Category: musings

Couched

Sat there, the righteous couch, like the boulder those folks rolled back to reveal Jesus. Of course, there’s no Jesus sat there on this couch, this couch that squats low and fat by the scrubbed out window with its wanton gauze curtain that’s just a little grubby. Jesus is not a lover of corduroy and my god, this couch is king of corduroy you know those black granity ribs that leave that grid pattern all over your arse or at least they would if you could see your own arse but you’re too old for that twist and pout these days isn’t everybody? If asked, Jesus might have said that the couch had the scent of wet Spaniel or Judas or even a fish finger sandwich but nobody asks Jesus about the couch because there are far more important things to be discussing with the Son of our Lord. When pestered, the curator has little to say on who originally owned the couch or how anyone managed to get it up the tight stone spiral staircase to the top floor although she has her suspicions. So here it is, a discomforting resting place for those who make it to the top of the building gasping and wheezing to peer out through the grubby gauze and the haar and over the supermarket car park that adjoins the seventeenth century graveyard. Couches, cars, gauze, gravestones – all as squat, righteous and pointless as each other.

diary musings

Room 229

Slim man with with the unsung promise of a pastiche moustache carries our bag to the second last room on the left on the ground floor.

Giggle but we don’t tip.

Inspect. The call button that controls the bed and the lights. The bathroom with its limpet green miniatures and its roll-in shower. The locked drug cabinet for our Vitamin D.

Lean our carried-in crutches in the corner. Empty our clean knickers into the drawer. Admire the plump calm swell of the tree from the window.

Solemn conversations with the pharmacist, the anaesthetist, the consultant surgeon and the woman with the menu card.

Legs dance and fingers slip slide around the plastic biro.

Sign.

Accept the delivery. A hospital gown and paper knickers. Disposable slippers in a sealed plastic bag.

Change in the bathroom. Struggle with the ties at the back of the gown. Wear our red striped silk robe as a dressing gown picked up in Pakistan in 2001 (you may have seen Hamid Karzai wear a similar one).

It is time. Summoned by the Anaesthetic OPD. Follow him along the corridor in our flapping disposable slippers. Climb onto the trolley in the anaesthetic room.

Can you feel my fingers? Can you feel my fingers?

Yes, yes we say. On repeat. Something about the spinal anaesthetic isn’t right.

Deep breaths, everyone says. Deep breaths.

Shaking.

Pushed into the operating theatre. Last memory of overhead lights.

Wake up half an hour into surgery. Our knee is sore, we say. We don’t remember this.

I topped you up with a general, she says in the wash up. I didn’t know whether it was you or the drugs talking.

Someone takes off our paper knickers, cutting them clean with neat cold blades.

Consultant surgeon drops in and says everything went well, it went to plan, she says.

Soft. Coddled.

Pain canons in just after the first biscuit.

Joy calls us darling, Nancy calls us darling, Eden calls us darling, love.

Shift changes. Shapeshifters.

Blood pressure, pulse, oxygen level, temperature. On the hour every hour.

Alone, watching the minute hand limp limp limp across the off-white night.

Fire. Everything white hot, monstering.

Breathe, great gulps of jittery breath, turning the dial to Radio 3, it helps, someone said, although do avoid anything with too much cymbal.

Tell the tunics about the brawling brutes clamped around our knee.

Bare pale round flesh for sharp jab (morphine).

Write first lines in the ceiling. Agree at least it will be we.

Shift change. Shifting shapes. Breakfast. Porridge, apple juice and prunes (we put sensible above joy when we ordered this).

Resistance is lying on a cardboard bedpan. Resistance revenge is a bladder scan and a catheter.

Release.

They make us choose our own analgesia. We don’t want choice, just poppers.

Offered slow release or instant relief. We make our decision based on the impact on our bowels.

(We have been here before.)

Day lengthens and shortens.

Wash from a cardboard bowl and disposable wipes.

Cardboard sick bowl for toothpaste spitting.

Semblance of dressed.

Parade of different coloured tunics.

We’ll get you up.

We shake we say we can’t stop shaking.

They empty, measure, empty, measure, empty.

