As it says on the tin. My ramblings have all been shifted across to http://razorsmile.org/hagiography and I'll be posting there from now on.

I was walking through town when I saw him, propped up against a lamp post eating a sandwich. We kissed. We always kiss. With my back to the scene he was surveying I asked in conspiratorial tones “Are you watching those big, strong boys lifting boxes?”.

He laughed and passed another crust to the child in the pushchair next to him, “No, I'm thinking about stealing that coat. What are you up to?”.

“Going to a book signing,” I replied.

He nodded. “Have you seen the queue?”

I hadn't.

“What are you getting Matt for Valentine's Day?” he said.

“Nothing.”

“Will he get you something?”

“Doubt it,” I said.

“Suzie will have my balls in a vice if I don't get her [i]something[/i].”

“Lucky you.”

“Seriously, it would be a fatal error.” Niall's an electronics geek. “Do you ever give each other Valentines?”

“Occasionally, depends on the ebb and flow,” I said.

“How do you mean?” he said.

“Don't know really. Sometimes it seems appropriate and important but at other times it just seems irrelevant.”

“And you know exactly which one of those times it is?”

“Pretty much. I bought a bottle of Champagne in January, the proper stuff not Cava, it took us nearly a week to get 'round to drinking it. Matt's busy.”

Niall sighed. Suzie's very busy, working full-time with a fifty mile commute thrown in for good measure. They've been married four years and Reuben's nearly two. “I thought of getting her one of those robins from Choccy Woccy Doo Dah,” he said.

“Don't. They're horrible. Have you ever tasted the chocolate from Choccy Woccy Doo Dah? It's overly sweet and kinda gritty.”

He lolled back against the lamp post.

“And don't steal the coat either, I think it belongs to that workman,” I said, pointing to a man in overalls who was painting a shop frontage.

Niall frowned. “It's been there a while though.” It was hanging on a sign, as if it had been dropped and then hung up, waiting for its owner to realise their loss, retrace their steps and reclaim it.

“Do you need another coat?”

“Not really, no.”

“Well then. If you want to buy her chocolates how about cherries in brandy from Montezuma's?” We were standing right next to the shop and he turned his attention to the window display.

“But they don't look very, er, romantic.”

“It's not really a question of what something looks like Niall.”

“You don't know Suzie.”

“So she'd rather have a shitty tasting chocolate robin in a pretty box than the best brandy cherries in the whole world?” I said.

He stared at the floor and mumbled “You're lucky”.

“And also now late. I gotta go.” We kissed again and I wandered up the street, past the hanging coat. I noticed small flecks of dried, white paint on the fabric. I was probably right, in all likelihood the coat did belong to the painter; but I was also probably wrong, because this proved that it does matter what something looks like.

Here lies in stuttering eyes:-

The man who looks in sleep as he might in death, providing he had fallen from a small height - arm bent, twisted above his head, careless limbs scattered like thrown cutlery.

Cotton dreamish sylph, blown in by winds not of my own desire.

He wakes and says “Nob ... Can you pass the baccy and vaseline [laugh] ... You're groaning like a creaky old boat.”

Small hiccup words for a disjointed wooden phase. I pick the lighter up off the floor with my foot, curling my toes.

Perhaps life can be explained in shap snots: three silver rings large enough to imprint their design on anyone's face; 'The Complete Poems of John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester'; my musical fascination triangulated by a balalaika I can't play; coffee stains and small designs, unerect, falsifying their oblivious entrance into consiousness.

Should it? Make sense?

He said, after Heidegger, “Words and language are not just shells into which things are packed for spoken and written intercourse. In the word, in language, things first come to be and are.”

I took film from the train window, arm always held at the same angle, fields of dreams and tangled metal. Bridges we call them, industry is how they define themselves. The scene slid in front of my eyes, rhythmised by an acknowledged and necessary forward motion. At journey's end the carriages disgorged their occupants to flow, in a peristaltic mass, along an anonymous platform. Wedged into the wall a V2 Rocket, provisioning memories of a continuous attack. Blitzkreig they called it, on both sides.

Here lies in stuttering eyes:-

The man who looks in death as he might in sleep, arm bent, twisted above his head, careless limbs scattered like thrown cutlery.

I want to smash something, because the frustration in here [points to chest, body, head] needs to be out there. The kitchen would be a good place to start. There's lots of metal. Metal makes such a great noise, especially when it hits. Not like flesh. Thump, thud. Crash, bang. And glass, everything's so apparent when you break glass. Instant regret. Most of all though, I want to destroy the books and ornaments, standing in their straight fucking lines, sitting squat in their smug safety. “Oh look at me, I belong here, in this order, I've been here a while now, prettifying the place up, waiting to be read, holding lots of memories between my pages, in my form.” I want to rip them off their shelves and throw them as hard as I can against a wall. Instead, I'm just sitting here, with my fingernails in my forehead, trying not to gouge lumps out of my face.

They had tissues today. I only cried once. Can't stand it when I cry in public. It makes me feel so weak and as if someone might touch me. I don't like being touched with kindness, because I'm scared it'll all come out then, and I won't know how to make it stop. Don't touch me with kindness. Hit me. Hit me really fucking hard so I have to lock my knees and clench my fists and stick my chest out. The fighting stance. I can do that. I have to do that.

It was a silly thing, a short story called 'Welcome to Holland'. We'd done one of those group exercises first: imagine you win a holiday and spending money, but you've only got twelve hours before take-off, list the things you need to do. It would be kinda great, wouldn't it? Fifteen parents sitting 'round in a circle, all of us knowing that we couldn't take advantage of the prize, because we can't leave our kids, our disabled kids. The first thing we'd need to do is refuse the offer, even though we desperately need a break and good luck doesn't seem to come our way that often.

But just imagine you get on that plane and you're on your way to Italy. I've always wanted to go to Italy, to see Michelangelo's work in its natural environment, ride a Vespa, visit the Vatican. Of course, you might read some guide books to pass away the time during the flight and familiarise yourself with the territory. After a couple of hours you land, but when you get off the plane you notice the sign 'Welcome to Holland'. That's what it feels like when you give birth to a child with a disability. All those things you were looking forward to, where you thought you were going, they disappear in a moment and you're find yourself somewhere else.

