oOo

A bride is a beautiful sight. She radiates hope, expresses love and charms the hearts of her friends and family as they gather for her big day. The groom, handsome though he may be, is happy to play second fiddle to his lovely lady, for she is the essence of his new world: a grown-up place he must control and tame, to keep his bride and their children safe and happy, until they grow old and grey and stand, misty-eyed and proud, as their offspring pledge their lives with their soul-mates.
The bride was a beautiful sight. She glowed with an inner light, and cast aside the morning she suffered, for now she was with her husband and her former life was ended. He promised it would, and he kept his word. She promised to love him until death, and she would keep her word. Until death do us part.

It already felt as if months and years had passed since she left her room that very morning: with her silver hairbrush and her little wardrobe of pretty clothes; photographs of her love—her new husband—taped to the dressing table mirror; her religious statues and rosary beads; her picture of the Sacred Heart above the eternally burning red lightbulb, the eyes of Jesus looking upwards and His hands outstretched in prayer. She prayed often and sincerely, as she was taught throughout her life—by nuns and family: the darkness of another reality smothered in a haze of incense from a thurible and a low murmur of Latin—and when she was taught to respect her elders, she learned the lesson well, and with humility.

It felt as if months had passed, but it was mere hours since she carried her case down the stairs, past her aunt’s complaints that the case damaged the dado rail, allowing her opinion of the groom to echo out the door. Across the road, a parked Morris Minor waited, driver smoking a Woodbine as he waited to bring her to a friend’s house, where she would dress in her virginal white. Her aunt would not allow “that rag” into her house. A last cutting remark—if you try to crawl back here you’ll find the door shut to you and that’s final—and her aunt slammed the bright red door. Waterfowl in the river rose in a cacophony at the sudden noise. Yet her aunt’s words were as light as some Chopin drifting through the sunlit room of her thoughts, for she was leaving the hurt behind to be with her new husband, to truly begin her life, love and obey, to raise their children, teach them right and wrong … to ensure they never suffer as she did, and he did.

She knows he suffered too, albeit in a different way. Many were the nights they met for a break time smoke together in the factory yard. Her heart leaped at the sight of him; her heart skipped a beat with concern when a bruise on his face absorbed the light of the dull electric lamp overhead. Da did it, he would explain laconically. She knew instinctively. She wished he could say the simple facts—Da came in drunk again and I stood between him and my mother so he couldn’t hammer her into submission for not having dinner ready, or for not having more drink for him, or for just looking disappointedly at him.

Da was a bear of a man, a lovely man, and she loved him when he was sober; Da was a terrifying monster after a good few jars, or after any amount of whiskey. He cried like a baby when he sobered, begging forgiveness, before he headed out for pints again. She could tame his monster, she knew she could. Da already had seen how she could quieten him and tame his monster with her honest humility, to his abiding shame. Ma was wary of her new daughter-in-law’s ability and uncomfortable with her at first, but she warmed quickly as she grew to know the girl—this beloved of her second son; this sensible, warm, honest heart.

Hot summer days in the factory. Night-shifts under thunderstorms of hot water. Walks home through town with her love, at three in the morning, she trailing her hand against the walls as they flirted, and he pushing his bicycle. The weak light of the dynamo flickered, unable to get enough speed to function at all. They laughed, they chatted, they stopped for a smoke and looked into each others’ eyes. He was darkly handsome, with hair like a rock and roller. He was decent enough to respect her and never pushed further than she allowed. They suited each other. She knew it. They each had scars to bear. They knew their limitations. He brought her to her aunt’s red door, his reward a peck on the cheek and a wave as he mounted the black Raleigh and pedalled off into the night, the happy dynamo making the back light blaze red. She would smile, brace herself, turn the key in the lock and deal with her aunt’s ire. She would always wait there to complain about the noise and how she couldn’t sleep because of her talking and banging. There was little point in arguing, for her aunt would get ever more upset and she had work again on the following day.