You’ll get up on the walker first.

Catheter removal must be by a nurse who is the same sex as the patient.

First bend tears us up.

As does the sudden stiff descent on a toilet designed for small people.

If we’d known, we say to anyone, we wouldn’t have gone through with it.

Eighty degrees already, darling.

You’re doing so well, darling.

Pee in the card bowl resting in the toilet.

Drink, stagger, shriek, pee, measure. Repeat.

Oxys.

Surgical staples, diamante style.

Her son met his wife in Afghanistan. Miss, she calls us, handing us pale bloated macaroni cheese. Black tunic, pink dancing shoes. Such tiny shoes.

Warfarin. Belly bruise the colour of doves.

Eyes follow Strictly, spangle fizz, our toes wriggle away clots.

You spin me round round round you spin me round.

You finished that, love?

Sorbet is blood orange, served in a glass sundae dish.

Tags partial knee replacement, surgery

fiction musings

Notes on a scandal

Once upon a time a queen died. She was 96 years old and she died in a big old castle in Scotland in 2022. The Queen, it is said, was a constant rock throughout her 70 year reign over her subjects, which isn’t hard because if a rock isn’t constant, it’s probably not a rock. She had blue eyes and an enchanting smile. She dressed like a stick of Blackpool rock and her hats were always the same colour as her frocks. She even had matching handbags but nobody knows what was in them, if anything at all. She liked horses and corgis and she shot birds out of the sky that had been especially bred just for that. She made sure that many laws that applied to her subjects didn’t apply to her or her land but she was the Queen so you be the judge on whether that was right or wrong.

It is said that one of her dying wishes was to see the end of Prime Minister Johnson, a flabby man that didn’t dress well or own a comb and had so many children even the Queen’s Mathematician couldn’t count them. She didn’t want him dead of course, just out on his ear.

Since the Magna Carta, a paper that says royals can’t be naughty and abuse their power, queens and kings have had to be careful with prime ministers. They don’t have to like them, though. This queen, Queen Elizabeth II, she thought Prime Minister Johnson was a bampot.

Prime Minister Johnson had made the Queen sad by having parties when the Queen’s husband died during the plague. He also made life a bit embarrassing for her by advising her to suspend the Parliament. He did this to stop Members of Parliament asking difficult questions about the Government’s crazy plan to leave the European Union (known as Brexit). Leaving the European Union would cause all sorts of problems for the people and animals and make many of the people cry but the Government said this was just ‘project fear’ and the people who didn’t want this Brexit were ‘talking down this great country’. Later project fear came to pass but that’s for another time when we look at the break up of the United Kingdom.

Anyway this suspension, known as prorogation (that was a big new word for lots of people in the country), was all very humiliating for the Queen because she ordered the suspension on the advice of the Johnson government and then the highest judges in the land said naughty naughty, that was against the law. What was a queen to do?

It was a man called Pincher, who was said to have groped two people at a dinner party (groping is a VERY BAD THING) that eventually brought Prime Minister Johnson down, not the naughty suspension of Parliament or the plague parties or any of the other one thousand and one scandals.

The United Kingdom was a funny old place then and the people were coming out of a plague that killed 190,000 and you just never knew what mud would stick and what mud would slide but either way a mud pie was a mud pie and we all liked slinging them, right?

So the Queen’s dying wish came true and the Queen said goodbye to Prime Minister Johnson and hello to Prime Minister Truss who wasn’t elected by the people but planted by an evil group of plotters who wanted to make the rich richer and the poor starve and freeze. Prime Minister Truss became famous on Twitter for her footballer curtsy and her witch’s hat and her strange fascination with cheese and pork markets.

After she said hello to Prime Minister Truss the Queen died and the people got a new king, King Charlies III. Some people thought that Prime Minister Truss poisoned the Queen but nobody dared say it out loud because in those days any old thing was treason even standing in the street holding a blank sign.

