the three classes of wo/man

One person wouldn't offer the hungry soul a crumb even if they were starving.

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Another person in their generosity will think nothing of offering half the lunch on their plate to a hungry soul.

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Another will think nothing of giving it all away. Not even knowing if the soul is all that hungry.

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Which is more likely to be wealthy and which more likely to be poor? Which successful, and which one a loser?

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one coin with many sides

Just because someone comes across as a saint under given circumstances, it does not mean to say that under other circumstances they might not find themselves playing the devil.

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thin ice

It is when we are at our most generous that we are at our most vulnerable.

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The more generous you are, the more vulnerable you become.

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Unless you can claim to be a saint.

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west london tales 5

Conversation in the lift, between ground and tenth floors

- We've been here 41 years. We were one of the first six families to move in. Things were different then.
- What was it like then.
- Oh it was very different.
- What was it like?
- Oh it was like... paradise in the sky.
- Paradise in the sky?
- That's right.
- And it's not like that now -
- Oh no. Not like that at all.

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progress

In the old days you couldn't spend money unless you left the house.

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These days you can blow your fortune from the comfort of your living room.

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message found on the inside cover of mario vargas llosa's the war at the end of the world

To A -
may all your wars be little ones
Love
N
oct' 87

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after it ends

You feel like crying every day.

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You do cry every day.

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Then one day you stop crying.

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You don't feel like crying anymore.

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You feel something else.

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the mistake

One day it was announced that the war was now imminent.

The announcement was made on television. Thereafter only two television stations were available, both rolling 24 hour news channels which looked at the way the state was responding to the news and what people should do to prepare.

After 48 hours both of these channels went dead.

At the same time mobile phones ceased working, as did the internet, and twelve hours later land lines stopped working. All petrol stations were closed.

There was nothing for people to do except go back to their homes and wait for the war to happen.

During the whole of this time no-one had informed anyone exactly what the war was. Who the enemy was. People thought it might be the climate war, or a nuclear war, or a biological war, or a chemical war, or an ideological war, or a state-sponsored war, or perhaps a vestige of the class war, or even the gender war.

However, whilst there had been much discussion on this point on the television before it closed down, and whilst people had initially debated it amongst themselves, in the end they realised it didn't matter. They had all been expecting the war, in some way, sub-consciously or semi-consciously or just innately. There had been so much peace for so long that people realised in their guts it just couldn't last, and when the war came they were not surprised. In fact many, although they didn't express it, in spite of their fear, were quietly relieved that the war they'd been anticipating and warned about all their lives was finally arriving. 'Good', they thought to themselves. 'Let's get it over with.'

Tanks made sweeps down wide roads. Soldiers could be heard talking outside on radios. People sat in their silent homes, waiting. Some went through phases of hysteria and then depression, and then realised there was no point in even these emotions. Others left their homes, against their family wishes, and walked the street. Some of these were shot at, and then tried to return home.

After two weeks, the electricity was cut off.

An hour later it came back on again.

When it came back on, all the televisions and radios and computers came back to life.

The television was running as normal.

So was the radio.

The internet was back.

People charged their mobile phones and found they were working.

Buses started appearing on the streets.

Over the following week, people returned to their former lives. They stocked up at the supermarkets and went back to work. They cleaned their houses and started jogging.

For a week or two there was much discussion over what had really happened, and the government offered its apologies and one or two people resigned, but at the same time the population was praised for the way it had handled the crisis and the armed forces were praised for the way they had handled the crisis, and everyone had to acknowledge the state had done better than anticipated and people felt good about this in a quiet and understated way.

In two months the season had changed and life was normal. People went about their day to day existence as if nothing had happened.

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isolation

Every seeker of solitude ends up discovering they were looking for one of two things:

Company (in the most roundabout of ways); or the peace of death.

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platonic love

When you discover a writer you need to read more of it's like making a new friend.

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Only the writer will be a friend who cannot betray you; who will always be there for you; who will be never be too busy to keep you company. And they will not object if you neglect them for year after year, but be grateful for the part of your heart you've already granted them.

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Then again you cannot make love with a book.

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west london tales 4

Bolaño.

This is how it happened. The whole Christmas period had been a wash-out. The misery of a relationship ending. The absence of family. A nagging dwindling of funds. The near-mortal collapse of the computer. And then flu, which arrived as though recognising a body it was more than welcome to take possession of, as that body had nothing better to do than retch and shrivel and hack and gaze out at the Westway or curl up in bed.

The one consequence of all this was that he rediscovered something that had gone missing for he couldn't remember how long. This was reading. Which can become an almost perverse pleasure. Perverse because it is a process that requires no assistance from the world. Perverse in so far as the ardent reader can walk through a bookshop and sense the pleasure that lurks within the walls.

That feeling came back to him one evening as he walked back from the computer repair man and decided to stop off in Whiteleys on his way home. He walked into a clothes shop selling shirts for £5, but the label said made in Cambodia and something inside balked at whatever deal this transaction might represent, even though in another year, at another Christmas, it would not have bothered him. He went next door into the bookshop which was still open after eight and the perverse charms of literature came back to haunt him.

The books he chose were The Strange Death of David Kelly, by Norman Baker, another New Orleans thriller by James Lee Burke, following on from the Tin Roof Blowdown he'd been given for Christmas, and a book called The Nubian Prince by a Spanish writer called Juan Bonilla. There was a clear rationale behind each purchase. However, it should be noted that as he contemplated the Bonilla, a reasonably slim paperback with hints of Sudan, he'd also looked at a large hardback, out of his price range, which sat next to it, called The Savage Detectives, published by an apparently Mexican author he'd never heard of.

Five days later he'd read all the books and as much as he could manage of David Peace's GB84. In between the time spent sitting in bed coughing, sweating, reading, he'd been to Hereford and back. Before going away for New Year, he'd collected his computer which now seemed to be working.

Only it wasn't. As he realised on the morning of his return. The computer was stuck in L. Which meant the keyboard dementedly spewed out the letter L, even as it allowed the typist to try other letters. He took the laptop back late on the third evening of the new year to the Queensway computer market and as he walked homewards, he once again stopped off in the bookshop in Whiteleys.

This time he bought The Savage Detectives. He wasn't sure why the book exerted such a pull. The Nubian Prince had been something of a disappointment, and he knew he was succumbing to his Iberomania once more, but this book summoned him, demanding to be bought, and there was nothing he could do about it. The first week of the new year was another wash-out anyway. So why not spend it with a 500 page Mexican road movie epic by an author he'd never heard of.

And this is how Roberto Bolaño secured his latest victim, nailing him to the Aztec altar and nibbling at his heart over the course of four days. Saying (lying, of course) - you see, I wrote this just for you. I've painted the life you should have been leading. The one you dipped your toes in. I was out there, in Spain, the whole time, writing this stuff, whilst you were - what were you doing? Get on with it, Bolaño was saying to him. That's why you wandered into the bookshop. So that I could remind you of your responsibilities.

He googled Bolaño and learnt that this was the great dead hope of Hispanic literature. Someone he should have known about, only he lived on an island in the middle of nowhere where information seemed to be plentiful but of course it wasn't. The writer of lost poets heading towards desperate ends, or if not desperate, then forgotten, unexalted ends, barely a memory left of all the words they had spent so much care piecing together.

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