Although Da became more placid because of her visits to her fiancée’s home, all the while her aunt was regressing. Nothing she did was right or good. She was a Cinderella—cleaning the fireplace, cooking food, scrubbing the floors. Yet nothing was done good enough for her aunt: she once threw a plate of food at the wall in mock disgust. Even on that morning, the very morning of her wedding, her aunt refused to let her out until she had fully cleaned the house and emptied the ashes from the grate. She did the chores without a word, bathed herself again, carried her case down the stairs and sat into the Morris Minor. The driver, her best friend’s own husband, said nothing as he stubbed his half-smoked Woodbine into the stone wall and placed it back into the pack. Her aunt would not attend the wedding and that pleased him. She deserved to have a day just her own away from that miserable old hag.

The ceremony over, the party walked from the church to the hotel. He looked manly and full of pride as they entered the function room. She was like a picture postcard: a glorious apparition; better than Jackie; like a film star. His relatives sat at most of the tables. She had few. An only child given to an aunt that used her as a source of labour, her coterie were a few cousins and personal friends: outnumbered and out-shouted by the family of the groom, they were a glum knot of long faces in a distant corner. She pulled them into the gathering and diluted them within the crowd, her easy charm bonding them to their new in-laws with a gentle word, a laugh, a smile, a pinch of the cheek and a soft swish of lace and terylene.

Da rose to give a word or two, his cheeks as ruddy and bloodshot as his eyes, and managed to slur out wishes for a long and happy life together before he broke down, bawling for whiskey and jaysus, don’t drown it with that feckin’ lemonade. Today he was a happy drunk. Ma sat demurely—regally—beside him. Everyone knew that she was a proper lady, no matter how boorish Da could become.

The bride and groom rose to cut the cake. Smiles and photograph flashes. She whispered in his ear. You and me, she said, we’re in this together. He smiled at her and nodded to Da. And we don’t make the same mistakes, he agreed. The guests toasted them with a cheer and the glasses were refilled again.

oOo

Eighteen months sharing a house with Da and Ma had diminished the glamour, but the love was stronger than ever. The occasional rat crept through the newspaper-stuffed broken windows at the back of the house, but they had to deal with this until their house—their very own house—was completed. The building works drove all the vermin into the condemned tenements that were to be knocked on completion of the fine two-storey terraces sited a stone’s throw away. Throughout, she never complained about the lack of privacy, the burden of managing her affairs under another woman’s roof, and gracefully demurred to Ma’s knowledge and wisdom. Her time as woman of the house would not be long in coming. For now, she was a guest and beholden to them for her lodgings. Da was less wild with a two women around, for they could gang together and make any drinking man’s life hell. He spent most evenings in Paddy Clarke’s public house, or down at the Widow Burke’s bar, returning home just as the television closed for the night.

A month short of their first anniversary, the newly-weds were gifted their firstborn—a puppy-fat boy, all blonde hair and rosy-cheeks. She smoothly took control of his life and destiny with the care and ferocity of a mother bear and woe betide anyone or anything that got in the way. Da wasn’t seen now from morning to night, and her own husband occasionally joined him for a bit of a break from Ma, the new ma and the sounds and smells of newborns. He worked steadily to bring home the bacon for his little family, for she gave up her job and left the factory when she married. That was how things were done.

The day she found a rat in the baby’s cot was the end of their stay under the corrugated iron roof of the house. Da barged around the house with a shovel, and in his attempt to murder the rodent, smashed one of Ma’s precious Chinese porcelain lions on the high mantlepiece. Ma was raging, for they had been sent all the way from America as a gift. The baby, carefully checked by his mother, was happy and gurgling, and had seemed more eager to play with his new “pet” than to watch it being hacked to bits on the flagstone floor by his grandfather. The child wailed for hours after the animal was dispatched, much to everyone’s concern. The doctor said he would be alright: it was just a bit of a fright. That night, they broke the locks of their house-to-be and moved themselves in; whether it be finished or nay.

oOo

A month short of their third anniversary, she and he were content and happy in their safe, warm new home—free of vermin and aunts that no longer spoke to them. Da and Ma had been moved to the house next door. She was in her element now. God had granted her all she wanted and all she every prayed for. Every time she descended her own stairs in her own home, she offered a humble prayer of gratitude to the statue of the Child of Prague that stood by the bannister, with the supplication that the Angels of God continue to look after her husband and her son and their house and home.