The words started happening next, key phrases: 'exile, resentment, alienation, exhaustion, sadness, loneliness, guilt, frustration, anger, disappointment, isolation' ... it's endless. We all agreed there is no light at the end of the tunnel. It's like staring down the barrel of a gun and being repeatedly shot in the face, except you don't die, because you can't die, that's not part of the contract, you just have to keep on keeping on, it's your responsibility and you can't escape. That's not what we thought we were signing up for. No one there, in the first flush of pregnancy, considered they might still be changing nappies or pushing a pram (wheelchair) twenty years later. Your kids grow up, leave home, get on with their lives, independently ... Nah ...

I remember when I was pregnant. At thirty eight weeks I went to hospital. “Please take this baby out of me,” I begged, but they refused. “He's too big,” I said. They disagreed, six pounds max they reckoned. I knew something was wrong. Three weeks later I had to be induced. He didn't want to come out. We were poor then, not even a pot to piss in, only thirty seven pence between us. It was a blasting hot June day. I walked to the hospital, couldn't afford a bus or cab. They forced my husband to leave me, sweltering, worrying, on my own.

The next day they shoved something up me and in me. It's tough being induced, going from no labour to hard labour. Seven hours of the most abject pain. I pleaded for an epidural. Eventually an anaesthetist arrived and insisted I pull my knees up to my chest. Lying on my side, my body shaking itself apart, feeling as if I was disappearing. Thank God for my husband. He recognised the signs of medical shock. Threatening violence, he cut through the intransigence of the midwife and other staff, making them to listen to me. They'd ignored me for so long that I'd actually birthed my son's head while curled in an impossible ball. He was slowly being starved of oxygen. Unbelievably, the midwife had failed to notice this simple fact. He came out at nearly ten pounds and unbreathing. They took him away. Alarms went off. Doctors crowded into the delivery suite.

“What's happening?” I said desperately.

They didn't answer.

“Is it dead? What's the matter with it?”

I tried to sit up, but a midwife pressed me into the mattress.

Later, back on the ward, I studied his little face. Half of it was covered in an angry blue mark. “It'll turn pink,” they said, “once he's fully oxygenated”. He was very quiet, fast asleep. I wondered into the nursery, situated next to the nurses' station. A woman at the far end, in a yellow dressing gown, was settling her baby. She turned around. “Can I see your baby?” I asked.

She started to cry. “He has a cleft palette.”

“What's his name?”

“Peter.”

“Can I see him?”

“No one else has said that after I've told them.”

He was beautiful.

I went back to my own bed and slept until morning. Breakfast. Strict visiting hours. No telephone. Jordan was, indeed, pink and the birth mark on his face had become red. I didn't like it. Why couldn't I have a baby that looked normal? What would people say?

A doctor arrived, poked about in the crib momentarily, then stood straight to address me. “ ... A fifty fifty chance of being a cabbage.”

“What?”

He repeated himself.

“Get away from me. Get away from me and my baby. Get away. Get out.” My voice rose, I started to throw things at the doctor. Matron came hurrying down the ward and demanded to know what he'd said or done.

He repeated himself.

Cabbage. Cabbage. Cabbage. Cabbage. Cabbage. Cabbage. Cabbage. Cabbage. Cabbage. Cabbage. Cabbage. Cabbage. Cabbage. Cabbage. Cabbage. Cabbage. Cabbage. Cabbage. Cabbage. Cabbage. Cabbage. Cabbage. Cabbage. Cabbage. Cabbage. Cabbage. Cabbage. Cabbage. Cabbage. Cabbage. Cabbage. Cabbage. Cabbage. Cabbage. Cabbage. Cabbage. Cabbage. Cabbage. Cabbage. Cabbage. Cabbage. Cabbage. Cabbage. Cabbage. Cabbage. Cabbage. Cabbage. Cabbage. Cabbage. Cabbage. Cabbage. Cabbage. Cabbage. Cabbage. Cabbage. Cabbage. Cabbage. Cabbage. Cabbage. Cabbage. Cabbage. Cabbage. Cabbage.

She frogmarched him off the ward and then ushered me into a private room. I can't remember anything else.

Three months later the diagnosis was confirmed by CT scan. My son had (and has) Sturge Weber Syndrome. A facial birthmark, following the line of his trigeminal nerve, is reprepeated on his brain. This capillary abormality interrupts the normal electrical activity. About two hundred people in the UK 'suffer' from this condition and there is a wide spectrum, in terms of how the disorder affects individuals. They couldn't offer us any prognosis.

To a certain extent, the future is always unknown.

Fourteen years down the line and we've been through a lot. Jordan's first seizure was at ten months. They couldn't stop it, apparently that's a feature of Sturge Weber, intractable epilepsy. It did stop eventually, either of its own accord or because they finally managed to pump him full of the right combination of drugs. These little 'adventures' happened every three months for the next God knows how many years; one week in hospital, fervantly fussing by his bedside, followed by two months of rehabilitation, only to find ourselves back in hospital within a matter of days. A situation like that tears a hole in your life.

I could go on and on about: the time they declared him brain dead; the time there was no doctor available on a children's ward to site an intravenous line so we were bundled into the back of an ambulance and blue lighted across a city in rush hour; the time I watched an anaesthetist repeatedly shove an intubation tube down my son's throat in an effort to maintain his airway. It does something to you. It did something to him. Every bout of seizures not only increases the chance of a further cluster, but also, kills part of his brain, turns it to bone, steals a little bit of him and sets him up for further complications.

And you don't even have the luxury of just seeing your own child suffer. No, intensive care units, where the stools are on wheels so they can kick you out the way quickly, are full of children struggling to survive. There was the five month old baby, born prematurely, drowning in his own mucus, crying and crying and crying, until he stopped crying, then I knew he was going to die. Or the car accident victim, with his eyelids taped down, completely on his own, I sat holding his hand for an hour one day, it wasn't right that he should be so lonely ...

As I say, been through a lot.

“Do you have any worries about the course?” the facilitator asked. Jesus yes. I've not done this before because I couldn't do it before, perhaps there's only so much reality one person can take. I don't want to go delving about in how I feel, what my expectations are, hopes, fears, dreams, bloody nightmares. As my mother used to say, 'it doesn't bear thinking about'.

“That I'll be defensive,” I replied.

She didn't ask me to justify my response. She didn't insist that I unpick it and work a way round it. She simply nodded. I liked her instantly.

Do you feel numb, blank, guilty, tearful, unable to cope, irritable, angry, suspicious, frightened? Do you have problems with sleeping? Are you easily startled? Do you have trouble concentrating? Do you deliberately isolate yourself? Do you find it hard to make decisions? Is your memory shot to pieces?

