Michael Bloor

Michael Bloor

(first published in Moonpark Review, Issue 10, Dec 21^st 2019)

We set off up the mountain on a clear, cold, crisp day, a week before Christmas. We needed to quiet our minds through the rhythmic rustle of the beechwood leaves under our marching feet. So many looming problems: the burnt-out clutch; the Christmas journey to her parents; my parents; her boss…

Our valley has two names: the lower, gentler part is St Mary’s Vale; the upper, wilder part is Cwm Trosnant, which means the valley of the three springs. As Owain — our neighbour — says, the Normans conquered the lowlands, but the Welsh hung onto the hills. Quite soon, we left the beechwood behind us and crossed the invisible border into Cwm Trosnant, with its scattered, bent oaks and scrubby thorns. We kept a look-out for mistletoe, the official excuse for the excursion. The woods and orchards of the Black Mountains of South Wales are favoured places for mistletoe. Every December, the farmers take cartloads of it over the border to the Christmas market in Hereford. It’s spread by thrushes that gorge on the berries, wiping their beaks free of the sticky seeds against the bark of neighbouring trees. The rough, cracked bark of oaks and old apple trees ensure that they are often peppered with mistletoe.

It’s a strange sight in the desolate dead of winter, to come across a grove of oaks, and there among the bare branches is the green, thriving mistletoe. No wonder that many ancient peoples believed the mistletoe to have magical properties, the mysterious green bush with no roots in the earth. Frazer’s ‘The Golden Bough’ retells the story of Baldur, the Sun God, who could only be slain by a mistletoe spear. The Druids, who were masters of this land two thousand years ago, were said to harvest it with a golden sickle.

Near the head of the cwm, we reached the first of the three springs, issuing cold and clear from the roots of a solitary, stunted holly tree. We knew the place well enough and had picnicked there sometimes, dipping our hands in the cool waters. The mountain is dotted with these sudden springs. Over on the east side there is a spring with an ancient church beside it and pilgrims still visit the spring to leave tokens and to pray.

I never heard that the holly tree spring was also deemed holy, but we were witnesses that day to a secret wonder. The bark of the holly, like that of the beech, is a smooth, plain, regular grey: no cracks, irregularities, or rough patches. And yet, couched among the red holly berries were vivid, pearly-white berries of the mistletoe.

I gasped. And then I laughed and pulled out my pocket knife to cut it down. She stayed my hand. ‘No, we could search out every holly tree in Wales and never find another that’s home to the mistletoe. We’re witnesses here today, not thieves.’

She was right. We stood for a moment or two and then turned for home. I cut some mistletoe out of a thorn tree, suffering only minor scratches.

Michael Bloor

(first published in The Cabinet of Heed, Issue 26, Nov 2019)

First of all, it’s his voice I hear – holding forth in the next room. A shock (a nasty shock, if I’m honest) after fifty years, but instantly recognisable: if you’re going to adopt the received pronunciation of the British ruling class, you really need a deep voice to go with it – something Dr Braithwaite lacks. If it hadn’t been for the squeaky voice, I probably wouldn’t have recognised him after such a long absence: the ‘young fogey’ tweed-jacket and the brogues that had so marked him out as a posturing twit when an Oxford Don at thirty, now appear natural camouflage at eighty.

Friends and relatives, colleagues and neighbours, all have me down as easy-going, even a bit of a soft touch. That’s probably true as far as it goes, but it’s not the end of the story. The fact is that I maintain a warm regard for ninety nine percent of humanity by nurturing simultaneously a consuming hatred of a tiny minority. All the hated minority are bad apples, of course, but probably not as evil as I like to paint them. Sigmund Freud surely got a lot of stuff wrong, but he was right on the money when he wrote about ‘projection’. That’s what I’ve been doing: I’m able to forgive my acquaintances their trespasses with a gentle smile, because I’m projecting my anger, frustration and abhorrence onto a very small number of habitual offenders. I know I’m doing it, but they’re either persons I’ve never met (for example, a particularly pompous and disastrous politician), or persons from my distant past. So it has seemed to me a harmless foible, despite the murderous feelings that can sometimes take hold of me. And of all those dark eminences whose recall can provoke thoughts of blood and revenge, the darkest is my old Oxford tutor, Dr Braithwaite.

