, stretching across the desert from the crash site, bucket-brigading bits and pieces of us to the road, where there was a lead-lined ambulance waiting under guard. I have to take this on trust, of course. Wasn't awake (or at least not in the sense I think you think I probably mean) to see it. although I do remember looking up from the bottom of a bucket and seeing a cheerful squaddie looking in at me, cheerily wording all colloquial-like, even as the hand that held the handle of the pail began to ever so slightly glow.

No tuck shops in the Phantom Zone

2006-09-23T16:59:00.000Z

Thrud, thrud, thrud of ill-fitting boots on the flagstones of the scullery. Clack of the pantry door handle; screef of the door against the floor as it's opened. The click of a ring-finger against a jar of preserves as a fist closes around same. Scloop of the lid coming off. Raspberry. I can smell it from here.

We picked them last autumn (fall, she called it) and made the jam ourselves, in a big pot over a fire in the side garden. The smell of applewood burning; sound of the pot lazily bubbling. Throw another bag of sugar in, someone suggested.

Where do you sleep when you've destroyed your own bed?

2006-08-06T17:48:00.000Z

Well, I'll be a Dutchman

2006-08-06T17:39:00.000Z

Woke up later on in another part of the hospital. Well, at least a projection of me did. Which opens up all sorts of curious avenues, I suppose. If I can project myself into the nurses' quarters (I know, I know) then where else might I shoot off to while what they're still referring to as my brain snoozes or otherwise passes a dozy hour?

And were they the real nurses' quarters? I mean to say- Might they have been a mere projection of the nurses' quarters? A summoning, if you like, from the silted floor of the sludgy grey trough labelled 'take a gander at this, chaps', half-remembered from something overheard when I was alive?

Or am I alive now?

Do dead men think about nurses buttoning their fronts?

No head to speak of

2006-08-06T17:32:00.000Z

They're all around the bed. Of course they are. Where else would they be? I can hear the sea. I can hear the sea. That rattling again, though. I took it upon myself to apply a little oil (well, margarine) to the joints of this bed-thing they have me in and ended up with bits of it all over the place- lengths of tubing, mattress springs and pillow-insides. The staff were very kind in the matter. I'd missed my supper in the kerfuffle, so a couple of slices of toast and a brown betty-ful of nicely understewed tea were produced from somewhere, much to my grateful appreciation. I few things niggled, though, as I munched. Where was that smell of salt coming from? What sort of salad was this (on my toast, no less)? And- this plucked from the memory of my afternoon's unscrewing- why were the tubular support sections of the bed filled with sand?

That chap on the ceiling is gone, at least.

Twice round the lighthouse for £256,000,000.

2006-08-03T21:53:00.000Z

Something with caterpillar tracks, fit for the crawl across the face of where foot has never stepped. Comfy seats. Well, as comfy as is reasonable. But you know it'll be the usual bucket seats. Looped straps along the bulkhead to hold onto in the event of a jolt. And you know there'll be plenty of those. And some boffin's variation on the Motorman's Friend, no doubt, for those little emergencies (I wonder what the ladies use?).

Doubtless they're already sketching the family saloon version, against the day when all this becomes as unremarkable as a trip to Blackpool or an inside lav.

The Great Whatzit

2006-07-18T10:32:00.000Z

Bubbles, bubbles

2006-07-15T12:22:00.000Z

I'm thinking of the way a smile brought me back from the very brink. I'm thinking of the promise of a Sunday dinner, served on Saturday night. I'm thinking of a house with all its eyes and ears open, drawing what little fresh air there was into its book-lined, wood-panelled lungs. I'm thinking of music coming from one particular room; French windows giving onto a sort of veranda upon which heart's desire resolutely- but how can that be concluded?- never appeared. Clink of glasses. Quiet enough but audible from where a disincluded specimen lingered in the rougher part of the garden, with almost as many eyes and ears as the house.

Strange, the things that will and won't take in the soil here. Seeds. Fetched back from... Official Secrets Act, and all that. The initial thinking was that they wouldn't grow on this... in local soil. Well, those were the days when a chap might slip a little packet of same into the pocket of his jacket as he took off for the weekend to his house (rented, but later purchased when the bottom fell out of the local maket) near the base. Sally was there, as ever, waiting for him.

Glimpsed from beneath the darker overhangings of the garden, some sort of party was clearly underway. Little flower pots were lined up along the rail of the veranda, each of which contained a seedling (one or two of them already game to shrug off their pots and make themselves more comfortable elsewhere in the house). I remember him telling me that he woke up one morning (carefully avoiding any reference to the possibility that Sally had been there too) and one of the things had slipped a couple of roots- slight, wispy things- under the soft skin of his left underarm. Easily disentangled, of course, but a later x-ray showed a surviving root making for his heart. That was a problem less easily solved.

But do you think it stopped him? It did not. The house was a distance from the main road, so who was to naysay his continued hobbying with the things. Dried animals began to be found about the place. Rats and such. Desert vermin. Better than traps, he'd joke, and raise his glass once more, taking Sally into this and all his other little conspiracies with the smallest movement of his eyebrow. Chin-chin!

And names. Of course they needed names. Tiptoe Heartflower. He joked about finding someone to translate the names into Latin. Crawling Noonsorrow (he thought it looked sad, and it certainly crawled). Flowering Dogger (this appelation deriving from the discovery, one morning, that the translucent belly-sack of one of the slower-moving shrubs appeared to contain a dog. The unfortunate beast was digested over a period of weeks. Slides were, of course, taken).

The small gathering that evening moved easily around the house, the conversation ebbing and flowing as is usual. In the silences at least she wasn't talking to him.

I sound bitter, I know. That counts as an emotion, I realise. And I realise that I realise this, and I am pleased. Which is also an emotion. Now where was I? (even this tergiversation is so novel and, and human).

I- he- stood under the Arching Tyburn (not its real name; but I am human now, moreso by the minute, and don't remember what...it was called previously). We- he -was watching this particular woman he had a bit of a pash for (slang; I do so enjoy it) but apparently she was rather taken with this other chap, who I recognised from when he seeded me in one of those little pots on his veranda. I suppose I am in his debt for this kindness, even if it was only occasioned by his curiosity, so I endeavour to try to think of him as a chap and not as a collection of minerals and organic mulches that...

No. A chap. Ladies and chaps. I remember her in her uniform, on the base. Fine figure of a gel (Gel? I wonder if that's a colloquialism- colloquial to this particular human grouping, I mean- of girl?). Cute as a button. Shiny as a new pin (What on... earth am I talking about?). Legs like... well, like legs. Legs are a bit of a novelty to us. Me, I mean. Sort of like tubers that stop on the surface of the ground and somehow resist the urge to plunge through it into the cool, moist underneath. And wear nylons, finagled from the Yanks up the road.

So there I was. All jealous and everything. Leaning against...well, me. Jealous. Angry. Fingers digging into the pale, fleshy bark of...now this is getting confusing. He wasn't quite me at that point. And I wasn't quite him. But that was a situation quickly remedied.