YES

YES

YES

YES

YES

YES

YES

YES

YES

YES

YES

YES

YES

YES

YES

Define anger. Is that when you want to rip someone's head off and shit down their neck? Is that when you walk down the street, carrying a bottle back from the off licence, with your hand curled one way rather than another, just itching to crack open a skull? Is that when you attack people for no apparent or obvious reason? Is that how you can comprehend why someone might stab their wife to death/be a suicide bomber/get involved in a pub punch up?

Some nights I drink myself into oblivion.

Some nights I do worse.

Isolation, real, imagined, self imposed??? Despite all the anti discrimination laws, essentially it's no better. My kid still looks weird. People still try to talk with/to/at him in a language it takes his brain longer to sift and save, so he stands there, looking like an idiot, being unable to understand or articulate. If he were to say he wanted to get married, have children, that would be considered an outrage. He doesn't have the same opportunites or expectations. No, no, none of us do, everything's dependent and contingent but, broadly speaking, we're in agreement with regard to who, what, when, where and how. He can't even pattern those concepts and, because he's part of me, I find myself alienated from them as well.

The world's not a very friendly place if you don't fit in. What to do? What to do? Round peg, square hole. I guess you can hope the hole's bigger than the peg, in which case it'll pass fairly easily, like a soft stool. Alternatively, you can jam the peg through the damn hole, shaving off the sides, using brute force, but it might get stuck or damaged. Arse. Or you could get a big fuck off drill and make the square hole round. I mean why is the hole square in the first place? I've tried arguing with it, about its inhospitable squareness, pointing out how that invalidates the roundness of the peg, but that's got me nowhere. Fuck the square hole. Holes aren't meant to be square in any event. What bastard decided on all those frigging angles? Bloody squarist.

Back to the anger, the alienation, the suspicion.

Feeling murderous and armed with a drill for a number of years isn't healthy. I've ended up kind of twisted, head-wise, gut-wise, and I don't know how to straighten this out any more, or whether I should even try. Thing is, there was this one time when Jordan was really sick. The doctors, well, they couldn't make him better, stop the seizures, get him above a three on the coma scale. I asked a healer to come see him, she did some stuff I couldn't understand and then turned to me and said “He's in there, but you've got to go get him. He's very frightened and really lonely”.

“Get him?”

“Yes, you've got to bring him back.”

“How do I do that?”

She touched my hand ... I sat by his bed all night, eyelids pinned open with matchsticks, WILLING him to come back, I've never wished so hard in all my life, and he did, come back, sometime round about dawn. The first word he said was 'Mummy'. That's my boy. God, that's my boy, tough little bugger, just like his mum, balls of steel, doesn't care what the odds are, what anyone thinks or says, doesn't give a rat's ass. I fight so he can fight to stay alive. I fight so he can have some quality of life. I fight because I don't know how else to be, what to do with it all, where to let it out or how to direct it. I'm like an AK 4fucking7, useless at targetting, loud and noisy, but you can drag me through a river, lose me in mud, get me covered in sand, and I'll still fire bullets, all over the place like, but it's usually sufficient for some purpose or other.

It's changing though. They got us to do this exercise where we had to pick out a postcard from a selection on a table. I chose some African art, man emerging from a stone. I don't really know why. One of the other parents chose a beach scene at sunset. He was talking about it and said 'it's because it reminds me that there's beauty out there'. I couldn't stop the tears. Bastard. He looked over at me and he was crying too. I guess we're all casualties, casually, by accident, in our own way.

I decided to buy myself some rose tinted spectacles, not metaphorically, literally, pink ones, round, £2.99 from some dreadful hippy shop, utterly useless for stopping UV rays, totally wonderful if you want the world to take on a different hue, warm and friendly. I don't know if it'll work, but the physical tends to impact on the emotional in ways I don't fully understand. I've got a lot to learn.

And then I heard this, “We are the universe manifest trying to figure itself out”. What a thought. I'm composed of star stuff. Everything that has existed, does exist and will exist is part of me. Maybe I don't need to let it out or let it in, it's already there, doing its thing, working itself through. Suddenly I didn't feel so alone or as if I had to hang onto Jordan for grim death. There is no death, no struggle, no finality, end or beginning, it just IS. Scary as shit, to be everything and nothing all at the same time. Got to be open though, got to let go, work with it not against it, but I don't know how to be vulnerable, how to accept, what will happen if I stop fighting. Won't there be a big hole if I give up the anger? Perhaps there's a hole already, where I've been eaten away. Does it work like that? I don't know, I simply don't know, but in the words of Otis Redding:-

“But there was a time that I thought

Lord this couldn't last for very long

But somehow I thought I was still able to try to carry on

It's been a long long time coming

But I know a change is gonna come

It's been so long

It's been so long

To live too long

But a change has gotta come

So tired

So tired of suffering and standing by myself and standing up alone

But a change has gotta come

You know

And I know

And you that

I know

And I know that you know

Honey

That a change is gonna come”.

I've taken my fingernails out of my forehead.

How to start? How to start? Coffee. Two cigarettes. Gulp, inhale, swallow, suck it back, drink it down. Two minutes later and she's rooting through her make up basket in the bathroom to find a nail file, then a lipstick. Mirror. Pout. Unpout. She raises her eyebrows. Her forehead crinkles. She wonders when her eyelids became so damn heavy.

“Hello doggie.” His tail wags in blank appreciation. The cats in the kitchen circle, mewing. Their food bowl is empty (she makes them share), the back door is shut, they could not possibly suffer the indignity of crawling through the cat flap. Thank you Sir Isaac Newton, all that wonderful fizzick, yet still you failed to grasp the essential nature of feline. One does not want to be independent, one relies on the constant attention of another and, when that is lacking, one primps and preens and discovers distractions.

The telephone rings. She accidentally sits down at the desk. Sure, she's good, fine, excellent, superlatively settled, everything is progressing perfectly. There are small laughs. Lunch. Yes. Maybe. Some time never. Is he? Is she? Of course, that would be wonderful. She replaces the handset and finds herself, once again, face to face with the computer monitor.