The Queen loved her subjects, and she also knew that all 68 million of them enjoyed a queue. So the Queen, whose favourite pastime was playing Snakes and Ladders with real snakes and real ladders, decided to gift her people a queue. This gift was to make up for the one thousand and one scandals under Prime Minister Johnson and the decimation of public services and the bedroom tax and all the sewage in the sea and rivers and the fact that people had to go to food banks and that fat cat landlords had got fatter and fatter and climate change was destroying everything and low traffic neighbourhoods were a war on the motorist. The Queen wasn’t that bothered about climate change but her son Charles was so she threw that in for good measure.

So the Queen prepared to gift to her people the longest most respectful queue in the world as part of her funeral arrangements. A queue for the Guinness Book of Records. A queue fit for the 21st century. A queue fit for the fifth longest-reigning monarch ever (Louis XIV beat her by two years and was more stylish by a country mile). The problem was she had to die to make the queue.

The Queen was very religious and although she was a Christian we don’t know if she prayed to the God of Queues. The God of Queues is interfaith and was available to everyone in the United Kingdom no matter what their religion or creed. We are still learning about the ceremonies associated with the God of Queues and whole departments in universities are dedicated to researching these curious rituals. The Queen wanted to make a queue to die for and she must have planned it for a long time, or at least have had her servants plan it. The Queue, for it had a capital Q just like the Queen, became a Thing.

There was an Edinburgh Queue and a London Queue but I refer to them here simply as the Queue. Both of these Queues involved people standing in a line for a very long time waiting to see a coffin with the dead queen. The coffin was closed and so the people could only see a box not a dead queen but the people didn’t mind this, they wanted to see the box.

Some famous people made sure they were seen by the box in their best hats. Prime Minister Truss wore a witch’s hat. The wives of the Queen’s grandsons wore large wide-brimmed black hats even though it wasn’t summer. A little princess wore a boater hat last seen in a children’s book in 1867. A lot of men wore funny hats that you have probably seen in museums.

Back to the Queue. The Queue had its own micro-climate, its own App, fans, critics, fawning journalists, tickets, security, sonnets, experts, anthems, selfies, signs, joining instructions, an unwritten constitution, pavement games, Dunkin-donuts, dancing police officers, commemorative memorabilia, three French hens, Twitter threads, TikTok memes, pickpockets, B-list celebrities, Facebook adverts, has-been footballers, jumpers, hipsters, bedazzled toddlers, history makers, history takers, dog creches, fish and chips, chicken salads, gin flasks, tea flasks, tea dances, felafels in wraps, Marks and Spencers hampers, bottled water, first-aiders, blank signs, sugar free Pepsi, men that were dragged off by the police, women that were followed by the police, hawkers, snake-oil merchants, litter-pickers, butchers, bakers and candlestick makers, socialists, monarchists, marxists, scientists, florists, breakfast TV has-beens, and a lot of shite spoken about very little at all.

The Queen, a wee old lady who died of wee old age and gifted her Queue to the masses, would have been thrilled.

Tags history, Queen

memoir musings

notes on a funeral

Eight hours, Martha Kearney says, eight hours. (And the ten days that went before, Martha, the ten days?)

Nick Robinson has a wee chat with Dame Kelly Holmes. Bright blue is mentioned. And her investiture. And how wee the Queen was. The dame queued and queued just like normal people.

Someone measures something to do with the procession with a stick. I miss that bit. I’m trying CROWN on Wordle. Two out of five ain’t bad.

Chime.

I have one black sweater. It has a chocolate smear around the navel. I opt for the pale green sweatshirt my mother gave me. A cast-off. Warm but pallid. Evanesces my thin lips in a dance across the Forth.

Her death left a giant hole in the global stage.

She was a point of reassurance.

Psalm 42. Put thine trust in God.

Any weeping I do will be for the planet. I well up.

Jacob Rees-Mogg is seen on a bus.

Where are the Oxford commas?

Chime.

She’s got those wonderful blue eyes. That unforgettable smile.

The machinery of state.

Chime.

Over on Twitter a woman calls a baby a fascist.

Over on Twitter it’s CODE For All – Summit 2022. Join in tonight fellow geeks with critiques.

Chime.

She, Truss, will lead a lesson at this service.

I think you’re right, Martha.