Dorothy and I have been once-a-week, volunteer guides at Castle Curdle ever since we’ve both retired. Most of the volunteers prefer the castle when it’s busy, but quiet days don’t bother me: I enjoy my solitary thoughts in the great dining room, among the portraits and the porcelain – the clutter of a futile aristocracy. When I heard Braithwaite’s voice through the open door to the library, I’d been musing over a little double-figurine in the china display cabinet: two arctic explorers, Nansen and Major Frederick Jackson, shaking hands in a million-to-one-chance meeting in the middle of the arctic wastes – the chance meeting that saved Nansen’s life.

Braithwaite is squeaking at length about the library’s eighteenth century long-case clock: he’s got the right period, but the wrong maker – a typical historian’s error. As he enters the dining room, among what I later learn to be a cluster of great-nephews and great-nieces, I turn from the display cabinet, prepared for my own arctic chance encounter. But he passes by me – a mere flunkey – without a glance.

He gestures towards the great dining table: ‘What sparkling conversations must this table have witnessed, eh? How many times must the porcelain and the cut-glass have been outshone by the wit of the diners? The subtleties of a local Jane Austin… The verities of a local Sir Robert Peel… Ah, if only I had lived in that age…’ His relatives, either dazzled or cowed, murmur their agreement. I silently recall the extracts from the butler’s account book, on display in the kitchen. They demonstrate beyond contradiction that the conversations that the table had witnessed must have routinely degenerated into the maunderings of a drunken rabble.

He turns to one of the equestrian portraits: ‘The young laird on, no doubt, his favourite horse. See how the artist has captured the sheen on the horse’s flanks, the poise of the rider in easy command of the animal? What nobility!’(In point of fact, the ‘noble’ in question had gambled away a huge fortune and racketed his way to an early death.)

Braithwaite was hobbling and leaning heavily on an odd, large, walking stick, a typically mannered choice – I imagine it’s what is termed an alpenstock. I murmur to one of the young relatives that if the old fella can’t manage the grand staircase, I can take him up in the lift. She smiles her thanks: ‘I’ll tell Great-Uncle John.’ As they move out of the dining room, I take up the rear.

Braithwaite then proceeds to hold forth to the great-nephews and nieces about the portraits lining the lower part of the grand stairwell. Years ago, I thought I’d detected the source of the animus that Braithwaite had shown towards my teenage self: I had come to Oxford from the same undistinguished grammar school in the same northern industrial town as Braithwaite – plainly, I had unwittingly reminded him of a past he had wished to bury. And that was the source of his slights and petty cruelties, and why he’d tried to get me sent down from the university. But what on earth lies behind his insane worship of eighteenth and nineteenth century aristocratic life? Surely, he’s too knowledgeable a historian not to recognise that his temple is built on a cesspit?

I stand quietly aside, waiting to perform my menial duty as bell-hop. The tiny two-person lift (wood-panelled, early twentieth century) is rather temperamental – hence the house-rule that it is only to be operated by paid or volunteer staff, not by visitors. If the button to the basement is pressed accidentally, instead of the button to the upper floor, then the occupant will be trapped down there until an engineer can be summoned – a matter of hours. I speculate, happily, about the sturdiness of Dr Braithwaite’s bladder.

My projected victim is led, still squeaking and gesturing, towards the lift. As I usher him inside, I see him squinting at my name-badge. I hesitate for a moment. And then I follow him into the lift and press the button to the upper floor. We stand eyeball to eyeball, as the lift creaks and judders upward. I see no dawning recognition in his wizened face. As he shuffles past me out of the lift, I whisper: ‘Did he who made the Lamb make thee?’ The lift doors are then closing to return me to the ground floor, and I watch him turn back, slack-jawed, to look at me. Then he is gone from my life forever.

On the drive home, Dorothy turns to me and says, ‘Why the quiet smile?’

Michael Bloor

(first published in The Sea Letter, Issue 7, Nov 2019)

Darek was thinking about how his children slept, sprawled so peacefully in their bunkbed, back in Gdansk. It was a long time since he’d slept like that. Indeed, it was quite a long time since he’d slept. As the tanker’s first officer, cargo was his responsibility, and delays at the terminal had kept him on duty for sixteen hours. Yet, back in his cabin, he was too fidgety to sleep. He kept replaying the incompetency of the terminal staff. He kept scratching his psoriasis. He wondered about the contents of the unopened Head Office emails on his desktop. He struggled to remember which Personnel Reports he had still to write. He worried about whether his wife was being hoodwinked by the roofers repairing the February storm-damage.

