FOR YOUR INFORMATION

This was written by the man said, ‘property is theft.’

‘To be governed is to be watched over, inspected, spied on, directed, legislated, regimented, closed in, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, assessed, evaluated, censored, commanded; all by creatures that have neither the right, nor wisdom, nor virtue...
‘...To be governed means that at every move, operation, or transaction one isnoted, registered, entered in a census, taxed, stamped, priced, assessed, patented, licensed, authorized, recommended, admonished, prevented, reformed, set right, corrected.
‘Government means to be subjected to tribute, trained, ransomed, exploited, monopolized, extorted, pressured, mystified, robbed; all in the name of public utility and the general good.
‘Then, at the first sign of resistance or word or complaint, one is repressed, fined, despised, vexed, pursued, hustled, beaten up, garroted, imprisoned, shot, machine-gunned, judged, sentenced, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed, and to cap it all, ridiculed, mocked, outraged, and dishonoured.
‘That is government, that is its justice and its morality!’

IT WORKS

The lift stopped at Five on its way up from Four.
When the door opened she walked out and said, ‘is this Eight?’
‘No,’ I said, ‘it’s Six.’
‘I'm so keen to get to my floor, I don’t think,’ she said. ‘I’m always doing that.’
‘Easily done,’ I said.
The two of us.
It stopped at Seven and I said to the women waiting there, ‘going up,’ and she said, ‘you can get it on the way down.’
The two of us.
‘You keep your bike in your flat?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’d like to leave it outside but you know...’
‘I leave mine in a cage and get it on the way out.’
‘Does that work?’
‘Oh yes,’ she said.

THE FOUR WAYS OF THE PIT

DIRECT ACTION

‘I saw him in the office,’ she said. ‘Walking around. She was outside. Smoking.’
‘You seen them there before?’
‘Yes. Both times he was shouting at her saying, “fucking this, fucking that...”’
I’d not heard her say, “fucking,” before.
‘...this time though I went down and said to her, “why do you let him speak to you like that?” She just looked at me, kept on smoking. Then I went in to the office and said to him, “do you have to talk to her like that? I can hear every word you’re saying,” and he said, “sorry,” so I said, “well, I should think so.”’
‘Did he stop shouting?’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘he did.’

THEN THERE WAS ONE
four pigeons sitting in a row...

WORDS AND BALLOONS
a selection of Broadmead, Bristol, Saturday, 27th January, 2007

MOP MAN

‘Look at this mop head,’ he said holding the the said article towards me as he stood by the extractor.
‘Goodness,’ I said.
‘That’s four flight of steps has done that, it is,’ he said.
‘That made it that dusty?’
‘Yes. Four flights. You think it’ll do more?’
He was short, had a fringe.
‘I’m Treat,’ he said. ‘Here from seven to eleven.’
‘Every day?’ I said.
‘Yes. So if you want anything just say, “Treat, treat,” or just, “oi, you.”’
‘I’ll use “Treat,”’ I said.
When he’d left the laundry I said, ‘is he an addition or a replacement?’
‘He’s a replacement,’ she said, ‘for the one left beginning of las year.’
‘That was quick. He seems alright.’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘but I don’t know if he’s right for the job the things he’ll see at seven in the morning.’

NEED MY SLEEP

‘I’m so tired,’ she said.
‘How come?’
‘You’ve not heard the dog?’
‘No.’
‘You’re the other side aren’t you?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘So what about the dog?’
‘Barking all night,’ she said. ‘Well, from midnight until the morning, keeping me awake. It’d bark then stop and start up again.’
‘Yeh?’
‘Yes. He must put it on the balcony at night and it’s only a puppy.’
‘No wonder it barks it being so cold,’ I said. ‘Must be distressed.’
‘I know,’ she said, ‘leaving an animal outside at night...the things people do...I’d go down and say something but I’m single and don’t know who it is lives there so I’m a bit scared and I don’t want to leave a note, well, not without putting my name on it and I don’t want him to know it’s me and where I live...’
‘I don’t blame you,’ I said. ‘Have you told the council?’
‘Friend of mine did that and they told the person she was complaining about. They’re not supposed to but they did and she’s single and retired like me and she was scared.’
‘Oh dear,’ I said.
‘Well, yes, but I’ll have to do it. I need my sleep.’

