Black snow...

There was a little snow last night. I opened the front door and there it was, flake on flake, falling on the ground, settling white. Night time snow, sparkling under the street light. The kind of snow that might be gone by morning or might mean waking to a winter wonderland.

These days I think I like the idea of snow more than snow itself. Gone are the days that I’d rush to build a snowman, start a snowball fight, go rushing down the hill on a sledge. I still try, but the cold soon defeats me and my joints aren’t quite what they used to be. I used to build igloos, places where small daughters could play Eskimo. There was a time I’d fearlessly ride the tiniest tin tray down the steepest hill. I’d rough and tumble in a snowball fight, taking a well thrown ball of snow compounded ice in the face, laughing until I fell over.

These days I simply like to watch the snow fall through the window, the roar of a log fire behind me and the twinkling light of candles to make it all nostalgic. What lies. Not white but the blackest black. I pour myself another and then a final glass of wine and then a final final glass. I think, remembering. And then another, and just one more.

The snow was still falling when I stumbled the wooden hill to bed. As I went deep into the covers I remember thinking that I wished the snow would fall and fall, covering the world in a blanket of white, then fall some more, and on and on until every mark that had ever been made were covered in a pristine white. Everything gone; disappeared beneath the suffocating whiteness of a winter’s night and everything made pure.

When I awoke this morning the snow was gone - not my memories though.

Home truths…

After the investigation it seems that Jimmy Saville’s crimes were far worse and even more despicable that first reported. Just how did he get away with it for so long? A lot of very blind eyes must have been turned, strings pulled, favours called in and no doubt, threats made. From national treasure to monster, the worst sex offender this county has ever known, in the turn of a few months.

Of course that isn’t quite true. It was going on for decades and a lot of people knew about Saville; victims, co-abusers, the authorities, friends and colleagues - and surely his family must have known. Yes, judging by the way they ripped out his hideous gravestone memorial under cover of night they must have known something. Not everything perhaps, but something.

What strange things families are? Most have their secrets, things they don’t want anyone else to know - a beater, an abuser, a violent drunk, a liar, a cheat - things that they find too uncomfortable to share. It’s not all simpleton children hidden away in attics and mad twin brothers, shame can be made of much smaller things than that. Shame, that’s what the denial and covering-up is about. Nobody likes to be shamed.

With family secrets everyone in the immediate vicinity usually knows anyway. They know about the deformed monster chained-up in the cellar. They are just too polite, embarrassed, frightened, indifferent, or sick of it to say. It’s just his way … He doesn’t mean any harm… I’m sure that it was a mistake - or worse still… I don’t believe you.

Yes, blood is thicker than water, but mud is thicker than blood and there’s no excuse for doing nothing. In Saville’s case his family did nothing because of the rewards they received. According to his niece, he bribed them into silence. If Saville’s family had outed him for what he was, and not left him to get away with it over and over again, maybe so many innocent people wouldn’t have been hurt.

Turning grey...

There’s a cold snap coming and for a few minutes it looked as if I might have to blog that today. Yes, when in doubt the weather is a reasonably safe subject. Unfortunately when I looked out of the window this morning I was met by a damp greyness much the same as the greyness that has been around for the last few weeks.

Nothing there then… well, nothing other than greyness and nobody really sees greyness after a while.

Chinese artist Liu Bolin isn’t grey. He has himself painted into invisibility with colour, merging like a chameleon into any background he chooses. Look closely and you’ll see him. It’s undoubtedly clever, certainly whimsical and amusing… but art? Now at this point I could blog about what art actually is. But of course that’s far too big a subject to be dealt with in this post. Besides I have a headache. I may come back to it at some other point though – so you have been warned.

Instead Liu made me think about how most of us try to merge into the background. He claims that his art is about how the individual is being absorbed into the fabric of China’s rapidly growing, ever changing backdrop. Okay I get that. I agree that it is hard to keep your individuality. Particularly as these days most people seem to be trying quite hard to become part of their surroundings, whatever those surroundings might be. Celebrity, the media, technology, the fact that there is hardly anywhere on earth where you can’t buy a pizza or grab a coke, probably all contribute to this greying out of our individuality.

For years I put on a suit and tie, cut my hair to an expected length, behaved in an acceptable way, did all the things that I was expected to do within the environment that surrounded me. We all do it. It’s easier to conform than to be different. For most people different is frightening, and fear will often lead to negative reactions. And of course, just how different can most people really be? Particularly as so many things that were once too different to be acceptable now pass without comment.

The world moves on and even those different people become the same eventually. Just look at all the old alternative comedians who are now fast becoming national treasures; the enfant terrible artists who are now the establishment of the art world; the wild rock stars whose outrages are no longer outrageous. Listen to the Sex Pistols; you’ll see what I mean. They sound so ordinary.