I wonder what he can feel, now that he's me? I'm sure he'll remember, at least for a while. But I wonder if he's aware, and if so, what he'll think, when and if he realises that this desert garden is full of nothing but cheps- former cheps- like him, all of whom took a shine to Sally Hood at one point or another during their posting, and lingered in the undergrowth a little too long?

I feel sorry for him. I do. But I console myself that plants don't think much; don't feel much (I should know!). Even walking ones. They are content (if the word can even be applied) to shuffle out their brief span and ignore whatever part of them currently hurts. Ignore it until it withers, dries and drops off.

I don't know why I call him Gerald.

2006-07-15T12:06:00.000Z

Of course, even memory is sworn to secrecy regarding the events surrounding the calamity that befell the HMSS Spitfire on its far from maiden voyage to the unseeable portion of that chilly old pebble that hangs awkwardly in the sky of an evening. RK Barrett's idea, it was, to try for the dark side. Brightest chap on the strength he was, scribbling away furiously on any bit of paper that came to hand in the Woomera NAAFI. He'd have thrown half his life's work away with his unfinished egg and chips if we hadn't kept an eye on him. And of course the ladies loved that dark-eyed lost boy thing that sort of hung over him like a shroud.

Did I say shroud? I remember thinking 'shroud'. I remember the word seeming somehow appropriate. Even before he took off.

Silence from the music room

2006-06-13T10:06:00.000Z

Can I have change of a wistful glance in pennies and tuppences, please.

2006-06-09T15:51:00.000Z

Daft things, memories. I'm not at all sure about the new ones they've put into my old noggin. I much preferred some of the old ones which, I am told, were far too damaged in the operation to be repaired. The funny thing is, I still recall some of the apparently excised memories, which fact makes old Nyfenfork lean forward interestedly on his shooting stick (that is why the floors in here are made of cork) but the look in his eye makes me feign befuddlement- too late!- as he reaches anew for that tool of his which is surely too large to be classified as a mere scalpel.

What understands a Maginot Worm of romance?

2006-06-09T15:40:00.000Z

It was only when she cubed the Cheddar with a swipe of her racquet that I understood that she had replaced the strings with, well, cheesewire. An apple was next, toppling in all directions off the waxcloth table-cover where I had left it. The house was full of apples, and yet she had chosen mine.

Outer space impressed her not in the least, she declared, starting on the hard-boiled eggs I had prepared for the afternoon's snacking in the garden. She had presumed me master of my own house, which I suppose started her on the wobbly path to discombobulation. How could I explain the nomadic nature of, for example, the lake? Or the towers that frequently and cheekily rearranged themselves, often not even waiting until one's back was turned to do so?

She called for bicarbonate of soda, declaring her tummy to be upset. To my shame I though this was a ruse to lure me within range of her racquet. And by the time I realised the truth it was too late. Bob, as we called him (I think he was male) lived for twenty minutes wrapped in a tea towel. We buried him as the sun set, closed the grave and have not been able to find it since, although it is occasionally glimpsed in the distance on summer evenings.

Pardon me. My ear is full of milk.

2006-06-09T15:27:00.000Z

Horrid things, foodstuffs. At least as I regard them now. Halfway rotten already, it seemed to him. Nurse is encouraging, of course. She finds a knife tough enough to cut my sausages into what she deems to be friendlier sections and pops onesuch on the end of a fork that I swear wasn't on the tray. And when I refuse that she grabs the offered tidbit with her own gob and mimes a big oh, this is LOVELY overactment as she forces the thing down.

Determined to repeat the example until I succumb, the fork swoops again like a Stuka with a baleful eyeful of a roadful of slow-moving refugees, only to stop, poised in the air an inch or two above the elected next bit of...Well. Long story short, there was a vein protruding from the misfortunate morsel of presumed porkmeat, which, needless to say, never made it to Nurse's quivering lips. Although, oddly, the half-whispered name Terry did, even as the fork clattered to the floor.

The egg was as bad.

The Cure of Crooning Water

2006-06-09T15:15:00.000Z

Busyrot, rots the rot; rot the walls and strings. Parrot-rot, aping the rot of the rotten apple as the rolling thunder remains rotten. Roll a few more R's there, missus, instead of funnelling rotten old pills into my rotten old maw. I shan't swallow 'em. But you've thought of that. And since when do pills have legs? And how many? Marching straight down my throat like a military tattoo, disassembling superannuated artillery pieces, handing them in bits over walls and fences to their co-marchers on the other side of said jerry-rigged obstacle, and then assembling 'em again. All conducted against the clock, of course. Shades of "What the flipping use is all this?" offered as a prayer for the repose of the souls of Polish lancers flung in formation against the carterpillar onrushing Mark 2's of the thousand year...well, not as it turned out.

At least five legs on each one, he thought, as I slipped into the second person again.

An unfeasibly-shaped thirties racing plane heads for the sunset. Control tower reports the pilot singing all the way.

2006-06-06T09:33:00.000Z

Photographed from memory

2006-05-31T17:49:00.000Z

The fabled half slice

2006-05-31T17:34:00.000Z

They'd finally gotten him down to the base nuggets of his wherewithal. Or so it seemed. To see a head opened like that, and to realise, after a would-be cushioning delay, that it's my own head...well, indeed.

Funny to think that a thirty year-ago summer afternoon spent sprawled on the grass reading boys' papers is, in fact, a pinhead-sized spot of grey sludge, there, on the end of somone's fork. Well, they don't call them forks. They have technical names for the tools of the trade. Very sharp. Like the operators themselves. Unblinking. My fondest Christmas memory lies on the draining board by the sink, dying as it dries out.

The songs I'll never know I heard.

Patient unable to speak; some response to visual stimuli.

2006-05-24T10:22:00.000Z

Where is the Ark Royal?

2006-05-21T17:58:00.000Z

Although these days even a shell to my ear is enough to make me sweat, the sound of the sea was once music to me. A cold sweat, I mean. An echo, perhaps, of the waters out Murmansk way. Skies full of Heinkels and plucky (this was then) volunteers waiting to unload our cargo of (on this occasion) Hurricanes.

We sailed surrounded by tankers, each one- to quote the ship's cook who rehearsed, rehearsed his hatred of Spam- a bomb just awaiting its detonator. One lucky cannon shell. One incendiary. He advised me not to think about it, as the sky clouded over with (I think) 88s, and returned to his kingdom in the bowels of the ship, where, I imagine, he still sits.

Stitches? It'll all be zippers, in the future.

2006-05-17T12:07:00.000Z

The doctor insists that we've met before. Show me your face, then, is my reasonable enough request; one he avoids as deftly as ever, turning the subject to the parachute tanks the hospital's groundskeepers have been finding in some of the more unclassifiable trees that surround Saint Feasance's.

Admittedly, they are fascinating. I can see one or two of them from the window of my room. It's difficult to tell, from this distance, whether they're ours or theirs; no markings remain. Edges are blurred too; weathered. Branches weave in and out among the caterpillar tracks and even force open a hatch here and there.

