When the bleeps are through.

Too early to phone them, the sun not yet up
The tired, young man stirred the tea in his cup
And rubbed at his chin as he zipped up the bag
Then popped out the back to sneak a quick fag
Where he smiled as he stared at the same sky me and you
Slept under, and watched black fading to blue

He looked at his watch for the tenth time that hour
And tutted and yawned and then hopped in the shower
He sang happy songs too loud and off key
As he applied anti-perspirant while taking a wee
Then, having twice checked he had all he'd come for
He picked up his phone and stepped out of the door

"Hello," came the voice from the phone in his hand
"We're not in right now, call back if you can"
He tutted and smiled, he should've known
At five in the morning, who answers their phone?
He left them a message and set on his way
On that fresh, early morning of that perfect day

The red bulb he'd ignored now wouldn't go off
And not quite half way there the car coughed a small cough
It spluttered and juddered and rolled down the hill
Still smiling he coasted along and until
He arrived at the pump of the handily placed
Texaco station, a grin on his face.

The best ever day and nothing could spoil it
He filled up the tank and opened his wallet
And paid for his fuel and for chocolate and water
And a little pink Teddy to give his new daughter
Crossing the forecourt toward his car
He yawned a huge yawn and ate a Mars bar

Seven missed calls while he'd been in the shop
Choosing a Teddy and perusing the pop
The phone that he'd left, in the car on the floor,
Flashed it's red light as he opened the door
He settled down and plucked it up
And dialed back, but alas no luck

Three times he tried, three times call failed
A second time he left voice mail
Then on his way, his head in a whirl
To go and fetch his favourite girls
From hospital to home where they
Would share with him this perfect day

On with the journey, a mile or two more
The phone started vibrating and dropped to the floor
And eighth call from Dad, he knew that he should
Leave it to ring and call back when he could
But just this once he took the call
A second or two before hitting the wall

The flowers are wilting, as wilt flowers will
When leant by a wall on the brow of a hill
Bright inks on the cards bearing messages of love
Have faded to pastels now, bleached from above
And tucked away, hidden, behind flowers long dead
A soggy, pink teddy sits bowing his head

J2H.

Be more Christian?

"You know the pie warmer at work?"

And so begins another evening of scintillating conversation in Casa Del Spacey.

Apparently, one of DickFingers' colleagues was sacked recently for putting his dick in the pie warmer. A little harsh, you may think, especially since the pie warmer was allowed to keep her job, but that's nepotism for you.

The dialogue continued as she went through her post-work routine of leaving her shit all over the house and changing into her favourite pig-onesie. Half heard snippets of gossip shouted from all over the house to where I was stood standing in the kitchen, throwing food on a plate and pouring boiled water into mugs while my dogs followed her from room to room, noisily offering her their opinions, giddily dancing before her and making sure she didn't steal anything.

Eventually the dogs tired of her and, television warming up in the corner and arses on the settee, we settled down for what was left of the evening.

Our conversation meandered in that meandering way it has a habit of meandering. From pie warmer we worked our way through the events and issues of the day. Some topics, the less important ones like the economy, whether or not a politician is lying (He or she invariably is, whatever they say) or the war on terror given but a brief moment of air time. Some other, more important but still not that important, topics would occasionally branch off from the mundanity of the mumblings that preceded them, seamlessly (Though occasionally tenuously) blending into one and other and taking the conversation in some very unexpected directions.

People think idle chatter is wasting time. They sneer when they describe people as "stood around gossiping" as if as if they were lazy or workshy. They may very well be, but that's not why they're gossiping. They're interacting, reaching out and being a part of someone else's existence, exchanging news and views, maybe even laughing. Time you enjoy wasting is never time wasted.

It's becoming ever harder to strike up a conversation with a stranger. Suspicion and mistrust lie all around. As many of you know, I try to undertake random acts of kindness as frequently as I can. This, too, is subject to the same twisted view of reality, skewed by our suspicion of strangers and spoiled by our worldly cynicism. Long ago I gave up offering to help old ladies carry their bags up the hill from Tesco, the fear in their eyes as I loomed over them, grinning my grinniest grin, covered in tattoos and, with hand outstretched, offered to bear their load for them in my thick Salfordian accent was heart breaking.

Some people, it would seem, are less offensive in appearance and, like the young man I'm about to mention, don't give elderly folk the heebie jeebies.

The chap in question is a young man that works in my local branch of Aldi. He was snapped by a lady from the chip shop as he wandered along, slowly, hand in hand with an elderly gentleman whose shopping bag he carried. The lady from the chippy put the photo of the smiling youth and his equally smiley elderly companion on Facebook along with a description, probably expecting a few shares around the local community and maybe a few "likes" to show the lad he was appreciated. In fact, it went viral. People from all over the world were praising young Christian Trouesdale on various social networks and even mainstream media. Caught in the act of a simple act of kindness, unaware he was about to become famous for nothing more than being nice and to bring a smile to tens of thousands of internet users all around the globe.

Eventually, of course, just as the cream rises to the top of the milk, the dickheads rise to the top of the internet.

Almost lost among the sea of nice words were a few sharks of derision, the basis of these being that it was nothing special and how shitty must the world have become that we should celebrate this one, measly, little act of a do-gooder. (I hate that doing good can be used against you, what fucking chance does that give us?) I'm sure Christian never expected gratitude from anyone other than Bill, the shopper he helped, and being an eighteen year old lad he's almost certainly suffering quite some embarrassment given all the attention. Hopefully he'll recognise any of the negative comments he comes across as nothing more than ridiculous cynicism.

The point these people are making is that we should all be doing stuff like this as it is, and that this occasion was remarkable for the fact that it was remarkable, but that's not the case.

It was always remarkable, but it needed to be remarked upon. By a lady from the chippy. Remarked upon, photographed and shared. It was nothing special, but nice, and it made a change from hearing about eighteen year olds puking up outside NightBar or being pregnant.

The mistake these moaners make is poo-pooing that single random act of kindness. Yes, it doesn't happen enough and yes, some other people are proper bastards. But don't let that stop you appreciating the good ones. Don't be afraid to smile in the street and acknowledge all those tiny little acts of kindness you see everyday, those acts that sometimes get taken for granted, that don't get photographed, Instagramed or Tweeted. Those people, the one helping the young mother lift her buggy from the bus or the bloke helping the old lady to pick up the shopping that she's just dropped, they're not trying to impress anyone, they're not expecting a reward, they're just being nice. They get rewarded by the spring in their step and the self-satisfied swagger as they continue on their way living their own lives. You know this to be true because you, I'm sure, have done a lot of nice stuff yourself.