Mr T Walford, The Grange, 57 Sefton Road, Manchester, M15 6DJ, 0161 459380

Malcolm Parry, 22 Brunel Close, Andover, Hants, PO6 4FS, 02392 544396

K J Lloyd, 14 Pleasant View, Colchester, Essex, CO3 9QG, 01206 647329

The work does not interest her, but it fits into her life relatively easily. She starts when her husband leaves for work, taps away for a couple hours and then breaks to push a vacuum around the house. Lunch is a simple affair, eaten while staring at a TV that disgorges its entertainment like a desperate anorexic. After a second cup of tea she returns to the relentless database.

Miss L Atkinson, 26 Thorpe Avenue, Barnstable, North Devon, EX32 0TY, 01271 735651

Mrs Vivian Peterson, Flat 2, 74 Wellington Street, Bournemouth, Dorset, BH10 3RU, 01202 868734

Michael Bellamy, 4 Thompson Drive, Much Wenlock, Shropshire, SY13 7JR, 0773 4573947

Does Mr T Walford think he is in a Jane Austen novel. Perhaps the place was already called 'The Grange'? When he bought it did he imagine how the address would look and sound? Was that a deciding factor? Maybe the suggested superiority pleased his wife, Marjorie, “Yes, we live at 'The Grange', delightful, quite delightful”. Marjorie probably wears chiffon and reads The Sunday Times colour supplement.

Malcolm Parry, now there's a straight forward bloke. He passed his driving test at seventeen and bought a clapped out Ford Fiesta. His friends are called Mike, Lee and Dougie. On Tuesdays he goes to The Cobbler's Thumb and takes part in the pub quiz, usually coming third. Malc. Macolm to his mother. Bullied at school, but he works hard, now lives in a new build, complete with fitted kitchen and polished steel appliances.

As for Mr, Mrs or Ms Lloyd, a pleasant view in Colchester, are you kidding? Bored squaddies, concrete and carefully gridded roads do not make for pleasantry. Another new build. Pictureless walls, magnolia paint, wood chip wallpaper perhaps, a corner bath, in beige (known as 'sand' when they chose the suite), three different types of cleaner, two with squirty action, heaven forbid anything actually gets, or remains, dirty. Exfoliate the shit out of life itself. There is no room in Colchester for scum, dead skin, dead wood. Mouthwash. Bleach. Dental Floss. Brasso. Mr Fucking Muscle.

Laura does not like Colchester.

She surveys the room where she sits. Books, small balls of fluff (cat hair combined with dust and general detritus), an open fire, alternately belching and breathing. They never painted the walls, preferring beached plaster, as if the waves come in and out, leaving their impossible imprint on a vertical horizon. Naked. Yes, she likes to be naked. Vulnerable. Exposed. The shivers excite her.

This morning he made her shiver, ripple, quiver. They wedged sex between coffee in bed and breakfast at the kitchen table, leaving a door ajar somewhere between blowjob and ejaculation. When he mounted her, cool as the cucumber between his legs, she looked askance at the curtains. Did they blame her, for still being in bed at ten in the morning? Probably not. Sometimes the material is immaterial.

He slid in

Breathe

Unbreathe

Like a boat

Into water

Breathe

Unbreathe

With

in

sec

onds

he

was

Miss L Atkinson has squashed her title in as an after thought. Mrs Vivian Peterson might be a divorcee, by virtue of the fact she lives in a flat. Flat? Rice paper is flat. Glass is flat. Does Mrs Vivian Peterson have a heart of glass? Does she wish to be laminated throughout? Laura considers Mrs Vivian Peterson for a moment. Nothing is missing from her information. Similarly, Michael Bellamy, although his marital status remains unclear. On the form is says 'Name', a simple request. What is your name? Laura's name is Laura Miller, it used to be Laura Cunningham. She did not know when she got married that she could have chosen any surname. Her husband, Andrew, did not want to change his name to Cunningham. They had argued. “Cunningham,” he said, “sounds like cunnilingus”. He spat the word out and it landed on the carpet.

Pump

in

GGGGGG

God

Oh God

God

Do all men becum religious when they have their penis up/in someone? Andrew likes to take the Lord's name in vain. Maybe it spur[t]s him onwards, direct communication, slavish adoration, always outside of himself, on his knees, Laura lying on the bed like a rag doll.

Gary Wood, Ken Cant, 24 Staplehurst Drive and 4 Station Street respectively. There is a Bob Roberts (surely baptised Robert Roberts), a David Betts (does he?) and a Ravenscrowned Byrd (either the unfortunate result of drug addled parents or someone with a misguided sense of their own unique magnetism). The road names dance in front of Laura's eyes. She wonders whether, in keeping with council policy, whole developments are christened thematically. If there is a Lebanon Rise is there also a Gaza Heights and a Basra Buildings? What about Afghanistan Acres or Kosovo Crescent?

Wars do not start with bullet fire, perhaps that is when they are declared, but for a war to be truly successful the participants, at least on one side, must hold acne grievances. Pick, pick, squeeze, a topical treatment of antiseptic does not help. Blight. Lack of recognition. A sense of disease and the prospect of a cure, usually involving cleansing. Unfortunately, Laura is unable to wash away her peony memories, red and blue, shot through with pink flounces, those suffocating wedding dresses, oh to be a bridesmaid and never the bride.

When Andrew asked, she had said yes straight away. The engagement ring never arrived, instead the romance was nullified by practical considerations. He earned a good wage. She earned a good wage. They bought a house in the suburbs, with central heating, double glazing and scope for an extension – “You could add an extra twenty grand to the purchase price,” said the estate agent, rocking back on his heels.

They never did need more space.

Naomi Symonds, 11 Elizabeth Place, Malvern, Worcestershire, WR14 2TS, 01684 249130

Mr P Fielding, 5 Cromwell Road, Fleet, Hants, GU51 4NX, 0208 4263040

And the way people write, some in thin biro, scratched so barely legible. Laura scratches on bad days, but covers the marks quickly with her sleeve. No one notices, except her, and only then after a few hours, or if she showers. Some write in sloppy fibre-tip (black), squashed flat against an unforgiving shiny surface. Ink fares the worst, smudging and smearing, unable to gain purchase with regard to penetration.

Andrew pulls her down the bed like a dog worrying at its quarry. She lies there. She LIES there, making the appropriate groans and gasps, writhing in just enough ecstasy, keeping step with his military formality. Pump, thud, pull, pump, thud, pull, pump, thud, pull, pumpthudpull, pumpthudpull, puthpu, mpudll. Afterwards they eat scrambled eggs, or beans on toast, or bacon sandwiches, or anything else that satisfies his need to reaffirm his atheism. God is for the bedroom, not the kitchen.