She was the mother of servicemen.

The Octopus Energy customer service team is sorry to hear that my smart meter is still not working after six months.

Liz Truss with her husband.

Liz Truss now taken to her place.

Sombre clouds doing their sombre thing on the smiling women standing in the sombre water chest deep.

Royal claret, nearly black.

Not a black dry-robe amongst them.

And the crowd erupting in applause.

Over on Twitter a train silently pays its respects to the Queen.

Over on Twitter video screens are already blaring into an empty park.

Clop clop clop

The Family very much acknowledging the crowd that lines the Mall.

Tethered by ropes and chains.

There is sand on the corners of Parliament Square.

The tradition of moving a monarch.

Two minutes with the frozen peas. Two minutes with the hot water bottle. Repeat. End with the frozen peas.

Overheard on the Promenade: This is where all the antimonarchists are then.

Gem encrusted cross.

The sword.

More from Radio 4. My mum would sneak me into gigs under her coat and How did low and no-alcohol drinks get so popular?

There is complete silence here as the bearer party move into position.

Over on Twitter Mark is #cycling the Innerleithan Granites Gladhouse loop with Cam today.

At the time of writing there are no union jacks on the Promenade or the beach.

A sailor may have fainted.

A little boy on a little electric bike on the Promenade this is a little dangerous.

A BBC commentator refers to older ladies. In 2022. Let that sink in.

So many men. #funeral

In the work of the Lord.

It’s reigning men. #funeral

Let us pray.

They came with their deck chairs and their paddle boards and their water-proof bags for their phones.

My phone rings. I fail to get to it in time what with not finding both crutches.

Take one paracetamol and one co-codamol 15/500 at 2pm.

Scotmid on Bath Street is closed for seven hours.

A Herring gull eats a rat.

The soul of Elizabeth our late queen.

Over on Twitter Andy can’t recall the Scottish stereotypes in it.

Over on Twitter maggots key to crisis-time fertiliser for Ugandan farmers.

The spider in the bathroom sink is not moving despite a poke with a cautious finger.

(Organ music. God save our gracious king).

What do you call a murder of ex-prime ministers (dressed in black)?

An email from East Coast Organics. This is to confirm your payment of £12.73.

Reservoir Dogs.

An email from Microsoft Spam Fighters. Just checking.

So many flies for a sombre September afternoon.

A friend visits with spinach and satsumas and a cucumber and tinned dhal. Ten days after falling off my bike I am still confined to a 40 metre radius.

One of the corgis is called Windsor.

I can see the seat where her Majesty sat.

I make a salad. I limp I make a salad.

Below me now, the coffin.

Below me now, a laughing child.

A fly cannot find its way out.

Buzzing.

I’ve heard the streets are so quiet you could picnic in them.

If that wasn’t treason.

The orb, the sceptre and the crown.

Sirens on Portobello High Street. The rushing silence of a cancelled train.

The Queen’s children and grandchildren.

(I like that Q in italics. See how it curtseys and birls).

Over on Twitter people keep retweeting this humiliating video of Boris Johnson’s failed queue jumping attempt.

Rejoicing in the power of the Holy Spirit.

Three pigeons plucking fleas on the television aerial on the Victorian tenement across the road.

(Organ music. God save our gracious king).

Where the ashes of Princess Margaret are also interred.

A purely private ceremony. (That was a commentator, not me).

The most extraordinary service.

The large black Labrador that sniffs around my crutches.

Broadcasters have bogged dulled deepened.

Eight hours on and time for the debrief.

A dramatic and important development.

4 billion people.

The Archbishop spoke very well.

Over on Twitter surprising degrees of saltiness in accounts describing why naval ratings pull the funeral gun carriage at state funerals…

Over on Twitter Counting Dead Women.

No lettuces so she buys spinach instead.

Profound Christian faith bore so much fruit.

Email: Portobello Community Council notice of 396th meeting on 26th September 2022.

The sovereign always exists, the person only is changed.

The image is taken from the BBC website, today 18 September 2022.