Three or four-man crew, from the look of it. What was their mission? Certainly, if they're ours then they were dropped in the wrong place. And if they're theirs then all the histories of this part of the country pertaining to the war years will have to be amended.

Another thought. Although I have become accustomed to the staff of Saint Feasance's predilection for wearing tin helmets while on duty, am I imagining it or was the lady anaesthetist who sorted me out the last time but one wearing a personalised adaptation of a tankman's overalls, something she took in herself, made more suitable to the ladyshape?

Reunion cancelled

2006-05-16T22:59:00.000Z

Amapola

2006-05-13T13:04:00.000Z

Another time. Another day. Wandering in the grounds of my house. The beach, that year, had managed to connive its way a good seven miles inland and right up to my front door. None of my neighbours had this problem, needless to say.

But this was all on the broad shoulders of a good summer, so having a beach in the garden was no bad thing. I'd put out a deck chair in the hollow between dunes of a morning and, packet of sandwiches under my arm, settle down to make a day of it. I might wander back (all of eighteen steps!) to brew some tea, but apart from that I'd be out of the house all day. And the telephone, should it ring, was readily audible through the open kitchen door. Lots of important calls in those days.

One day- this particular day- my nose was buried in Gordian Applebath's Trifles of the Mighty when I looked up suddenly at the sound of a splash. Now, the lake, nomadic as its inclination is, can usually be found somewhere stage right (if you like) of the front door. This splash had definitely come from just over the dunes directly in front of me.

Standing up to gain a better view, my nose was pleasantly assailed by the salt smell of the sea. No mystery there, obviously. I was on a beach. But beyond my few dunes, as I could clearly see now, there was nothing more than my garden, my trees and my five or six paths winding in and out of same to their hearts' content. So I sat down again.

No sooner had I done so than I heard another splash. And another. The sound: bare feet running along the water's edge; tinkling splashes interspersed with the slap of sole on flat wet sand. But..

...What water's edge?

I almost dropped the book in my haste to get to my feet again. I needn't have bothered. As before, my cluster of dunes yielded onto the green familiarity of my garden in its summer dress. There was no water to be seen, nor any to be heard. I was puzzled but I am, after all, a man of science. I sat down again.

'Lovely day. Even for the time of year.'

A woman's voice. I looked around. I looked behind my deckchair. There was no sign of anyone.

'Interesting book?'

I looked again and there she was, drying herself with a large towel.

'Not going in for a dip yourself?'

I told her I was expecting an important telephone call. She nodded three times and made a little face, then threw her towel down not a yard from my chair and sat on it.

God forgive me, but I returned my attention to my book, though I watched her from the corner of my left eye.

'They say it's going to be as nice as this for at least the next fortnight', she said, shielding her eyes with her arm as she looked up into the bright, electric blue sky. 'No rockets today. Pity.'

I offered that most of the launches took place at night. To say any more would have risked the security of Penda's Fen and the important work carried out there.

She gave her head a shake to settle her wet hair. She had a trio of freckles on her right shoulder blade. At length, I took my life in my hands and asked her if she would like a cup of tea.

She turned and faced me. Her eyes were... What colour were they? 'Lovely!' she said. And then, when I was halfway to the kitchen door, 'Any cake?'

I always had cake, in those days. She clapped when she saw the plate and gave a little cheer once everything was ready and the tea was being poured. We chatted. She had been a service pilot. I hadn't even noticed the scars on her legs until she pointed them out to me. 'Still', she said. 'Sunshine is good for them.' She was lucky, she explained, that her Wellington had gone down over the sea. The salt water had prevented the burns taking too deep a hold. So, as it turned out, the three days and nights she spent clinging to a bit of floating wreckage was probably the best thing that could have happened, in the circumstances.

She liked her cake. She had two and a half slices. She drank two cups of tea to my one. She said that she wished we had a little gramophone out there, on the dunes. For music. But in the absence of one, she sang.

The telephone rang and I made my way towards the kitchen, shouting over my shoulder that I wouldn't be more than a moment. The call was of no consequence; a simple matter regarding some upcoming tests that it nonetheless took a good ten minutes to extricate myself from. I could hear her splashing in the water outside, and that made me smile. But when I went out again there was no sign of her. I walked right across the beach into the garden and searched among the trees. All to no avail. And when- finally- I turned back towards the house, I saw that the dunes were gone too.

Seventy-five Japanese women singing in the vaults directly beneath my bed. Seventy-four, actually. One of them missed her bus.

2006-05-12T14:40:00.000Z

Minyoh singing, I'm told they call it. They've been at it for hours. Complain? No, I shan't complain. Why would I complain? I am alive, and they have reminded me of the fact.

Listen, listen

2006-05-10T16:25:00.000Z

The brain, they're trying to convince me, is like a big old rolltop desk.

There. Now you're as puzzled as I was, my dear unseen friend.

Nooks and crannies and the smell of mothballs, eh? Pencil parings in the drawers. A little bottle of ink, eager to be spilled. A forgotten glacier mint in an envelope otherwise full of stamps.

A sorting office, then. They wheeled this fresh metaphor into the room and turned it around for my inspection. Lots of niches in which to store things while you sort them out.

Store what things?

Well, said the nurse, removing a bit of fluff from a lense of her goggles. That depends on whether we're talking about your brain or the rolltop desk. Envelopes. Thoughts. Envelopes with thoughts inside them.

I don't need a desk, I said. Take it away.

This got a laugh. But it didn't stop them continuing to "explain" the problems with my head in terms of post office sorting offices, urban traffic systems and a jar of boiled sweets. There's been a series of mis-filings in the first, a rag and bone man's cart has shed its load in the second, and the third are all stuck together.

I would have asked them to explain further, but considered that enough damage had already been done.

I asked the nurse again for a flare pistol. She seemed to find this very amusing.

Verey amusing! Eh? Eh?

The tea lady didn't get it either.

Making lots of honey for the dear old queen

2006-05-10T11:33:00.000Z

The walls are moving again, but I'm assured that this is a symptom of my condition. That's easy for them to say, of course.

Am I looking forward to having my head shaved? the nurse asked, giving my hand a little squeeze. I asked what she meant.

She laughed and thought I was pulling her leg, but was happy to explain, as if to the class dunce, that Professor-Doctor Nyfenfork had decided- as I well knew- to get the old hand-drill out (my words; hers were more considerate of my feelings, but the meaning was the same) and take a look inside my poor old bonce.

Everything's in there, she went on. Everything they need to know in order to- said without irony- help me.

Noticing that I was worried- my spoon paused uncertainly above my farola- she offered the reassurance that she, herself, had had her head opened by the good Doctor-Professor. More than once. She'd recommend it, she said. She felt better now; she felt better and better all the time. She was looking forward to the next time his attentions fell upon her shapely braincase. One girl- she was excited now, telling me this- had had her head completely removed- and maintained in a solution of certain chemicals for twenty-five minutes before being re-attached succesfully, with no unpleasant after-effects. She has to wear a scarf around her neck all the time, of course. Or a high collar. But that's all the rage these days, I'm told.