Perhaps as the world grows smaller, gets slowly more equal, flattens, and becomes bland and the same, there should be more chance to be different. But in a landscape where we increasingly all live in much the same way, access the same information, are sold and told to want the same things, and expect to live the life that television promises, we become increasingly uniform. Our tendency seems to be to allow ourselves to become sucked into the greyness.

The landscape we live in is changing. As it becomes less wrinkled, dangerous and varied we can step into it and, like a chameleon or Liu Bolin, stand invisible and unnoticed almost anywhere. Maybe, despite the wonderful colour the world has to offer, we are all turning grey.

Finding the marbles…

I keep convincing myself that tonight I’ll sleep better, going to bed tired and warm and then taking myself through all the tricks and techniques I learnt in hypnotherapy class. And, each night, for a while I do. But then the dreams kick in and I can be anywhere; in any situation; with anyone - but usually with people I used to work with back then. Each and every night they appear in my dreams.

But first I need to fall asleep. When the wine doesn’t work I take myself on a journey back through my life. Way, way back. All I have to do is sit in that warm comfortable room within my mind always knowing that I can return to my chair at any time I like. I can return to my chair at any time. Back from the blue door with the gently sloping, dusty corridor stretching into the distance behind it. I can return through the blue door and back into the room at any time that I want or need. Back from the corridor with the doors on each side. Doors slightly offset from left to right, alternating and numbered like a suburban street – 55, 53, 51, 49… 54, 52, 50, 48. The corridor of my life. My corridor. We never forget anything you know. It’s all there on record neatly filed and waiting to be rediscovered - taken out, dusted off, re-experienced. Through that door. Through the door and into that corridor. And I can come back into the room at any time I want or need.

Regression, it holds all the answers to who we are you see; and why we are who we are. I walk slowly down the corridor passing the doors on either side. I’m going down, going back. Memories of every younger me, times past but never gone. Back to the farthest door I can find. 11, 9, 7, 5. I pass through the door to my right. Here I am. Here are we.

I’m crying. It’s my birthday. The cake sits upon the table. Three blue candles in white, plastic fairy-hat holders burn on its icing sugar surface. My mum has iced the cake. I don’t want to blow them out. I want to watch them burn. I’m told to blow them out, make a wish. But I don’t want to. My cousin Gina is here. She’s laughing. I’m crying. I don’t want to blow them out. I see the candles through my tears. I’m being naughty. I’m always naughty. I slap Gina. She cries too. He’s in the room. He’s shouting again. He’s always shouting. Shouting and raging. I’m crying and raging. His shouting makes me cry more. My crying makes him shout more.

He grabs me up. It takes the wind out of me. A limp marionette, he rushes me out and into the hall. I can see the pattern of the deep green carpet and the polished brown-black of the painted cement floor as my head passes above it. I’m struggling, my arms and legs kicking out. I see the white sandals upon my feet as they thrash in the air. He looks at me – cold and harsh. He launches up the stairs. I’m going to my room.

You’re going to your room my boy.

My room - left of the bathroom at the top of the stairs with the big pine chest of drawers - but I don’t make it. As he passes the stairway window, half a dozen steps or so up, he swings me around and my head catches the thick red painted tile of the windowsill. I see the windowsill coming closer, each fleck of paint, the tiny hollows where the red has been repainted and repainted. I hear the bone ‘thunk’ as my head connects just above my eye. I feel the gouge expand as the corner of the windowsill enters the side of my head. The windowsill looks redder.

Numbing blackness.

Light. I’m in a pushchair. He’s stopped shouting. Head down, he pushes. My head feels funny and blood is dripping down my cheek. We are almost at the nursing home. Where are we? It wasn’t until years after that I knew. We go up the steps and in through the door. A dark haired nurse comes towards me. She kneels down and looks at the gouge in my head. She smiles. Her face is very close to mine. She smells nice. She cleans my face with stinging stuff. It hurts.

He fell rushing up the stairs, he says. He tripped and caught his head on the windowsill as he rushed, he says.

I say nothing.

Lucky it wasn’t a little lower. It could have been the eye, she says.

Yes, he says.

I don’t hear the words, but I hear them anyway. We aren’t speaking, but the words are there anyway.

I didn’t trip, I don’t say.

I’m alone. Out of the door, back along the corridor, touching my scar and remembering. I step back into the warm comfortable room and sit in my chair. When I open my eyes I am back in bed. I’m tired. I fall asleep… and dream of the people I used to work with back then.

When in doubt...

Sometimes it’s the small things that make you feel better… as Mae West said: “When in doubt, take a bath.” Well, I’m with her on that - particularly as I was given a couple of packets of Pears soap for Christmas. Pears soap, now that takes me back, makes me feel safe and secure. As a child I’d stand outside the local chemist gazing in at the bars on display in the window. They looked so luxurious, amber bars of deepest orange, translucently fascinating, a solid elixir of forest, coal and magical herbs, like looking at a pirate’s chest of rare and beautiful treasures.