When I worked supporting adults with severe Autism, one thing we had to deal with was what we referred to as "behaviours". Some service users smear faeces. some spit in your face, some become violent, either toward those around them or themselves in the form of very distressing self harm and some may simply rock and cry. (In the name of balance, I'd just like to point out that, although every one of the men I cared for exhibited severe "behaviours", those weren't what defined them. The child like wonder, the lack of cynicism, the loving, caring natures. No matter how severe the behaviours exhibited during a shift, no matter how much poo I'd cleaned up or whether I'd been kneed in the nuts hard enough to turn a testicle upside down, I always left work with a smile and never once dreaded going back. Oh, and my apologies for this extended use of parenthesis.)

Their behaviours, just like your behaviours (bad moods, irritability, theft), occur for a reason. It's a form of communication and one any good support worker needs to listen to. It's not always easy, but once you've built a relationship you know when a behaviour is about to raise its head and you've a chance to change the environment, remove whatever is disturbing them or help them make that cup of tea they want. Maybe even throw in a biscuit.

What you mustn't do is acknowledge the behaviour. Refuse to discuss why you're on your hands and knees cleaning his body waste off a skirting board, why your voice is several octaves higher than before his well aimed knee lifted you off your feet or why you're on the phone to maintenance requesting a window be replaced. You just move on, write it in the daily log and realise that it happened because you missed the signals, you didn't listen. His communication methods are limited, listen to him better in the future.

Of course, if you're any good at the job, behaviours should become rarer over time. Not because you ignore the act but because you focus on others. You shower praise on your ward whenever and wherever he does something "socially acceptable". Walking to the park without shouting any swear words in response to the abuse someone shouted at him, when he apologisies to someone he's upset and whenever he's just in a happy mood.

When a kid's "playing up" we say he or she is doing so to get attention and most of us, quite rightly, ignore it. We praise their good behaviour and ignore their bad, and it works.

Unless we're talking about that little bastard that was booting the back of my seat on the 575 all the bloody way into Bolton. That kid needs a slap.

All around us, people are doing nice things. Lovely little acts of kindness. At the same time, people are being pricks, and it's these pricks that get the attention. When a kid wants Kudos what will he do? His communication methods are limited and, remember, kids are lazy little buggers. The line of least resistance is always going to be their chosen course and if it's easier to get a bit of attention by shouting abuse at a chap with Autism on his way to the park where he'll slap his carer and be forgiven then that's the path they'll tread.

But if they can be praised all over the world for doing something nice, attain fame by being kind, be trusted and liked by strangers near and far just as easily, then surely that's a good thing?

Hopefully, a few more fame hungry teenagers obsessed with the pursuit of the celebrity lifestyle that is dangled before their noses on reality television shows and appears so tangible might take note. Maybe their hunger will lead to increasingly delightful acts of love, generosity and altruism. They might engage in one-upmanship, constantly trying to outdo their fellow Snapback wearers (I love hats, I'm never without one, but Snapbacks? For fucks sake, kids.) in the hope that the lady in the chippy has her iPhone to hand...

...and isn't too busy scrubbing the pie warmer.

J2H.

...So why should it be you and I should get along so awfully?

I'm very comfortable around death.

It wasn't always the case. My ease with all things decomposing hit me like an epiphany. No gradual desensitisation, no video games warping my view on the world, no hard core, ultra-violent B-movies, not even a hint of psychopathy. Just taking the opportunity to earn twenty quid, cash in hand.

It happened when my children were still young, the youngest being a new born, and I was working as a self employed builder. Married, with a nice house and a half decent van, a big back garden and a dog, I worked as hard as I could to provide.

The building game can be quite seasonal and so, once the nights had drawn in and people were saving for Christmas rather than shelling out to have a kitchen wall knocked through or a Velux window installed I took on an extra job working for our friendly, local funeral director, a man that bore an uncanny resemblance to Peter Griffin of "Family Guy" fame,  driving his hearse. It was a doddle of a job and I could easily arrange the week's building work around whichever jobs he had for me.

I always had plenty of notice, an emergency burial is not only rare but tends to require a van and a shovel rather than a modified vintage Daimler and a chap in a nice hat.

One afternoon, whilst crawling around under a floor in Eccles with a torch in my gob, my mobile phone rang. This was at a time when to call a mobile phone required a bloody good reason given the disgracefully high cost and so I was sure it was important. I broke off from stabbing at joist ends with a screwdriver and took the call.

It was the undertaker, Peter Griffin, in a mad panic and wanting to know if I could do an emergency job for him. I told him I was a little busy, imagining he'd probably be better served enlisting the help of Winston Wolf, and asked if it was life or death.

"Death." Came the reply. He was a sarcastic bastard.

I eventually agreed to help. The job, he explained, was driving his private ambulance. A chap had died in hospital and his remains needed collecting from the mortuary and taking to the rest home for Peter to weave his magic and do all those things that you and I really don't want to. The guy he normally employed to undertake such undertakings, an octogenarian with a dicky heart and diabetes, had been taken ill. An octogenarian with a dicky heart taking ill was generally something that was guaranteed to bring a smile to the face of our jovial, local funeral director, but this particular occurrence had occurred at a very inopportune moment.

Twenty quid, cash in hand, a half an hour of my time and I didn't even need to wear my nice hat or have a shave, I scrambled out from beneath the floorboards, told the lady of the house I was off to the builder's merchants and went to acquire a new line for the work experience section of my CV.

I'd never been back stage at a hospital before, only ever having seen a mortuary on the television screen, so I wasn't sure what to expect. As it turns out, the television people have nailed it. Shiny, steel handles on little doors, cadavers on sliding mechanisms within, steel trolleys and echoing footfalls. the only thing I experienced as I approached the drawer in which our gentleman lay that I hadn't experienced through the medium of Starsky and Hutch or Silent Witness was the smell. Not a bad smell, not a nice smell. Just a smell.

I'd been a little nervous in the run up to the big reveal but I needn't have been. The mortuary assistant opened the drawer and slid out the contents with a swish.  The body that glided out in front of me was wrapped from head to toe in a crisp, white sheet that bore the blue stripes and logo of the NHS upon it. I stood by the feet of the deceased and prepared to help my colleague lift him across onto the gurney we'd brought along with us. I wasn't going to have to touch dead flesh or even gaze upon it, a piece of piss. I took a deep breath and grasped the ankles.

"Hang on," the mortuary assistant called out, "I just need to take this...", He unwrapped the body before me, reclaiming the hospital's property, smiled and walked away.

And there it was, with only a hospital gown to barely cover it's dignity, the first dead human I'd ever seen. I'd seen them on the television, real dead bodies, lined up next to mass graves or lying in a street in Soweto, but those real dead bodies weren't real real dead bodies. They were pixels, an illusion, a series of little lights magically blended together by the sorcery that lay within the cathode ray tube in my lounge. Just a picture, not a person. This was a person. A person who'd clearly not looked after his gnarled and discoloured feet, those being the only thing I could focus on.

The flesh was cold beneath my fingers. Not the kind of cold that shocks you when your significant other puts the soles of his or her feet on your arse in the night, the flesh wasn't giving off cold, it was just not giving off any heat. After a slight delay whilst my opposite number at the other end of the drawer manipulated the dead man's arms into position, rigor mortis having already begun to creep through the newly decaying flesh, we lifted.