Too soon, he was back on watch, as the tanker steamed through the Straits of Hormuz, one of the busiest shipping channels in the world. He was frequently distracted by the smugglers’ launches, with their contraband cargoes of alcohol and pornography, bound for theocratic Iran. The launches manoeuvred perilously close to the tanker, so that they would be shielded from the Iranian coastguard radar. The tanker was much too ponderous to be able to avoid collisions with the launches – Darek was wholly dependent on the on the nimble skills of the smugglers – but his helplessness only served to concern him further. By the time the second officer arrived on the bridge to take over the watch, Darek was near to collapse.

Then he slept. He slept not like child, but like a drunk in a ditch. When his alarm went off, he awoke like a drunk – painfully, confusedly, wretchedly. The shower cleared his mind, but not his fatigue. Bolting some breakfast in the messroom, Cookie told him that the captain had asked him to drop by his cabin. Darek really needed to have a word with the bosun about slippage in the maintenance schedule, but it wasn’t smart to keep the captain waiting.

The captain was a mumbling mess: ‘Sorry, Darek. A return attack of the malaria… first time in years… taken my meds… should be fine after a few hours sleep. But you must take my watch. Sorry…’

The ship had three watch-keeping officers – the captain, the first officer, and the second officer – who manned the bridge sequentially, eight hours at a time. If one is sick, another must take an extra watch.

Back on the bridge, Darek counted himself fortunate that the tanker was now steaming on a south-east course towards Sri Lanka, in quiet waters with little traffic. The weather was balmy. Flying fish were playing with the tanker’s bow wave. The radar incorporated ARPA tracking: it showed no vessels on a converging course. He filled the bridge’s electric kettle, for the morning cup of coffee that he’d forgone in the messroom. While it boiled, he sat for a moment.

Twenty minutes later, the tanker smashed into the fishing outrigger-canoe that had sat too low in the water to be picked up on the radar. The Baluchi fishermen had only shrill whistles to sound the alarm. The bosun had heard the whistles only seconds before the collision. He raced to the bridge to find Darek still sprawled in the chair, sleeping peacefully at last.

Michael Bloor

(first published in Ink, Sweat & Tears, Oct 21, 2019) 

 Dear Kylie,

Saw this in the motorway services – I know you like pandas.

You’d be expecting a card from Scotland, but we’ve only got as far as Doncaster – it’s your Uncle Raymond’s erratic bowel movements again. He blames it on growing up in a house with an outside toilet. But he needs to lighten up a bit: since he’s retired, he’s taken to reading out loud to me bits from a book called ‘Constipation and Our Civilisation.’

It was very kind of you and Harrison to lend us the motorhome, but I’m afraid we’ve decided that The Freedom of the Open Road is not for us. Harrison’s gift, ‘A Hundred and One Sri Lankan Curries,’ was a nice thought, but perhaps not an ideal recipe book for a motorhome.

We’ll be returning the motorhome shortly to you and Harrison. Just as soon as we’ve replaced the chemical toilet, which is slightly damaged.

Love from Auntie Pam

Michael Bloor

(first published in Cabinet of Heed, Issue 25, Oct 19th 2019)

Some said that Alwyn Wyckham-Smith M.P. had suffered ‘a mid-life crisis.’ Some said it was ‘a secret sorrow.’ Some said it was Brexit. But no-one really knew what happened…

The M.P. held two constituency ‘surgeries’ in his West Barsetshire constituency every month, one in Barchester and one twenty miles away in Blister. He would have preferred to have held them all in Barchester, where his constituency office was, along with the constituency secretary. But at the selection meeting, six years ago, the officers of the constituency party had enquired closely whether Wyckham-Smith would keep on the Blister surgery, if he was selected. Naturally, he’d laid great stress, in his reply, on the importance of ensuring that the elderly and infirm of Blister should continue to have easy access to their elected representative. So, as he told himself, looking in vain for a parking space and cruising wearily round Blister market square for the third time, he’d once more succeeded in being the agent of his own suffering.

Eventually, he found a space by the device of motorised shadowing: driving slowly behind (and alarming) an old lady, tottering over to her battered Nissan Micra with her shopping. Running late, he jogged across the square to the Mason’s Arms Hotel, where the surgery was to be held in a rented back room. He handed the list of appointments to the hotel receptionist, apologised to the first appointee (a local builder), opened up the room, and got down to work.

