Saturday December 1st
Verb Your Enthusiasm
I remember when it first circumstanced,
this problem that routines with my words:
I was in the kitchen, plating my food,
when my nouns conversioned to verbs.
I friended others with similar troubles;
we workshopped together for days.
Dialoguing in search of solutions,
the long hours flipcharted away.
I now diarise each time they event.
Are they nerbs or vouns? I’m not sure.
The doctors cannot medication me.
Even to poem provisions no cure.
In a World Cup for languaging weirdly
or a verbing-renowned Olympics,
I’d have podiumed – I’m in no doubt –
if it weren’t for those medalling kids.
Dylan was disconcertingly cheerful today. Perhaps, unlike me, he has come to terms with his departure.
He came in brandishing a leaflet. It was for a ‘Motivatathon’: a rolling twenty-four-hour session of workshops for leading business executives to ‘inspirationalise’ and ‘change-manage’ their teams. It is hosted by Stuart Mould, ‘Dream Architect’, and is all for a good cause. On the leaflet is a list of charities, who will receive 80 per cent of the corporate sign-up fee: Save the Elderly, Aid for the Vulnerable, Lame UK, the Guatemalan Orphan Trust and so on.
There was a picture of Stuart on it, gazing enigmatically at a lake. I suggested to Dylan that we ‘graffitise’ his face but he didn’t want to join in the fun. He snatched the leaflet up and put it carefully back into his bag.
Sunday December 2nd
For some unfathomable reason, the disappearance of Toby Salt continues to be of interest to the media, as well as the police. You would think they’d have more interesting things on which to report, like the victim of a splashed puddle or a hat being found in a tree.
In today’s newspaper was an article about the phenomenon of This Bridge No Hands Shall Cleave, which has reprinted six times now since it was published. It’s been recommended in all the Books for Christmas pages of the broadsheets and is set to be the best-selling poetry book of the year. It’s a relief that Toby Salt is not around to see all this, to be honest; he’d be insufferable.
Monday December 3rd
In an almost-certainly doomed attempt to get ahead of myself, I revisited my list of Christmas card beneficiaries. Each year, it shrinks a little. This year I am down to twelve and that includes all the members of Poetry Club.
I’m not sure whether I can stand any more recipients asking to be removed from my mailing list. Last year, there were three of them, one of whom seriously considered prosecuting me under breach of the 1998 Data Protection Act.
I may need to add DI Lansbury and Sergeant Tuck just to get my numbers back up.
Tuesday December 4th
Having Fun with a Clerihew
Archimedes of Syracuse
was keen to tell the town his news.
Naked through the streets he raced,
with clothes displaced.
Eureka! I have it! I know where Toby Salt is! At least I think I do.
I’d been flicking through old issues of Well Versed in search of some advice on how to write a clerihew when I realised that I knew what was wrong. But I needed Toby Salt’s postcard to figure it all out and that had gone into last week’s recycling collection.
Only it hadn’t, I remembered. On Friday morning, there’d been another knock on the window from the Man at Number 29, who’d pointed out it was a landfill day. I went rummaging in the recycling bag to find the bits and then pieced it all together. It was harder than a 500-piece Photo Jigsaw Puzzle of Gérard Depardieu in a Submersible and far less satisfying. But I finished it.
Whether Toby Salt was still alive was another matter.
One thing was clear: time was of the absolute essence.
I ran myself a bath and consulted tomorrow’s train timetable.
Wednesday December 5th
Why Poets Don’t Drive
Whether motorways, B roads, or backstreets,
there is a road for us all to explore.
Yet each leads – in the end – to the same place.
Yes, Karen, I know we need the A4.
There are some who live life in the fast lane
and some who stick in the middle, unsure.
Others live theirs in a roundabout way.
I know I did, Karen. We’ll have to go round it once more.
The road is – in essence – a metaphor.
We journey along it, trusting to luck,
being mindful of others upon it.
Don’t be silly, Karen, there isn’t a tr—
One of the drawbacks of being unable to drive is that it takes me a while to get anywhere. Unlike those heroes you encounter in the movies, I can’t just drop everything and hit the open road. Journeys need to be planned – and sometimes delayed – in order to secure a more competitive ticket price, as well as to write a poem and get the laundry up-to-date.
The 4.50 from Paddington arrived in Swansea just before eight o’clock. I checked into a B&B and left a message for DI Lansbury and Sergeant Tuck.
Thursday December 6th
Roles
He never got to play
the part of Joseph;
he was one of those kids
that no one noticed.
The type barely seen
and more rarely heard,
no Innkeeper, Herod,
or Second Shepherd.
Not once did he wear
the crown of a king
nor wings of an angel
(although he could sing).
Instead he would be
Brown Cow Number Four,
A Rock or A Bauble,
The Stable Door.
And now – forty years on –
it still made him wince,
for it seemed that his life
hadn’t changed that much since.
With the exception of once being a rather pivotal turnip in a vegan nativity play at primary school, I don’t think I’ve ever played the role of ‘hero’ before. But I suppose that’s what I must have been to Toby Salt, not that he could quite bring himself to say it – not even after I’d pressed him several times on the matter after he’d been unchained from the letterpress.
The print shop was situated at the rear of a quiet Victorian terraced house in a secluded Mumbles backstreet. There was no sign of DI Lansbury or Sergeant Tuck yet so I thought I’d take a quick look around myself. The house itself was locked but on the left-hand side was an entrance leading into the back yard. This side-door had also been secured but, by climbing up precariously onto the neighbouring fence, I was able to reach over and slide the bolt over to open it.