The body was an inch or two off the bed when the epiphany struck. I suppose it was a form of very severe aversion therapy. Where, moments earlier, I'd been scared of the dead now, with a pair of cold, lifeless ankles in my hands, I realised there was nothing to be afraid of. It was a dead body, no longer a person. I had never met the man in my life, would never know anything more about him than was written on the paperwork I carried and would never hear of him again. He mattered to someone, but not to me. Not now he was dead.

I went on to do many more of these little cash in hand jobs. That first was the most pleasant. On occasion I would have to remove a body from a home rather than a hospital, sometimes having died weeks earlier without anyone noticing and in a really rather unpleasant state. Once, I removed the remains of an unfortunate schizophrenic who had attempted to remove both his hands with a guillotine and had completed seventy-five percent of the task before the loss of blood resulting from the transfer of blood from within his exposed veins to the walls and ceiling had taken their devastating toll on him. Each job was different, but the cargo was always the same. Just dead bodies, not people. If I'd thought of them as people I couldn't have coped.

I couldn't have coped, because I'd have cared too much.

Bodies, corpses, cadavers, the deceased or the departed. To their loved ones they were people, to those that have to do what their loved ones could never bring themselves to do they were not. It sounds cold, it sounds awful, but those people that do those things can only do those things if they de-humanise our fathers and grandmothers to some extent. The remains of our dearly departed are treated with reverence and respect whilst in the care of these vital members of our society, but the respect is as much for the feelings, love and loss of those he or she left behind as for the fleshy bag of bones and organs that need to be "processed".

This week, Katie Hopkins has been in the news. She scribbled some of her usual brand of odious venom down and caused an outrage which led me to read her bile, if only because I couldn't believe it if I didn't read it for myself. I'm putting no links to her work, that would make me feel dirty, but I'm sure that if you haven't already heard what she said then you won't struggle to find it online.

Her words came just before a further nine hundred people died when the ship they were fleeing Africa on capsized. Many were trapped below decks, the last moments of their lives filled with the thing they were fleeing, terror. Men, women and children, nurses, bookkeepers, teachers, baristas, IT consultants, petty thieves, saints and sinners. People. People so scared of where they were that they fled, they attempted to reach the safety, security and affluence of Europe. So scared that they took a gamble with their own lives, the hope of the ultimate prize, an ordinary life again, a life similar to the one they once had before the bad times came, was a hope potent enough to make the risk worth taking.

Hell, Heaven or death, pick two.

She'd asked to be shown pictures of coffins, bodies floating in the water and skinny people looking sad and claimed that even this wouldn't move her. Then, presumably by the hand of some really fucked up Genie, her request was granted. She'd advocated the use of gunships to turn back the boats that carried them and referred to them as "cockroaches". De-humanising the victims, the real life people that, like you, never dreamt their lives would end in such a way. Regarding them as vermin so that she could bring herself to offer her vile opinions. Opinions she must, on some level, know are vile.

The newspapers and the television have paraded the images she claims won't move her before our eyes. Coffins, bodies, glum looking skinny people, a string of real dead bodies that aren't real real dead bodies, just a visual representation of the real real dead bodies that really lay somewhere other than here and are really dead.

The nine hundred that really died were migrants, as has been repeatedly mentioned throughout these news reports, who perished in a desperate bid to flee their homeland and escape to the relative safety of Europe. "Migrant" is a fitting description of what they were, in the same way as when you're behind the wheel of your car you're a motorist or whilst your in Asda you're a shopper or maybe a shoplifter. It describes what you were doing at a short period in your life, it doesn't describe you. You may have a lovely car or a fridge full of fine cooked meats, but there's a damn sight more to you than that. You're beautiful, or at least passable. You're kind, thoughtful, protective of your loved ones. You support that football team you support and your favourite colour is the colour of your first ever curtains in your first ever bedroom. You're you, a person. If you drop down dead whilst pushing a trolley down the ready meals aisle in Asda you'll be described in the local rag  as a shopper. If you survive the self service tills and make it back to your car in one piece only to die in a fireball on the way home then you'll be reported as a motorist. Killed in a bus collision you'll be either a passenger or an unfortunate pedestrian. That's what the nice man that can do what your loved ones won't will know you as. You won't be someone's father or daughter or the lollipop lady that lives over the wool shop, to them you'll be a cancer sufferer, the suicide victim or that bloke that had died, turned black and swelled up in his armchair because no one noticed he was missing all through July and August.

Only to our loved ones will we still be a person, which is why our loved ones hurt when we're gone. They don't miss a motorist, they miss a mother. A real, tangible person with a real, hard, eventful existence, a person that lived, loved and was loved. Not perfect, not special, just loved. Just like you.

The press report the people that drowned as nine hundred migrants because that's the easiest way to describe what they were and to explain why they were there. It saves ink and column inches, freeing up space for stories about terrorists and advertisements. It would be ridiculous to expect a journalist to write "seventy nurses, two hundred and eighty eight schoolchildren, forty seven gardeners, ninety five waiters, thirty two retired police officers, forty eight babies, seventy seven musicians, twenty nine doctors, nineteen joiners, three baristas, ninety six stay at home wives, fifty eight fishermen, thirty seven taxi drivers and a pheasant plucker", especially given that would be almost certainly wholly inaccurate, so in that medium maybe there's an acceptable excuse for using such dehumanising language.

But dehumanising those unfortunate human beings that are dying every day for the sake of brevity and doing so to allow us to vent our spleens in such a disrespectful and uncaring manner in order to attain infamy, column inches and notoriety are two very different motives. Those that partake of the latter, those that think of and describe fellow human beings as less than themselves, those without the intelligence to see that it's not beyond the realms of possibility they too may one day be faced with the choice of Hell, Heaven or death through no fault of their own, those people should be reminded that it is they, not the migrant, that is a cockroach, spreading the filth and disease that passes for their opinion all around them. And when finally they accept they've no more right to life than a skinny, sad person in a boat and their humanity has been restored, they should be welcomed back into the fold with much celebration. Balloons, party poppers, maybe even a DJ. Hold a street party, put on a spread and rejoice or turn your hats backwards, buy some whistles and have a rave. Whatever floats your boat.

Can you imagine how much more pleasant the world would be if Katie Hopkins repented her ways and became a nicer person? 

Or even if she were just a bit quieter.

Of course, it's important to have the details when deciding on a course of action and to give detail when reporting on a catastrophe. It's up to us, as readers of those facts or deciders of those decisions, to empathise with those involved, to read beyond the facts and to try and feel what the victims feel, or felt in those last terrible moments. To remember that those migrants, in days long before they migrated, once perched upon a parent's knee and giggled and put the cold soles of their feet on their partner's arse in the night. Those feet that they'd probably not have looked after if they'd lived longer.

And to not get too comfortable around death...