It was dispiriting stuff. The builder was complaining about the local council turning down his planning application to build next to a famed beauty spot. A Sikh constituent was complaining about his brother-in-law’s niece being held in an immigration detention centre. The chair of the local civic society wanted to know why there was still no start-date for the anticipated Blister By-Pass. One local activist demanded to know why the government were shilly-shallying over Brexit. Another local activist demanded action to prevent the post-Brexit sale of Britain’s wonderful National Health Service to the Americans…

Two-and-a-half hours of hopeless cases and of impossible demands, and Wyckham-Smith’s polite smile was wearing thin. The last name on the appointments list was vaguely familiar, Mr A. Burton. In response to the knock on the door, Wyckham-Smith suppressed a yawn and gave out a faux-hearty ‘Come In!’ A thin, pale, hesitant person entered, smoothing down what little was left of his thin, pale hair.

‘Pleased to meet you, Mr Burton. Won’t you take a seat? What can I do for you?’

‘Actually, it’s Reverend Burton. Not an appellation I insist upon, but in this case it’s really rather reverend, I mean relevant…’ (spoken in a sibilant whisper).

‘Good grief, it’s “Gone” isn’t it? Old Gone-for-a-Burton?’

‘Mmm.’

‘Sorry. I’m being disrespectful: I’m afraid you took me by surprise. Er… Do you remember me perhaps?’

‘Indeed yes, you were Head of School. Although then, you were just “Alwyn Smith”.’

‘Ah, yes. Under the terms of grandfather’s will, I was required to add the “Wyckham” bit… Families, eh? So, you’re a churchman – jolly good. You know, although you took me by surprise just now, I’m not actually surprised that you joined the clergy. Haha.’

The Reverend Burton smiled and looked down at his hands. ‘Odd you should mention occupational choices Mr Wyckham-Smith. I was remembering…’

‘Call me Alwyn please, old chap. May I still call you “Gone”?’

‘If you wish, er, Alwyn. I was remembering a conversation we once had, waiting to go into the Chemistry Lab. You turned to me and said, rather out of the blue, “My father’s a Weights and Measures Inspector. He says that’s a good job. I don’t think that’s a good job, do you?’

‘Crickey. Did I really say that? And you remembered it after all these years, eh Gone? Well, well.’

‘Mmm. I suppose I remembered it because it was a rather odd conversation. And because you were confiding in me. After the incident in the school play, I’m afraid I was rather shunned by my fellow classmates.’

‘The school play?’

‘Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. You played Caesar and I played The Soothsayer. It was when I had to repeat my warning about the Ides of March…’

‘Ah yeeesss, I remember! You were The Soothsayer… I’m sitting on my dais-thingy and Tank Thompson, the Roman Soldier, throws you at my feet. I say, “Well Soothsayer, the Ides of March are come.” And you’re supposed to answer…’

‘Yes, I was supposed to answer, ‘Aye Caesar, but not gone.’

‘Mmm. And we were all looking forward to it: to Gone saying “not gone.” Schoolboy humour eh?’

‘Yes, but I didn’t answer.’

‘That’s right, you didn’t.’

‘I didn’t answer because Tank Thompson threw me too hard. I tripped on my robe and cracked my head on the corner of your dais.’

‘Mmm. You were out cold, old chap. The English teacher kept whispering your line from the wings. But there wasn’t a cheep from you. Eventually, the English teacher and The Roman Soldier (aka Tank Thompson) carried you off into the wings. An unexpected humorous episode like that could’ve made you a school hero. What rather spoilt it for you was…’

‘What rather spoilt it for me was my mother erupting from the third row, and shouting “Let me through. That’s my son.”’

‘Well. Yes, it did rather. Schoolboys can be very cruel, eh?’

Both parties reflected for a moment or two on the terrifying mob-rule of schoolboy societies. Wyckham-Smith, weary as he was, made an effort to lift the mood. ‘Y’know Gone, it could’ve been worse. My cousin, Roderick Colin Stevens, had the initials “R.C.” So he was known throughout his schooldays as Arsie Stevens.’ The Reverend Burton merely nodded.

There was another pause and Wyckham-Smith asked what it was that had decided Gone to make an appointment for the constituency surgery.

‘It’s about my mother. She’s 92 and she’s being evicted from her flat by her new landlord.’