WHEN YOU SAY HELLO

‘...you remember,’ she said, ‘it was the man with the dreadlocks...down one side.’
‘Oh yes,’ I said. ‘I know who you mean. Said, “hello,” in the lift...we both did.’
‘Used to live on the eleventh floor.’
‘Yes, I remember him getting in and out there. I’ve not seem him a while, now you mention it.’
‘He jumped off the bridge,’ she said.
‘No, oh no,’ I said. ‘I thought he was quite together. Some of them move in trash the place, leave or get thrown out. But not him, he stayed.’
‘Jumped last summer,’ she said, ‘To be honest I was scared of him at first, the way he looked.’
‘Yes,’ I said thinking of him.
‘...but he always spoke to me, was very polite...so I felt alright with him.’
‘That’s what happens when you talk to people,’ I said. ‘When you say, “hello.”’

HUMMUS

The train was forty-five minutes late this morning. We stood on the platform shivering in a breeze from St. Phillips. At home this afternoon I fell asleep for a couple of hours.
She called me as I walked down the steps to the subway on my way in to town to buy food. We arranged to meet at Kino’s in a half hour. I popped into my flat and put in the fridge what I’d bought and needed to be there.
‘It’s crowded downstairs,’ she said so we sat upstairs on stools in the window.
This evening I ate two veg pasties, a tub of organic hummus, spoke on the phone, watched stuff on the internet.

WHY ISN’T THERE A MEDIC HERE?

‘Do you know this place?’ she said. ‘They’re going to flatten it and sweep it all away. Just like that...’
We were stood on the ridge of a line of slag.
She turned to me and said, ‘do you thhink he’s dead?’
‘He got her pregnant,’ I said, ‘and now he’s got to marry her.’
She walked across the garage forecourt through a door she closed behind her.
‘There’s more to come,’ she said later. ‘Don’t you worry about that.’
‘What do you mean?’
She shone a torch in my eyes and for a few minutes I only saw the light.
‘It’s a family story he never finished,’ she said.
‘Do you think he’s punishing me?’
‘Depends how you look at it.’
They lay each on a stainless steel gurney.
‘Sometimes I see things but then I don’t know if they’re really there,’ he said speaking for the first time.
‘You need a leap of imagination,’ she said.
‘That might be true,’ he said, ‘but what if your friend is your enemy?’
‘That’s why I renounced God,’ she said rinsing his mouth out with water from a bottle then wiping his lips with a monogrammed handkerchief. ‘I couldn’t understand such a strict father.’
Twenty-six, twenty-nine. When they reached the suite on the top floor she noticed the furniture had been moved.
‘So what do you want to do now?’ I said.
‘Some things come to you,’ she said, ‘gradually. It takes time. Then you know, you just know.’

BROADMEAD DEVELOPMENT
21 January 2007

IT’S NOT MY BABY

‘It's not my baby,’ said the woman as she walked in front of me and then asked, 'would you like some food?'
‘I’ll have a samosa,’ I said, ‘I feel like something spicy.’
I picked the baby up from the floor and stood with it sitting comfortably on my forearm.
‘How old is it?’ I said.
‘Twenty-four weeks,’ she said.
I walked around the kitchen.
Beneath the industrial grill twelve uncooked joints of beef and more by the sink in front of a large window.
The baby put it’s arms round my neck.
‘I want to leave Mississippi,’ said the woman, ‘and go back north.’
‘Will you take the baby?’ I said.
‘I told you,' she said, 'it’s not my baby.'

STOKES CROFT FROM NINETREE HILL
(lunchtime, January 20th)

CUP WITH LEGS AND STRAW
(Broadmead, Saturday afternoon)

THE PHONE RANG

She decided not to meet me for lunch in town.
‘Ok,’ I said and put the phone down.
The phone rang.
‘I’ve got a radio gig in a couple of weeks,’ Triple said. ‘Can you do Wednesday on your own?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’ll ask around.’
‘I don’t want to turn it down.’
‘I wouldn’t if it was me.’
‘I don’t even know if anyone’ll be listening.’
‘Someone might,' I said, 'and you never know who.'