...unless you're just taking the opportunity to earn twenty quid, cash in hand.

J2H.

Oh brother, where art thou?

I always wanted a brother.

And not just any old brother. An older brother, one who would beat up the big lads that picked on me in the park. One who would wear a leather jacket and repair motorcycles in the garage at home, teaching me the life skills that my father wouldn't. How to get drunk, how to smoke a cig, how to chat up the chicks, how to climb a tree and how to build a campfire. The important stuff.

In my mind, an older brother was a hero. Some of my friends had them. They were the prototypes, the ones that had been around the block a few times, had made all the mistakes already and were able to pass down the secrets of a successful childhood. A blueprint detailing what not to do in the form of a taller, more handsome, overly protective version of one's self.

But, alas, it wasn't to be.

I wasn't only the first born son, I was the first born grandson too. I didn't even have an older cousin. It was me that was the prototype, the one whose duty it was to make the mistakes that any younger siblings fortunate enough to follow in my wake would learn by. It was a daunting prospect.

Even more disappointing than the realisation that I was never to have a big brother was the realisation that my little brother had no penis. My little brother, the one that was supposed to look up to me and learn how to service a two-stroke engine under my tutelage had been born with lady-bits. He was no better than a bloody girl and I was damned if I was taking him under my arm.

Eventually, though, I came to terms with the situation. My brother, as much as I longed for him to be so, wasn't my brother at all. My feckless, useless, half-arsed parents had made a terrible mistake and opted for a girl instead of a boy. A bloody sister. Just what every small boy wants.

At some point, before I reached school age in the early 1970s, my father acquired a shit load of louver doors from a bloke named Chalky and embarked upon a mission to replace every door in our house with them. My father didn't have a younger brother, he was lucky enough to have been born second, so he had no younger sibling to learn from his mistake, that being that doors with gaps in, whilst giving your home that Scandinavian look that was all the rage in those heady days of test cards on the telly and white dog shit on the streets, make for very draughty houses.

Once every door had been replaced, dad still had more louver doors in the shed than you could shake a stick at. Never a man to see good timber go to waste, he used the left overs to construct fitted wardrobes in all three bedrooms. This meant, for a month or so, I had to share a room with my dickless brother, Victoria, whilst my room was completed.

Victoria cried a lot, especially at bedtimes. She was coming toward the end of that period in her life when bedtime meant imprisonment. She'd be lowered into her cot by my mother as my father tucked me into the squeaky, creaky camp bed he'd borrowed, screaming and screeching and demanding she not be left behind those wooden bars that made up her comfy, warm cell.

We were all well used to her caterwauling, it had been an almost constant soundtrack since we'd brought her home, and we'd become mainly deaf to it but, now having to sleep within a few feet of where she lay, I found myself unable to locate the land of Nod.

I loved drawing as a child. I'd draw a picture of a cowboy or a pirate, a monster or a happy house with smoke curling from the chimney before being tucked in every night, and the pencils, crayons and drawing book I'd used would be placed upon the top the chest of drawers that stood between my camp bed and her cot by my father before he and my mother retreated downstairs and turned the television up. One night, in frustration, I took two crayons from their packet and screwed them into my ears. It worked! All was silent. I looked across at my sister, expecting to see her standing with cheeks of scarlet, grasping the bars of her cage whilst her mouth opened and closed, silently screaming.

She wasn't. She was laughing at me.

I took the crayons from my lugholes and smiled back, but her bottom lip started to wobble and so I rammed them back in. Upping my game, I took a pencil and inserted it into a nostril. More hilarity. I pulled the little rubber from the metal collar of another pencil, placing it in my vacant nostril and tilting my head back. I snorted, sending the rubber shooting across the room and bouncing off her forehead. She turned, rummaging around in the bedclothes, found the rubber and held it out through the bars.

"Again." Her vocabulary wasn't all it could be at that point.

Again and again and again and again she returned the rubber for me to fire at her, each time with heavier eyes and a dreamier smile, until, eventually, she fell asleep with her face against the bars.

Each night I'd repeat the procedure, becoming quite the crackshot in the process, until one night I sucked when I should've blown. Coughing and spluttering and making an odd whistling noise as I sobbed, I managed to raise the alarm. My father pinned me to the camp bed and, as carefully as he could, used the penknife he always carried to remove the little, cylindrical bung from my nose, a lengthy process made lengthier by the bollocking he administered during the surgery for doing nothing worse than making a stupid mistake. A stupid mistake that left me with a sore nose and that taught my little sister not to stick stuff up her own nostrils.

The bollocking was probably warranted, as was the swollen nose that kept bleeding for days after and the rather macabre descriptions of what might have happened furnished by my mother the following morning. Warranted and necessary, a lesson learnt by mistake. Three lessons, in fact. The lesson I learnt, "don't stick stuff up your nose", the lesson my parents learnt, "don't leave stuff around that your kids could stick up their nose" and my sister's lesson, "if you don't want your father to pin you down and stick a blade clumsily up one of your nostrils resulting in your favourite Manchester City pillowcase being spattered in blood and stained for evermore then don't stick stuff up your nose, no matter how annoying your younger sibling is".

Mistakes are a handy thing to encounter. The reason the big brother knows how to drink, to smoke, to kiss and to fight is because he tried, failed and tried again. Older brothers make our mistakes so that you don't have too, but we cant fuck everything up for you. If you never make any mistakes of your own you've scant chance of ever learning anything. Everyone makes mistakes...

...that why they put rubbers on pencils.

J2H.

It's not a valid defence in law, you know?

I grew up in a time when bad news was hard to come by. As a child, with my education well underway, I existed in a world where, once I'd clunked my clunky way through the shiny, black gates at the end of the drive, laid my bicycle on its side (Being careful to lay it on it's left side to prevent any damage being done to the Sturmey Archer gear hub) and fastened the gate behind me so as not to be followed by the family dog, I was "off the grid". If, whilst I was busy in the park building a den, damming the stream to catch sticklebacks or booting a ball around, my granddad died or our house burnt down I would continue building, damming and booting with a snotty smile on my face until home time, my fun uninterrupted by the selfish deaths of aging relatives or the destruction of my family home. Ultimately short lived but blissful, ignorance in the age of innocence.

Of course, sooner or later the bad news got through, but by then the fun had been had, the dens and dams built and the balls booted and booted until eventually ending up stuck in a tree, popped by the guy with the garden fork on the allotment or, on one occasion following an explosion of glass and the clarion call of "LEG IT", on the rug in Naggy Harris' front room. Once fun's been had, it's had. Receiving the worst news you can possible imagine upon returning home hungry, happy and with twigs stuck in your 1970s David Essex curls can't strip you of the laughter and smiles you've already laughed and smiled, although maybe they get put to the back of your mind until the pain has faded.