The story came out in dribs and drabs. His mother retired to Blister when Gone Burton was appointed the vicar of St Alkmund’s on Blister’s shambolic Summerleys Estate. She had a comfortable ground-floor flat in one of Blister’s last remaining Georgian terraces. But the whole block had been sold to a hotel chain for conversion to a boutique hotel. Planning permission had already been granted.

Wyckham-Smith knew about the hotel development. The exasperated owner of the Mason’s Arms (where they were currently seated) had been bending his ear about it for the last eighteen months. Sadly for Mrs Burton, it was a done deal.

‘Couldn’t your mother stay with you in the vicarage, Gone?’

‘On the Summerleys Estate?? I’ve had three break-ins in the last nine months. There was a stabbing in the bus queue last week. The only shop that’s not boarded up is the betting shop. My mother’s terrified of the place.’ Gone paused and muttered, ‘So am I.’

‘Well, technically, if the eviction was served, your mother would be classed as homeless and eligible for rented accommodation from the council…’

‘Yes, she’d be offered one of the hard-to-let flats on the Summerleys Estate.’

Wyckham-Smith had canvassed on the Estate during his first election campaign. He had experienced first-hand the discomfort of the genteel, forced by circumstances into proximity with the poor. How had it happened to his country, this apartheid of the poor? He wondered how the Reverend Burton coped on a daily basis – the empty church, the stares of the children, and the sniggers of the teenagers – each morning’s fragile hopes shattered in the dirt and the spittle of each evening.

His constituent seemed to intuit the M.P.s unspoken thought. ‘I have had two great consolations in my life: the power of prayer and the love of my mother. Cleaning the mess in the church porch last week, I found the local paper with your picture on the cover… So I thought, perhaps…’ His voice was cracking. ‘I fear I’m losing my soul-mate. And I fear I’m losing my soul. You’re my last hope… Alwyn?’

* * *

Trudging through the rain to his BMW, afterwards, Wyckham-Smith, reflected back on his schooldays alongside Gone Burton and the others. He remembered the morning school assemblies when he’d thought the words of the hymns they sang were meant for him. ‘Onward Christian soldiers,’ and the rest of them. What was left of the idealism he’d felt when he was elected to Parliament? He paused, squinted up at the louring sky and muttered, ‘I fear I’m losing my soul too.’

The electronic car-lock clicked.

Michael Bloor

(first published in Ink Sweat & Tears, Feb 25, 2018)

Sandy Brodie pushed open the door of the Inverallan Barber’s. Lachie Brown was in the chair, with Jim MacBeth, the barber, in attendance and Willie Bain next in line for a haircut.

‘Aye boys, helluva storm oot there.’ There was a ragged, muttered chorus of ‘Aye Sandy’ from all present.

‘Shouldna’ be too long, Sandy, if ye just tak’ a seat. How’s business up at the hotel? Many guests?’

‘Aye, aye. A family o’ six folk frae Holland came in today. An’ the lady bishop decided to stay anither week.’

‘And wit’s the lady bishop doin’ wi’ herself? Willie here wis saying that she wis goin’ in for The Peat Throwing Contest.’

(Lachie Brown: ‘Peat throwin’ – load o’ bloody nonsense’).

‘Aye, that’s richt. They held it this morning, afore the rain started. An’ she competed in the ladies section.’

‘An’ how did she get on, the bishop lady? She wouldna’ be any match for Lady Gayle from the Big Hoose: she’s won it every year since it started.’

‘Well now, she was makin’ an awfy hash o’ it, at first. One peat hit Andy, the gardener, on the back o’ his heid. He wasna’ pleased.’

Willie: ‘Nothin’ pleases Andy Morrison. If Nicola Sturgeon ran off tae Las Vegas wi’ Donald Trump, he wouldna’ crack a smile. So did she improve, the bishop lady?’

‘Didn’t she just? I reckon she wis getting some tips off Donnie MacKinnon at the half-time break. Because she really began to rack up some style points from the judges after the break.’

‘She wis turnin’ a tight spade?’

‘Aye, aye, a very tight spade. You could tell Lady Gayle wasna’ best pleased. So Donnie won the men’s section. And the bishop won the ladies’.’

(pause).

Willie and Jim together: ‘You mean…?’

‘Aye, that’s richt: Her Grace at first just ghastly, turned a tighter spade than Gayle…’

Willie and Jim gently hummed the Procol Harum organ break.