She wanted to hear a song; anything I cared to sing for her

2006-05-10T11:06:00.000Z

There was a time when all this could have worked out. I liked them, any of them I met. They're not so different from us. They like chocolate and they laugh at a good joke, same as anyone else. They dance when they're happy and they cry when they're sad. you know I'm no dancer, but I gave it a fling. Rather embarrassing, I suppose!

She was punished later for talking to me. She had a little son and they took it out on him. They didn't kill him, or anything. Just made him into one of themselves.

Ice cream, they have the nerve to call it.

2006-05-09T12:39:00.000Z

Out on the lawn I saw them. Posing for the camera. Lots of cameras. Endless flashing. And a picnic afterwards, of course. Do you think I was invited? I was not. Staff only, apparently. Very convenient.

There's hundreds of them out there now, laughing and joking in their respective tongues. I could come to mischief in here, and no one would know until some time this evening, if even then. I have no faith in these straps holding me down. A child could escape them. I want cake and I want lemonade. I want to sit on a rug on the lawn and put stones on the corners of the newspaper to keep it from blowing away. I want to take off my jacket, roll it up and put it under my head while I take a nap, the laughter of children playing nearby wafting in as from another, nearby world.

But as I look at my hand- it's not even shaped like a hand anymore- I realise that my garden party days are far behind me. Who could have known that that picnic on the moon would be the last one, ever?

"And you'll see all the wonders of No Man's Land if a whiz-bang gets you""

2006-05-09T12:30:00.000Z

Doom. Doom. Doom. Percussion of guns in the distance. Howitzers, I'd say. Doom. Doom. I had no idea that Saint Feasance's hospital was so close to the front. Doom.

Doom. Doom. Breakfast was late again this morning. And still no word on when the high-and-mighty Professor-Doctor Nyfenfork might get around to performing whatever operation it is that he has decided I require (files lost again). Doom. Doom. Doom.

Doom. And the eggs, when they finally come, are tiny. One is forced to cut the soldiers especially thin to get any yellow on the end at all- doom- No mean feat with the blunt-edged instruments they expect us to eat with. Doomdoomdoom.

The other night there was steak for tea. Do you think the blessed butter-knife they gave me could make any purchase on the thing, let alone cut into it? Doom. However, the chips were very acceptable.

Doom. Doom. The ease-of-cutting dotted lines a couple of Nyfenfork's juniors drew on my body are starting to fade. That's how long it's been. Doom.

Doomdoom. I had no idea Saint Feasance's hospital was so close to the front. I had no idea there was even a war on.

Doom.

From 'The Sunday Ephemeral' (No date visible on the fragment)

2006-05-05T14:58:00.000Z

REMEMBERING SALLY HOOD

By Clerihew Potash

Miss Hood, who has sadly left us, will of course be familiar to hundreds of young watchers of the 'telly' from her appearances on Paint Along With Gully. But keen-eyed readers of the science weeklies will be familiar with another aspect of this fascinating chapette. Many of her exploits still reside 'neath the cloak of the Official Secrets Act, but the sterling character of her war service is a matter of public record, as are her attempts on the stratosphere and her charming series of stories for children which went out in nine volumes over as many years.

Detailing the misadventures of a pilot in the air force (or rather, space force) of the future, Caroon of RAF Luna was an immediate success with bright children throughout the empire. Calls for a follow-up were met within the year and, much to her surprise, Miss Hood found herself with yet another string to her many-strung bow.

That she was able to find time in between important (and still classified) work at Penda's Fen on behalf of (among others) the BERG to turn out the series which enthralled so many is a testament to the woman, her grit and vim, and most of all her pluck.

The books gained in popularity with every new volume, and soon Caroon was troubling Biggles for shelf-space in libraries up and down the land. A BBC radio series followed, and who can forget Peter Sellers as the unfortunate Victor, pleading plaintively (but, of course, hilariously) to be rescued as his rocket, HMSS (Her Majesty's Space Ship) Spitfire stuck in orbit for three years around the moon finally began to sink towards that dead planet's dark side? For a whole summer the catch-phrase on everybody's lips was 'Help meeeeee. Please help me'. A television version the following year was generally considered to be less successful.

Drums in the snooker room.

2006-04-30T10:50:00.000Z

Wandering again in the root cellar of Saint Feasance's hospital. My slippers were not made for such excursions. My breath is grey and visible; my dressing gown no longer proof against the increeping damp-cold. I chanced upon a kettle, several galleries back, but as yet have found no tap from which to fill it, nor gas ring upon which to set it a-boiling. Also and alas, a quick dip into my pockets yields up the knowledge that I have forgotten to bring my usual spoonsful of tea, habitually kept safe in a re-used envelope. But not today.

Some of the tools observed covered in dust in certain of these lower galleries reveal that Saint Feasance's was once a hospital that admitted ladies as well as gentlemen.

Which starts me thinking that the other patient I've been hearing crashing around the premises in the small hours might not be a chap at all.

Certainly, whoever it is, it's safe to venture that they seem to attain a certain consummation from breaking things.

Lipstick. Several shades.

2006-04-28T18:37:00.000Z

It's on evenings like these that the fish and chip men make their fortunes, observed the Group Captain, as the golden hour lit up the examination room and the music of Jack Hylton wafted in through the cod-French windows from the radiogram in the Bren Carrier outside.

Marcella Purcell ventured so far as to open a bottle in memory of her musical ancestor, as the selfsame light made highlights on the lenses of her goggles. Her gloves were on the telephone table; her mind was on the events unfolding in the small room upstairs.

Eventually Crawfax, the base surgeon, made an appearance, apologising and insisting that any of us might have made a better job of the procedure, while at the same time not a little proudly displaying the results of his labours. Three eggs, intact, with faces already visible through their gelatinous outer skins.

He flopped down on the settee, tired out, and accepted a drink.

"She bit me," he said.

Checking the boots of my mind for scorpions

2006-04-27T09:56:00.000Z

The wax cylinders I found in Professor-Doctor Nyfenfork's study continue to yield up secrets, however slowly and unwillingly. The real coup now would be to find a device capable of playing them. The labels, however, present some problems. If the information thereon is correct, then the good Nyfenfork has been chief of crypto-alienist syllogistics at Saint Feasance's for...eighty-two years?

Goodnight, Alida

2006-04-25T09:24:00.000Z

"There's a long, long trail a-winding"

2006-04-24T10:03:00.003Z

A bathing hut, I suppose you'd call it. Concrete. On the rocks ten or so feet above the water's edge with two sets of steps leading down to your choice of two jumping-in places.

We sat there, Charteris and I. The poor sod was still moon-burnt and would never recover the use of his hands. his eyes, as is the pattern with these things, were white.

Water lapping. Hint of a breeze. Was there tea? I think there was a flask of tea. Voices in the distance. Could have been from anywhere. They passed. Probably kids, higher up on the hill, near the obelisk.

So. Yes. Charteris. He took off his glasses and regarded the water. This had been a favourite swimming spot of his, I heard later. He named girls, and the naming lit up his face a little. Night swims, years ago. I held the flask cup for him while he sipped a little tea.