Tags funeral, Queen

blog fiction musings

On beauty

I am not beautiful. I know this because a damson-faced man in a sad silver Mercedes (circa 1990) called me a fucking wee slag. Fucking wee slags are not beautiful. Especially when they’re the other side of fifty-five. Damson-faced men with concertina-slabbed bellies know a thing or two about beauty. They practically invented it. There they squat in the spill of an autumn morning, their foxy grey y-fronts cutting deep circumspect lines where their waists might have been. Damson-faced men drive with a psoriasis-spun elbow out of the smudged grease of a window that no longer shuts, not even close.

I am not beautiful. I know this because a tall beautiful man I lived with took it upon himself to grab me, to force me up against our kitchen bench, to push so hard my hand, of its own trembling accord, reached around behind me for a knife I knew I couldn’t use. This tall beautiful man had history. Her turquoise violation lingered for days in amongst crisp white sheets and reclaimed hardwood floorboards.

I am not beautiful. I know this because a shorter beautiful man with skin woven from chitins grew bored of our planned life together, ending it after a scramble of life decisions already made and briskly undone. Still, this shorter beautiful man continued to play me a bit-part, pulling my knee-strings, indispensable for walking, How those of us who are now ugly clamour for a nod or a touch from those who remain beautiful, refuting the adage that beauty is only skin deep, how can it be when they have everything and we have nothing?

I am not beautiful. I know this because I have a job in a building with a toilet mirror that pitches my lower lip, that punnets my cheeks, that reptants my neck (is that even a word?). Mirrors in shops are liars, we all know that. They groom us and swoon us, shaking us down into frocks we don’t need, careening heels that will murder us on escalators (manslaughter at least). But office mirrors? Are even they in the misogyny game now?

Tags beauty, feminism

musings poetry

Singular Us

I am writing this to you, no for you, you would be god could be god if I believed, permitted you to believe, cast you in that role but I don’t, don’t grant you how could I? he maybe she they, if you insist I’ll get over myself gift you the belief all seeing knowing mining reams of baleful show don’t tell you’ll have to interpret what I mean without ~~words~~.

(Even if I don’t know myself.)

You, like I, must read between the lies I put down scrabble around spending more time on rhythm than hues although your hue, who? is glimmer dark, just one fold away from bewilder but maybe you, she slides her hand between the silks, feels for the real I’ve hidden there, biding myself, all of me, I and all ~~of us~~, the singular us a rabble of letters I’ve yet to join up.

You’ve always had such lovely joined-up writing you say to me I blush and sometimes I can’t make it out one of the singular us just wrote it down a moment or so ago and now none ~~of us~~ can make it out, one ~~of us~~ titters when reading it out, I can’t bleed my own writing the you in me says what does it all mean do you think you could help us out?

Tags lyric

blog musings

On not getting a job

This week I didn’t get a job. It took five weeks from starting the application process, through the two interviews, to learning the result. It struck me during the process that it might be interesting to share the various emotions I experienced through those weeks. Some of those emotions will be universal, some are more likely to be experienced by women, and a few no doubt, are just mine.

Stage 1 – Discovering the vacancy

I see the advertisement on Twitter. Yes, I think. I’d love to work with those people! After all, I already know some of them, so I know what I’m getting into. And it’s part-time so I can manage my disability. And it’s with an organisation doing something I believe in. I am excited. I start to imagine myself in this organisation. Out and about at events with them. Plotting and planning with them. In shopping parlance, I’m already wearing the outfit. Looking in the mirror, checking myself out in this fabulous new cloth. Yes, my bum looks good in this. Yes, it suits me. Yes, I’ll take it. Oh – how much does it cost?

Stage 2 – The person specification

How much does it cost? In other words, do I meet the criteria, and can I live on the salary? Let’s leave the salary to one side for the moment. Many person specifications have three columns. The first has the criteria, the next is the column for ‘essential’, the final is the column for ‘desirable.’ I can tick off most of the essential criteria. There are perhaps two or three that I can’t. But two of these criteria are knowledge-based. In other words, if I think about it rationally, I can learn what I’m currently missing on the job. I can also tick off most of the desirable criteria. No problems there. But, perhaps because I am a woman, I pause at not getting a perfect score. Perhaps I shouldn’t apply. Doubts set in. Then I remind myself how I look in the new outfit. And that I need the money. Surely it’s worth a punt. And anyway, the average man I tell myself, wouldn’t have any doubts at all.

