Found ourselves with the forever few,
battling rainwater and tumbling truth
while latitude and longitude;
geographic limitations restrict our progress.
Pitched our odds against the fear
of flight, and something happened here –
such violent lines cannot be measured,
or buried, followed, farmed, uncovered.
(Written in Leicestershire, August 2014)
All poems are copyright of the originating author. Permission must be obtained before using or performing others’ poems.
Day four.
I have just woken up, freezing – checked my watch and it is just past 3:45am. The window is shut, blind is down. Outside is pitch black. I tried to turn on the light, but the electricity doesn’t seem to be working. Tested phone – no dial tone. So I am shivering in my coat writing this by the light of my mobile phone. In my impulsive rush to leave England, I stupidly didn’t pack for cold weather. I have been thinking about going and meeting Saran if he is still in his shop, and leaving this notebook with him. It seems like the most appropriate thing to do, leaving my short diary in a bookshop. Will have to brave this cold though.
*****
I must have fallen asleep again for a few hours, woke up to some shouting outside. I looked out of the window, now a very dark greyscale, and I couldn’t see anyone. Still bitterly cold – colder than any winter back home. I’ve just wrapped up with several layers of clothes and been downstairs to the reception to find out if there is any breakfast, but there doesn’t seem to be a soul around, let alone anything to eat. The office door behind the reception desk was open, but there was nobody in the room, just an empty chair sat at a tidy desk, and a computer with a blank screen. Aside from the shouting earlier, everything is silent this morning. I opened the door to look outside – even colder – and the street was empty apart from a few figures moving about outside other darkened buildings across the road. I saw ice on the motionless cars. The creak of the hotel door sounded like it was echoing for miles.
It’s strange to think about the way things have gone over the last few years. This so-called Shutdown could have happened on any day of any year since I lost Louise. I’ve worked hard, been promoted a few times, had a few friends I could go to dinner with, but mainly been alone, and missed her; talking to her, just knowing she was there. The one that got away and is never coming back. If only I’d taken her where she wanted to go when I had the chance.
I’m not scared, I’m not even sad. I’m calm, and for the first time in a long time I’ve felt a sense of purpose, and now accomplishment, or something. This was the right thing to do. I’m going to use the rest of my t-shirts to make a scarf and protect my head from the cold, and go to the bookshop to say goodbye and leave my book. My only regret is that I didn’t start writing sooner – I suppose I had nothing to write about, but I believe it’s kept me going, keeping my thoughts in order as I put them down on paper. Writing was always something someone else did. Like dancing, or playing the guitar.
If anyone ever finds this on the shelves in Saran’s shop and picks it up, know that the end was dignified and quiet, not chaotic and confused. It’s been a good life.
****
Day three.
Time seems to mean less now, the light outside just changing from black at night to the eerie grey of the daytime hours. The world seems to be grinding to a halt. I have not seen any panic, or looting, or the chaotic scenes you see in apocalyptic films. If anything, life is slowing, calming down. By my count we are two days from Shutdown, if that scientist was right.
Yesterday I walked down Connaught Place and found an open book shop full of English-language books on aviation and Sikhism. I struck up a conversation with the man behind the counter, who introduced himself as Saran. I told him where I’d come from, and he smiled – “You have come a long way to witness the end of the world”. I spent an hour or so in the shop talking to Saran, about his two daughters, my family, Louise, God. We talked about it without talking about it. He explained he was not a religious man, but believed this might be the only way for the world to find peace. He seemed more like a philosopher than a shopkeeper, with a lot of wisdom and thoughts to share. I asked him how long he was planning to keep the shop open – many of the shops here are closed or bricked up – and he told me he would come to work as long as he had customers to serve. He told me the hospitals are getting full, but the doctors are starting to give up. What’s the point in fixing someone when we’re all about to be beyond fixing? I told him I will try to call in again tomorrow.