Such is the nature of the bay that he was able to point out the houses of old friends, a few hundred yards across the water but made all but inaccessible by the tide in its current humour. Dangerous around here, he observed. Unless you know the water.

Three times he tried to trick me into leaving the spot to get cigarettes or sweets or a bar of chocolate. But I wasn't turning my back on him.

He succeeded later, on another day, after his legs had gone. Logan, I think it was, brought him down to the bathing place that day. Just to sit and look, he said. Fibbing that he'd left his glasses in the car, he sent poor old Logan back up the hill and across the train tracks to get them.

There was a note in his desk, back at the Fen. He said he loved us and we were not to blame ourselves.

'No "salad" here, guv. Where d'you think you are- in a flippin' Lyons Corner House?'

2006-04-18T12:18:00.000Z

Sleeping a lot better since I took to wearing my helmet in bed. It's worth enduring the tuts and the occasional wryly heavenward looks of the nurses in order to significantly reduce the risk of something frightful happening to my head during the night.

There's poetry too, of course. 'Don't get rid of your freckles.' Who was it said that? Was it even in the context of a poem? Did I say it myself?

I don't know. But I know to whom I said it.

Find me something to write on.

2006-04-18T12:13:00.000Z

Why do my pyjamas have an inside pocket, as if to keep a wallet in? Why is there a faint but very clear sound coming from inside my foot? What does the nurse mean when she says it will soon be time to remove my "other" appendix? Why did I not recognise a single food item on my breakfast tray this morning?

Next train's gone

2006-04-18T11:47:00.000Z

Only these notes survive the evening

2006-04-12T12:07:00.000Z

Programme for harmonium recital by Professor-Doctor Hjalmar St.John Nyfenfork, held last night in the "Berryman" room at Saint Feasance's Hospital on a date to be established as soon as possible.

1. Blue Skies (Berlin)

2. Lamentations of Jeremiah (Tallis; harmonium setting by H. St.John Nyfenfork)

3. Who's Been Polishing The Sun? (Noel Gay)

Intermission. Tea and cakes served by the ladies of the Arpington-on-Sea Gas Precautions detachment. 15 mins.

4. There ain't no "maybe" in my baby's eyes (Donaldson, Kahn, Egan)

5. Lachrimae Antiquae Novae (Dowland)

6. Toward the Unknown Region (Vaughan Williams; setting of a poem by Walt Whitman)

Old photographs, and the way they turn up when one least expects it.

2006-04-05T14:37:00.001Z

This one fell out of a book I was reading (Bladderwrack's "Tomb of Reason", if you're interested) and I immediately forgot the matter at hand.

Caroline Vickers was her name. "Vick" to her pals. Started as a service pilot, I think; ferrying the big four-engine jobs to stations all over the south-east. Somehow or other she fetched up in Trollenberg, after the wind-up, when we and all the other scientific units were scurrying about trying to get our hands on anything and everything before our (former and until very recently) "allies" could get their greedy paws on it.

She stayed attached after we brought a shipload of rocket parts in varying stages of completion or disintegration back to Penda's Fen, from where we could shoot off a few of them across the flatlands without disturbing the locals overmuch.

Lovely girl. She's buried on the moon.

Oh, for the days of the trucks roaring up and the land girls piling out.

2006-04-05T14:37:00.000Z

It seems that the only way I may get an audience with Professor Nyfenfork will be to buy a ticket to his harmonium recital in the old upstairs basement tonight. I had planned a far different evening for myself, needless to say, isolating in advance certain memories as the base notes for a performance of my own, to be conducted after cocoa and biscuits; around a quarter to eleven.

All up in smoke now, of course. But at least the night holds the promise of the possibility of finding out from Nyfenfork- from the Professor's own lips- just how long he intends to confine me to the entropic precincts of Saint Feasance's hospital.

I'll wear my medals, I think.

Bugles

2006-04-05T14:20:00.000Z

A battery of artillery paused outside my hospital room this morning. It was the smell of their campfire that first alerted me to their presence. I thought I was imagining things until a personable young bombardier stuck his nose around the door, looking for somewhere he might obtain water for the horses.

They were bound for the front, although naturally not at liberty to confirm any such thing in the presence of civilians (loose lips sink etcetera). Before they set off again, many of them pressed little notes upon me, intended for sweethearts, mothers and families, all addressed in careful schoolboy handwriting.

The bedside locker is full of the letters now, and with each shell-blast heard in the distance this evening I wonder how many of the pitiable things I will need to somehow commit to the mails tomorrow morning.

Otherwise a quiet day. Stitches healing apace.

Sad tidings from our colleagues in Poland

2006-03-27T18:27:00.000Z

A drawer full of old valves; nothing you'd want to keep

2006-03-25T18:46:00.000Z

How long had he been asleep? thought Caroon, slipping back into both unconsciousness and the third person.

But whatever he may claim in his weaker moments, one question must be answered: if unaccountable headaches are the root cause of this hospital stay, then why is there a metal tube inserted between two of his lower vertebrae? What is the tube connected to at the other end? And the fluid that can be heard gurgling inside it: is it going in or coming out?

Lie down. Lie down.

2006-03-19T21:57:00.000Z

They've done nothing to me yet, but the changes were underway long before I was brought here. Those children at the funeral. I had no idea what to even say to them. And people I had known years ago, all wearing black suits. Granted, I managed to crack a few jokes. But I always manage that, somehow or other. I couldn't manage to sit among them, though, at the table, when the tea and ham sandwiches were being served. Nor could I do anything useful when tears began to appear at the corners of most everyone's eyes.

Whatever connects me to the world is breaking, sundering, dissolving. And I don't want it to.

Gracious. For a moment there I thought I was referring to my own funeral.

Silly me.

That won't be for a while yet.

"Scatterjack a-dawning/Winter's yawning"

2006-03-17T19:01:00.000Z

A new edition of my "Per Ardua Ad Astra" reaches me, fresh from the publishers, messrs Wacklow, Futtle and Crun. I see that they've gone with a variation on Page's original cover illustration, featuring myself, Drake and Hood, and there's a generous selection of Sally's photographs- eight pages, I think- placed aprropriately enough between chapters seven and eight (which chapter includes an account of the mission's first complication, during which the camera was lost; three exposed rolls of film, however, were safely secreted about Sally Hood's person).

She cut my hair- gave me a trim, really- in that little compartment of the Spitfire that doubled as kitchen and lounge (and was soon to be pressed into service as a morgue). Perhaps I should have included such details in the book? Is the scientific community of saltpetred greyheads really interested in such day-to-day minutiae as which tin of Spam we opened at which particular point in the debacle?

Sally it was, also, who calculated the seasons of the moon and taught us all to remember them by means of a simple rhyme. A song, actually. I wish I could remember it now.

She kissed me once, too. Should I tell them that as well? And if I do, what will I have left then?

At play in the toyshop of the Lord

2006-03-16T13:50:00.000Z

An inquiry as to the nature of the operation- long postponed- that I must undergo has thrown up yet more problems with the clerical system here at Saint Feasance's. My records are incomplete and, if I didn't know better, I would almost swear that a raving person has been amusing himself in the office.