(Lachie Brown: ‘Load o’ bloody nonsense’)

Michael Bloor

(first published in Spelk Fiction, Oct 7^th 2019)

Anthony Morgan, Professor Emeritus, came away from the staff seminar (on Malory’s story of the Death of Merlin) feeling ruffled and bruised. Anthony hadn’t expected his comments on the paper to be treated with murmurs of respect and gratitude. But the junior staff member delivering the paper had, after some prevarication, actually confessed that she believed that Anthony had misremembered the circumstances of Merlin’s death (in his earliest incarnation as the pagan sage, Myrrdin). Moreover, the young woman, Dr Tamsin Ajebo, had been backed up by Anthony’s successor as Head of the English Department, Jim Lawton. And what’s more, Prof Lawton had referred to Anthony as “Tony.”

Anthony sighed heavily as he headed for home. He hadn’t really wanted to go to the seminar in the first place: the paper had been on the links between Malory’s Merlin and later literary incarnations, like Tolkien’s Gandalf and JK Rowling’s Dumbledore. Anthony had previously made a study of William Morris’s prose romances which, as precursors of The Lord of the Rings, had made him rather snobbish about Tolkien. He’d attended out of a sense of duty, only to be told he was now “Tony,” and losing his marbles.

There was a queue of traffic at the lights on Newport Road. Gazing out the window, he caught sight of a newspaper billboard: “University Cuts — Staff Redundancies.” So, he nipped out to buy the evening paper from the vendor. As he pocketed his change, he caught sight of his bus starting to pull away, and he stepped nimbly aboard.

***

Hearing him open the front door, Dorothy called out: “How did the seminar go?”

He called out in return, “Young Tamsin Ajebo told me I’d misremembered the death of Merlin.”

Dorothy didn’t reply immediately. As they sat down to the evening meal she said, “Surely, Malory wrote that Merlin, in his dotage, fell for a young woman at Arthur’s court and taught her the binding spells that cannot be broken, remember? She eventually tired of the old fool, and cast a spell to imprison him forever in a cave, below Tintagel.”

Before Anthony could reply, there was a ring at the door. “I’ll go,” he said.

Dorothy heard the continuing murmur of voices in the front hall and went to investigate. “It’s the police, dear,” Anthony said. “Apparently, I left my BMW ticking over at the traffic lights on Newport Road.”

Michael Bloor

(first published in The Cabinet of Heed, Issue 24, Sept 15^th 2019)

On his way to the airport for his early morning flight, Charlie felt shrivelled and cowed. The previous evening, a meeting at the university had been cancelled and so he’d arrived home early, only to find Huw Pryce-White at his ease in an armchair with a whisky glass in his hand. Charlie’s wife, Felicity, had explained (a little too quickly) that Huw had popped round to borrow a book, and she’d poured him a drink while she searched for it.

There had been a pause. Pryce-White, his famous, battered, leather jacket unbuttoned, had simply stretched out in the chair, smiled, raised his glass and winked. The wink was disconcerting, since Pryce-White had one green eye and one brown eye. Closing one eye wrought a complete change in his physiognomy. A number of past female students had allegedly found themselves fascinated by those piercing, dissimilar eyes, to be released only when they were hooded.

Charlie, initially nonplussed, then worked his way through an unpleasant train of thought, carriage by carriage. ‘What was the book?’

Pryce-White had remained silent, still smiling. Felicity supplied an answer: ‘Er, Louis MacNeice’s autobiography…’

Another pause. Charlie muttered, ‘It’s in the bookcase in the spare bedroom – I’ll get it.’

As he climbed the stairs, he recalled a poignant passage from the book. MacNeice, on first arriving at boarding school as a child, had not gone to the toilet for two days, because he was too embarrassed to ask for directions. Charlie knew how that child had felt. After Pryce-White left, Charlie had failed to ask Felicity for directions.

* * *

Boarding the Aberdeen-Heathrow shuttle, Charlie was shrivelled once more to find the adjoining seat already taken by a very large, bearded gentleman. But in the event, he proved an entertaining companion – Gunnar, a Norwegian oilman – who had just been dispatched by his drilling company to a place in Africa called ‘Libreville.’

‘What do you know about Libreville?’ Charlie had asked.

‘Don’t know a damned thing.’ Gunnar laughed and signalled for a tonic water and a complementary packet of peanuts. He topped up the tonic water with a whisky miniature from his side pocket.

‘If I were in your shoes, I don’t think I’d like not knowing. Unknown prospects.’

