38: Humming

The wake was held at the green-grocers, fresh vegetables served to sustain and benefit those who continue on in life. I had popped out of proceedings and was having a puff on my pipe, occasionally sinking a hand deep into my pocket to draw out a carrot so as to alternate a healthy snack with the ongoing curing of my respiratory system, all the while watching the Fitson’s bakery. To my astonishment, rats began popping out of the cakes and breads I had been ogling, proceeding in an orderly fashion over the counter to a gap in the door created by a stale loaf door stop. Once through, they scurried over the cobbles heading towards the sea, joining others who had come out from the supermarket and Mortonssons butchers. Between their cream cake, vegetable and cold cut births, and the freezing water of the sea, the stream of rodents bore heavily the sharp icy wind that was rolling over the surface of the waves onto the promenade, the flowing colony’s movement ever slowing until their ice bitten bodies came to a premature standstill several feet away from the beach, petrified, each one reduced to an individual still cut from an educational animation that had spliced every possible stage of rat locomotion. The children began coming out from the houses and apartments along the front, gathering in excitable huddles, then separating, their attention grabbed by the rat statues. When the first finally took the bold step of holding one in its hand, the others were encouraged to follow suit and soon they were arranging them like figurines, and even though the eyes of some of the rats continued to move, they were trapped: hapless actors in the kids’ raucous game of rodent apocalypse. After a short while, and some prompting by the adults, the children turned back up the Main Street and began humming in unison the melody of ‘Old Father Bobbins Is All Rolled Up And There Ain’t No Tea For Him’ as they ambled care-free towards where the grocer, the butcher and the baker were holding out metal trays covered in cling film in anticipation of the return of their property. The whole episode caused me to wince and gurn slightly. I tried to casually bring chewed carrot from the lowest reaches of my stomach, up along my gullet to the front of my mouth. I followed this with an attempt to nonchalantly spit the orange bile purée into my gloved hand to discharge on the pavement. Much later, on my return home, I found the majority was in fact scattered down my waist coat, pasted on my flies and caked on my shoes. Sift and grit, sit and grift. Sift the sand in a lift full of gits, at the centre of a sump we’re seeping down. Thought streams, POW! Thought streams, POW! Sift and grit, sit and grift. Sift and grit, sit and grift. Bottom material dripped from a pipe on to the bench edged tightly into the corner. She motioned for her lunch. I could practically see her thoughts surfing over the clattering of the food trolley tottering her way, they must be the most perfect circular issues to survive that racket. Her file said she had spent the last few years hopping about the holiday network, part of some on-going process of forgetting that had turned into a procession around the world’s buffets dedicated to some event she’d never mention to anyone. It was cheese week at the hotel’s restaurant, possibly only to hide the stench from the pipe. The waiter slid a note onto my table, and tipped his head in the direction of the lady now ruminating over the trolley. I nodded back at the waiter and flicked off the seal in one swift motion; some sort of Leicestershire Stilton and wax imprinted with a stamp that looked like a Fox flying over a forest of pines. I started to read: The fructogenetic diet book was scrapped after the accumulated efforts of a camel, one bird, and an apple on a PC. ‘It’s always a Trinity’, I thought. ‘Well, if you don’t include the computer, and I don’t’, I continued, “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush” said the apple when the news broke. The camel was shutting away the spilt splurt twitching material facts in the filing cabinet. “What should we tackle next?” The bird tweeted, then looking up from its phone it tweeted “What should we tackle next?” this time moving its feathers over the screen looking directly at the apple before finally opening up its beak and tweeting to the room “What should we tackle next?” “Wash wheat uncles neck?” questioned the camel, the height of his head meaning sounds gathered or lost phonemes before arriving on the waxy conveyer belt to the inner ear where a specially trained improv unit in the brain box appeared to riff with it until something as simple as a few words could come out as dauphinois potatoes. “I think Uncle Wheat was cut down several harvests ago, but I could ask Miriam to find out. This is how I imagine their conversation going, their interactions normally had that sort of shape. It was several days later the camel WhatsApp’ed me, it said hey Miriam, I need a favour.” I folded the note placing it in the empty toast rack. I sat back rolling a large piece of iceberg lettuce around my mouth and I was transported back to my vegetable garden and my precious tortoises. My head's a tortoise shell, my senses have retracted into its sanctum, if I open my eyes and ears and reconnect with the rest of my body I’ll have to follow the scent of this absurd note from a peripatetic lady laying waste to a cheese platter near a pipe pouring out excrement. All this potentially another lead down another cul-de-sac of despair that gives the real goal all the time it needs to get as far away from me as possible. I swallowed and beckoned for the waiter “Bring me some fondue,” I whispered, “no bread, I’m gonna use my hands.”