The staff are eager to help, of course. But so many of the files appear to be missing that I may need to have certain of the preliminary tests again (and I'm not looking forward to renewing my brief acquaintance with the hydraulic catheter, I don't mind telling you!).

The briefest of glances was enough to tell that even the x-ray photographs were not all mine, this despite the fact that my name was clearly affixed to all of them. But I do not have that amount of shrapnel in my chest cavity, nor am I missing a chin.

The incision you made in my heart has yet to heal. Take off your mask, for god's sake, and give us a kiss.

2006-03-16T13:29:00.000Z

A card arrives from the old gang at the Experiential Apparatus Establishment at Choking Down, wishing me a swift recovery from my 'recent operation'.

I smiled, of course, since there's still no sign of the operation being performed. I've been prepared and rolled down to the basement seven times so far, and each time Professor Nyfenfork has looked into the innards of the day's chicken and shaken his head, no.

Choking Down, though! I expect the old place is very much the same as in my day. Vital work, of course. But such fun in the evenings.

Endless cups of tea. Grand chats. Board games. And trips to the local cinema. We'd march there, arm in arm, singing at the top of our lungs, our voices ringing out across the evening, setting the electric fence a-quiver with its own particular music. And a funeral almost every week.

"A squirt of lemon in the eye/Guaranteed to make make you cry"

2006-03-16T11:03:00.000Z

The pancakes arrived, finally. I don't mind telling you that my hands shook as I tore open the envelope.

There's something about a girl in a tin helmet

2006-03-13T19:40:00.000Z

I should be at home. What am I doing here, waiting for an operation that may never take place? I haven't seen hide nor hair of Professor Nyfenfork for over a week now.

The ground will be softening in the garden, preparing to yield up its treasures. Last year we were in the right place at the right time and managed to bring out two Hurricanes and a Spitfire. The former were old lead models, but the latter was life-sized and full of bullet holes.

The pilot we found on the edge of the lake some time afterwards. I don't mind telling you it took some talking to convince the poor sod that he was, in fact, dead.

There's a bullet in that sofa no surgeon has ever managed to extract.

2006-03-13T19:24:00.000Z

There is an enemy within each of us, intoned the old gas mask man, lacing up his overshoes. I was so used to this little performance that even to call it from memory requires no effort at all. I can see him now-conjured- at the end of my bed.

He has just come back from shellacking the sunken gazebo, of course. And more than likely has stopped off to admire the view as he passed Stones on the way. He collects everything.

Or, at least, he did. But he'll always be alive to me. People would laugh at first, when he entered upon a party via the French windows, unannounced and unexpected, thinking, perhaps, that it was all a cod; one of their host's little jokes.

I'm thinking of a particular afternoon. Gin and tonics. Gramophone records. The whiff of sighing greenery from the conservatory. In he came. Did his dance.

Then fell to his knees before Kitty Smash (she was sitting on the old war settee). She took in the company with a circular look, inviting one and all to share her amusement. Which they did.

I remember she was wearing a purple satin affair that day. Full skirt. Very fetching, the way her underskirts held the dress slightly aloft as she sat there, smiling (even if her expression gradually gave way to something else) as the old gas mask man stuck the nozzle of his apparatus under her costume, and sniffed.

I know it sounds petty, but...

2006-03-13T19:23:00.000Z

...I really must remember to complain about the size of the breakfasts in this place.

Met me tonight in dreamland

2006-03-13T19:09:00.000Z

Has it really been six days? The band, of course, were marvellous. There wasn't a tune one could suggest that they didn't have at their fingertips. We lifted the roof of the big old hall alright. Dancing! Would you believe it! Hundreds wheeeling around while the band lit up the stage.

Fox-trot! Black-bottom! Shuffle-bob! Wincey-quiff! Oh, you should have been there. Many a comment was passed on the number of banjos fronting the ensemble. Three. Four. Seven, sometimes. Everything from tiny little banjolettes smaller than your hand to big bass banjos that fair obscured the player with their sheer size!

She was there, of course. I noticed her first as the ceiling fish-tanked with rippling light and my second falling-down cordial took hold. Hard to believe, at that moment, that this was happening at all; that the massed dancers and the colourful costumes could possibly exist. Hardest of all to comprehend, of course, was the notion that in fact, it didn't; that I was still in my bed in Saint Feasance's, rapt under the chemical ministrations of whatever it is in the syringe they jam into my arm each day.

Hang out the stars in Indiana

2006-03-07T11:31:00.000Z

Wandering the corridors of Saint Feasance's again, mildly surprised to find a room full to the rafters with discarded bus stops, and another floor-to-ceilinged with park benches.

Interesting scratchings and scrapings on some of the benches, as well as names one doesn't hear anymore. I will investigate further at a later time.

My attention was then drawn to another door, behind the piled benches. Cobwebs and bolts gave way to curiosity and I found myself looking at a room completely full of railings, saucepans and scrap metal, collected I'm sure in some patriotic drive; the makings of a Spitfire, perhaps, that never flew. That might fly yet.

A comforting thought, that an old kettle might be so full of aeroplanes waiting to be born. But how to effect the birth?

What date is Christmas this year?

2006-03-06T18:28:00.000Z

Just this thought, as the nurse bends over the bed, her overalls smelling fresh and her forage cap at a jaunty angle: What was the name of that bar, the one where the chaps who'd been too close to the blast sat out their afternoons? You know the one I mean. A bare-bones affair. Just the counter, about a half dozen chairs and two or three tables. I believe they had chess sets behind the bar for the asking, and a hoop board on the wall (but no hoops).

Dominoes was always a favourite game. I can picture the bandaged hands even now, carefully sliding tiles into place on the many-cornered snake of dotted tiles that was the sign of a good, hard-fought game.

Now that I think of it, some of the players had no eyes. Not entirely necessary, I suppose; anyone with fingertips can get the hang of a set of dominoes quickly enough. But what memories they must have had, to retain the whole game in their heads as it unfolded! Absolutely ace chaps; former navigators, many of them.

No doubt I'll think of the name of the place there later. The reason it came to mind was that it was there I met Bonnie. Bonnie from the aerodrome, with a smile like a sad song that played in my heart for the fortnight we had before she was demobilised. The sheets of her bed were white and cold. She had told me about the scars on her legs, but was nonetheless nervous when she removed her trousers. I sank to my knees and kissed her wounds, and she cried and stroked my hair. Then, in the morning, only this note: Forgive me.

Dry-lipped at the gates of heck

2006-03-06T15:10:00.000Z

Operation postponed again. Something to do with fluids; a shortage thereof, or somesuch. But I have plenty of fluids, I joked. And they laughed, but not in such a way as to make me smile.

And surely doctors should take off their hats when they enter upon a patient?

We don't know where we're going 'til we're there

2006-03-05T17:56:00.000Z

The walls of this place don't like me, confided the tea lady, by way of explaining her habit of walking a dead-straight course down the very centre of the corridors, equidistant from any and all nearby threat. I had come to look forward to the squeak-squeak approach of her urn trolley, making its slow progress towards the ward, with perhaps a jam tart on the second tier for me, on a little plate by itself. I wonder what they've done with her?