STORM BREWING
...and still they worked as the bush got blown...
a man walks in through the door behind the crane and later comes out, can you see him?

WIDE AND NARROW

‘Are they army boots?’ he said as he sat watching me.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Ex- German para, I think.’
‘What size?’ he said after a short pause during which I wondered what he was doing asking me these things.
‘Twelve,’ I said, ‘forty-six euro.’
‘I need wide boots and these are a bit narrow.’
‘You can get these in a wide fitting,’ I said.
I didn’t really want to talk to him but he persisted. He’d been a friend but had behaved in a way that made it impossible for me to feel other than a mug if I made any pretense at friendship now or in the future. I can be civil if required but no more.
‘Do you want these boots?’ he said pulling his trouser legs up to show me the boots he was wearing.
I looked at them and said, ‘no thanks, they’re not high enough,’ and pulled one of my trouser legs up so he saw what I meant.
‘Oh yes,’ he said and smiled, having despite my obvious reserve, managed to engage me in a brief exchange, which for him I imagined was a victory.

SMOKE

‘Can you smell that?’ she said as she opened the door I’d just passed and she stepped in behind me on my way down the flights this morning.
‘What?’ I said. ‘Urine?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s a burning smell.’
I sniffed deeply a few times but couldn’t smell anything especially.
‘You mean fire smoke or cigarette smoke?’ I said.
‘Cigarette smoke.’
‘No,’ I said.
‘Mmm, I can’t smell it so much now,’ she said, ‘it must’ve been on my floor.’

SWAN
This swan came hoping for some food to where I stood near Bristol Bridge, I didn't have any but I immortalised this majestic bird in pixels.
Can you hear the sound it makes?

GHOST

The permanent members of the community had left us in a room with painted white walls and ceilings, a white carpet on the floor.
We searched discarded white pillow cases had white objects in them. We didn’t find what we were looking for so tried to find something else.
I walked through to an adjoining room had a subtle golden glow where I caught a bus that soon became a tram.
By the time we reached College Green it was twilight. I pulled my head back through the front window of the tram as it passed close to a long line of white buses.
To the right in the middle of the green was the tallest whitest ghost I'd ever seen. I was scared because I knew immediately it belonged to me.

RAINBOW ON SUNDAY
I saw this from my flat. I know it doesn't do justice to the colours or its stride but...

COCKTAIL

I woke up this morning and the sky was blue. So was my mood.
You know I’ve been ill this past week and some, had a few days off most of which I spent in bed tired and coughing or watching free tv programmes on the internet. I’ve seen a couple of people, one who kindly brought some shopping round for me and the other who popped in during a break at work, but mostly I’ve been alone.
I’ve had time to think and time to do things I haven’t done and I’ve felt ok but this morning the outlook was bleak. This is a condtion in which everything and nothing merge in a cocktail drunk in the bar after time’s called in ‘The Last Chance.’

IF...

‘You’d get more visitors if the lift worked,’ she said.
‘I don’t think it’d make that much difference,’ I said, ‘ever since I’ve lived here you’re one of only two people visit on a regular, albeit, infrequent basis.’
‘If you had more friends,’ she said, ‘you’d get more visits.’
That is probably true but at my age how do you make friends?
‘They’ve plastered the walls either side of the lift,’ I said. ‘Did you notice when you came up?’
She hadn’t so I showed her as she left.
‘Oh yes.’
‘They were here the other day when I went shopping and I said, “is it going to be ready soon?” But they said, “no, it’ll be a couple of weeks yet.”’
‘A couple of weeks?’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘they still have to do the electrics.’

I WENT TO THE DOCTOR’S

I went to the doctor’s yesterday morning. I overslept but arrived a minute before my appointment time booked in using the touch screen consul mounted on the wall left of the reception area took a seat and almost immediately was called via the electronic display board into the locum’s surgery.
‘What can I do for you?’ she said.
‘I’d like you to sign me off sick for a few days,’ I said. ‘I’ve been very unwell the past week.’
I gave her a rundown of how I’d been, she nodded then asked me to take my jacket off and pull my shirt up when I said I’d developed a cough.
‘Breathe in,’ she said, ‘breathe out,’ listening with her stethoscope at various points on my back, ‘keep going...
‘...that’s fine, you can put your jacket back on.’
She said, ‘I’m signing you off for a week but you might need longer to recover. If you do come back and I’ll give you another week.’
'Thank you very much for your help,’ I said before leaving. 'Thank you.'