It wasn't just us street urchins that had to wait for bad news either. Way back in those heady days of my youth, while my father still worked at the timber yard and before he bought the pub that ensured he was always on hand to deal out punishments, the phrase "just you wait until your dad gets home, you little bastard" was bandied about with unnerving regularity. My father would leave for work at the crack of dawn, before my sister or I were awake, spend his day toiling away by the bank's of the ship canal and then make his weary way home without once hearing of the multitude of misdemeanors his mini-me had made. Generally, what with all the overtime he was forced to do to keep the roof over our heads, he'd not get home until his kids were in bed and his wife had forgotten about the phone call from Naggy Harris or the stink bomb that had gone off in his son's pocket whilst sat at the dining table, the bad news he was due becoming, with a little distance, not worth mentioning, mainly forgotten and not imparted. The trials and tribulations of my mother's day fading into memories that, maybe one day, would become nothing more than funny stories told to embarrass her son with when introduced to every new girlfriend the poor boy would ever get. The cow.

Then the end of the age of innocence snuck up on me. My birthday falling in early September, I was one of the first of my group of friends to pass my driving test and have a car, a beautiful, beige MKII Escort. One evening I found myself in a rather swish bar on the newly developed Salford Quays. As I sat, feet dangling from the ridiculously high stool I was perched on and gazing out at the ship canal on which my father worked before the posh people had moved in, my friend Andy arrived. Unusually for Andy, he was wearing a suit. Not his own suit, it was quite apparent he'd borrowed it from his father, a man a good six inches shorter than himself, and the half mast, flapping turn-ups of the trousers revealed not only his mismatched Playboy socks but a good half inch of hairy leg. Normally, I'd have latched onto this wardrobe disaster and mercilessly taken the piss, however this evening he carried with him a curious and intriguing device. It appeared to be a car battery inside a suitcase and with a telephone handset perched atop. He was sweating profusely, having carried this portable, but bloody heavy, device from the office of the company that, as of this evening, employed him and the establishment in which we'd arranged to meet. He heaved the device onto the tall, round table, narrowly missing my pint of lime and soda in the process (I'd given up drinking as soon as I passed my driving test, preferring to wow the chicks with wheels rather than fail to impress with drunken shenanigans) and sat opposite me with a grunt.

Andy, having recently been given the boot from the chicken counter at the local Tesco, had made a dramatic career choice and was now salesman for a telecommunications company selling their space-age, and to me almost magical, mobile telephones. The device that now sat before me, in a puddle of lime and soda since, for some reason, those trendy wine bars that popped up all over the place in the 1980s refused to furnish their patrons with beer mats, hummed as it intrigued.

Andy and I spent much of the rest of that evening driving around Salford and Stretford, parking outside our friends houses, looking up our friends phone numbers in the diary I carried with me and calling them.

"Hiya Shirley, it's John. Ask me where I am."

"Hiya John, where are you?"

"Look out of your window."

We'd watch for the twitch of the net curtains, wave frantically with maniacal grins plastered across out faces, blast the horn and wheel spin away. I felt like James Bond.

A few years later, now married with children and still at the tail end of the age of innocence, I found myself working as a jobbing builder. I'd managed to get contracts with a number of care homes through "contacts" in the pub. Each night I would call in to the pub and be given a list of jobs that needed doing, but getting hold of me through the day if an emergency cropped up was difficult.

And so it came to pass that I purchased my first ever mobile phone.

Unlike Andy's miraculous device, this was a Motorola Personal Phone, a mobile phone so small it could be carried in your pocket, so long as you were wearing cargo pants and didn't mind having a bruised thigh. It had buttons rather than a dial and a skinny, plastic, retractable aerial, ideal for chewing when pensive or cleaning ears, usually also while pensive. It was the beginning of the end.

I pulled up outside my house with my new acquisition lay on the passenger seat. I picked it up and dialled.

"Hello."

"Hiya son, ask me where I am."

"Where are you dad?"

"Look out of the window."

I watched for the twitch of the net curtains and waved frantically at my son, peering confused from within, with a maniacal grin plastered across my face as I blasted the horn. James bloody Bond.

Now my days were busier and far more fiscally rewarding. On call, always available in an emergency and with a very reasonable call out fee, I wondered how I'd ever lived without such a device.

But there were drawbacks.

No more could my wife defer punishment for whichever misdemeanor my own mini-me had perpetrated until his dad got home, more often than not calming down before then and forgetting all about it. Now, no matter how insignificant a felony he had committed, his father could be phoned and could provide, remotely, a suitable scolding.

That phone came and that phone went, to be replaced by another phone. And another. And another. It's pushing thirty years since first I phoned a friend from a Ford, since I wondered at the brave, new world that this incredible invention seemed to be opening up, and in that time I've become more and more reliant on the little box of inedible chips that I carry with me.

No longer can the box of chips really be called a phone. Where once the pinnacle of mobile phone technology came with an alarm clock and a ridiculously basic but highly addictive game to while away potty time on it, nowadays your mobile phone is better described as a portable computer that fits in your pocket and doesn't bruise your thigh, with a phone on it. The advent of this miracle of modern day marvels has brought with it an end to the ignorance of fathers all over the world. No more brief respite from the role of the parent to be scared of, no more are we just an idle threat of a vague punishment that may or may not come to pass, now paternal admonishments are "on tap". Now, daddy can be just as angry at his offspring as their mother is, whenever their mother is. The age of innocence and of ignorance is no more.

Ever contactable by anyone we share those eleven digits with, whenever it's convenient for them to call and whether or not it's convenient to be called. On the lavatory, paying for your groceries or in mid conversation, that incessant, repetitive, relentless beep of our phones is enough to force us to answer, dropping change at the checkout, hushing the person conversing with us or desperately clenching our buttocks for fear of an audible "plop" or "ffffffffrrrt" noise being converted into digits and resonating remotely in our mothers lounge or bosses office.

And, should we refuse to answer our flashing phones, there are text messages. And emails. iMessages, KIK, twitter, facebook, a myriad of methods to make sure you can't claim "I didn't know". You have to read the messages because even if you don't the sender will still think you did, still be angry if you don't respond, still claim they told you when, technically, they bloody didn't. No more ignorance sounds like a good thing, but there's an awful lot of that shit you could do without knowing.

This week, my contract on my phone came to an end. For the first time ever I managed to get to the end of a whole contract without breaking the phone I received for signing up. No scratches on the screen, no dents in the case, no loose buttons. A perfectly serviceable iPhone 5. So off I went to the to a local branch of a major phone shop intending to walk out with the same phone in my pocket that I walked in with, but with a greatly reduced monthly charge. During negotiations it came to light that not only could I have a vastly reduced bill for a greatly improved service I could also, for no extra charge or work, walk out of the shop with a brand new, shiny, gold iPhone 6. I didn't want the new phone, but I'd have been a fool not to take it.