Gunnar shrugged: ‘I imagine there will be someone there to meet me – there usually is.’ He fanned some boarding passes: there would be two more flights to board after he arrived at Heathrow. ‘Maybe I’ll find out something by the time I arrive.’ He laughed again.

‘Does this kind of thing happen to you a lot?’

‘Every once in a while. Before I was in Aberdeen, I was in Azerbaijan. I’d never heard of that place either.’

‘What was Azerbaijan like?’

‘Don’t really know. I was in one of those places… er, “gated community.” Everybody there was in the oil business too. Fancy a whisky?’

‘It’s a bit early for me… but, why not?’

Gunnar produced another miniature from his side pocket, poured half into his tonic water and the other half into Charlie’s plastic teacup. Charlie had never tasted whisky in tea before. He reckoned it was a good combo.

Gunnar asked what Charlie would be doing in London. He was told about the dreary academic journal and its dreary editorial board meeting. There was a pause. ‘If I may say so, Charlie, you seem a little gloomy.’

Charlie stared into the now-empty teacup. ‘Gloomy?? Gunnar, I feel like a man on a beach watching the ebb tide and knowing it will never return.’

More whisky appeared, a half-bottle this time. And Gunnar listened to the story of Huw Pryce-White sitting in Charlie’s armchair. ‘Hmm. Hoo Priss-Vite, you say? A curious name: hyphenated, perhaps? Is he Scottish?’

‘He likes to pretend he’s Welsh, likes to play the hell-raising Celtic Bard, but he’s actually from a place called Blundellsands, outside Liverpool.’

‘Heh. You would like to do him harm, I think?’

‘Dead right, pal.’

‘Heh, heh. I was born in the Lofoten Islands, in the far north of Norway – a fishing community. You know how superstitious are fishermen. My grandfather, he knew many spells, many charms. Also, secret signs – staves – that can be drawn or carved to bring luck. Or bad luck.’ Gunnar paused to top up Charlie’s cup and murmured confidentially, ‘You simply hide the stave among a person’s belongings.’

It was a tough call. Charlie took another swig, thought about it, and then asked politely about Gunnar’s granny.

The moment passed (apparently, Lofoten Island women were bad luck anywhere near a fishing boat. No spells or staves, but she cooked a mean fish soup). The conversation moved onto the disappearance of the Scottish herring fleet. But a seed had been sown.

* * *

Two days later Charlie, through his open office door, watched Pryce-White wander along the corridor, into the staff toilets. Charlie snuck quickly into the vacant adjoining office and stole Pryce-White’s famous, battered, leather jacket. That night, he burned the fucker in his backyard.

Michael Bloor

(first published in Ink Sweat & Tears, Jul 22, 2019)

Kim Brown (kim25071999@quiknet.com)                                        Sat 5 Jan 2019 11:50

To: Alex Brown (alexkbrown1969@quiknet.com)

Hi Dad,

We had a lecture the other day on an eighteenth century Idealist philosopher, Bishop Berkeley. He was a pretty cool dude – a co-founder of Yale University and of the London Foundling Hospital. I just googled him: he even has a feast day in the liturgical calendar of the US Episcopal Church (June 16th). Weird.

I thought you might be interested in what he had to say about John Locke’s writings on abstract ideas. Locke reckoned it was possible to have an abstract general idea of, say, a triangle, which was neither oblique, nor equilateral, or whatever. Berkeley quite rightly pointed out that this was nonsense: when we think of a triangle, we always picture it as having some specific properties. Therefore, it’s perfectly possible for two guys to be having an amicable conversation about triangles, without realising that they actually have in mind quite different specific ideas of a triangle.

So when I asked you for ‘a small loan’ last week and you subsequently sent me a cheque for twenty five pounds, it became clear to me that my specific idea of a small loan and your specific idea of a small loan differed by a factor of four.

Your loving daughter,

Kimberley x

Michael Bloor

(first published JULY 15, 2019, in THE DRABBLE)

On Andy’s stag night, Willie Macleod claimed that Joe Stalin was supposed to possess just four English phrases:

‘You said it;’

‘So what;’

‘What the hell goes on here?’ and,

‘The toilet is over there.’

In retrospect, it was clearly unwise for Willie to make a bet that he could conduct himself through the whole of Fiona and Andy’s wedding solely by utterance of Stalin’s four phrases. True, he managed to deliver the first three successfully. But, at the reception, he really should have admitted defeat when Fiona’s mum asked him how he liked the smoked eel canapés.