The streets here are still quite full, but quieter than they were yesterday. The excited chatter and friendly shouting we drove through yesterday has changed to a murmur. The urgency to get to work, meet deadlines, buy and sell and hit targets has gone. I can picture the Doyle’s office on Enderby Road, empty and silent, perhaps a phone ringing occasionally but all my colleagues elsewhere waiting for the final BBC broadcast and the Shutdown of the lives and homes they’ve built up.
India – Delhi – is not what I imagined it would be. I don’t know what it was like before this, but the shops and huge office buildings could be any other city in full swing. Parts of this place could be London. Perhaps I was expecting something smaller, different smells, more crowded. I suppose when the days were bright and the sun was burning, this was the India I always promised we could visit.
****
I have taken off my watch and left it in a drawer in my room. I kept looking down at my wrist, counting down hours. If those news reports are to be believed, tomorrow is the day. It’s certainly getting colder, and darker.
This small hotel is now near enough empty. The only other guests I’ve seen are a young French couple staying a few doors down – I have spoken to the woman a couple of times passing in the reception. The man never seems to say anything, and his eyes are red as if he has been crying. We made eye contact briefly this morning and he quickly looked down at the floor.
****
Day two.
Woke up from a deep sleep as we started descending into New Delhi. It looks like night outside, but the clocks on our screens read 07:34. I have set my watch – India is waking up. Am now sitting writing as we wait for the attendants to let us off the plane. Louise always wanted to come here, I never gave her the chance. I was never bothered, but now it’s the only thing that matters. They’re opening the doors .
*****
Mind spinning. Have just got to my hotel room on the first floor, after taking a taxi from the airport through the city centre. There is a cold light cast over everything, as if it’s the early hours, the crack of dawn, but with a hustle and bustle that could rival London at rush hour; busy-looking people moving quickly from building to building. I saw a few shop fronts being boarded up, fortified. Protection against looters, I suppose. The driver refused to mention our impending doom, instead assuring me that it was “business as usual here in Delhi, Sir.”
Jet-lagged, beyond tired. At the hotel reception, the young man informed me that the rooms are “not being cleaned, for the time being. Usual rates apply, but all meals are complimentary. I would be happy to recommend – “ I cut him off, just asking for my room key. We used to explore England, the best holiday we could afford. We’d spend our time wandering the streets of new cities and places we hadn’t been before. I lost my inspiration – my itchy feet – after the accident, but this is for her. The only way I can do this properly is to go it alone and roam New Delhi.
The television network here has stopped transmitting, so I’m left with word of mouth for any news or progress. I don’t know what I’m expecting to hear – “it was all a joke” or “the damage isn’t as bad as we thought”? I just feel like I should stay up to date. My mobile phone was dropping in and out of signal in Dubai, and here it has lost it all together. The landline phone next to the redundant widescreen television does have a dial tone, so some communication systems are holding up. I keep thinking about trying to call home, but I can’t think of anybody I’d want to talk to enough to actually pick up the phone and do it. Not that I have any idea what I’d say.
I have pulled down the blind in my small room. She would have hated it, orange and green thick stripes. She was always complaining about the lack of co-ordination in places we’d stay or at friends’ houses. Ours was like a show home while she was around, shiny surfaces and colour themes in every room. She’d hate this blind, but I just needed to keep out the strange, cold light and rely on the artificial glow from the lamps in here.
****
Day one.
They said we’ve got four days, and I just started walking, moving, travelling finally, like I’d been glued to the spot all these years and suddenly my feet were free. So I’m making another change – putting pen to paper for the first time since I left school and went to work for my old man. See, I thought I’d better write things down, keep a diary, a record, just in case anyone survives and wants to know how it all went down. What really happened.
I work – worked – at Doyle’s of Leicester, managing a handful of sales guys out on the road pushing our brand of cheap and cheerful plumbing supplies. ‘Gets the bodge done’ – that’s our little inside joke. Worked from an office, enjoyed it, paid the bills, ever since I moved up from Romford five years ago. I suppose it doesn’t matter.