So I spent last night playing with the new phone, to all intents and purposes a slightly lighter and larger version of the one I already had. Downloads downloaded, updates updated and restore restored I settled down to read a book, on my phone. Something I've never done before but, given the now larger display in my pocket, I thought I'd try. It wasn't an unpleasant experience but, being a lover of actual, physical, warm, musty, papery books it's not one I'll be repeating often.

This morning I left the house. As ever, I went through the routine of checking my pockets in order and ensuring I had everything I like to have with me with me. Keys, wallet, spectacles, a can of dog deterrent to fend off the feral Staffies that roam Horwich and, most importantly, my phone. My day was already well underway before I realised that I'd picked up my perfectly good old phone rather than my perfectly similar but a little bit larger new phone. What's more, last night as I was updating the newer model I scrubbed clean the memory of the old and so I was bereft of podcast to listen too, of Twitter to while away minutes and of any way of telling the time. It felt like I'd lost a leg.

Strangely, the only thing I wasn't sorry to not have with me was the ability to be contacted by anyone.

Sitting at a bus stop I noticed that, even though I knew the phone in my hand was redundant, I couldn't help but keep glancing at it and clicking the little button on the top. I was bored, terribly bored, and I longed for my wireless connection with the world. Looking around me I noticed everyone else at the bus stop had their own phones in their own hands, staring at their own little screens and tapping away at their own little buttons, sometimes smiling, sometimes not. All stood within a few metres of each other, all conversing with people near and far, passing the time with people that were absent when all around people were present. People that they may never see again, right there, right then, available and, just like them, eager to converse with someone. Bloody ignorant, some people.

I stared out of the window of the bus as we chugged along Chorley New Road, watching the texters text and the tweeters tweet as they shuffled along the pavements, and traveled the few miles to the supermarket.

Basket in hand I weaved my way through the other shoppers, occasionally selecting an own-brand item from a shelf and doing a bit of mental arithmetic so as to ensure no embarrassment at the checkout. Suddenly, a young lady came around the corner and began making her way up the aisle in which I stood. Head down and tapping away at the keys of the phone in her hand, she was on a collision course with me. I was sandwiched between a stack of boxes on a pallet truck to my right, a pensioner with a trolley to my rear and some semi-skimmed milk to my left. The only way to avoid a collision was to leap up high, grab hold of the "This Week's Specials" sign that hung above my head and swing to safety into aisle six where, if the owner of the tinny voice on the tannoy where to be believed, there had been a spillage a little earlier.

Of course, I'm not bloody Spiderman, so I was forced to brace for impact.

She walked straight into me, phone first, and immediately muttered an apology. I was looking right at her face when the impact occurred. Not even for the briefest moment, not even whilst apologising, did her gaze leave the messages on the screen before her. She took a pace or two back and then, still without tearing her attention from her phone and plainly imagining that everyone around her knew how important her messaging was, walked into me again. Again, an apology and again no glance from the screen.

When she struck me for the third time she realised something was amiss. She looked up, an angry expression on her face, and glanced around desperately for someone to vent her fury on. She saw she couldn't get through the way she'd intended and so angrily span on her heels to find another way through. Unfortunately, another young lady, possibly engrossed in a Twitter spat, was coming up behind young lady number one. Their phones clashed together, tumbling from their respective owner's grips and falling to the floor. Both young ladies were, obviously, very upset by this unexpected turn of events and a particularly loud argument followed during which, it emerged, both thought the other to be an ignorant bastard.

The new-fangled phones that had brought an end to the age of ignorance have now, a few short decades later, brought forth a new age of ignorance.

No need to converse with, interact with or even acknowledge those around us. No need to form new, real life, flesh and blood friendships with the people we encounter every day. Now we can happily take our own little bubble of ignorance outside with us and enjoy it 24/7. That in itself is by no means the greatest gift science has bestowed upon the modern world...

...but at least now we can let our children know their granddad is dead via WhatsApp.

J2H.

I'm sure Tracey's lovely, really.

My first friend had no name.

He was a drawing I'd done, in blue crayon. An alien spaceman with tall, domed, glass helmet, a squiggly smile and six fingers, unequal in length. At some point he'd come to life and taken to following me around the house never speaking. The only clue to his identity was the big "A" crayoned on his chest. I was three years old, so maybe the "A" had been put there because it was the letter I'd learn't to write first and had practiced the most, who knows?

At first, I believed my imaginary friend was pretty cool, but his lack of speech stunted the deepening of any relationship we might have built up. Eventually, he started freaking me out. The way he'd sit on the stool in the corner of my bedroom wiggling his ribbon like fingers at me when I was trying to sleep, how he'd stand a little too close, behind me, whilst I peed combined with his unnatural fascination around dead animals and matches made me uneasy, but he had no one else and so I put up with him.

I was aware he wasn't real, or at least that he wasn't real to everyone else. I could see him but no one else could. I'd try to enter every room last so I could hold the door open for a second while he slipped through unseen, he couldn't operate a door handle since he wasn't actually real. We had a door of dimpled glass between our front room and the hallway and so, if I'd not managed to smuggle him in, I could see him, even more distorted and wiggly, through the textured glass, flailing his arms, fluttering his fingers and getting angrier and angrier. Of course, I couldn't let him in, my parents would think me crazy and so I'd sit, fidgeting, trying desperately to come up with an excuse to walk across the room and briefly open the door to allow him entry. I never did come up with a plan but, fidgety as I was, my mother would always send me to "try and use the bloody toilet". Problem solved.

On many occasions I tried to devise plans to give my increasingly unnerving friend the slip. I knew he couldn't be killed, he was a crayon drawing for goodness sake, how do you kill a crayon drawing? I tried leaving him at the shops, but he figured out all he need do was stick close to whichever grown up I was with and I'd not get far. I dug a grave in the back garden to bury him alive in, but my mum made me go to a doctor. I racked my brains for some Machiavellian plan. I considered traps comprising of nooses and nets like those I'd seen on Tarzan. Mum confiscated the nooses and made me see the doctor again.

I tried hiding. I hid in the dustbin. I still remember the look on my fathers face as he raised the lid and saw his three year old son curled up in the bottom hissing "shush" at him with a finger over his lips. Dad wasn't one for doctors, he dragged me out, slapped my arse and told my mum. Who took me to the doctor.

Then, when all was lost and I'd accepted that I'd have a wiggly space alien at my wedding, my family moved house. I remember driving away from our old home, surreptitiously waving goodbye to my wiggly friend as he stood in the bay window of the living room I'd locked him in waving goodbye right back at me. I began to wonder if I'd miss him, whether I should have brought him with us and a mild panic set in. Was I making a mistake? Then, dad turned on the radio in the little car and I became lost in lyrics regarding a chaps regret over causing his Sugar Baby Love to be blue. Problem solved.

We'd moved from a main road to a quiet, little cul-de-sac that my parents deemed safe enough for a four year old boy to play out on unsupervised. Many of the other houses on the street had families with children living in them and so, within a few short hours of arriving, I had enough non-crayoned friends to ensure the silent attentions of the wiggly alien were soon pushed to the back of my mind, whereupon they became memories, memories that remained mainly unvisited.