The outhouse door had been left slightly ajar. There was somebody talking inside. I slipped in quietly. A man stood with his back to me, leisurely loading up various items of crockery onto a tray.
‘And how was your breakfast this morning, my bestselling poet?’ he said.
Django. I’d recognise his adenoidal tones anywhere. And there, in front of him, sitting on a bench and chained to a nineteenth-century letterpress, was Toby Salt. The top of his head was bandaged but the rest of him appeared to be disappointingly bruise-free. His head was bowed and he appeared utterly unresponsive to all of Django’s attempts at conversation.
‘I must apologise for the continued absence of Lapsang Souchong,’ Django went on. ‘But I can assure you that I’m on the case. The shopkeeper has high hopes of a delivery this Friday!’
Toby Salt continued to stare at the floor.
‘But do not despair,’ said Django. ‘I bring you better news.’ He flourished a newspaper in front of Toby Salt. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘the non-fiction top 10 – you’re now at number 4!’
Django, undeterred by the silence which greeted every utterance, pressed on:
‘And you are fast closing in on the Lean and Healthy Cookbook. Who knows, by Christmas, you could be number o—’
‘WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO LET ME GO, YOU MONSTER!?’ shouted Toby Salt, livid with rage.
‘Now, now, Toby,’ replied Django calmly. ‘I have told you before that you really should not make such a noise.’ He bent down to pick up a cloth from the floor and, as he did so, Toby Salt glanced upwards and our eyes met. I put a finger to my lips in warning.
In my anxiety to hear the conversation, I’d advanced further into the workshop than I had intended; I was now standing only a couple of metres behind Django. But, as he set about re-tying his prisoner’s gag, he must have noticed some subtle change in Toby Salt’s demeanour that caused him to whirl around suddenly. We found ourselves face to face.
‘What!’ he snarled nasally. ‘Who are you?’
He picked up a printer’s block and began to advance on me menacingly.
‘Please put that down. It’s all over now, Django,’ I said, backing away nervously.
‘It is for you!’ he cried as he raised the printer’s block into the air, poised to bring it down on my head. In desperation, I blindly grabbed an object from the table next to me and slammed it into his face. If that didn’t unblock his nasal passages, nothing would. Django reeled backwards from the blow, lost his footing and crashed down, cracking his head on the edge of an impressively solid-looking piece of Victorian machinery.
There were shouts behind me as DI Lansbury and Sergeant Tuck burst into the workshop. They surveyed the scene in front of them. Sergeant Tuck went over to inspect Django’s crumpled figure.
‘He’s out cold but he’ll be OK,’ he said.
I looked down at my hands to see what I’d struck him with: it was a copy of the commemorative linocut edition of This Bridge No Hands Shall Cleave.
‘Who would have thought Toby Salt’s poetry could be so hard-hitting,’ I joked. Disappointingly, nobody laughed. Darren would have enjoyed that line.
‘Can somebody PLEASE unchain me from this damn machine?’ came a voice from across the workshop.
I went over to Toby Salt.
‘Is this what you meant by being at the bleeding interface of literature and technology?’ I asked him, in an attempt to cheer him up.
It was at that point DI Lansbury reminded me that kidnapping was a rather serious matter, that Toby Salt would have endured a very traumatic and gruelling experience and that perhaps it would be the best for everyone if I went home and left them to it.
Friday December 7th
I opened the door to the spectacle of DI Lansbury’s triumphant beard, and behind him, the doughty Sergeant Tuck, bearing news.
‘Django has confessed all,’ declared DI Lansbury. ‘It was the final act of desperation from a publisher on the verge of bankruptcy.’
‘I had no idea,’ I said. ‘I’d always imagined they were doing well. That’s the impression that Toby Salt gave.’
‘I’ve no doubt he did. But all that poetry takes its toll on the finances,’ continued DI Lansbury. ‘Sales are precarious, margins slender. Then along comes Toby Salt, the best thing to have happened to Shooting from the Hip for years.’
I did my best to keep a straight face.
He went on. ‘But there was a cloud on the horizon. Toby Salt’s star was rising fast – he was winning awards, writing for newspapers, appearing on the radio and television – and the major publishers had started to circle. Django knew that a small press like Shooting from the Hip wouldn’t be able to keep hold of him for long. His only hope was to make as much money as possible out of This Bridge No Hands Shall Cleave – and what could be better for sales than a mystery surrounding its author.’
He helped himself to another custard cream before proceeding.
‘It worked far better than he could ever have dreamt. After his disappearance, Toby Salt was in the news every day – and as sales of his book increased that became a story in itself. A publishing phenomenon with a self-perpetuating cycle of sales and publicity.’
‘But what was he planning to do with Toby Salt when it had all died down?’ I asked.
‘Who knows! He claims he’d only intended to detain him for a couple of weeks. But then the book orders flooded in, and it all spiralled out of control. I suppose he’d have had to find a way of getting rid of him more permanently.’
I wondered momentarily whether I’d been a little too hasty in uncovering his whereabouts.
‘And now?’
‘And now, Mr Bilston, we’ll leave you alone. Thank you for your assistance and good luck with whatever it is that you do.’
He handed me my old diary back and they took their leave.
Saturday December 8th
Christmas without you is
A cracker in need of pulling.
A glass of wine that could do with more mulling.
A stocking that’s lacking in presents.
A champagne cocktail without effervescence.
