Wednesday, May 31, 2006

Photographed from memory


The fabled half slice

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.

Wednesday, May 24, 2006

Patient unable to speak; some response to visual stimuli.

Sunday, May 21, 2006

Where is the Ark Royal?

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.

Wednesday, May 17, 2006

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

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?

Tuesday, May 16, 2006

Reunion cancelled

Saturday, May 13, 2006

Amapola

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.

Friday, May 12, 2006

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


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.

Wednesday, May 10, 2006

Listen, listen

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

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


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.

Tuesday, May 09, 2006

Ice cream, they have the nerve to call it.

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""

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.

Friday, May 05, 2006

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

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.