Stage 3 – The salary

I cast the doubts aside. I am in the new outfit, striking off down the catwalk. And, as I have been on a career break for three years with no income at all, I start spending the money. Not actually spending it of course. But I plot. I fantasise. I’ll get the lights fixed in the kitchen, replace the linoleum floor, get someone in to help with the interminable silicon issues around the bath. I’ll pay off my missing years’ National Insurance. I’ll take the people out who’ve bought me lunch and dinner over the last three years. I’ll treat them and treat them and treat them to Edinburgh’s finest. Of course, during these fantasies I’m also sure I won’t get the job. I don’t meet the criteria. There’ll be someone better, younger, smarter, more suitable. So I’m spending the money and not spending the money because someone else better than me will be spending the money instead.

Step 4 – The application

Some vacancies require you to fill in an online form. In this case, it’s a letter and a CV. The letter needs to refer to the person specification – the essentials and desirables (here I’d like to say something amusing about deplorables but nothing obvious comes to mind). This is tricky. There’s an art to writing a succinct letter that covers a person specification. How much detail to give for each criteria? Detailed examples or one-liners? Should I write a short story about each one? Should I use the competency approach beloved of the public sector? Should I include my major strategic successes? Or stick to small specific examples? A two-year project taking a government’s climate change plan through from inception to publication? Or a blog for a local active travel campaign? Might I be considered overqualified for some of the criteria but underqualified for others? I decide that the letter must be no longer than two pages. And I rework my CV to suit the post. I submit.

Step 5 – The interview

The email arrives with the offer of an interview. It will be an online interview given the covid situation. More mixed emotions. The heft of success – hurrah, got through the first round! Then the anxiety. Since being run over by a lorry some thirteen years ago I’ve not been as effective as I might be at interviews. This, I discovered when taking part in some post cycle/vehicle collision research, is relatively common. I tend to overprepare, am overanxious at the interview itself, and don’t take enough time to pause and think when being asked questions. With this new self-awareness, I spend some time researching the organisation again, and rehearse some of the stories that I used in my essential/desirable criteria. Am I still trying the outfit on? Oh, yes. Am I spending the money? Oh yes. But I’m also talking myself down. Remembering other failed interviews. The interview with the Tramadol (not recommended but was essential medication at the time for pain control). The interview that was supposed to be online but the recruiter didn’t understand the technology so I only had audio but the panel could see and hear each other. That was, I believe, verging on the deplorable.

Step 6 – The wait

This interview is not deplorable. It is fair. As fair as an interview can be online. Of course, afterwards, I focus on all my negative aspects. The things I didn’t say but should have. My inability to read the room on Zoom. No facial cues to bounce off. No body language to check. Just thank you very much we’ll be touch. And then the wait. We are all waiting. I no longer dare to wear the outfit. I don’t spend the money. But I am caught in the coursing ebb of an unknown future now outside my control. Two futures. One in work, and all that that entails. And one that continues as is, free, loose, but without structure.

Step 7 – The second interview

OK – I absolutely did not expect this. I did not expect a second round of interviews that include preparing some content, doing a presentation, and answering more questions (provided). Initially I am surprised and perplexed. This hiatus of two potential futures is discombobulating. I apply myself to the task. Learn the basics of new software for the presentation. Prepare answers for the questions. I consider what to wear to the interview given 1) I’ll be cycling there and 2) what the panel are likely to be wearing. My choice of clothes involves entering my wardrobe for the first time in months or even years. I attend the hybrid interview in person (we’re all hybrid now). Once again the interview is as fair as an interview can be. It is a Friday. We’ll be in touch on Monday, they say. Thank you, I say. Thank you.