A deep-filled mince pie with no deep-filled mince.
A Father Christmas who doesn’t convince.
A Wise Man bereft of myrrh
(substitute gold or frankincense, if you prefyrrh).
A card you’ve written but forgotten to send.
It’s A Wonderful Life without the bit at the end.
An Ernie without an Eric.
Generic
An out-of-tune carol.
A tin of Roses with no Golden Barrel.
A Bowie without a Bing.
A merrily-on-high dong that’s lost its ding.
Mistletoe without a kiss.
That’s what Christmas without you is.
With all the excitement of the last few days, my thoughts had been distracted from Dylan’s departure but it all came flooding back as I opened the door to him this morning. My attempts at cheeriness were unconvincing. By contrast, Dylan was in high spirits; I even caught him breaking out into a whistle.
Maybe he’s on drugs.
Or maybe he’s just looking forward to going away.
I hope he’s on drugs.
Sunday December 9th
Mrs McNulty whistled to me from across the fence. Reluctantly, I popped my head over. She handed me a piece of paper containing a series of strange patterns and squiggles.
‘Are you feeling OK?’ I asked her.
‘I’ve been reading the runes,’ she said, ‘and it’s not good news for you. No, it’s not good news at all. They spell. . .’ She paused for dramatic effect. ‘. . . DEATH!’
I sighed. ‘Toby Salt has been found now, Mrs McNulty. Alive and well, worst luck. It’s no use trying to pin that one on me.’
She looked at me with something approaching sympathy, then shook her head softly.
‘Poor boy,’ she said. ‘My poor boy.’
She reached into her apron and produced a book of Icelandic Christmas songs and fairy tales.
‘I was going to give you this for Christmas,’ she said. ‘But you should have it now. It will help you sleep.’
Monday December 10th
Papa Crimblecheeks
A traditional Icelandic lullaby translated from Old Norse
Be good, my child, be good,
for Papa Crimblecheeks comes tonight.
Shut tight those snowflake eyes
or he will slit your throat.
The whale pot rocks by the fire
and the wind whistles a tune tonight.
Papa Crimblecheeks is on his way.
Hear the ghosts of children’s cries.
Leave a tooth in the baleen bowl.
Keep it by your bed.
Papa Crimblecheeks will walk on by
for he knows you have been good.
Have you seen little Pétur?
He is hanging in the shed.
For he stole Eyhildur’s doll
and Papa Crimblecheeks found out.
‘Sorry to disturb you again, sir.’ It was Sergeant Tuck.
I was glad of the interruption. I’d been reading the book Mrs McNulty had given me and I wasn’t keen on being alone in the house.
‘I’ve just been wondering how you figured out where Toby Salt was.’
‘Oh, that was simple,’ I lied and showed him the taped-together postcard.
Sergeant Tuck filled me in on some more of the back story: how Django had forgotten his promise of providing the bookshop with handwritten postcards for the launch of This Bridge No Hands Shall Cleave; how he’d returned to the imprisoned Toby Salt and applied some ‘pressure’ to get him to write them.
I smiled at the thought.
‘Presumably, Django was watching him closely,’ I mused, ‘to be sure that he wasn’t able to send a message to the outside world about his incarceration. But then again his writing is so opaque, who can tell what any of it means? I felt, though, that there was something even odder than usual about the poem on my postcard. I’d seen it before in Well Versed. But there was something about it that jarred.’
‘Which was?’
‘For a while I wasn’t quite sure. But then, when I chanced upon the original version again, I noticed there were differences between that poem and the one on the postcard. Gutter press had been changed to letterpress. Jingle to jangle, like Django. Thigh to Hip. Daily agonies to shooting pains. Once I’d spotted the inconsistencies, it didn’t take a genius to see where all the clues were pointing.’
‘That cryptic crossword you’re always doing must have helped.’
‘Possibly. But also, a few days before, I’d been listening to some jazz and I’d had a sudden revelation. Improvisation and freedom of expression only works if the musicians have a common base from which to start.’
Sergeant Tuck was impressed, much as I’d hoped he would be because I’d just made that bit up.
‘One more thing, sir. Those eleven missing days in your diary: what were you up to?’
‘Ah. Some things are best kept secret,’ I replied enigmatically.
He didn’t pursue this further. I saw him eyeing up my anthologies.
‘Feel free to borrow anything you’d like,’ I said.
As he left, he thanked me profusely, from behind the large pile of poetry books he was carrying and expressed his hope that we might meet again one day soon.