Her baby was bouncing and bright. She used modern child rearing books to help her educate him the right way. Less than two years old, he could speak well and even read, and get into mischief. In less than a month he would have a little brother or sister to play with; a second baby was due and this little one inside her kicked even harder than his big brother had. The eldest would have his work cut out for him with this one. She hoped it might be a girl but, please God, once it’s healthy we’ll be happy no matter what.

She looked out of the upstairs window and waved as the Morris Minor pulled up outside. The morning sunlight reflected from its glossy black roof reminded her vividly of the day the same car brought her to Church on her wedding day. She manoeuvred herself and her bump down the stairs—how it hurt her back!—and greeted her friends. They had a cup of tea and a smoke in the kitchen as the eldest played with his toys inside his playpen. They were going for a drive—it’s such a lovely day—oh, come on—you’ll be too busy in a couple of weeks with the new baby—enjoy yourself girl—we won’t be long anyway—and she allowed herself to agree, laughingly, then shouted at her husband to get his lazy self in from the back step where he was soaking up a little summer sunshine and picking horses for the day’s gamble. He gave her a hug and pulled his son into his arms as the group wandered out to the front door. She sat—carefully—into the back of the car, greeting their neighbours as the sun blazed down on the green grass in the front garden, on the flowers she planted, on her first-born, on her husband as he waved their child’s hand at the Morris, then headed for the front room to see if the horse racing is on television yet. The sun blazed on children playing on the street, on tarmac strewn with sparkling glass from broken bottles, white numbers chalked inside hopscotch squares. The car heads off for its drive, into the blazing sun.

The sun blazed as the cortege left the mortuary, and continued to shine when the black hearse left the self-same church where he and she married. It blazed as the hearse drove through the warm countryside, past honeybees and leafy sycamores, to her place of repose, and upon the priest uncomfortably warm in his black cassock as he read Words from The Book. It blazed upon him as he stared dully down at the box in which she, the light of his life, lay still, her arm around their infant second son, as they lay in peace forever more.

The sun blazed in the vault of Heaven, the clear blue sky of July, cloudless, empty as his heart; for him there was no sunshine, no warmth; his body and soul were numb and cold. His ears rang with an earth-shattering silence and his eyes saw emptiness that no words could fill. His anger and rage could never be focused, and it made him weakest of all. They were gone. He failed them. She was gone, lost: his one pure love; and there was nothing ahead of him now but time.

Da staggered out of the graveyard and smashed a bottle against a wall as he roared curses at the sky and at God.

When dada came home, his little boy saw him through the front room window and ran to the door. He hugged dada’s legs and kissed his father when he was lifted up in his strong arms. He looked out the doorway and in his expectant voice asked where mama might be.

Dada held him tightly, tears streaming from his face. He whispered the answer so low that only his little son could hear.
“Mama is gone to Holy God. She’s been stolen by Him because He needs her more than we do. She loves you, and dada loves you. Dada’s here and there’s no need to cry.”

The sun set, then rose again. The world continued on and there was nothing ahead of them but time.

oOo

So there I was.

A werewolf.

Fated to wake up in the damn zoo every full moon, covered in fur and stinking of blood. I managed to deal with it, I really did.

My damn shrink helped me a lot even if it was two hundred dots a pop. But I just couldn’t get used to that first few moments each time. You know, when you wake from a dream believing you’re in your warm bed, though when you push yourself up on your elbows you find that you’re not lying on your expensive Tempur mattress in your air-conditioned room but laying in leaves — naked as the day you were born, except for the damn fur — with a sodding wolf lapping at your stupid fucking pointy ear and whispering sweet motherfucking nothings.

I swear to God, if I ever find the evil savage that bit me I’ll rip his bastard head off.

Germany, 2010

“I do not like thee, Doctor Fell.
The reason why – I cannot tell
But this I know
And know full well:
I do not like thee, Doctor Fell.”

Tom Brown, 1680.

Germany, 2010

(Being a one-word poem, describing the pressure on the bovine psyche caused by the callow usage of vicious, tearing metal barbed wire on the perimeters of areas that were once fine sunny meadows, designed especially to prevent the aforementioned noble species from roaming freely, in particular to such places where the grass is known to be sweeter, finer and — indeed — more green.)