I’m now sat in Dubai International departures waiting for my connection. Half wondering how I managed to convince myself to get on the train to Birmingham and spend the last of my savings boarding the last flight to New Delhi; half wondering why I never convinced myself to do it before. Doing my best not to stare at the jumble of different races and cultures making their way across the airport. And we’re all in the same boat – everyone knows it’s nearly over. Doesn’t matter where you come from, the news in every language says our time is nearly up.
Flight has been called – will write in more detail when on the plane.
****
Plane is nearly empty – a very strange feeling, just myself, a young family of four and a man in his sixties sitting towards the back. Flight attendants said we can sit wherever we like as long as we’re wearing seatbelts. A few hours ago, my plane from Birmingham was packed full, mainly with last-minute passengers that must have dispersed in Dubai or decided their onward trip wasn’t worth the trouble.
I made some notes about the course of events, according to some scientist on the news on one of the TV screens at the train station (not sure what this all means):
N. KOREA LEADERS THREATEN NUCLEAR STRIKE ON U.S.A. OR CHINA
N. KOREA LAUNCH BM25 NUCLEAR STRIKE ON U.S.A. & CHINA
U.S.A. WEST COAST IN STATE OF EMERGENCY
EASTERN CHINESE PROVENCES IN STATE OF EMERGENCY
U.S.A. THREATENS TO RETALLIATE
CHINA RETALLIATES
N. & S. KOREA IN STATE OF EMERGENCY
N. KOREA ALL COMMS DOWN
S. KOREA ALL COMMS DOWN
NATIONS ACROSS WORLD RECORD DAYTIME DARKNESS
TEMPERATURE RECORDED FALLING RAPIDLY AT KEY METEOROLOGICAL SITES
‘NUCLEAR WINTER’ EFFECT SUGGESTED BY LEADING SCIENTISTS IN FIELD – TEMPORARY BUT MAY LAST FOR SEVERAL WEEKS
NUCLEAR WINTER CONFIRMED – 4-5 DAYS UNTIL ‘SHUTDOWN’
So it’s finally happening, days before Christmas, and we’ve brought it upon ourselves. After a power struggle between what newsreaders have been describing as the ‘economic centres’ of the U.S.A. and China, in which North Korea was shown to be a significantly minor state with little or no effect on either country, North Korea’s leaders threatened a nuclear test, then a nuclear attack. The notes I made read like a story – an action movie where the North Koreans must be stopped. But it is really happening, and has all happened so quickly.
I woke up in Leicester yesterday morning, started making my toast like any other day, turned on the television and forgot about breakfast altogether. While we’d been sleeping on our safe little island, the rest of the world had started launching rockets towards one another and we were heading towards the end of human civilisation. And they can’t even call it what it is on Sky News and the BBC – all this talk of ‘Shutdown’ – it’s like they’re in denial. I haven’t even had time to be terrified.
The last plane was noisy, passengers panicking and a general scene of chaos. This is the complete opposite – calm, serene. Like we’re the ones who have accepted our fate. We’re on the last flight that will ever fly from Dubai to New Delhi, and the pilot isn’t even talking to us.
****
WITNESS STATEMENTS
Living amidst muses and crude groups of poets
sat waiting for life to happen
or halfway through the Great Adventure.
Don’t ask me what I’m writing in this bluey haze,
getting beaten down by the vulgar vocabulary of the modern and untamed.
Tightrope walker suspended between trees and speaking for all of us
without moving his tongue.
Time in minutes and days suspended between colonial street and bright, blood orange sun.
Sleeping in a light sweat behind a mesh for mosquitos
and waking early to meet white-feathered scavenging birds
on a terrace or balcony, on someone else’s terms.
Lost in another long deep coffee and nervous calm,
knowing nothing good ever stays ripe for long enough,
we walked from the coast to the city in a day
between boutiques, cafés and real real bookshops
staffed by families who really know words.
The ocean beats relentlessly beneath low-hovering police helicopter looking for someone and
the ocean is carrying carefree surfers or handkerchief-white sailboats and
the ocean washed us all up here once and can take us away in a matter of seconds.