Tuesday December 11th
I have been welcomed back into the soft and crinkly fold of Poetry Club. Instrumental in my re-bosoming was Poetry Club’s latest recruit, Sergeant Tuck – or Henry, as he prefers to be known when he’s not on duty. He told them all about how I’d unearthed and untethered Toby Salt. As he narrated my fight sequence with Django, I thought of Douglas and how he’d have embellished the tale with suitable sound effects. I chipped in occasionally with the odd additional detail (again, no one laughed at my ‘heavy-hitting’ line) but I was content to leave the retelling to the good sergeant. After the tale had been told, Chandrima hugged me. Kaylee gave me a fist bump. Liz stroked a sleeve of my cardigan, an action that I discovered to be surprisingly erotic. Mary sat there, seemingly unmoved and impassive, and then cleared her throat. ‘When you’ve all quite finished,’ she said, sternly, ‘we have a poetry evening to put on. Brian . . .’ she paused and I wondered whether she was going to ask me to leave, ‘since we’ve all missed your poems over the last few months, I’d like to suggest that you go first.’ I took some crumpled pieces of paper out of my cardigan pocket and went up to the makeshift stage. I took some crumpled pieces of paper out of my cardigan pocket and went up to the makeshift stage. ‘Here’s a poem about the time I kidnapped Mumford from Mumford and Sons,’ I mumbled in my usual, shambling manner, ‘planted him in a large pot and decorated him like a Christmas tree . . .’ It was just like old times: Mary treated us to a poem about the time her sixth husband nearly choked to death on a five-pence coin hidden in a Christmas pudding; Chandrima enchanted us with a meditation about the uniqueness of each snowflake; Liz accompanied a poem concerning the pulling of an obstinate Christmas cracker with a series of hand gestures that left me feeling rather hot and bothered for a while; and not even Kaylee’s powerful diatribe about an unscrupulous landlord who hires out his barn at an exorbitant price to a young pregnant mother on Christmas Eve was able to dampen the atmosphere. And then, finally, Sergeant Tuck – Henry, I mean – shared with us something he’d written about the revelation of a corpse hidden beneath melting snow. It had promise but afterwards I gave him a few pointers as to how he might make some improvements to it. On parting, Mary reminded the group about our Christmas lunch together next week. Chandrima said that she’d try to get in touch with Toby Salt to see if he would like to join us. I hope he does; it would be good to catch up and hear about what he’s been up to recently. |
marginalised I’ll cold, welcome me |
Wednesday December 12th
On the Shelf
They got straight to the heart of the matter.
‘It’s no fun here any more,’ remarked Bleak House, sadly.
‘He makes me so angry!’ whined The Grapes of Wrath.
‘I’ve never felt so alone,’ said One Hundred Years of Solitude,
for whom reality had long since lost its magic.
‘He couldn’t even remember my name, The Idiot,’
muttered a voice from the Russian literature section.
‘That’s because he avoids you like The Plague,’ said another.
‘C’est vrai!’ came a cry. ‘It is like I don’t exist!’
Two shelves below, an atlas shrugged.
Meditations of Marcus Aurelius thought for a while.
‘But why on earth doesn’t he read us?’ he pondered.
‘Perhaps he doesn’t have time because he spends so much of it
in a bookshop,’ suggested Catch-22 ruefully.
‘He just needs something to sink his teeth into,’ said Dracula.
‘Let’s not give up on him yet.’ It was Brave New World.
‘Who knows what the future may hold?’
After some Persuasion, they agreed to give him one last chance.
‘Be quiet!’ cried Waiting for Godot with Great Expectations.
‘I think that’s him coming now!’
My next deadline is approaching fast. I gritted my teeth and got down to it as best I could, interrupted only by an exchange of messages with Liz: she’s asked me if I’d be interested in joining her book group. After a brief deliberation, I agreed, and then spent the rest of the evening avoiding eye contact with my bookshelves.
Thursday December 13th
A ‘memory’ flashed up on Facebook today: I’d been tagged in a photograph from an old Christmas office party. There were about twenty of my co-workers on the dancefloor, all linked together to form some kind of human centipede – or ‘conga’ as I believe it’s called. They were all laughing and having fun. You could just about make me out in the background, sat by myself, looking glum. I was attempting to flick pistachio nuts into a jar.
It is funny to think that was only two years ago. It feels so good to have moved on from those days.
Friday December 14th
I’ve drawn Mary in our Poetry Club Secret Santa. I had a browse in the Age Concern shop and was able to pick up a second-hand Wham! CD for her at the bargain price of fifty pence. I have no idea whether she likes them or not but it’s the thought that counts.
After that, I went to the bookshop to pick up a copy of Liz’s book group choice for the month: Grief is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter. It seemed miserly to leave the shop merely with one book and so I also bought an illustrated edition of A Christmas Carol, a collection of English Ghost Stories, The Oxford Book of Christmas Poems and a biography of James Stewart.
Saturday December 15th
Dylan texted this morning to say that something had come up and he couldn’t make it over again today. He wouldn’t tell me what the matter was. I wondered whether Sophie might be behind his no-show and considered phoning her but couldn’t face another argument.
I lugged my misery around with me for the rest of the day. I lugged a Christmas tree around with me, too, carrying it for three miles before I eventually got it home. Exhausted, I collapsed on the sofa and ate a whole packet of custard creams, then fell into a strange, disturbing dream.
I was on a dancefloor in a nightclub. The music was awful. Balloons fell down from a cage on the ceiling, next to a shining, spinning disco ball. There was a man dancing next to me with bad 1980s hair. He boogied over to me with a balloon between his knees, which he then proceeded to lodge between my own knees, after a series of rather alarming cajolings. I inspected the man more closely and saw that he bore a remarkable resemblance to Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Samuel Taylor Coleridge sporting a mullet.
I looked at my fellow dancers. I was surprised to see William Wordsworth there – and Percy Bysshe Shelley. And Byron. And Keats. They, too, wore their hair short at the front and long at the back. Suddenly, in unison, they clapped their hands and began to act out a sequence of bizarre actions in time with the music: pretending to sleep, waving their hands, hitching a ride, sneezing, going for a walk . . .
I woke up suddenly, my dream interrupted by a knock on the door. It was the Man at Number 29.
‘I’m just out delivering Christmas cards,’ he said, holding one out in front of me.
‘Oh. Thank you!’ I said. ‘That’s very kind of you.’