My boss asked me to let her know what the doctor said and I will but before I do I want to talk to a friend of mine I thought’d disappeared but who I’ve arranged to meet tomorrow (Friday) morning after she phoned and left a message saying, ‘I’m back in town.’
The thing is, I’ve had enough of this piece of work and I’m thinking to give notice.

A RARE SIGHT

After I got back home from the doctor’s, my daughter, who was in the bath when I walked through the front door, packed her suitcase and bags and made ready to travel back north.
‘You know where the bus stop is?’ I said.
‘By House of Fraser.’
I hadn’t been able to find it on Monday so ended up walking to the station when I could really have done without doing so. Because of the current building work expanding Broadmead First Bus have moved the number 8/9 bus stop and, as far as I know, because I’ve seen nothing to indicate otherwise, haven’t posted information or directions to where the stop’s been moved.

So there we were, daughter and me, on the bus to Temple Meads, and I have on the go an angry familiar internal rant...
...First Bus is a company serves, not the bus using public of Bristol, but rather itself and its shareholders who profit from over pricing it’s a disgrace the city council allows such shameless exploitation of the people whose interests it is, apparently elected, to represent...
...when the bus stopped at a set of lights on Temple Way.
On the pavement outside the nearside window a young man resting by an obviously heavy, lumpy rucksack, held a hat on his head against the the wind. He silent nodded a plea for the driver to open the door and let him on the bus.
‘Fat chance,’ I said.
But the driver opened the door and the young man got on the bus dragging his bag behind him. He made topay but the driver waved him away.
‘Thanks Drive,’ he said, ‘thanks very much,’ and he sat down near the front.
‘You don’t see that very often,’ I said to my daughter.

A NARROW ESCAPE

In bed just after nine last night.
Having walked to the station from the flats and then back along the towpath in Bath I thought sleep would be easy but I made my way through almost five hours of radio before dropping off and then only for two hours waking at four fifteen. I slept again from six ten to six thirty when the alarm woke me.
I felt full of energy and decided to go to work. I walked to the station all the time thinking, ‘I shouldn’t be doing this,’ and the same as I bought my ticket from one of the machines.
I sat in the cafe, Bonapartes, cold and damp from sweating all the way there. When I got on the train I sweated more and started to cough, which was painful.
‘What the fuck are you doing?’ I said to myself, ‘it’s cold outside, you’re damp, coughing...you could get pneumonia, and all because you feel so guilty about missing work.’
I looked at the station clock said two minutes to go turned to the man next to me who was listening to something on an ipod.
‘Excuse me,' I said, 'excuse me,’ and got off the train when he moved out the way.

BEDRIDDEN

First time out of the flat today since Thursday evening the night of which I woke up in the small hours sweating and with a dry throat.
My daughter’d been ill on Wednesday and I’d taken the day off to look after her. Thursday she was, though not a hundred percent, up and about and we cleared and cleaned the kitchen before I went to work the afternoon.
Friday morning I phoned in sick and spent the rest of the day as well as Saturday and Sunday in bed, unprecedented in my not so short life.
Saturday was the worst day because I couldn’t keep any liquids down and was ever so thirsty. I lay on my bed pre-occupied with my suffering and listening to the football on the radio. Each time I drank I felt nauseous for the next half hour then bring it back up feeling better for a short while going through the same process on four occasions. During this two or three hour period I felt geuinely scared not able to remember ever feeling so unwell.
Eventually, drinking a teaspoon of water every tenminutes or so, I manged to not throw it up and gradually reached the point I was able to swallow and keep down various painkillers that, while not completely eliminating, reduced my discomfort and wretchedness.
Getting out of the flat, walking around and doing some work seems to have done me some good but I’ll see how I feel in the morning.

PIGEON ON THE SILL

EXCUSE ME SIR...