Chris Rapley, 32 Kent Avenue, Reading, Berks, RG1 3LG, 0207 1406650

Mrs C Duffy, 27 Queens Road, Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, NG18 6TC, 01623 773729

When boredom threatens to overtake her, Laura looks up places she has never been and is unlikely to go. Bracknell she can take or leave, similarly Romford and Ipswich, but Portskewett in Caldicot sounds interesting. Monmouthshire. Big. Expansive. Marlow, very Christopher, maybe there is a church, one of those squat, heart of the village type things that smells musty and has a Norman knight interred under a rubbed-bare-brass-plate set into the floor of the transept. Yes, Marlow would be nice, in Spring, perhaps she could do a tour. “What do you think doggie?” He wags his tail. He does not know he would end up in kennels and she would be in the dog house simply for suggesting the idea.

Ben Mustow, 15 Old Barn Lane, Tunbridge Wells, Kent, TN2 3JH, 01892 640663

She stops. She remembers Ben Mustow, her Ben Mustow. It seems so long ago now. He was twenty three and she was nineteen, in her second year at university. Ben, with his sun bleached hair and brown eyes. All the girls liked him, mainly because he had been around, not the block, the world. Instead of the obligatory compulsory gap-year, he took three and crewed a yacht to all the places you could ever possibly want to go, and some you did not. Laura was surprised when he showed an interest in her. She was gangly and inexperienced, had barely read or seen anything. When she asked him “Why?”, wide eyed and somewhat held-in by fear of humiliation, he replied “Because you're you”. That did not make sense to her, but it was unimportant, nothing needed to make sense then.

Now, sitting at her desk, names and addresses dancing in front of her eyes, letters and numbers, she reasons this Ben Mustow cannot possibly be HER Ben Mustow. Both names are fairly common. In entering over five thousand slices of data it was inevitable there would be something recognisable. But Kate had told her, when they met at Julia's wedding, that Ben was living in Tunbridge Wells. Laura nodded, looked slightly to the left, right into the sun. She always did this if she wanted to stop herself from crying. The sudden blast of retina singeing light forced her eyeballs to react by screwing themselves tightly shut, overriding any unchecked bodily function. Then, when she opened her eyes, they were already watering, a result of unfortunate scorching. It was unnecessary to explain the tears, quite natural, completely unemotional.

When she was little Laura used to watch TV with her parents, but only on a Saturday. Dad sat in his usual armchair while Mum fussed about with her usual distractions. The family were particularly fond of The Generation Game, especially the climax. Contestants watched a moving conveyor belt of prizes rattle along in front of their eyes, trying to memorise as many of them as possible. After a couple of minutes, or so, Bruce Forsyth would usher them away, isolate them on a stool and badger them to recall what they had just seen. Inevitably, the stuttering contestants failed to entirely articulate everything and, typically, it went something like “Heated rollers, toaster, cuddly toy, Teasmade, set of luggage, bath towels, cruet set,” and so on, because this is as far as the BBC's budget stretched. At the end Brucie would pipe up with his catch phrase, “Didn't he do well?”, while raising his right arm, palm up, to indicate the audience should concur and applaud.

Laura had not done well.

01892 640663

She drums her fingers on the keyboard.

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“What do you think doggie?” He wags his tail.

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A decision is either made in a moment or not at all. Potentialities are fraught with the danger of rationality, and people are simply not rational, not when it comes to how they feel. It is impossible to discover what will or will not happen, because the only information available is totally subjective. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

Laura makes herself a cup of tea and sits at the kitchen table, her hands wrapped around the mug. She has an overwhelming urge to bite her fingernails. If it is THE Ben Mustow, well, she could suggest a meeting, somewhere half-way between him and her. She just wants to touch base, his name cropped up, it might be good to see each other again. Confidence, that is the thing. Dithering would suggest she was dissembling. Why not? Why the hell not? A cigarette. Another cup of tea. Another cigarette. But it had ended badly. We're older, wiser. Bygones have been allowed to be bygones. What is a bygone?

The phone winks in its cradle, its little red light telling her that its merrily charging away. She clasps and unclasps her hands, remembering the last time she saw him, that picture in her mind's eye, worn and tatty 'round the edges, as if its been pinned to the fridge for too long, absorbing all the airborne filth domesticity produces. He said, right after he withdrew, “When we have children, what colour eyes do you think they'll have?”

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“Hello.”

The woman's voice on the other end of the line is light and breathy, expectant.

“Hello,” Andrew shouts as he comes through the front door, simultaneously unhinging the coat from his arm and dropping his briefcase onto the hall floor. “How was your day?”

Laura looks up as he enters the kitchen, her hand clapped over the mouthpiece.

“Who's that on the phone?” he asks.

This shakes her out of her shocked reverie. “Oh, no one, wrong number”.

Nigel appeared in the doorway, his hair still wet from showering, and Paul followed him in, the tail end of their conversation snaking behind them as they sat down.

“Blueberry and cream or maple syryp?” chirruped Jessica.

Nigel answered first, taking command of the situation, suggesting the toppings be placed on the table so everyone could serve themselves. Yes, that was a better idea. A smile stole onto his face, like a cat, bright eyed, confident, settled and comfortable. He licked his lips in anticipation, knowing his plate would arrive first, at which point he'd lean back, just enough, not breaking his flow, his elbows remaining on the table as he delivered yet another witty anecdote to his laughing audience.

Mark fiddled with his cutlery.

The kitchen was warm and pleasant. The usual prizes were scattered about the place. A large wood-burning stove stood squarely under a hefty chimney breast, smugly enamelled in neutral beige, or was it pale yellow? Two butler's sinks squatted side by side, fitted into an oak frame, attended by hand carved and hand oiled draining boards. A huge pine dresser decorated the whole of one wall, laden with a dinner service, inherited from Jessica's grandmother.

Paul rose. Bucks Fizz. How perfect. Quite Christmassy, New Yearsy. He opened the double doored refrigerator. Sophie offered to help, blinking, pushing her chair back from the table. Nigel slapped her bottom as she walked past him, her well heeled boots striking the quarry tiled floor with small, dull blows. She let out a little whoop, softened by the exposed beams and sheer weight of cashmere in the room.

“So how long have you two been married?” asked Mark, his smile twisted, forced, stretched across his face as if pulled.

“Two years,” beamed Nigel.

“Three,” said Sophie.