‘Not at all. It was the least I could do. Thanks for all your help with that spot of bother earlier in the year.’
I looked at the envelope. It was addressed to ‘The Man at Number 25’.
‘Well, thanks to you for all your help, too. I’m Brian,’ I said. ‘Brian Bilston.’
‘Good to meet you, Brian,’ he replied. ‘My name’s Colin. Colin Porlock.’
We shook hands. After he’d gone, I began to write a poem about my peculiar reverie:
In Agadoo did Kubla Khan
Push pineapple, shake the tree
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran,
Wave your hands, superman!
But that was as far as I could get. It was incomplete, a fragment. I went to bed, unsettled still by my dream and the sounds of its sinister, haunting soundtrack ringing in my ears.
Sunday December 16th
Dave, Martin and Marvin have headed off for the Christmas holidays. Last night’s party had clearly taken its toll. They managed a mumbled happy Christmas to me before staggering over to their car and heading off down the street with a jaded parp of the VW Beetle’s horn.
I wasn’t on good form either, having been unable to sleep through the merrymaking. In the end, I gave up trying and climbed out of bed to go and read some of Grief is the Thing with Feathers on the sofa. I looked at the clock: it was 4.30am and I was up with the crows.
Monday December 17th
The shops are full of worried men. I was in one of them on the hunt for a Christmas jumper to wear at tomorrow’s Poetry Club lunch. It took me five hours to choose one. I stood in front of the changing room mirror as I tried jumper after jumper, featuring an assortment of knitted elves, reindeer, Christmas trees, mistletoe and snowmen.
I’d hoped it might make me look rather hipsterish, that its wool would hug me with an ironic coolness. But I just looked like an idiot in a tank top with a big Christmas pudding on it.
Tuesday December 18th
I was singing to myself as I walked to the Poetry Club Christmas lunch:
‘Last Christmas, I ate a la carte
But the very next day I was ill straightaway.
This year, to save me from tears,
I’m choosing from one of the specials.’
It was the same restaurant that I’d been to last year for my work Christmas lunch. That occasion had not ended well. I made a note to choose my food with caution.
‘Once bitten, vegan pie,
Broke my resistance, the microbes multiplied.
Tell me, pastry, do you recognise me?
It’s been a year since I have looked at a cranberry.’
I had the Wham! CD with me. I wondered what Secret Santa had brought me. Not another scented candle, I hoped.
‘Happy Christmas, I chewed you up and ate you.
Next day by the toilet, I quickly learnt to hate you.
Yes, I know, what a squalid scene,
And if I ate you now, I know you’d floor me again.’
I was the last to arrive and I had no choice but to sit next to Toby Salt, who’d decided to grace us with his presence. He had a ‘serendipitous window’ in his schedule in between all the interviews and book signings. Mercifully, Liz was sat the other side. She pulled my cracker and I blushed again, thinking of her poem.
I ordered the stuffed peppers. The Secret Santa gifts were handed out by Mary. Mine was book-shaped. I unwrapped it. This Bridge No Hands Shall Cleave.
‘I wonder who could have bought you that?’ said Toby Salt, chuckling.
I didn’t admit to him that I already owned a copy.
‘Someone who buys their Christmas presents from charity shops, I suppose,’ I responded as my food arrived.
‘It’ll be interesting to see how you get on with it,’ he said. ‘I know my poetry can be a little too clever for you.’
Luckily for him I had no pistachio shells on hand or he’d have been peppered. I wondered if I should shell him with my peppers instead.
‘Not so clever that he couldn’t figure out your postcard,’ interrupted Liz. ‘If it wasn’t for Brian, you’d still be sat chained to a letterpress in your underpants.’
I could have hugged her.
Toby Salt glowered. ‘I wasn’t just in my underpants.’
‘That’s not what Brian said.’
‘Well, we all know how jealous Brian has been of my success,’ he said, reaching for the bread sauce. ‘He only resents my book because he knows he’ll never have one of his own.’
But that’s where Toby Salt was wrong.
Wednesday December 19th
Eleven Days
In the beginning, there was emptiness and then He said, ‘Let there be white,’ and there was white.
On the second day, He said, ‘Let there be words to dance upon the white,’ but there was still just white.
On the third day, there was white and not much else.
On the fourth day, it was all about the white.
5th = white.
On the sixth day, there were words but they failed to dance and they were cast asunder and white prevailed once more.
On the seventh day, the words returned and danced upon the white, albeit in a rather tentative fashion as if they were attending their first school disco.
On the eighth day, He said, ‘Let there be a plot to make sense of the white and the dancing of the words,’ and there was a plot, if only a loose one.
On the ninth day, He said, ‘Let there be characters, strongly drawn, to drive the plot, which though it may be a loose one, is all I have to make sense of the white and the dancing of the words,’ and there were characters but not of the strongly drawn type.
On the tenth day, He said, ‘Let there be love, whatever that means,’ and there was love, whatever that meant.
And on the eleventh day, He rested.
Dear Diary,
Without you, I don’t know how I would have made it through this year. You have been my friend, my confidant, my constant companion. There have been days in which I may not have risen from my bed at all, had it not been for you and the joy of filling up your pages.
But I have a confession to make. And an apology. I am sorry that I tore some of your pages out and burnt them. I was not in my right mind. I had been ashamed of what I had done and wanted to leave no trace of it.