Wild blue yondering on seven shillings a day

2006-03-04T07:53:00.000Z

Another broken night's sleep, interrupted and barged-in-upon by the noisy but unseen other patient in the hospital. He stamps around on his heels, this chap (I'm assuming he's a chap) and sometimes pauses outside the door of this ward, making a sort of tuneless sub-music with lips and teeth, halfway between a whistle and a series of gasps. Sometimes he stands out there while he consumess whatever food and drink he has found, wolfing and gulping, stuffing so much into his mouth at one time that breathing becomes a problem for him. It's as if he expects me to come out and save him from himself, with his groans and muttered "Oh, sweet gods". But when I call out to ask if he needs assistance, he just expostulates a bell-clear flatulette and stamps away.

But I mustn't grumble. The smell didn't hang upon the air too long, and the disturbance meant I was awake as dawn crept around the ward, lighting up its corners with its magic wand. Soon my cup of tea will arrive and soon thereafter my tiny boiled egg. I will joke with the nurse, as always, on the theme of tiny chickens in the basement providing such eggs. And she will smile, and tell me I'm a terrible man altogether.

Here's hoping there's a date on today's paper.

The music in the walls

2006-03-03T10:18:00.000Z

Breakfast is served very early at Saint Feasance's. And what with information being so thin on the ground, it's only when I receive said meal that I know I shall not be opened that day. Today. They like a chap hungry when they cut him. Or her.

Strangely enough my slippers and dressing gown were returned to the bedside at some point and no one objects as I pad out into the sunlit corridors, whistling a tune I don't recognise and wondering if there's a newspaper kiosk in the lobby.
But some considerable expenditure of energy and shoe (well, slipper) leather finally draws one to the conclusion that this hospital does not, in fact, have a lobby. Nor a front door.

There is a note from Davison on the bedside locker when I return to the ward. Unfortunately I don't read it immediately, and by the time I decide to read it I have realised that, in fact there is no note. I imagined it. Silly me. Next time I will be quicker off the mark.

I relate this daft little trifle to the nurse who brings me my afternoon suppository and we both laugh.

Don't muck about with the moon

2006-03-02T11:57:00.000Z

Lying here in Saint Feasance's, the straps on the bed tight but not uncomortably so, I am minded of a day- an afternoon; the sandwiches yet unwrapped- when I sat waiting on the banks of the Poddle, phrasing and rephrasing the words I hoped would catch and keep her when and if she passed the spot and I accidentally bumped into her (or she into me?)

I have her helmet now, and goggles. Somewhere.

Trying to remember the words of that old song they used to sing in the evenings at Woomera

2006-03-02T11:47:00.000Z

Nothing to do but think; and when thinking fails, it's usually a freefall float into the past, where most of my life has been spent, and where the Tunnock's Teacake of opportunity sits forever wrapped in the tinfoil of desire.

Difficult now, of course, to even remember her name.

The long trip to teatime

2006-02-27T18:48:00.001Z

There I was, dotted lines drawn all over me for Professor Nyfenfork's ease of scalpelling, when word came down from the top floor that my operation was postponed for (at least) twenty-four hours. I wasn't on the dinner list as the kitchen had expected me to be still unconscious this evening, but egg on toast was materialised on my behalf and duly munched-upon with great satisfaction. Tea, of course, followed, served from a mighty two-handler of a Brown Betty not much smaller than myself. No end of refills, too. Ah, tea.

The evenings are getting quite a stretch, I noticed, as I slid feet into slippers and arms into dressing-gown sleeves, intent on stretching my legs with a turn or two up and down the corridors.

Saint Feasance's is a vast old pile, though not, apart from the wing which contains my bed, in the best of order. The tiles are cracked in very many places, and many's the window is broken. Birds that I could not see but heard plainly, appear to live in the ceilings of many of the empty wards. And there are what I can only describe as termite mounds in what I took to be some sort of laundry room.

The quiet slap-slap of my slippers accompanied me as I followed my curiosity up yet another flight of stairs; this by way of beginning to explain how I- somehow- lost my bearings.

I know! Old Caroon who mapped a good eighth of the sky with nothing but a bit of butcher's paper and the stub of a pencil as the only-partly-under-control BERG 1 bounced along the atmosphere like a skimming stone...and here he is now: lost!

I smiled to myself as, from somewhere not too far away, the sound of a choir wafted sweetly oward my appreciative ears. William Byrd: O quam gloriosum et regnum. Quite a treat.

I listened awhile with mounting pleasure. And somewhere amidst that pleasure, the sun went down.

Silly me, expecting the light switches to work in this run-down part of Saint Feasance's. The music ended and the silence impinged upon me like a real thing. Do I sound like I was nervous? Perhaps I was. But steady the Buffs! and let's make a start on unravelling this maze of identical corridors.

Sure enough, I made it back to my ward, where certain members of the staff looked curiously upon my entrance. They seemed quite put out when I shed my slippers and dressing gown and clambered into bed. Indeed, they challenged me to explain myself.

Explain myself? Indeed. They wanted to know what I was doing in Wing Commander Caroon's bed. I took this to be a rather clumsy put-on, and pretended to go along with the joke. But joking they were not. Wing Commander Caroon, they revealed, had had his operation reinstated on the schedule and was in theatre right now, having been brought down in the service lift not half an hour ago.

So. If Victor Caroon was currently below being opened by Professor Nyfenfork, who was I? They spoke some more on this theme but I confess I barely heard them, my poor old brain having room at that moment for only one thought:

Not again.

Patron saint of the bewilderati

2006-02-27T13:41:00.000Z

The staff at Saint Feasance's are very kind, bustling cheerfully up and down the corridors, wheeling tea trolleys or swinging bed pans with girlish abandon. The big joke among them is that I look far too healthy to need the surgery which I shall undergo tomorrow morning. But, as they say around here, Doctor knows best.

I'm told that there is another patient in the hospital, but as yet I have been able to glean no details.

Shall we go, then?

2006-02-26T23:04:00.000Z

It's always a bit of an ordeal, rattling around the house on the night before an operation. They wanted me down at Saint Feasance's tonight, of course, but Professor Nyfenfork graciously acceded to my request to wake up in my own bed, munch my own toast and watch the dawn mist roll back across my own garden.

They're opening me up again. And I shouldn't really be surprised. As to what they hope to find, not even the surgeons themselves know. They've tried most things already.

I'm getting on, I know. But strong. There's a few rounds in the old clip yet. Am I foolish to think that I can see my way to the end of today, along the sharp edge of the incising blade, under the skin of my tummy and round and around my guttyguts? Am I silly to imagine that I shall, indeed, finish the John Blackburn I began reading in the bath last Wednesday evening, that I shall listen to the Tallis Scholars' recording of the Lamentations of Jeremiah a few more times before the shutters come down, that I shall complete editing The Annotated Frank Richards before the smell and the buzzing of flies alerts the baker's boy that something is amiss in the study?