“Yes, of course, three. Bloody hell, I'll be writing last year's date on my cheques for at least the next month,” said Nigel, swivelling to smile at his wife, lip curled.

“Right.” Mark arranged his napkin on his lap, shaking it out, smoothing it down. “And how are you finding it?”

“Finding it?” said Nigel.

“Married life?”

“Well, you know,” said Nigel diffidently.

“Not really, I'm still a bachelor.”

“It has its ups and downs.” Nigel winked.

“In what way?”

“The usual ways.”

“And what are those?”

“Good God, is this twenty questions or something?” said Nigel, getting up stiffly, the back of his knees hitting his chair.

“Just making conversation,” said Mark.

The other occupants of the table turned their attention to a pot containing three hyacinth. All agreed they smelled simply divine, marvellous, quite seasonal. Christmas isn't Christmas without a hyacinth, at a push you can manage with a poinsettia, but really you can't beat the good old fashioned holly wreath. Jessica didn't have one of those. She flipped a pancake smartly and cursed when the fat spattered onto her apron.

“All right Jessie darling,” said Nigel, sidling over to her side. “Need a hand?”

“Oh you are a sweetie. If you could just pass me the plates. They're keeping warm in the top of the Aga.”

“Mark, shake a leg man,” said Nigel, his smile becoming a smirk, “Jessie wants the plates”.

Mark flicked the napkin off his lap and strode over to the Aga. He didn't realise the crockery would be so hot. One plate clattered to the floor. The sound of his mismanagement echoed 'round the kitchen. As he bent down, to retrieve and inspect it, Nigel threw an oven glove, hitting him on the head. “Oi!” said Mark angrily, bristles rising, cheeks transfused with embarrassment.

The Bucks Fizz was being handed out. Angostura bitters did make all the difference. Yummy. Mark's glass was plonked in his place. Someone wanted a maraschino cherry; they were kept drinks' cabinet in the sitting room. Mark obliged. He didn't hear her feet, because of the wool carpet. Consequently, when she said “Sorry,” he was taken aback, dropping the cocktail sticks all over the floor.

“Sorry for what?” he said, turning to look at her.

“For Nigel, he can be such a prat.” When Sophie spoke her eyes blinked a lot, as if they were connected to her lips and an invisible thread was making her whole face mobile. When she was quiet, unspeaking, her face fell silent. Sometimes Mark caught sight of her, in these silent phases, and he found himself studying her, looking for small secrets, tucked away in her eyes or the curve of her mouth. Curiously, all he found was a mask, discrete, uncluttered, but a mask nevertheless, perfectly preserved, blank, impenetrable. It wasn't that Sophie deliberately constructed a wall, more that she dissipated, became hazy, withdrew from the world around her, leaving only a smudge. Mark wondered what would happen if she took flight, spread her wings, escaped from the insufferable Nigel and found her own fresh air, somewhere up high, where it was crisp and clean and clear.

“We better pick these up,” she said, bending. As her head passed his face, Mark smelled the perfume of her hair. Lilies? No. Jasmine? No. Just fresh, she smelled fresh. Delicately, she plucked the cocktail sticks out of the carpet, using her long nails. He watched her fingers extend and contract, long, thin, with little knuckles; and then he noticed the withered mark, the banded pinch. “You don't wear your wedding ring?” he asked.

She snatched her hand up. “No, I ...”

“Oh there you are,” boomed Nigel, “we were just about to send out a search party”.

Sophie's head jerked 'round. “I was helping Mark,” she said half apologetically.

“He's a big boy, I'm sure he can manage,” snorted Nigel, curling his top lip, exposing his teeth. “Anyway, we're all waiting, the pancakes are getting cold. He stretched his arm out into the hall, indicating they should proceed in an orderly manner. As his wife passed in front of him, he caught Mark's eye. The gaze was quite unswerving, unblinking, nothing was hidden or secreted away.

In the kitchen, Jessica was flushed. Nigel resumed his seat, after gallantly, and ostentatiously, pulling out Sophie's. He insisted on a small peck before she sat down. Mark trailed in behind them, because he'd forgotten the cherries and so had to go back. By the time he arrived, Nigel was in full flight. “ ... 'A blonde with big tits? Why kill a blonde with big tits?' Bush turns to Powell and says 'See, I told you no one would worry about the hundred and forty million Iraqis'”. Laughter tinkled round the table. Nigel leant back as Jessica placed a plate of steaming pancakes in front of him.

first draft of a rough idea ...

 

The grass had been shorn short in the autumn, right back to its stubbled roots. He'd seen it then, at Stephen's christening, when he'd stood as Godfather. It surprised him, that Jessica even asked. He wasn't the most religious man, or guardian material, but their friendship stretched back a long way, so far that he could barely remember the point of origin. They'd never been 'friends' friends in any event. The sexual frisson between them was always conspicuous by its absence. There hadn't been any college relationship followed by a slow, painful breakup and months of recovery, culminating in a solid, life-long commitment. They were just friends, glued together by the inertia of approaching middle age. Old friends. Best friends. Always there for each other, like their own kneecaps.

He stared out across the new growth, looking over his shoulder back at the house. It was a nice place. Jessica had done well for herself, good job, great husband, cute baby. Some part of him envied her success, but he'd decided on a different life plan, or at least that's what told himself. He enjoyed being single and childless, living in London, going out and partying. His circumstances had nothing to do with the fact that he worked a sixty hour week. He was well respected, at the head of his field, he didn't need to be the head of a household as well.

The bank at the edge of the field fell away steeply into a small area of coppicing. Lucky Jessica, she'd married a rich man. Following the path, Mark found himself surrounded by rough winter trees, their bare branches sticking out at obscenely naked angles. He preferred the summer, when everything was hidden, nude secrets covered up by fertile imaginations. Old lady trees disgusted him, with their skeletons and undisguised gashes; and the branches reached out, snagging his clothes, snatching at his hair. He pushed on, refusing to think about the dead, fat spiders that might be falling all over him.

When it appeared, the lake was magnificent. Under the winter sun it shone with shy indifference, the water apparently oblivious to his presence. At the far end, near the gates of the weir, a single bird stepped carefully along the water's edge on its thin stick-like legs. Mark paused for a moment and squinted myopically into the distance. He was used to fat city birds, pigeons, ducks waddling in the park, peculiar starlings with their fat, brown bodies hurtling about and crying, screaming, but what he saw in the lake was different, long, regal, perfectly angled and completely silent.