It had all started as a joke. I had never meant it to go so far. We’d just had so much fun reading A Surgeon in her Stocking that I had thought I’d try to write a send-up of it. For Dylan. And that’s how A Poet Up Her Chimney started. But, a few chapters in, I wondered whether there might be money to be made out of this. I was broke. And desperate. It didn’t take very long to write. It took me longer to come up with a nom de plume; Brian Bilston was never going to cut it as a writer of romance fiction. Delores Wildflower, on the other hand, had every chance – and she took it. Delores sent it off to a publisher of romantic fiction, who loved it so much that they offered her an advance for a whole series of titles, provisionally entitled Poets in Love.
It would seem that I’ve made it as a writer, after all.
But none of this could ever justify my rough behaviour towards you, my dear, beloved diary. I hope you can find it in your papery heart to forgive me.
Yours sincerely,
Brian
P.S. I would appreciate it if you could keep this information to yourself.
Thursday December 20th
I squeezed Grief is the Thing with Feathers into my coat pocket and headed off to book group. Liz was already there when I arrived and she introduced me to the rest of the group. They seemed like a good bunch and smiled sympathetically when I confessed that I hadn’t quite had time to finish reading it.
‘Never mind,’ one said. ‘Life gets so hectic at this time of year, doesn’t it? I’m sure you’d have finished it in any other month.’ I nodded vigorously and bought some wasabi peas for the table.
‘It was good to see you tonight,’ said Liz, as we exchanged our goodbyes outside the pub. ‘I wasn’t sure whether you’d turn up.’
‘Oh, you can always rely on me,’ I said. ‘Happy Christmas.’
She raised an eyebrow, reached across and hugged me before we parted; she, striding off towards her bus stop and I, in search of mine.
Friday December 21st
Traits of the Artist as a Young Anagrammatist
When life gives me lemons, I see melons;
it sometimes makes me solemn, too.
Because when a word bores me sober,
and starts to wane, I shake it up anew.
I’m alerted to how words are related,
how, when altered, they might enmesh;
shuffling letters like a pack of cards,
then dealing them out, aligned afresh.
Faced with a poser and on the ropes,
I’ll make a poem from its prose.
An education to be cautioned against?
It’s character building, I suppose.
A gory orgy of words put to the sword:
these are traits the artist understands,
largely, and in whose gallery
the Ars Magna of anagrams hangs.
I filled in the gaps of the final clue at 31 down, A_T_T_M_Y, and then looked it up in the dictionary:
AUTOTOMY (noun): the casting off of a part of the body by an animal under threat. For example, the tail of a lizard.
It was done! I held it out in front of me to survey my accomplishment and began to wave it around like a chequered flag of victory. I couldn’t wait to show Dylan tomorrow. My thoughts turned to how he might help me with the next one. I would teach him the Grand Art of Cryptic Crossword Solving. The two of us sat together, dictionary at our side, decrypting clues, unscrambling anagrams, finding all the answers. We’d finish it in half the time!
And then, suddenly, a vision of the future without him in it came out of nowhere and hit me. I reeled backwards, doubled up with loneliness. I sat back down on the sofa and breathed deeply.
I would give my right arm for him to stay.
Saturday December 22nd
The bell rang and somewhere an angel was getting his wings.
Dylan and his mother were at the door. Sophie took one look at me then burst into tears. I often have that effect on people. I invited her inside with Dylan and made some tea. I arranged some custard creams on a plate. It was one of those occasions.
The police had paid a visit, Sophie said.
I asked her whether one of them possessed the most magnificent beard. She glared at me and I decided to keep quiet from that point on and let her do all the talking.
They’d been making some enquiries into Stuart’s charitable works, they told her. Stuart was out at the time, hosting a Zumbathon in aid of maimed Bulgarian circus workers.
The police had received an anonymous phone call. The mystery caller claimed that the funds Stuart had been raising from his good deeds had not quite been making it into the bank accounts of his supported charities. What’s more, many of these supported charities didn’t seem to have any charitable status at all. The following day, in the post, the police received copies of all Stuart’s bank statements for the last three years on which a number of rather sizeable deposits had been circled in red with an exclamation mark written next to each one. Also enclosed was a recent leaflet featuring Stuart and advertising a ‘Motivatathon’; the list of supposed charities featured on it were also accompanied by exclamation marks.
I noticed the faint traces of a smile on Dylan’s lips as Sophie mentioned this.
Stuart didn’t return home on the day of the Zumbathon. Nor the next. Sophie sent a series of increasingly frantic and angry messages but heard nothing back, receiving no news of him at all until the police called her to say that they’d intercepted him at Heathrow, attempting to board a flight to Spain. He was wearing one of his motivational T-shirts; it was the one with the phrase ‘SOME PEOPLE ARE SO POOR, ALL THEY HAVE IS MONEY!’
I tried very hard to keep my face looking concerned and sympathetic as she told me all this. When she got to the part about never wanting to see Stuart again, I suppressed my laughter with a fit of coughing – and then as she told me that all thoughts of moving were over, I sat on my right hand to stop it from punching the air.
I offered Sophie more tea but she said she had to be getting on. There were a lot of things still to sort out. Out of respect for the gravity of the situation, Dylan and I waited for Sophie to drive off before we began a prolonged bout of whooping and fist-bumping.
I ordered in pizza and we turned the TV on, just in time to catch the end of It’s a Wonderful Life.
Sunday December 23rd
We See Gigs
We see gigs of ambient ska,
Acid jazz and indie guitar.
Blues and Britpop, soul and hip hop
Following yonder stars.