All these things I shall do, and more. The old apple tree will astound one and all with a crop or two yet. The lake has depths yet unplumbed. I have never walked to the top of Snetcher's Hill, and I shall. Life is rolling out like a mile-long Giles cartoon and I, my dear unknown friend, am there in the crowd.

Horses in the house; small ones

2006-02-26T19:25:00.000Z

Davison regards it as convenient that the lake has moved that much closer to the house. This, of course, is the kind of utterance one hesitates to take at face value. Davison, of course, is giving nothing away, merely reaching anew for the teapot, testing it for content, then indicating with a look that I should boil the kettle again.

The afternoon sun does things to a chap, Davison agrees. Soap-smooth bars of Sunlight Soap-shaped sunlight drape languorously across the unfinished wood of the table. Davision chances a tootle on his oboe and the mood is perfected.

The kettle boils and everything and more seems possible.

The root cellar is full of gas masks again

2006-02-26T19:16:00.000Z

How strange. The sea is far away- miles- and yet I can hear the tide when I lean slightly over the edge of the well near the orchard and look down into the salt-smelling darkness. Is this the well mentioned in the old letter I found when my wall-papering regimen revealed a hitherto unknown door under a rancid sheet of ersatz William Morris, giving onto a room that- window and all- I had never suspected was there before.

And once the room was discovered, it was as if I'd always known that particular window over the conservatory to be there; can't remember, in fact, a time when it wasn't there. Except, of course, it wasn't there yesterday.

I've never counted all the knives in the house before

2006-02-25T16:56:00.000Z

I can only conclude that Davison is right, and that the old map is, in fact, genuine. Damn the history books, then. They make no mention of any such thing within a hundred miles of here. Davison has also pointed out that the orchard itself is conspicuous by its absence on the most recent map to hand, printed (according to itself) by Bodfirm and Daughter, Charters and Circlists, Snedge, which, I'm am reliably informed, is an old form of the more familiar (at least this side of the Werts) Snudgepate (not, in itself, a placename; rather the family name of generations of snudgers (hence the name) who, alas, lost all records in a storm they insist I must remember.

A bucketful of rosy-tinged apples of all sizes was duly brought back to the house and emptied onto a sheet of newspaper on the kitchen table, apple tart for afters hoving into view as a distinct post-prandial delight.

I've always been a dab hand at the peeling of apples, managing nine times out of ten to remove the skin in a happily spiralling single piece. But these, these somehow defeat me.

They're in the potting shed again with their musical instruments, but what harm?

2006-02-23T19:31:00.000Z

Four little cowboy hats on the hall table again this evening (five gallon hats?). I must speak to someone about this, if only to know what to lay in for the owners of the hats, should they choose to appear.

"Help him! Help the bombardier."

2006-02-23T10:51:00.000Z

Only this morning, walking in the overgrown part of the garden near the ornamental lake that was only discovered when I started to cut back the overgrowth, I caught a glimpse of something white in the lower branches of a magisterial oak and was intrigued enough to hurry away and fetch the ladder.

A closer look, then. Returning to the spot, it was difficult, for a moment, even to remember which tree had caught my attention. One day last year I counted over two hundred ivy-clad gentlemen (to say nothing of the trees on the far side of the lake, as yet uncounted) and another day managed a tally of only fifty or so.

It wasn't until almost noon, crunching around in the copper-leaf shadows, that I happened once again upon the sight that had first caught my eye.

But where had I left the ladder?

Ice in the Biscuit Barrel

2006-02-22T23:35:00.000Z

The Unheard Voice is up to its old tricks again, muttering inaudibly in the glory hole at the bottom of the stairs, among the cobwebs and coal dust, setting the bedsheets to crackle with electric weasel-itch. There'll be no sleep tonight. Resigned, then, I lie awake. So be it, if that's the game he's playing.

I am equipped for this. This is not the first night the Unheard Voice has hissed its slurs in the small hours. I have a flask of tea, a bicycle lamp and a copy of Health & Efficiency.

We'll see who cracks first.

Angel Blake

2006-02-22T21:30:00.000Z

Can it really be almost forty years since I shook the hand of Patrick Wymark?

An old flame writes

2006-02-22T19:29:00.000Z

It all started with a piece of paper I found in the pocket of that old pair of trousers I use for gardening. 'Victor,' it begins, 'if that is indeed your name...'

You can well imagine that at this point I put said piece of paper down on the kitchen dresser and shook the kettle to see if there was any water in it. There was not. But more anon.

All afternoon he (I mean, I) avoided that innocent-looking, crumpled sheet. Barely a sheet, in fact. Half a sheet. Less. Torn, by the look of it, from some junior scholar's exercise book (the back of the sheet- barely a sheet!- was completely becrayonned, and scratched into the waxen mass- perhaps with a Helix compass like the one I once possessed myself (a good inch of the point of which still resides uneasily in my good leg)- these words: 'Help me. I'm not myself.'

You see? You see? It was no trouble at all to look at the reverse of the sheet (barely a quarter of a sheet, in fact) but something... something unutterable prevented my flipping it over (with a butter knife, perhaps; I wouldn't even have had to touch the thing) and casting an eye over what words it held scrawled upon its crumpled, parchment heart.

No. Not scrawled. The hand was elegant. Feminine. And yet I had no memory of ever a female hand being inside my old gardening trousers (perhaps it happened whilst I was in a faint).

The day wore on. I saw to the cabbages and the creeping beans, but no amount of vegetable solace could remove that piece of paper from the very gunsight of my mind. The veins of my skull begin to clench, fistlike, and I fancied I could hear the beams of my skull beginning to protest like an old frigate bobbed tennis-ways halfway to the breakers' yard upon a cheeky tide.

I was going to have to read it. But when I returned to the kitchen there was no sign of the note (Note? It was barely two lines, as I recall).

So. It was gone. Vanished. Disappeared.

I filled the kettle and boiled it (which simple action always puts me in mind of some of the old songs. 'High Germany', say, or 'Joe Soap's Army'; songs we sang all those years ago with many a lad whose lips are forever stilled now, unless there's singing in heaven). Afternoon tea was an uneasy affair that day, I don't mind admitting.

BERG 1 antwortet nicht

2006-02-22T19:16:00.000Z

Very well, then. Here we are, crouched on the very brink of the imminent eschaton, searching our pockets for stray Toffos but finding only old bus tickets, the notes scribbled thereon having long since yielded to the great blurring that starts in the head and works outwards, ever outwards.

How long have we been ill now? asked Victor recently (still, strangely enough) referring to himself in the third person. Is that a survival mechanism, Victor?

Good heavens, man. You can't expect old Caroon to have the perspective to answer a boomerang of a question like that. He may have been through the Van Allen Belt in a vessel made of tinfoil and good intentions- he may have gazed down on the grainy old black and white earth from a bakelite rocketship that looked for all the world like a giant pen- but you can't expect a fellow to know what's going on in his own- his very own!- Dead Sea of a noggin.

The war of course, explains some of it.