Instinctively he crouched down, secreting himself behind a clump of holly. He waited, listening to the sound of his own breath, one hand in the dirt propping him up. As a boy he had holidayed in the countryside. His father, a bank manager, took his work with him, and spent most of his time at whatever dining room table, in whatever sitting room, writing in blue ink on yellow lined paper. His mother preferred to relax in the garden, drinking gin and tonic from lunchtime until she started on the brandy after dinner. This left Mark, who was an only child, free to do as he wanted. He roamed through fields, forests, walked along country lanes, finding things in nature that he could never find in nurture. “Wash your hands!” his mother scolded when he returned, because she was positively convinced that anything and everything needed soaking in alcohol to be perfectly cleansed. “And set the table for your mother,” his father said gruffly, looking up from his papers, positively convinced that some help, any help, would shut his wife up.

Mark stood and wiped his dirty fingers on his trousers, and then tutted because he remembered they'd cost him one hundred and seventy pounds. The bird was still there, craning its long neck, dipping its regal beak in the water. Mark crept forward a few yards on the balls of his feet, putting his heels down gently. The bird raised its head and turned. Perfect black eyes scanned the horizon, swivelled and blinked. Mark edged forward, lips tight, stretched over his teeth in determination. Twigs snapped and cracked under his feet. Swivel, swivel. Black beady eyes, run around with black feathers, like a 1950s diva. Mark held his breath. Forward, forward, each step carefully measured, heel to toe, heel to toe, a straight line, forward, exhaling through thin lips, slowly, a quiet intake, moving, feeling his way along rough tree bark, always with his eyes fixed firmly on the visual prize.

The spider's web took him by surprise. His hand punctured the silk netting a millisecond before his disgusted screech obliterated the silence. He shook himself vigorously, danced on the spot, virtually dislocating his fingers and wrists in his attempt to shake off the vile mesh. The bird's head jerked 'round, its crown arched forward. A single, shrill call left its beak, perfectly controlled, entirely unpanicked. It spread its wings and left the water, swooping low over the trees, its giant wings sucking up the air, sucking the air out of Mark, the disgusted scream out of his throat. He watched it, the bird, the invisible disgust, and then he set off back to the house.

“A heron,” Jessica said, “why else do you think this place's called Heron's Ghyll?”

Mark laughed. It was important that he laughed first, then people would laugh with him, not at him. Sophie smiled. He knew Sophie would smile. She smiled at everything he did and said. Such a pretty face, such pretty, black eyes, just like a 1950s diva.

“Pancakes?” Jessica said, turning to the assembled group, triumphant, waving a spatula. A general murmur of appreciation went up from those around the long, oak kitchen table. Mark sat down next to Sophie, smiling Sophie. He felt better. When Sophie smiled at him he forgot about the spider's web and the dirt on his new trousers.

It's raining again, but we must carry on. Three months it took the men to build the terraces, so we could get to the top of the hill, with our equipment and materials. It's still a heavy climb. The beasts can't make it, always losing their footing, so we bring the stuff up on our own backs. I'm skilled, most of my work's done down on the plains, which is good, because to lug the fuel up there would take too much energy. And while the stone masons can do their carving, at least of the intricate stuff, in town, well, the construction blocks still need moving.

We're from all over the place, some from as far away as Winchester. They walked here. Many men are needed. The pay's good though, much appreciated, there's not been a lot of work since, well, since there's not been a lot of work. It's difficult. The bread and butter commissions'll pay for food, but that's not enough. Hand to mouth. Can't do it. I've got five kids to support, and the land's not been kind recently, over and over the crops have failed. Don't know why. The priests say it's because we've lost our way. This is us trying to show we've found it again. Our Gods, the rituals were simple, do this, do that, nowadays it's a vengeful fucker, second guessing him all the time, and his servants. They don't act like servants though, always wanting us in their service, claiming it's in his service, a right old pecking order they've got going on.

I liked it before. No guilt. We just had to do what we had to do, and mostly that was to keep our ownselves sorted. When the corn came in, well that was Lamas. Maypole, big hole, log pole, made sense that did. Shove the long pole in the big hole, dance round it a bit, shag yourselves senseless. Lots of fun. Drinking, making merry. Doesn't happen any more. Now we've all got to be miserable, as if smiling's a sin. When did their Jesus tell them that? Water into wine. What happened to that idea? Confessing, confessing, I'm always confessing and asking forgiveness. I'm lost in it to be honest. Them on top, us underneath, bread today, jam tomorrow. They promise us such riches, but always in the hereafter. What the hell is that? The hereafter? How can it be here and after? Not possible.

Anyway, they took our places, especially this one. It used to be beautiful, right on top of the hill, looking out across the land, the colour depending on the season. Personally I liked the brown autumn, right after the fields were ploughed. Made me think of promises, how they start all earthy but end up flowering. Reap what you sew my mother used to tell me. Half of what she said's illegal now. They'd have her buried under a pile of stones, like that Lily, after they half drowned her. I watched. Can't stick your nose in or else they'd have that off your face. Forgiveness, they go on and on about that, then get you to drop your coins in their collection plate, a tenth, a tenth of what? I've had enough I tell ye.

It was years ago I trained, under John. There was a good bloke, knew his trade. Things have come along since then. I suppose everything changes. We got the foot pump now – doesn't seem that complicated, can't imagine why anyone didn't think of it before. The charcoal they're importing from Sussex on big wagons, fair enough, burns different though. Hornbeam apparently. And some of the tool designs have been refined, not much, I reckon the anvil's always going to look like the anvil, forever, and you can't really update the hammer.

Seems like they want this in a hurry. I get the iron half done, someone somewhere's moulded rough pig. Great. But it's raddled with impurites. Quality doesn't seem to matter any more. Stupid. They should know that if it's shit in then it's' shit out. Speed's of the essence, or so they say, but they say a lot of things. The stone masons are up in arms, don't like the sixteen hour shifts, plus, there's no food up there, and it's damn difficult for a man to work on an empty stomach. The priests though, the new priest, not the old priests, just keep talking about how God's will must be done. They made us all learn this little prayer. Every day starts with it and ends with it. Before it was sunrise and sunset, now it's something else. You can't go round upsetting the natural order of things like that.

I do my job though, to the best of my ability, otherwise I'd be flogged. That's the other thing about their God, his punishment's awful swift. 'Make an example,' the priests and foremen say. Old Macha, her with the herbs, she reckons it'll all come undone in the end. Dangerous talking to her, but I had to go, to get some tincture for our Seth, because he was in an awful state and the wife was wringing her hands as if she wanted to squeeze the blood out of her fingers. Anything for a quiet life me. And he did improve, could keep his food and water down, got a bit of colour in his cheeks.

