It’s been ages since I was struck down with the flu. I felt like Death in Camden Market, which was perhaps convenient I suppose considering the amount of Goths that were there on a Monday lunchtime. Maybe I could have signed a few autographs. Do Goths not have jobs? It was the lunchtime pint and cigarette that set it off – sitting in the World’s End with the same beloved faces and banter, I fell into a time / space vortex and rematerialized three years ago in my old union. I do miss it all – the youth I mean, the recklessness.
Something was watching as we began to leave the cemetery. I don’t know for sure. It was more of a feeling – a paranoia than a certainty, a black space from between the trees and between the gravestones. There are foxes abound in there now, they are becoming tamer, as if nothing matters anymore, or they have nothing left to fear. That night, the dinner and the drinks, was very much a reunion. I wanted to go to a club with the others, but I’m getting too old for this sort of thing. So I went home and felt ill instead.
We walked through the London’s heart, its dark streets and arches. At South Bank, we both saw the homeless girl. “She looks awful,” you said, her eyes no longer looking at the world, but still flaming youth from behind blanched sooty skin. From Millennium Bridge, St Paul’s glistened like a nighttime revelation. It’s fascinated me ever since one 3am walk, noticing one light on in its dome. I’d recently finished Hannibal, and easily saw the good doctor crouched over his parchment, quill in hand, Bach’s Aria da Capo snaking round the gothic rafters like smoke from a cheap tape deck.
It’s Friday, I’m alone in the office for the day and I got in late. It’s a dark and wet day outside and there’s a lot to be getting on with. But what was the first thing I did when I got in? Did I get straight on with the huge pile surely breeding in my IN tray? Did I call my boss to let her know I’m in? Did I turn on my computer? Did I even turn on the kettle?
The answer to all of these was no.
What I did do was leap around the office, poking my umbrella at invisible felons and loudly humming the theme tune from The Avengers to myself.
I only thought this was an odd thing to do after I’d spent no less than two minutes doing it. I would say something glib like “sometimes I do worry myself” or “I know, I’m weird”, but I won’t because… it was FUN!
And I’d do it again I tell you! I’d do it again in an instant! AH HA HA HA HAA HAAAAAAA! [leaps through window]
Do you know what a true friend is? They’re the ones you can meet up with after years and feel like you never left. As we all lounged about cackling about the past and babbling of our own adventures in Grownupsland, I experienced a brief gnosis of what it is to be happy. Happiness is standing in your own kitchen, potato masher in one hand and glass of wine in the other, with two of your most sincere friends standing there too and making you laugh. And being able to make a bloody good Shepherd’s Pie while they’re doing it.
That was sordid. Like yawning, an exhaustion. I told you a clean truth before you started coughing up unattended to phlegm. As you sighed your goodbye, entirely not understanding, I couldn’t even see your face in the dark. You could have been anyone, and you have been many times before. You like a cheap Yoko and me a clumsy Lennon, you left and left me to my thoughts. I thought of Merlin, and how I was painted with the same colours but not by the same hand. If Fate gives me no other purpose, then what is this emptiness for?
I heard you’re here next weekend. Suddenly resolve collapsed to daydreams of you in white, toasting futures without mud on your cotton suit. You’d stayed up all night bleaching its stains. Did he ever see them? Or is that why he’s here - someone you don’t need honesty with. Someone new to pretend you’re someone else with. You and your blank canvasses. My tapestry might be scrappy, clumsy, frayed even and moth-eaten, but you – you’re a library of notebooks, each smudged once on every page before you turned over a new leaf, frustrated by your mark on the virgin sheet.
A brief trawl over the internet to find out whatever happened to Grotbags of “Rud Hull and Emu’s Pink Windmill” fame revealed this quite moving account of Rod Hull’s life. I particularly liked the thought that Emu represented the darker side of Rod’s personality. No, really - a gestalt schizophrenia thing going on there. I could never laugh at Fist of Fun again now.
Oh, and if anyone wants to know, Grotbags is now a singer.
This morning I lay in bed watching the red sky spread like a bad omen on the working world. I was truly dreading going in to work. I wanted to stay where it was warm, next to my laptop, notebooks and favourite empty coffee mug. I spent the day realising I should have stayed there. Returning home as I stepped off the bus, a child seen only from the corner of my eye pointed at me and cried “Leto!” I didn’t look back because I suddenly felt anxious. Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings thou hast perfected praise.