O stars of reggae, stars of punk,
Stars of Belgian neurofunk,
Sublime evenings, sometimes leaving,
Trying not to get too drunk.
Avant-garde industrial rock,
Honky Tonk and bubblegum pop.
Cuban mambo, duelling banjos,
Seventeenth-century baroque.
O stars of country, stars of trance
Stars of new age folk from France,
Find some new kicks, dump the Netflix,
Enter into life’s great dance.
In December, we have to take a flexible approach to 27th Club. There are not many gigs to be found on the usual date so we just have to take whatever we can find.
Darren questioned whether a carol service actually counts as a gig but I pointed out to him that it bore all the hallmarks. There was a flamboyant frontman (the vicar), a rowdy crowd (the congregation), alcohol (mulled wine) and a band (choir) who played (sang) all their greatest hits (including ‘Silent Night’, ‘Hark the Herald Angels Sing’, and ‘We Three Kings’) as well as some of more obscure songs (‘A Virgin Unspotted’ and ‘Whence Is That Lovely Fragrance Wafting?’) to keep things real for the true aficionados. Like all annoying gig-goers, we sang along in the choruses.
Darren enjoyed it so much that when it was over, he got a book from the merch stand on the back pew. He says he may come back again next Sunday.
Monday December 24th
Tense Christmas
I The Ghost of Christmas Past Perfect Progressive
Midnight. Awoken by a ghost.
I thought I must be raving.
But then he went and showed me
how badly I’d been behaving.
II The Ghost of Christmas Present Perfect Simple
The next night, a ghost again:
with a much more recent scene.
More evidence piling up
of how unpleasant I have been.
III The Ghost of Christmas Future Unreal Conditional
A final late night ghostly vision.
But this one lacked the pain and strife.
I saw if I could be a kinder man,
I would create a better life.
I went to Mrs McNulty’s house and watched The Muppet Christmas Carol with her. She tells me it’s her favourite Christmas film, along with Gremlins and The Shining. Mrs McNulty may be as crazy as a wheel of cranberry-infused Wensleydale but she’s not so bad, really.
Christmas can be a difficult time for some, particularly the lonely. I stayed with her to 11pm until she asked me whether I was ever going to leave, hadn’t I got a home to be going to?
Tuesday December 25th
The big advantage of spending Christmas Day on your own is that you remain entirely in control of your own agenda: what time to open presents, what to watch on television, what food to eat, when to fall asleep on the sofa. The downside is the relentless gut-wrenching loneliness of it all.
Perhaps it was just as well, then, that Sophie had invited me over to lunch. She’d rather I weren’t there, she told me, but Dylan had asked and I could at least help them get through some of the food and drink that she now seemed to have over-catered for. I headed over with my microwaveable nut roast.
For one day, at least, we were a proper family again. We exchanged presents; I had a new diary notebook from Sophie and Gil Scott-Heron’s Pieces of a Man on vinyl from Dylan. In return, I gave Sophie a Desk Calendar containing 365 Inspirational Quotes and Dylan got a copy of Meat is Murder by The Smiths. Then we ate too much food, argued about what to watch on the television and collapsed on the sofa, happy not to be going anywhere.
Wednesday December 26th
Job Interview with a Cat
Tell me, what is it about this position that interests you?
The warmth, perhaps? The security?
Or the power you must feel by rendering me useless?
Feel free to expand if you wish.
I see you have had experience of similar positions.
Can you talk about a time when you got someone’s tongue?
Or were set amongst the pigeons?
Have you ever found yourself in a bag only then to be let out of it?
Tell me, how would you feel if you had to walk on hot bricks?
What about a tin roof of similar temperature?
With reference to any of your past lives,
has curiosity ever killed you?
Finally, where do you see yourself in five years?
In the same position? Or higher up to catch the sunlight?
Or would you like to be where I am now?
Oh, it appears you already are.
Being sociable is exhausting, I find, and it was a relief to find some space for a bit of me time. Or to be more accurate, some cat and me time. She took up her usual position on my lap and I set to work on the new Guardian Bumper Christmas Cryptic Crossword.
It was a promising start: six hours in and I was already two answers to the good. 12 down, symbiosis, which Chambers defines as ‘a mutually beneficial relationship’, and 18 across, catatonic. The latter was an anagram. The clue was ‘Action cat? Not this one.’
Thursday December 27th
I remained on the sofa through the night, so deep was the cat’s sleep. She looked so peaceful that I had no mind to disturb her. The morning hours passed in that way, too, but by mid-afternoon I was in need of food and thought it was about time I moved.
It was as I picked her up that I noticed her stiffness – and that what I had mistaken for a lightness of breath was, in fact, an absence of breath. I placed her gently back on the sofa and stroked her, as the winter sun shone softly down upon her fur.
For she loves the sun and the sun loves her.
Mrs McNulty joined me in the garden as I was digging the hole. From beneath her apron, she handed me a hand-sawn wooden box, shaped like a miniature coffin. It was decorated with a series of elaborately carved runic symbols. The inside was lined with red velvet.
She said she had many more boxes back in her house if this one wasn’t right. But it was perfect.
I laid the cat down inside it. She looked content. She was dreaming of her next life.
The service was a short one. I read a poem:
‘I should like to sleep like a cat,
With all the fur of time . . .’
while Mrs McNulty recited a variety of incantations of her own devising.
‘It’s over now,’ she said.
I shovelled the soil on top and walked back into a house full of emptiness.
Friday December 28th
I Folded Up My Grief
I folded up my Grief,
Laid it gently in a box.