What annoys me most is the way they think they know best. Hundreds of years we've been living here, farming, getting on with our own things, then they turn up and tell us we've been doing it all wrong. What I don't understand, is if they're doing it so right, why badness keeps happening to them. The first priest, Stephen, he got sick and died. I'd see that as unfortunate, but they say it was God taking him to his side, a blessing. All right. But then there's the weather. If this is a temple to him, then why is he making it so damn difficult to build? We're knee deep in mud, no matter how much straw we put down. Shouldn't he be smiling that benevolent smile? I keep asking and they get all twitchy, something about mysterious ways. It's fucking mysterious all right. Sabotage we used to call it.

Macha, she's against it, says, like my mother, that we'll reap what we sew. I asked her and she said it had to be stopped, that were were storing up trouble for the future. She wouldn't elaborate, just turned back to her cooking pot and laughed. Can't work out what's so fucking funny. She said I'd find out, that there was will and then there was will, the two intertwined like the otter and fish. What the hell does that mean?

I'd finished the blaisings when Ynag got ill, probably the same thing as Seth, but she didn't rally, went from bad to worse. I tried everything, honey water, nettle poultices under her arms, changing the straw mattress every day – I had to steal the straw. All her life, the red apples in her cheeks, the tensity in her limbs, went out of her, leaking a bit every day. Macha gave me tincture, but it didn't work. I went to see her again and she told me that it was up to me, that I'd angered the old Gods. Nah, nah, this can't be my fault. I'm doing everything asked, looking after me and my own, but, of course, I knew. “If you let them take your fathers then there's no need for the sons,” she said. I asked her what I should do. I knew already. Night after night I'd had the dreams, slow moving snakes, forest of headstones. We never used to have headstones, that's those priests again. They'd be more Macha said, if I didn't do what was right.

I remember my father once telling me that if you want to hide something then you should put it in plain sight. The church's nearly built. Beautiful. White stone. Right on top of that hill, where we had our circle of yews, all cut down now, the sunlight breaks through from their heaven and bounces off the walls. Blinding. So clean, so pure. They know they've built it on our graves, the ravens tell them every night, crying out from the trees they left in the ditches. I love it round the back, where the green hangs heavy, regretting the sharp, white progress. That's what they call it, 'progress', the civilisation of man. And are we much better now? I know Ynag isn't. She gets weaker every day, as if the church is stealing her life. The brighter it grows the dimmers she becomes. One day she'll be just like one of those ravens, shouting away in the night, reminding me.

It's simple, the best things in life usually are. Only took me a week to make it. Never quite understood why they're so interested in which way the wind's blowing anyway. North, south, east and west doesn't matter to these Christians. East, they're only after the east, where our altars used to be. Funny that. You just layer some shit on top of other shit and, as if by magick, the old shit disappears. What is it with them and their burials? Before we were anywhere near finishing they were already tipping bodies into the earth. Marking the land I suppose, laying down their own ancestry. They like cocks as well, something to do with Peter I think, never worked out who he is, just that he was right, then he was wrong, then he was right again.

The steeplejack, Gareth, nice man he is, all the way from Wales, or at least his mother was. Macha said he'd help, that I could trust him. The penalty would be awful stiff if I couldn't. It's a tradition, so they tell us, that the weather vein is the last thing to go up. How would we know? Not done this before. Tradition, I thought that was something established over the ages. They bring us these new things and tell us it's tradition. Turns out most of us don't believe them. 'It's tradition,' they say, 'for us to have a tenth of your wages'. Who are they kidding?

Sun's bright right now, doing that twinkling thing off the walls. The priests are all robed, in their blood clothes, wafting the incense around. To tell the truth, I don't think they can stand the smell of us. They move as if it was a funeral, little do they know hey. Shuffling towards their God. Heads bowed in humility, except for the one at the front, right pompous git he is. I'm smiling very quietly to myself. Ynag's well enough to leave her bed. The children are all running around, in and out of the trees, firing sling-shot at the rabbits down below us in the field. Little Hector's screaming his lungs out.

When they open the big oak doors, I can hear the sound of the choir, singing as if someone's died. Indeed. I know in there, hanging above the altar, is their God as a dead man. He looks down as well, all limp. It's beyond me why they celebrate such cruelty. Suffering. They like to suffer, not personally, of course. They like us to suffer on their behalf.

The priests have almost finished their celebratory shuffle when the skies darken. According to my weather vein it blows straight in from the East. Big clouds. Not grey, angry black. Seth's pulling at my trousers and I hoist him up into my arms. The first rumbles roll in from the distance like a herd of stampeding cattle. The oak doors slam shut. Closer and closer those clouds come, with their rattling and thunder. Seth's counting the gaps between them, and when the lightening breaks, cracking down over the hill, he squeals. Yes, they're very close now. The wind's got up as well, whipping through the leaves, disturbing the ravens. I call all the children to me. Ynag looks frightened, but she needn't be, I gave her a new cloak, close woven wool, she'll keep dry and warm.

When it comes, the rain's heavy, thrown down from the sky like spears, but it's beautiful, splashing against those white walls, staining them dark. The lightening cuts through, making everything blue-bright. No, don't run to under the trees, that's a bad place to stand, the lightening will go for the highest point anyway, which, according to my reckoning, is the weather vein, with it's bronze cock and shuddering arrow.

I wait, clinging on to the children, there's two on my legs, one in my arms, one in Ynag's arms and one hiding under her cloak. Our children will get to watch this. Suddenly a loud burst tears through the air. Hector screams and then whimpers. The crack reaches right down from the sky, peeling the clouds apart. I can see a blessing behind it as it hits the weather vein. The next minute and everyone's screaming. The oak doors are thrown open, but hit a piece of falling masonry. The little pigs inside squeal, squashing themselves forward. Hands reach round the door. Some red cloth flutters through the gap. They're trapped, just like they tried to trap us. I'm laughing now. I'm laughing because this is just two fucking perfect. And the ravens are laughing. The ravens are laughing because that's what ravens do in a storm. The cock, on the other hand, well he's fallen off his perch and crashed into ground below, beak first. I can just see his tail feathers rising out of the mud. I know they'll be back, but not here, not today, not ever.