The Pure Life of Dreams

January 29, 2024February 12, 2024

Go Fish

I am in hurry to go to the airport but am still in my cubicle talking to Brendan. The desk has been cleared, nothing is left but the plain light beige wood slightly scratched up after I removed the computer and pencils and things, but Brendan won’t stop talking.

He waves his long blonde locks as he speaks, so that they fall in his face when he bends his head forward a little.

Under the desk I have a red petrol can and a dark blue roller case. The case is small enough to fit in the overhead cabin. I put on a red fluffy dressing gown. It us oversized and warm, and it’s my hint to Brendan that I need to go.

Then he stands up and makes to leave. I turn my back to him and with the can and roller case in hand I walk round the partition and into the corridor.

Only I forgot to tell Bill that I am going back to London. After having just returned.

I am going make an excuse. Last time I was there it was to see mum because she was sick with pneumonia and it was unlikely that she’d make it. But she’s still alive and this time I am just going for a holiday.

What will he think of my going again?

Last time I requested leave, it was a no brainer and he just said “Go fish!”

I walk over to his office and from the approach I see him through the doorway.

“I have to go back to London,” I tell him. He’s standing next to his desk.

“My mother’s sick again.” He looks over at me, he always has that handsome gait and even his greying hair works, though it’s thinning and brushed back from his temples.

“Go fish!” he says again.

“Thanks,” I reply and I walk back along the corridor to my desk again. Maybe this time they’ll fire me anyway.

Then I realize.

“Shit, I am naked again!” even though I am wearing a big dressing gown. I can’t go on the plane like this, like last time.

I tip the roller on its side and unzip it enough to insert a hand and pull out a pair of slacks. The slacks are a charcoal blue and they’re shiny but they will have to do. I won’t even look for underpants, I don’t have time and nobody will notice anyway.

I am sitting under the desk, the chair is pushed away and I am pulling the slacks over my naked feet, aware that the cloth will feel weird against my privates; but I can’t be bothered to get some underpants and maybe it will feel OK.

Then I stand up. I should have ordered the Uber, it will take a bit of time. I roll the case to the elevators, the petrol can still in hand but when the elevator arrives I notice that the roller case is leaking.

A thin spurt of gas is jetting out from halfway down, where the zips meet. Then there starts two lines of gas like taut threads spurting from the case. I won’t have time to fix the problem.

The first elevator is full but the second, the workman’s elevator has room. I get in and the walls are covered with painted red and black plywood, the paint slapped on carelessly. I turn to face the iron trellis doors. Someone tries to pull the doors shut, but another man stops him. The man puts a large hairy hand in the way, while another person hands us a baby, pushes the baby through the gap in the doors.

Oh come on! I don’t have time for this. It’s just as well I didn’t order the Uber.

The roller is still leaking, there are more spurts, and a puddle is forming on the elevator floor, a dark puddle. I hope that no one will notice, and that the leak will stop once the level of the liquid drops below the level of the zippers.

We get out at the lobby and I push through the circular doors into the parking lot. A car is waiting, its back door already open. An old Toyota from the 70s with an angular shape, painted an old chrome maroon. I throw in the petrol can and in the boot goes the roller case.

Then the taxi heads off to the airport, it’s not far, only 15 minutes and the British Airways desk knows me by now. As I climb the long escalator to the check-in counter they can whisk me through.

My passport is already in hand.

Photo by Bil Simser via Flickr

July 6, 2023July 31, 2025

Jungle Trekking in China

I am heading deep into the Chinese jungle on a double decker bus. It is great to be on the road. The bus is packed with locals and I am looking out at thick dark jungle vegetation, taking a picture.

July 1, 2023July 3, 2023

From Scottish Rites to the Hindu Temple

I am standing with Siobhan, Malik Qureshi and his new wife in the forecourt of the hotel and temple grounds. His wife is beautiful, a petite Indian woman with ~~the typical South Asian coloring~~warm South Asian coloring and delicate hands, dark straight hair and thin, especially compared to Malik who has become quite portly since I last saw him, thicker now that he is much older.

But Malik retains his jovial manner and I am quite jealous of his new bride. He reminds me of his Scottish roots as we stand together making introductions and then his wife leads me away over to one of the temples, a Roman-like columned building to show me around.

“What is your last name?” I ask her, but her response is not clear.

“No I mean your original last name,” I repeat.

But I still can’t make it out though she too goes on to assure me of her own Scottish heritage.

A light spitting rain starts as we walk over to another building where she has to perform a family ritual, part of the marriage ceremony . She wants me to come and it feels quite illicit. I cannot suppress a little desire for her despite my being Malik’s friend.

We climb the steps to a new Hindu temple fronted by square grey concrete panels, through the gaps of which I can see red alters and other religious goings on.

On the top step she squares up to one of the gaps and propels herself with both arms in one graceful movement into the temple. A blur of red and orange sari disappears behind the right side panel before she turns around to motion me in.

I try the same manoevre but I am bigger than her and not as fit, and I struggle to lift myself over the step and through.

“I’m going to need some help,” I excuse myself.