A little over a year ago I felt a bit poorly. After a while I felt a bit poorlier still and then, at some point late in the evening, I became really rather poorly indeed. I've no real notion of the passage of time in the period that followed, I'm by no means a wimp and have always had a particularly high pain threshold but the pain I suffered that night was unlike any pain I'd previously experienced. Maybe my pain threshold isn't actually as high as I'd imagined, it was just that I'd not experienced real pain before that night. Who knows? Although, the damn good kickings and the spectacular motorcycle accidents I've had would indicate that I'm very well acquainted with the sensation.

I writhed around on the floor, a pain in my chest that blurred every sense I had. The world looked wobbly and sounded like it was under water. I was aware of DickFingers, sat on the settee talking on the phone. I remember thinking "why isn't she helping", unaware she was on the phone to the Ambulance service, and then tweeting about it. By now I was beginning to feel really rather sorry for myself, then, at some point soon after, I became aware of the attentions of the paramedics who gave me the most deliciously sour drink that dulled the pain just enough to bring me back to the world around me.

I was taken from this house, via ambulance, to the not-so-local hospital. As I climbed into the back of the big, yellow, emergency bus parked around the corner I looked around. I became aware that there was, given that my already dicky heart had just suffered and "Unexplained Cardiac Event", a possibility I would never see this street on which I lived again. It was dark, cold and rainy. Some of the bins in the back entry had been kicked over again, their contents spreading out onto the road where a rat tugged at a disposed of disposable nappy. The street art on the gable end wall reminded me that "Tracey is a slag" and to "fuck you lol". I wondered if I'd miss it.

All things considered, I decided I'd not.

Later, having been prodded, poked, jabbed and stabbed long enough for the doctors to confidently assume I wasn't quite ready to die, I left the hospital. There was some discussion among the staff as to whether I should be allowed to but I'd made my mind up. DickFingers was going away the following day so who would walk my dogs? I signed a form, collected a prescription and phoned a taxi.

I don't know if it's a peculiar condition, but at certain times in my life I've experienced events from a third person perspective as if I'm watching a film, complete with soundtrack. The journey home during the early hours of a Sunday morning, alone in the back of a sickeningly sweet smelling mini-cab, was, to me, a very eighties affair. Slow jazz playing, my clammy forehead resting gently against the glass of the little back window as raindrops rolled down the other side of the pane, the world lit in shades of soft amber that radiated from the fog wrapped lamp posts as I sped through streets populated with burglars, prostitutes and other general miscreants

As we slowed down to turn into a junction, cheap brake pads squealing and echoing back off the shuttering ply that separated the derelict pub to my left from the rest of the town, I saw the street I thought earlier I'd not miss swinging into view. The sight of the derogatory graffiti, the rodent-shredded infant sanitary products and the crumbling tarmac dragged my attention away from my atmospheric, rain slick, eighties view and dumped me in the atmospheric, rain slick now, and I smiled. I hadn't missed it, but I was glad to be seeing it again. It meant I was home and, more importantly, not even a little bit dead.

I was still what I can only describe as "off my tits" on those delicious painkillers they'd been kind enough to feed me in hospital, so this part might not have actually happened, but as I pushed the door shut on the taxi in readiness for the last few metres of my triumphant, non-dead return journey I noticed the song that had been playing on the radio, the song my imaginary slow jazz had been obscuring, a song that was all about a chaps regret over causing his Sugar Baby Love to be blue. I saw, in the rear window of the departing taxi and waving a wiggly wave my wiggly, blue friend, having not thought about him in decades, and I smiled. If that song was playing, then it was a coincidence that it should be playing at two points in my life during which I'd been wondering such similar wonders, but even a coincidence is as wondrous as any spooky notion of fate, karma or messages from the Universe itself. A lot of work goes into a coincidence. Since the "P" of the "Pop" of the "B" of the "Big Bang" the atoms of the Universe have been speeding their way through the space into which they've been released, clumping together here and there and making "stuff". Loads of "stuff", filling the space with "stuff". All those millennium, bouncing off one and other, ricocheting around the cosmos and, as a result of this process, briefly coming together to make the instant that is the instant we're in, to make for that brief moment the vast majesty that is everything in that one, unique, never to be seen again work of art. Some of this wonderful tapestry woven around us is incredibly beautiful. Mountains, stars, birds, spiral galaxies and mycelium. Some, less beautiful and some others totally uninspiring and instantly forgettable. But each as important as the others, nonetheless.

I'd been right when I'd decided I wouldn't miss my friend. He wasn't important, at least not since he'd been forgotten. He happened though, once, when there was nothing else more important. A short, meaningless, unimportant and empty period in my existence into which life had rushed like atoms into a vast, empty void. He represented a time when I couldn't play outside my house and had no friends, a sad time maybe, but a time that was then. The only reason I know I was missing out when I had no friends back then is because I've had some since, and maybe it's that automatic connection that makes us smile. A negative experience that made appreciation of the positive yet to come possible.

All those bits in between, those bits that you know you won't miss, those bits are as important as the other bits. It's right, you probably won't ever miss them, you won't miss the cat that sits and licks his balls in the window of that house you walk past every day or the broken inspection panel on the lamppost outside the off licence, you'll not miss the way your front door feels when it clicks shut or the way your significant other does that thing that really gets your goat. But give it time. Give it enough time and it'll become a memory you're free to forget. Maybe you'll never revisit many of things you don't miss but did, but occasionally you will. And no matter how meaningless a thing that thing you don't miss but did is, I bet you smile. Smile by association. Smile at all those other things you do miss that led up to and came from that punctured Pampers or that wiggly alien behind the dimpled glass.

Once there's enough distance between the period in the past and the instant you're in, the simplest, most unattractive, most mundane thing can become the most poignant, can bring forth the most surprising smile and can reveal itself as the catalyst for the more important things that came since. A divider in the office filing cabinet drawer of life.

A tune and a wall with some fading graffiti together with the recent memory of a minor heart attack had reminded me of a disturbing psychological event from my early years and caused me to smile. To smile thinking about my younger self during that stage in his life where, if his father hadn't done a shitload of overtime and saved up for a better house, he might have grown up with an increasingly malevolent delusion following him around. I don't miss almost becoming insane, but I am glad I once was. I don't miss the gable end wall on the corner of our street, but I'm now always happy to see it waiting as I traipse home from the supermarket, it's dirty brickwork silently reminding me I'm nearly home and still not dead..

All those terrible, shortsighted, romantic choices you've made that ended in tears were leading you here to this, your happy contentment. Unless, of course, you're neither happy nor content, in which case you're in the midst of one of those periods you won't miss. Just do your best to make sure you get the chance to not miss it and maybe one day, wrapped in an NHS blanket and wondering who will walk the dogs if you die, it'll be no more than the empty space into which the great life you've had since exploded.