Step 8 – The news

I don’t think about it over the weekend. It is now, as they say, in the lap of the gods. My interview clothes are back in the wardrobe. I live my weekend without a possible new future. And then it is Monday. We all do it, don’t we? Make the calculations that is. We know that the successful candidate is contacted first. And that as the day wears on, we are less likely to be that candidate. My phone rings. This is it. But no, it isn’t. It’s the police (that’s a story for another day). And then, finally, the call. We know, don’t we. All of us. In the first second, we know. The gut punch. The rush of heat to the neck. We hear the explanation. We breathe. We are adult about it. We might take something positive from it. Or, if we are in the habit of beating ourselves up, we might not. In this case, the successful candidate has a different set of skills to mine. And those skills are the ones selected by the recruiting organisation. And that is fine. That is the best outcome for the organisation. And the things the organisation aims to achieve.

The gut punch doesn’t last. The almost future dissipates, dissolves, and disappears. For five weeks, my bum looked pretty good in it. But hey, there’s more than one way to dress a bum.

Tags recruitment

exercise musings

Under Wasp Rule

Cheiko Kikuchi, an 87-year-old Japanese woman, is in her wheelchair, heading to her home from her retirement complex. A swarm of Asian giant hornets descends, hornets that leave gaping holes in their victims’ bodies. Kikuchi screams and weeps but no passer-by intervenes. Even the fire brigade, called by her nursing home assistant, dares not to move in to help. The attack lasts ten minutes short of an hour. She is stung 150 times. She dies the next day.

Wasps live in houses and humans live in mud nests. Wasps leave out poison in organic beefburgers and cans of Coke. Wasps smoke out humans, targeting their fragile pulmonary systems, their sensitive ophthalmic nerves.

Austin McGeough, 21, has a wisdom tooth removed. Later he goes to a party. Alcohol and dental pharmaceuticals are a dangerous mix. He wanders away from the party, intoxicated and confused. He finds a building with a broken window, covered in cardboard. He pulls back the cardboard and is attacked by wasps defending their territory. He calls an ambulance, leaves the building, and heads for the highway, hoping to meet it on its way. He is run over by two drivers and killed. Wasps are efficient. Why waste energy on killing when victims do the work for you?

Wasps barbeque dragonflies as humans drown in Sprite. Wasps play tennis on smooth clay courts and humans flit around the edges of the nets, pointless, inane.

Wasps are sociable, living in colonies of up to 10,000 workers. Newly-mated queen wasps hibernate in the winter, emerging in spring to build their homes, colonising old human habitations. Red velour curtains are a favourite. As are Liberty cushions. And rotting oak floorboards. Queens lay eggs that hatch into sterile female workers. The workers take over the home making and food collection. The queen continues egg laying.

The queen announces wasp public holidays. And sting-free days for humans – one day every seven years.

Mary Church is 78. She’s a great grandmother who loves children and gardening. She pokes around in a barrel where she is neither welcome nor wanted. A wasp stings her finger. She thinks nothing of it, and then passes out. Her daughter phones an ambulance, attempts CPR. It’s too late. Mary did not have an epi-pen. The wasp knew. Wasps do their research. Wasps take no prisoners. Why waste resources on a prison system when a sharp prick will do?

Wasps give ice-cream vendors special dispensation. Adult wasps feed on sugary liquid secreted by wasp larvae. In late summer, as the larvae mature, humans compete with wasps for ice-cream. Humans never win. Wasp larvae eat carrion and insects. Humans do not compete with the larvae for this nutrition. Not yet. So far, the costs involved are not worth the effort.

Wasps point out important stuff on flipcharts, wargaming biological weapons. Venom from some hornets dissolves human tissue, making a hole big enough for a human pinky. Humans do not know why the wasps have chosen this level of damage. Why a pinky? Why not a thumb? Will wasps develop further weapons of mass destruction? Humans smash themselves off windows, whining and screeching. They want to know everything but they understand nothing,

Asian giant hornets are tactical. Sometimes they target the allergic. At other times they go all out full frontal. Vespa mandarinia hornets hide in the soil, waiting for vegetable pickers. In three months, a swarm kills 41 people and injures 1,600 in Ankang. Humans learn that vespa mandarinia do not respond well to flame-throwers. The pickers run and the pickers die.