I know, I know, it’s only a bar of soap, but for some reason Pears has always held a special fascination for me. Maybe it’s the fact that it’s the oldest continuously existing brand in the world, first registered in 1789. Or perhaps it’s the nostalgia of those old ads; Pre-Raphaelite boys blowing bubbles; dusky, smiling, south sea maidens; puppies and kittens. No, maybe not.

Then perhaps it’s that wonderfully thick oval shape. The shape of a bar of Pears is just right for the bath. So comfortably concave that it fits your hand as if each bar were bespoke just for you…almost undroppable

Of course it could be that for some strange reason I’ve always thought of it as posh… and the smell is like nothing else… and that colour…

Sometimes I find myself gazing into the amber depths half expecting to find a Jurassic wasp or ant captured deep inside its substance.

As a child I don’t remember washing with Pears - my first Pears memory is another Christmas as a teenager - but strangely that freshly laundered, gently spiced aroma and slight tarmac tang immediately takes me back to childhood every time I breathe it in.

Inhale deeply. You can almost smell it can’t you?

A few years ago they changed the formula. It affected the look and smell substantially and causing such uproar on Facebook that they had to change it back, well almost. Like everything in this modern world Pears isn’t as pure or natural as it used to be. I missed all that so will never know how the ‘new’ Pears smelled or looked. Of course, with the advent of hand soap dispensers and shower gels, bars of soap of any kind are becoming increasingly hard to find. The only soap easily obtainable seems to be that horrible Dove stuff, also made by Unilever. I wonder how long it will be before Pears soap goes the way of Corona pop and the Dodo?

Oh well, time for a bath. I wonder if you can still buy Wright’s coal tar soap.

A fool in Wales...

Yes I had a few days in Wales, well, one long day really, each day blending into the next with a greyness that only the dampness of a new year without cold, crisp air can bring. Foggy minded time. Not quite real. A crossing from one year into the next with hardly any fuss at all.

Of course as some of you might have guessed, through my own optimistic stupidity, Christmas didn’t go quite as we wished for despite all the planning, reassurances and last minute effort. We almost made it. But Boxing Day erupted into the farce that always threatens; probably because I should have known better than to try given the unpredictable predictability of the same old same old. To be honest the repetition of it all, the ever-present underlying storm, makes me tired to the bones - too much Jeremy Kyle I guess.

And of course I should have realised given that the lottery balls are weighted, Deal or No Deal is fixed, back then was a different time so seventies paedophilia doesn’t count, and instructions must always be followed. Just what did I expect? After all, Jean Charles de Menezes deserved to be shot by the police; only a guilty man runs from men wearing jeans and T shirts and pointing guns at him on the tube.

Disappointed? Yes, but mainly with myself. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. But fool me over and over and over again…

Anyway, after that, Wales was a welcome break. Not that we did much. A walk on the beach on that one fine afternoon, some long sleeps, a drink or two with friends; but no dark cloud over us other than the ones in the sky above our heads. No storms. Just directionless drifting. No shouting. Just a quiet time. As midnight came and passed I didn’t make any formal resolutions, but a lot of things flashed through my mind and in some cases stuck. I still don’t have a plan for this year, any more than I had a plan for last year. As I’ve learnt to my cost, planning isn’t all it is cracked up to be.

Not the real world...

A happy New Year.

Yes, I know it’s a week late, but I’ve been away in a dim, dull, and dismally grey Wales. A few days away from things, time to take stock. And part of that taking stock was to think about this blog, my blog, the one that I used to write daily which seemed to fizzle out as the end of last year approached. There are a few reasons for that fizzle. For one thing I was busy at the glass face and there was other writing to do. Then there was the nasty taste left by one of my readers who turned into a troll. And then of course I didn’t have much to say, or the will to say it - a kind of writer’s block.

There were plenty of things I could have written about of course; the long build up to Christmas with the decorating of the house; the little Christmas trees along our path; Patrick Moore’s sad demise; my walrus whiskers; that excellent Aldi ad that rather put John Lewis in its place; another end of the world that didn’t happen; Chester’s move to his new and splendid home with his new owners; that terrible, if not completely unpredictable, killing spree in America; my bloody father. I often found myself thinking: ‘that would make a good blog post’ - only to rush on to the next thing.

So, I’ve taken stock of this blog and I found that, whilst I don’t have to write it, if I don’t part of my purpose has gone. There are some things that I need to write about simply to get them out there and others that I’m sure will come along as they occur. I’m pretty sure that the blog will keep going, but I don’t expect it to be a daily thing. I’ve decided to write it as and when I want to write it and I’m thinking of limiting it to 15 minutes writing time each time I do.

You see, my blog is my world in many ways. Not the real world, but my world - a painted sky, a poured candle, and a lump of calcified coral picked from a beach long ago.

Yes, the real world can wait. Watch this space there may be a few surprises.