Then I try to angle myself in, instead of approaching the entrance full on as she did. But still it won’t work. And Malik’s new bride puts a fireside log in the gap between the panels so that I can grab onto the log instead of having to push myself up from the step. But that won’t work either.

And then a man who would be a priest comes over from the left side near the altar, his thick square hands open, palms up, in front of me. I see only large pudgy hands with thickset carved life lines; they fill the gap between the panels, as if to give me something to hold.

Goddess from the Sri Circle Maramma Temple via Wallpaper Flare

June 29, 2023March 20, 2024

Campsite Reconciliation with the Cold Cousin

Mao Sr. aka Dad and I were camping by the river, a grassy area out in the open. Our tents were already pitched, plain white Boy Scout V shaped tents, one for us and another for a friend of his.

Geri, a cousin, was there too; she showed up unexpectedly, and I thought to bring up some of the past grievances that kept our two families apart. She came by bike and she stood propped against it using the angle of the bike to lean back. And she was wearing a white chemise with plain dark trousers, and talking random stuff.

I too was sitting on my bike, only I was backwards on the seat.

Then I asked over to Dad.

“Might as well,” he replied.

And I told her. “When you came over to Coring Road all those years ago, one of you, I can’t remember who, said, ‘Is there a TV in this joint?’ as you walked in.”

I paused and thought about telling her about the cucumber sandwiches, how lousy the cousins thought them, and also the card game. Instead, I looked past Geri towards Dad again, but he was unpacking large bales of tobacco by the river. I wanted to tell her that Dad was playing cards with her, she was all of twelve or thirteen, and she was F’ing and blinding as she kept losing with each hand.

Then I thought not.

Geri needed to get some cigarettes from in town and we started walking, or rather she walked while pushing me on my bike, with me still backwards on the seat, and I thought we would veer off and I would fall but she held the back wheel and the handlebars and kept pushing firmly.

I was conscious of her white shirt close up, her breasts ample beneath. I wanted her to stop but then suddenly Geri stood back and pulled out a cigarette, ready to light it.

Dad was still behind her, him and his friend shaking the leaves from their clear plastic wrap. The leaves fell, wrinkled and brown, large and loose, from the wrapping into the water. And I thought I would be cool, because I too smoked the occasional cigarette, that I’d do the same.

I looked in my bicycle pouch and there was only one cigarette left, it was one of the long ones, the 100’s, and it was slightly bent and cracked. I took it out and held it to my lips then I leant towards Geri to light hers first, but hers was even more cracked than mine, and the paper barely held in the tobacco, I could see the brown of it poking through the slits.

And I could not see how to light it without the thing falling apart.

Cucumber image by Kai Reschke from Pixabay
Bikes by Barry MacHale via Flickr

June 23, 2023July 1, 2023

The Frog and Cat – Part 2 Back at the Hotel

After dozing off again, I find one of the frogs back with me in the hotel room. I have to let him lie in a small container of cold water for a while, to let him recuperate.

I put him in a long rectangular Tupperware, and put a lid on it so he cannot escape, but every time I put down the container, he starts hitting the lid with his head, almost knocks it off.

So then I fill the bathtub in the room, it is filled quite high, and I let the Tupperware float in it so that this time, if he escapes, he will only escape into more water.

The bathtub is only filled with water from the tap and is not the boiled, sterilizer water I used for him but I’m sure it will be OK for the time that he needs to get better.

Then I leave the room.

And it is only when I get back that I see the horror.

Artie is floating under the water of the bathtub his small body rotating slowly under the surface, the frog paddling around him, the Tupperware up-ended.

Artie must be dead, I think, as I pull him out. A bit of claw catches my hand and comes away from his paw, lodges with a piece of fur at the soft base of my thumb.

I lie Artie’s limp body, belly down, across the lip of the bathtub. I stroke his back, and press hard, up from his hind legs with both thumbs, push his fur up towards his throat until the water ejects from his mouth into the bathtub. And I repeat it again and again until the water spurts out, until after the third or fourth time he splutters into life, and rolls out of my grip onto the floor.

“Oh Artie,” I cry as he walk away.

He no longer has his buff coat but looks more tabby and smaller than he was before; when he was chasing the frogs.

I leave him to return downstairs where they have the constructors out on the patio. They are mending the tiles, resurfacing them with white squares in a diamond shape, white to match the balcony wall which surrounds the patio. And I want to see how the construction is going.

When I get there I’m surprised to see Artie once more. This time he is lying on his back, his body splayed across the balcony wall. A small but deep gash is visible across the white fur of his belly, bleeding,

“Artie,” I cry out once more as I rush towards the wall.

Next to him sits a contractor and, at the far side of the patio, two more. They wear grey hard hats and are eating sandwiches, it’s their lunch break. And they stare back nonchalantly at my commotion.

Then a second cat bounds out from the French doors of the hotel, across the patio and up onto the wall to my dead cat. Only it’s Artie who ran out of the hotel and the dead cat is not Artie after all, although he shares the same tabby markings and size.

Artie sniffs at the dead cat briefly before leaping towards the two contractors at the end of the patio. He ducks between them as they slouch and chew their sandwiches.

“Catch him!” I yell before he disappears under their legs.

Photo by Eu_eugen via Pixabay