11: Potatoes

My friend Tom became quite introverted after the death of his partner, Oliver. Previously an inveterate showman in any company, he began to shy away from socialising, stopped going to pétanque, he moved about aimlessly, lost in thought, engaged in inner battles; the normal stages of grief, natural, we all assumed. Hmmm, and then ... well ... when you stood near him there was a faint breeze blowing his way from all directions, it sent a shiver up you. As time went on, and it became more pronounced, small particles lifted and were carried by some invisible agency toward him,... dust, food crumbs, sand things like that, as though his body had become a hoover, it was quite handy, in a sad way. Gradually though larger objects started shuffling towards him. I remember one weekend, taking him for Sunday lunch with Maurice to cheer him up and I watched a potato on my plate roll off while Maurice, who was next to him, saw tidal ripples on the surface of his gravy. Tom’s own peas were plunging from the table like lemmings into his lap or leaping onto his chest and head as he bent down to attract his fork from the floor and he repeatedly had to stop the menu from covering his mouth when ordering pudding. By New Years, he was house bound, covered in detritus, familiar thingummys, photos, holiday trinkets, old shopping lists, clocks, bedding, dried flowers and pot-pourri, potatoes squashed, pushed, compressed, into his new conformation, even the walls of his bungalow were creaking under some compulsion to move inward. In April, a few days after the walls eventually gave way and the roof folded in I visited him for the last time. With a rope tied around my waist and my twin daughters manning the winch and hand crank, I crawled into the passage that funnelled to his head so I could clean up his face, unblock his nose and mouth, check and repair the mesh that lined the channel, it was hard work, especially with the force of the pull. I knew it was heading the way these things do, as it had with my sister. His release from the struggles dumped on him came by the end of that same week, and it was accompanied by a thunderous cacophony as the monumental structure caved in, collapsed, the suspension dropping to the ground, a tension released, sending the debris clattering and crashing, racing down to the ground, handed back to gravity. And from the centre of the heap a fire rapidly burnt leaving nothing but cinders by the time the fire engines pulled up and gave it a symbolic dousing for the silent spectators. i'm writing this with a heavy heart it's taken me a long time to come to this point and i say this with great difficulty i'm very very sorry but i can't see you anymore slowly i have come to realize that you're a psycho i'm sure you're saying to yourself right now me a psycho no you're the psycho and this is precisely the point i am the psycho not just any old psycho i'm afraid i don't have room in my life for wannabes but we had some fine times we really did do you remember when we broke into the british museum and took pickaxes to the rosetta stone that was a perfect evening but in the end let's be honest there was too much jealousy take for example when i burnt down notre dame do you remember what you did yeah you planted a bomb on a golden gate bridge i mean seriously what if someone had gotten hurt i'm sorry it's too vulgar for words i destroy one of the finest works of art possibly ever created and the fulcrum of a nation's faith and you destroy a bridge people need across that every day to get to work did you ever think about them no i'm sure you didn't because i'm sorry to say you're just an everyday psycho now darling put down that pickaxe and don't even think about trying to embed it in my head take a deep breath and try to think about what i've said i'm sure you'll realize that it all makes sense and plus you'll easily find someone else there are plenty more loonies in the bin that i can assure you but me i've got to focus on myself right now i've got big plans you'll hear about them soon affectionately easy seagull stitch is wearing thin silk stretched out in a soldier's tin this song's about a boy's young skin it's right right with pocket clamps all circumstantial the seagull stitch is long unpicked the silkworm perished in a tiger's fist and all the patterns that you can knit they're right dolphins have them so do your laces up tight run into the sea