At the start of all this, wasps set up border controls, security patrols, and stop and search. Now wasps ban human research into insect eradication. They ban protest marches, public meetings, and judicial reviews. Wasps kettle and bristle and put down any whisper of insurgency.

Wasps do not use lines on maps. Wasps do not set predictable boundaries. Wasps outdrone drones and outclass pest controllers.

Wasps have yet to ban the printing press. It’s only a matter of time.

blog exercise musings

On curiosity

I am curious about the relationship between a living daughter and her dead father.

I am curious about fishmongers that fight to the death.

I am curious about the relationship between a single person and their ageing cat.

I am curious about people who choose a brush over a comb.

I am curious about black satin sheets.

I am curious about fibre versus salt.

I am curious about people born from the wrong parent.

I am curious about emergency avocados.

Here is a quiz. This is a quiz about me, not you. Answer quickly and honestly. Answer yes or no. Am I:

astute

patronising

loyal

a cheat

a liar

forgiven

forsaken

overwrought

unreliable (narrator)

selfish

deluded

stuck

Stuck! That’s it. I am curious about why I am stuck. Stuck in the middle of you. Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, here I am, stuck in the middle of me.

Did you tick yes or no on stuck? Go on, tell me. I can take it (or I can’t – believe what you need to believe). I need to know. I won’t hold a grudge, I promise. Grudge wasn’t on the list. Does Kirsty bear a grudge? Oh yes, she is the queen of grudge-bearing. Wraps them up in tissue paper and sprays them with lavender oil and cedar to keep the moths at bay.

I am curious. Is there anyone out there who is more stuck, with more grudges, than her?

Mrs Watson once told me to stack my characteristics in a pyramid. Your best at the top, she said, pointing to her jade encrusted crown, and your worst at the bottom, she said, pointing to her mud encrusted wellington boots. But I’m not daft. She meant I only had one likeable trait, and several that would be found wanting. Stupid old bat. So I inverted the pyramid. On the top line: Affectionate, Broad-minded, Compassionate, Dependable, Efficient, Forgiving, Generous, Honest, Imaginative, Just, Kind, Loyal. On the next line more in the same sequential vein with some unfortunate afflictions thrown in. Oppressive, Rigid, Secretive. And so on until I had just the one negative trait left to provide.

I chose irascible. At the base of the unstable wobbling toppling hierarchy of me I chose irascible. Irascible is a heavy lifter. Irascible has ballast. Irascible has toe holds and firm footings. Irascible will neither budge nor blether. Irascible is anchor and resistance and purchase.

Irascible is a top word that is best placed at the bottom.

When I am down I retrieve my grudges from their moth proof wrappings. I hold them to my face. Stroke them and stoke them. Stroke, stoke. Stroke, stoke. Stroke, stoke.

There’s a lot I could say about Dr Strangelove.

And charm bracelets.

I wrote these notes from today’s writing class. We discussed Philip Lopate’s essay ‘On the necessity of turning oneself into a character’ in To Show and To Tell.

blog musings

Five truths

I have two legs. This much is real. There was a time, a moment without a screen or dignity, or let’s face it, basic common decency, when I might only have been left with one. Later he blocks me on Twitter.

I am an interrupted civil servant. This much is real. The civil is diminishing, the servile is harder to poison. I get a pay slip with zeros all over it every month. One day, HR will come after me. I have no talent for career choices.

I read shite writing. This much is real. I say it isn’t fit for purpose, this road safety audit. The Road Safety Officer says you don’t understand. That is your subjective judgement. I say two people are dead.

I have a father. This much is real. He is dead. My father is responsible for all the traits I despise in myself. It is easier to blame the dead than the living. I sip peppermint tea. Practice mindfulness on a red felt chair. The chair is the same colour as the Bakelite phone that used to ring on Sundays.

I am not a cat. This much is real. If I were a cat, I would spend much of the day under a Colombian hand-woven blanket contemplating my part in the catastrophic decline of small mammals. As I am not a cat, I spend much of my day under clothes contemplating my part in the catastrophic decline of everything else.

Tags truths