Tied it up with ribbon.
Fixed a sturdy-strong padlock.
In the garden, it was buried
In a hole dug ten feet deep.
But when I went inside,
Grief was still with me.
I confronted it and said –
Grief, I put you in the ground!
Why then are you here with me?
Why follow me around?
Grief said – But I cannot be buried!
For of you I am a part.
You must carry me inside you,
I am chained around your heart.
Coming up for air, I decided to cycle into town to pick up next month’s book group selection: The Third Policeman by Flann O’Brien. But when I went outside I found my bicycle had been stolen.
I took the bus instead, bought the book, then came straight back.
Saturday December 29th
Tomas rang and he dragged me out for a walk. He could tell something was up and I told him about the cat. I suspected something Wittgensteinian was coming my way and I wasn’t disappointed.
‘You know, Brian,’ he said, ‘Wittgenstein once said that “death is not an event in life. We do not live to experience death.” ’
‘But I have experienced death. Just not my own yet. And I’m not sure I care for it very much.’
‘I don’t think many of us do,’ he reflected, ‘but death is not so easily avoided. Of course, Ludwig had a theory about that, too.’
‘I bet he did.’
‘He said that if we equate eternity with timelessness, then “eternal life belongs to those who live in the present.” ’
I thought about this as we walked on. And it occurred to me that, if Wittgenstein was right, the keeping of a diary was itself a form of eternity. For what was a diary if not a record of somebody’s life as seen in the present; a journal of daily fragments of the here and now; a collection of tiny pieces of not being dead?
I began to share these ideas with Tomas but he started to shake his head. ‘Well, that’s not quite what Wittgenstein means—’
But I stopped him there. A poet should be allowed a little bit of poetic licence.
When I got back home, I called Liz.
Sunday December 30th
In the Betjeman Arms, we were on our third Guinness and second bowl of pistachios.
‘This is my favourite time of the year,’ said Liz, happily. ‘I love the lull of these in-between days.’
‘Same here,’ I said, taking another gulp. ‘Although yesterday I got so old, I felt like I could die.’
‘Did it make you want to cry?’ she asked, in mock earnestness.
I smiled. As ever, Liz had caught the reference.
‘I’ll tell you something that does make me want to cry. . .’ I continued, for here was a topic to which I could warm, ‘. . . all these retrospectives on the year just gone. Whenever I switch on the TV or open the newspaper: Sports Personality of the Year, Wedding of the Year, Pipe Smoker of the Year . . .’
‘Poetry Book of the Year,’ said Liz. We shared an enjoyable grimace together.
‘Can I ask you something?’ I said, apprehensively. ‘Why did you go and see Toby Salt in Saffron Walden?’
‘Oh, I didn’t go there to see him,’ she’d said. ‘That was just a coincidence. I went to see Chandrima. Her publisher had invited her to read some poems to promote her new book.’
‘Chandrima has a book coming out?’ I said, genuinely delighted for her. ‘I had no idea. Nor that she was there that weekend.’
‘Well, you know Chandrima. She’s a quiet one. Her book’s coming out in the spring, I think. Anyway,’ she said, ‘you’ve not told me what it is about these retrospectives that upsets you so much.’
‘I think it’s all that looking backwards,’ I answered, after a few moments’ reflection. ‘I’m not sure it actually achieves anything.’
Liz looked at me curiously.
‘That doesn’t sound like a very Brian thing to say,’ she said.
‘You’re probably right. But maybe I’ve changed,’ I mused. ‘Maybe I’ve got a bit better at being me. Or perhaps nostalgia just isn’t as much fun as it used to be.’
Afterwards, I walked Liz to her bus stop. Her bus was already approaching as we got there and I could see her nervousness as she turned around to face me.
‘Fancy . . . coming back for a nightcap?’ she asked, hesitantly.
It was an interesting question, not least because it caused me to ponder on the etymology of the word ‘nightcap’ and whether it was coined after the garment of the same name, given that, like alcohol, it had the ability to provide warmth and comfort through the night-time hours, although recent research suggests that alcohol may actually have a detrimental effect upon one’s quality of sleep, this being dependent, of course, like so many other health-related things, on the quantity of alcohol consumed. In other words, there is much truth to be wrung out of the phrase ‘all things in moderation’ . . .
I don’t think Liz could have heard the last bit properly, though, as by that time she had already boarded the bus and was sitting upstairs, staring out bleakly into the cold, winter night, as it pulled away.
So distracted was her gaze that, at first, she didn’t notice the man who was busy breaking the human land-speed record by outrunning the bus between its stops, nor hear the wheezes from his chest as he climbed up the staircase to sit down beside her.
Monday December 31st
What Goes Around, Comes Around
The world is spinning on its axis;
it never lessens or relaxes.
Through space and time, the planet hurtles
and every day it turns full circle.
It takes one whole year to round the sun.
Yet the revolution’s just begun.
And there a simple truth is found:
what goes around, comes around.
Don’t ask me why. Don’t ask me how.
You’d be dizzy if you got off now.
It was only when I got back that I remembered I’d yet to play my Christmas present from Dylan. I took the record out of the bag and inspected it closely. Gil Scott-Heron looked understandably fed up at having to wait so long.
I unpeeled the cellophane and tilted the album to one side. The record slid into my hand. I took it over to the record player and placed it on the turntable. I lifted up the arm and, as the disc began to move, carefully brought the needle down upon its surface, and the revolution began.