‘Excuse me sir,’ he said stepping towards me by the Full Moon on Stokes Croft. ‘I’ve been walking around trying to get money for a hot drink. Can you help me?’
I gave him a pound coin, ‘how’s that?’
‘Thank you,’ he said, ‘thank you.’
We walked on further into town, commented on the new information board near the top of the steps down to the subway and suggested what we thought a more suitable position.
‘That was the same man from last night outside the chip shop,’ I said. ‘He’s very polite.’
He was softly spoken, used crutches, had a foot bandaged like you see around here, a beard and when he spoke he looked down, ashamed, embarrassed, I don’t know, I wouldn’t ask.
Last night after we’d bought chips for tea he’d asked for thirty pence so he could buy some chips. I gave him fifty and as we crossed the road on our way home via Ninetree Hill I looked back and saw him walk up the steps into Rita’s.

3 Jan 2007

STOLEN GOOD

She’d wanted one of the tee-shirts for a while. Each time we walked through the store she’d say, ‘I want one of those, do you think they’d give me one or sell me one?’
The time before this she’d asked first at a counter on the ground floor and had been told to go to customer services on the top floor where they’d said, ‘sorry, but they’re only for display purposes.’
She was disappointed, so this time as I looked at sale items and she saw one of the tee-shirts on the floor at the feet of a mannequin she said, ‘I must have it,’ and picked it up.
She carried it around as we thought what to do: go legit or steal it. Eventually we decided theft was the course of action most likely to secure the prize.
‘Yeh, ok,’ I said, ‘but how we going to do it?’
‘Hmm,’ she said, thinking. ‘I know, give me the bag.’
I gave her the bag was an orange bag for life from Sainsbury’s, and she went back over to where the mannequin was.
‘What did you do?’ I said when, after a short while, she came over as I looked at long socks.
I put the tee-shirt on the floor took my coat off put it on top of the tee-shirt put the bag down next to them pretended to try something on then picked up my coat with the tee-shirt and put them in the bag.’
‘Clever,’ I said.
We walked around the men’s department making sure we weren’t being followed before making our way down to the middle floor pausing briefly to let the woman behind pass us on the stairs.
At the checkout on ground where we shopped in the food hall we were cool. Privately I planned how I’d take the rap if necessary...

BOY

The police employed me to escort a prisoner arrested on suspicion of murdering three women each of whom was killed by a single knife wound to the right side below their navel.
When I got in the car I realised the accused was a young boy wearing a nappy. He crawled off the lap, but remained handcuffed to, a woman, an ex-girlfriend who, the last time I’d seen had sneered when I reminded her of my middle name, sat the far side by the window.
The boy climbed on to my lap and I noticed his nappy was dirty and bulging. This was bad enough but as he made himself comfortable he heaved pushing out a shit that ran out of the nappy and on to my trousers.
I scooped up what I could with my right hand and threw it out the window as we went round a roundabout. A motorbike behind us skidded on the deposit, parted company with its rider who fell on to the road in pieces.
When we arrived at the building I went inside, found a shower and washed the shit, which seemed to have spread, off of me and my clothes but I was too late to prevent the young boy from being tried and executed, for a crime he had no memory of committing.

FROM THE CENTRE TO EASTON BY BUS

UNCLE

On the way to the Spar this morning, to buy butter and toilet paper, one of a group of teenagers walking on the opposite side of Cooperation Road to me shouted, ‘hey Uncle.’
They laughed.
‘Hey Uncle. Unc. You’re old enough to be my uncle.’
I kept looking ahead where I was going and took a right into Hinton Road the far end of which is the Spar.
As I browsed in the shop a group of teenagers came in and when, on my way to the counter to pay for the items I held in my hand, I passed the other side of the freezer to where they stood, I heard one of them say to the others, ‘hey, look, it’s Uncle.’

ALLEYWAY
this alleyway I walked along after shopping this morning at the Spar nearby, runs between Greenbank Road and Cooperation Road in Bristol

DUE CREDIT

‘You do the fireworks?’ I asked the man with the grey hair and beard.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘but I’m only a student of the firework art.’
‘It worked, what you did,’ I said.
‘Thanks,’ he said then walked off.
‘Was it him?’ said one of the people I’d been watching the display with and who’d earlier said he hoped it wasn’t the man I’d spoken to because he had a reputation locally for being a spoiler at community meetings.
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Oh well, credit where credit’s due.’