Don't let the things you wont miss be all you can remember. Fill the space.

J2H.

Ending.

No kiss on the cheek before walking away

No hug of farewell, no words left to say

She'd wanted to hold him and never let go

To tell him she's sorry and loves him, but no

He'd stared straight ahead as she'd shut the car door

And driven away without a word more

She turned and she wiped some grit from her eye

While the moon up above saw straight through her lie

He fumbled his way back in through the door

The same door they'd left through an hour before

The cold and the crisp and the wintry sun

Had taken a bow now the night had begun

He tore off his gloves and his hat and his scarf

And sat in his seat with his feet by the hearth

Then gazed at the place where, an hour before

She'd sat her last sit and would sit there no more

He stared at the window but couldn't see past

The velvety night pressed against the cold glass

He watched as the raindrops rolled down the pane

And winced as he felt the tears building again

Threatening to spill and to roll down his cheek

He opted to snarl, to hide he was weak

He breathed deep and curled up while, high in the sky

The moon up above saw straight through his lie

Her train made good time but she'd noticed not

The passage of time or the tight, little knot

That dwelt deep inside her and prodded and poked

That niggled and fizzled, made her wish she still smoked

That thing she ignored, that she'd not give a name

The tight, little knot remained there just the same

Just one change to make on her long journey west

To a life she'd once had with her make-up a mess

He sat in his seat whilst his mind was elsewhere

He floundered and wallowed in morbid despair

He tried hard to focus on all that was bad

For fear that the good thoughts would make him feel sad

He thought of the sulking and fighting and tears

Getting more frequent with passage of years

He thought that he hated her, hoped that she'd die

Though the moon up above saw straight through that lie

Time to kill, time to dwell, time to try not to think

As she sat in the cafe not drinking her drink

She fumbled about in her purse for her phone

And looked at the screen and she let out a groan

Zero missed calls, no message unread

All he'd to say he'd plainly now said

She was glad he'd not called, she wasn't surprised

But the moon up above saw straight through her lies

A man is a man and a man will be man

So he went to the fridge and cracked open a can

Then slipped on his slippers and flopped himself down

Flicking through channels and wearing a frown

Hunger! That's it, that's the pain in his belly

He picked up his phone and he turned off his telly

He'd order a curry be brought to his door

Then drink enough beer so he'd miss her no more

The screen on his phone faded from black

To reveal that face staring straight back

The face of a woman now far, far away

He'd change that bloody picture, though just not today

Zero missed calls, no message unread

All she'd to say she'd plainly now said

He'd delete her tomorrow, from phone and life too

But the moon up above knew that that wasn't true

Each side of the platform, a train on each track

One taking her forward and one going back

To the life she'd messed up and the man that she'd hurt

She took a deep breath and she straightened her skirt

She shook her head clear, her choice had been made

The pain and the hurt would eventually fade

She'd spoiled it all now but she would remain strong

Though the moon up above knew, in this, she was wrong

Nothing on telly, he grabbed the remote

As the voice on the box urged him to vote

For whichever of the singers had hurt his ears least

He clicked the red button to make the voice cease

Then he looked once again at the face on the phone

And hoped that he'd make it now he was alone

He'd be fine, he was sure, no need to worry

"It'll all be alright. Now, where's my curry?"

She stepped from the train, there was no turning back

And set off with her suitcase that clickety-clacked

As it rolled and it bounced along right behind

The hurrying woman with taxi to find

She shook her head clear, her choice had been made

But it wasn't her choice, if it were she'd have stayed

Curled up in a ball on the seat right beside

The man she'd betrayed, and she finally cried

He stood by the door to the little back yard

Smoking and drinking and trying so hard

To think about nothing, to breathe and relax

To think of the future, not dwell on the past

If only he'd known the last kiss that they'd had

Before his whole world had turned out so bad

Was the last kiss forever and soon she'd be gone

He'd still hold her tight and the kiss would go on

The taxi pulled up at the end of the street

The street from the past that now greeted her feet

She counted the coins into the chubby hand

Of the driver who'd driven, who'd chatted and

Had told her a story all about how

A football team had wowed a crowd

She thanked him and turned, took a mirror from her purse

Glanced at herself, she'd never looked worse

He could hold it no longer, that last beer wanted out

So he'd nipped to the toilet at just about

The same time that the finger had pressed the doorbell

He'd only just started, "Oh, bloody hell"

He called through the house, "Yes, yes, just a tick"

Dashing downstairs and replacing his dick

"I'm sure you lot watch until we're indisposed"

He moaned as he finished straightening his clothes

He opened the door to the man with the smile

That'd brought his hot food over many a mile

He tipped him and thanked him and bid him goodbye

Then hurried indoors with a tear in his eye

He taken the bags and realised what he'd done

A meal for two instead of for one

He looked at the space on the seat right beside

His place on the couch, and he finally cried

The smile of the man as they passed in the street

Went unnoticed by her as she stared at her feet

The door from her past now barring her way

She realised she had no idea what she'd say

She'd made a mistake and this was the end

Of the life that she'd broken and just couldn't mend

So now in the cold and the dark she was stood

Chewing her lip like a cow would it's cud

His appetite lost, he grabbed coat and hat

And his keys and his phone and the money that

If he rushed down the street to the pub on the corner

He could turn in to beer to supply tears to mourn her

And help him to sleep when the time to sleep came

If he drank enough maybe he'd forget her name

The future starts here, as is always the way

A new year of your life starts every new day

A check of the mirror and lick of the lips

She straightened her skirt over her hips

She reached for the doorbell, the time had now come

She'd made her mistakes, what's done had been done

She, just like we, couldn't alter what's been

It was time to move forward, see what's to be seen

The future starts here, as is always the way

A new year of your life will start every day

With a coat on his back and a hat on his head

He went through the back door to the passage that led

Past the bins, where he dumped the two big bags of food

And into the street where the wind matched his mood

Biting and chilly and harsh and so bleak

And bringing forth tears that stung at his cheek

He turned up his collar, tipped forward his head

And wished he'd gone to bed instead

It wasn't the plan, it shouldn't be so

She traveled so far and he wasn't at home

She pressed and pressed and pressed once again

But no sound of life came from within

This house from her past with her future behind

Where no lights were lit behind the blinds

While high up above the big moon did look down

And think, "Pretty girl, why not just turn around?"

She'd made a mistake, what had she done?

Thrown everything away on some meaningless fun

She shouldn't have come here, it just wasn't right

So she stepped from the porch into silvery moonlight

"Oh" did she say after turning away

From the door to the street where, blocking her way

Stood a man in a hat and a coat and who

Smiled despite tears and she smiled too

They fumbled their way back in through the door

The same door they'd left through some hours before

The door to the future they knew would be hard

"Sit down" he called out as he dashed to the yard

No talking that night, they'd no need to hurry

Curled up and enjoying their microwaved curry

What's done is done, the past's set in stone

But the future's a tapestry still being sewn

J2H.