Bolaño pushes the pen back into my hand while
they sit talking about Tommy who went to fly planes in Arizona
and told me he was really living.
Can’t stop once I’ve started this engine –
but make no mistake,
the romance of Europe is not here
and the tide is immeasurably less hopeless.
(Written on Manly Beach, Sydney, December 2013)
All poems are copyright of the originating author. Permission must be obtained before using or performing others’ poems.
THE FIRST ACT
Sometimes, once or twice in the long year
I just close my eyes and give up the act;
let myself drift and think of you
remember how I thought you were everything,
Don’t remember when –
Laid clues for the last of my friends
and sat quietly, waiting for it all to become predictable.
(Written somewhere between Birmingham and Berlin, September 2013)
All poems are copyright of the originating author. Permission must be obtained before using or performing others’ poems.
BUCKLEY’S SHOES
For some reason, he’d kept the brown, card box the shoes had come in when he bought them. I take them out every now and then, turn them over in my hands. They’re years old now but nearly new; he must have only worn them for a few days. Classic, brown leather brogues, with thin brown laces. As if he’d ever had a job in an office with a suit. I was young when it happened, and in all the pictures of him he’s wearing sneakers or standing with bare feet, either grinning or looking solemn – never in between.
The soles are hardly worn but there are still a few grains of sand stuck in the grooves. I breathe in the leather smell and try hard to remember, even just one small thing, but there’s nothing.
Sometimes I pick up his guitar and the thought of putting the shoes on crosses my mind, just for a second.
(Written in Oxford, Autumn 2012)
All writing is copyright of the originating author. Permission must be obtained before using or performing others’ work.
FURNITURE
There’s nothing left in this house but the furniture –
Just a flight of stairs leading up to unmade beds and windows
with curtains drawn, to keep out the light
Just a buy-now-pay-next-year sofa
And the best wooden table and chairs you could afford
No fights, no feelings,
no familiar scent of home in the kitchen –
Just cleaning supplies under the sink,
a cold boiler and a refrigerator full of food
That could never make a meal
There’s nothing left in this house but the furniture,
All too real, too tangible
Leaving no room for meaning or memories
Just walls lined with photographs of strangers you don’t recognise
Shelves full of books from literary greats to buy-before-we-pulp bookshop bargains
And that stern man in an oil painting from the car boot
A dozen or so candles sat on windowsills
And a couple of bedside lamps that stopped lighting
Just that old car in the garage you never fixed up
Surrounded by tins of spare paint, rollers and trays
Just the bags of old clothes you meant to give away, and
Boxes of things you’d surely need some day
Nothing left in this house but the furniture,
Just a collection of things from a previous life
No evidence of living or breathing,
or thinking or feeling –
You can’t take it with you,
But hell, we all try
(Written in 2010)
All poems are copyright of the originating author. Permission must be obtained before using or performing others’ poems.
THE REACH OF OLD ’60
To the end of the pier, we marched
Fifty cents lighter, uncharacteristically triumphant,
Surprised at our own spontaneous move.
Away from the super-sized accents, buffet breakfasts
and awful, chaotic bedspreads –
And out to the middle of the great sea,
A scent of fishermen’s lives and
a distant, flickering memory of neon ‘vacancy’ signs
At the end of the pier, we stood,
Battling away creeping uncertainty and
staring dark in the face –
“Feels like we’re miles out” from the holiday homes, and
have-a-nice-days. To a fresh salt breeze
and just enough warmth for our t-shirts and shorts.
The occasional guiding glare from a boat sending
ripples of light dancing across black waves
From the end of the pier, we looked
Back to the beach where we’d burned
earlier that afternoon.
Above a coastline littered with high-rise hotels
From Hiltons-to-Hyatts, and stubborn, steadfast motels
The sky began to turn, solid grey inevitable clouds
Gathered and hanging furiously, building and brewing
until with Hammer Horror forked lighting, they broke.
(Written in Florida, April 2013)
All poems are copyright of the originating author. Permission must be obtained before using or performing others’ poems.
writtendown 