1K worth of bugs?

On March 5, 1981, some thirty years ago, Sinclair Research launched their amazing ZX81 micro. It was marketed as the first mass market personal computer to retail for under £99 stg. Here in VAT-laden Ireland (how some things never change!) it was IR£149.

It has the dubious honour of being my first introduction to computers and brings back many happy memories of freezing winter days in the living room, trying to choose which two items I could plug into the two mains sockets. Problem was I had three items: the TV (to see what the computer was actually doing); the computer (obviously); and the heater that kept the room above absolute zero.

The computer/TV combo won every time and I bear frostbite scars to prove it.

For so many of us, the ZX81 created a new frontier that was most likely responsible for ruining my life. Had I not spent all those hours and years locked away with ZX Spectrums and Commodore 64s and Atari 800XLs and Amigas and Amstrads and Osbornes and PCs and Macs I might have a real job … or used my god-given natural talents in the worthy roles of confidence trickster or politician.

I have fond memories of the time I sent my postal order for a ZX81 kit to Sinclair’s English HQ in Cambridge, and Sinclair Research returned the cheque uncashed. As I lived “in a foreign country” and they didn’t do “exports”, they couldn’t sell it to me. How times, and customs rules, have changed, and what a lucky escape one unassembled ZX81 kit had.

While we took the photograph, the duck enjoyed looking for bugs inside the ZX81′s 4K ROM and 1K RAM, but preferred the slumbering snails she saw under the rock.

(Ireland, March 5, 2011)

oOo

There’s nothing in my mind now except pure, unabashed panic. I’m scared. I’m more than scared—I’m terrified. I want nothing more than to run into a dark corner and curl up into a ball. Nothing makes sense. Everything is a jumble of sound, light and scent and I can hardly tell which way is up. There are so many people around me, concerned looks on their concerned faces, hands reaching to me, compassionate sounds—I need them to go away. They are not what I need here. I’m drowning from them. The walls, that minutes ago were happy objects of interest and curiosity, close in upon me. I badly need to go to the toilet. I can’t stop shaking.
Someone speaks to me. I get very close to snapping. I can’t help myself. Rebuffed, he huffs and walks away with a dismissive comment I don’t understand. How can I? I can’t even think! I must get out of this place—out into fresh air—somewhere natural—away from glaring lights and echoing sounds. Turning on my heels I bolt in what I hope is the right direction, but I can’t be certain; my eyes are so wide it’s hard to see. I hammer into someone and, caught unawares, she yelps. Dazed and shocked, so do I. I didn’t see her. How could I not see her? Am I losing all my senses. I shake my head and barge onwards once more in a desperate skitter to the outside world.

The smell of grass comes on a breeze. I’m on it in a moment. There is the doorway, a bright square of brilliance many miles away. I have to go through. Everything will be better when I go through. I will be safe when I go through.

No! Something grabs me—holds me—pins me bodily to the floor. I go berserk and scream for it to release me, to set me free, to let me reach the only goal in my addled mind—

—and a familiar scent wrinkles my nose. Oh, I’m saved! It’s you! You’re here!

“Jake, if you lose that pup again, he’s staying at home next time, ‘hear me?”

“Yeah, mom.”

… and for tonight’s Action News, we discover where Tony the Tiger goes when not starring in commercials for Kellogg’s.

He just can’t get enough of that sugar-coating.
Germany, 2010

Yellow eyes glowing,
Staring hotly at the cam.
Now I’m really scared.

Germany, 2010.

There once was a cinnamon bear
Who lay on the tree by his lair.
The look on his face,
As he stared into space,
Was wistful, and thoughtful, and fair.

That same big ol’ cinnamon bear
Who lived near that tree over there,
On cream cakes he fed,
Flies buzzed round his head!
But the big ol’ thing just didn’t care.

Germany, 2010.

What?!

Gasket? You want to know why I called this piece ‘Gasket’?

Aheh. Well, if I said he blew a seal, you’d think I was being rude.

Did you know that seals are grouped as ‘pinnipeds’? Neither did I until I looked up the correct term.

Pinnipeds. Heheh. Pinnipeds.

Germany, 2010.