Category: With Geoff
森林が外である
ケネスサンは単独で坐っている。彼は書いている。森林が外である。葉の風はthunderous とどろきを作る。部屋のコーナーで火は火格子で燃える。Clive サン及びKeith サンは外で帰宅してい、車に取り組む。それらはオイルで覆われるが、これは意味しない不幸であることを。このパラグラフを終えた後彼はそれらに茶をする。ケネスサンは彼の仕事を完了し、ドアの方に動く。彼はソファーの毛布で包まれる子ネコの1 匹に気づく。彼女の極小の頭骨をなで、傷付けて彼は肉の部分が耳の1 つから切られたことを気づく。子ネコを密接に見るために曲がって黄色及び黒い目の後ろで潜んでいる彼は、はじめて、ほとんど人間のsentience に気づく。恐れているから遠くに、子ネコはmirthful - 楽しませてようである。彼はClive サンが外で声高に誓うのを聞いた。事は計画されるように進んでいなかった。
Arctic Hospital - Frost Castings (from Citystream)
La foschia era bassa
Presto sarebbe tempo di andare. Kenneth ha rifinito il suo caffè e rapidamente si è mosso verso il portello aperto alla parte inferiore del corridoio. Clive e Keith hanno sembrato ansiosi e dato il benvenuto a lui senza parole. Slittando nella sede posteriore dell'automobile, addormentato mezzo ancora, si è appoggiato a indietro ed ha ascoltato il ronzio del motore mentre il distributore a spaglio di notizie ha elencato, in un monotono irritazione, tutte le atrocità che erano accaduto o avevano evitato nelle ultime 24 ore.
Quindici minuti più ulteriormente su, alla stazione di benzina grande sui bordo della città, Kenneth si era svegliato sufficientemente per considerare l'interazione con altri individui una possibilità all'interno dei suoi mezzi. Comprando una carta, rinviante all'automobile, ha appoggiato ad un istante sulla struttura del portello aperto ed ha osservato circa, prendendo nei suoni e nelle viste di questa mattina grigia in autunno. La foschia era bassa, tranquillo e stava andando essere un azionamento lungo.
A Hawk And A Hacksaw - The Sparrow (from The Way The Wind Blows)
Appetite for distraction
"For turmoil, you should try these. They can halt most upsets of the stomach" said Geoff, offering a bagful of hot whelks.
"Hey thanks, but they're not the most appetising of snacks at the best of times" replied Keith. "Seafood is usually what starts the upset, if you ask me."
Ouch, instant noodles hurt the insides. Not like a pine cone or an all-lemon diet, more like forcing down a damp wad of toilet paper. Taste doesn't really come into the equation, but you might be able to dull hunger pain with this other feeling of thick and sloppy mass, and keep those demons at bay. But it's not satisfying that need for nutrients that the body gives out as a vague longing, at first, then a stronger tiredness and stomach cramp (or headache), then an implacable feeling of exhaustion and malaise. Of course there's the longer term pain of lacking any of the vital life-giving qualities of actual food - a really difficult-to-place void in wellness; it could last days... years. Imagine a drug where the effects don't kick in for several days. You'll only connect the reaction to the ingestion if you know what to expect. Food is like that. What's the difference?
Staring out across the sea towards some kind of boat that made it's way across the horizon, Geoff popped another whelk in his stinking gob. Keith thought about interrupting the silence with an observation, but thought better of it considering how banal an utterance it was likely to be. It would suit the weather, the landscape, the town, perhaps, but the silence of roaring wind, distant seagulls and the rhythm of the waves suited it just fine.
Keith would have been better off with a whelk, but he had never tried them before. How was he to know? They looked pretty disgusting, and that was enough to turn his stomach. Instead he filled his lungs with the sea air and hoped his churning belly would settle down enough for the drinking later on. A proper meal was what was needed, but no-one had been bold enough to be so prepared. On top of the background of nausea, hangover and tiredness, Keith felt the depressing throb of realisation that he had already opted out of having a great time this holiday and would have to suffer through it like so many before. The question to himself - was this to be life? And his answer: yes, for today again it is, and you have chosen it for yourself.
Mark Fry - Song For Wild (from Dreaming With Alice)
Jared
Even if the rumours that had recently gathered about their heads had no basis in fact, they were still upsetting regardless, and that they had and they were thus doubly so had not escaped the young Jared's attention. The protestors had begun gathering on their lawn a week ago, and every day the crowd spread and swelled like an unattended campfire.
In order to get to work his father and his uncle, who slept in the same bed in the corner of the living room, on the same side of the wall as the telly, had to use a tunnel they'd built in the basement - it took them to next door's basement and the neighbours were on holiday. For the first few days of this new arrangement they hadn't found the keys to the front door and had guiltily climbed out of a back window and snaked off down the block, hoping to remain unseen amongst the protestors. Then, when they had found the keys, they listened to the answer machine by accident (or design - it depends how highly one rates both the intelligence of cats and their manipulative appetite for drama) and discovered that it was in this house that the rumour began to spread, by the mouths of these neighbours, from door to door and street to street.
In the wake of this grim epiphany, Jared's dad and uncle had stopped caring about things like: feeding the cats, watering the plants, avoiding harming the cats, keeping the plants upright in sunlight, keeping the fridge door closed, keeping milk out of the television, keeping the front door to the house locked, not trailing mud about the house, and so on. So when this morning they stuck their heads out of the tunnel and climbed up the stairs, past a pair of swinging feline corpses and the flies feasting upon them, it should have been no great surprise to find a trio of men gathered around the fridge door looking at a map of the local area.
Jared's dad and uncle exchanged a look of silent tension. Jared's uncle put a finger to his lips. The three men were debating directions.
"... clearly three miles that way," said Keith.
"That way?" asked Clive, incredulous. "But we're here!"
"Even if we're not there," said Geoff, "and we're here, where Keith says, then it is neither three miles that way nor the other!"
"Maybe we should ask some of those protestors," suggested Keith after they'd paused to take all this in. "I wonder what they're protesting about?"
"Oh, haven't you heard, it's something to do with-"
Jared's dad coughed.
Ghedalia Tazartes - Tazartes' Transports [08] (from Tazartes' Transports)
More like a cornflake in the wind
Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,986854,00.html
Clive wished he lived in medieval times so that someone could give him a token of their affection. Tokens, it seemed to Clive, were ultimately a far greater aid to identity than any random logarithm generator or outmoded stylistic trinket used to denote your social demographic. You can trust someone blazing a “listen to ghostface” t-shirt across their ribs, and equally, you know to keep your distance from people who wear sweatbands, on any part of their body. Wearing your true love’s ribbon in your hair, now that’s identity. Clive was just in the process of etching a letter to his local Young Skimming Enthusiasts Association about the dire need for such signifiers for our security information as well, so we know we’re not acting on rustling breeze-borne coco-pops.
He knew that some things needed protecting. A freshly flounced quiff, the natural habitat of wool (which is successive homes secretaries’ hollow noggins, in case you’re wondering) and the exquisite song of bus drivers when you place any form of note to tender a fare (particularly noteworthy is the polyphonic tone emitted if the note is from your mum to excuse you from PE, which should be archived for posterity). Some things need shelter.
Clive was unsure of the familiarity shelter had with protection. Were they bed-fellows or just queue-buddies?
Sometimes people protect or shelter you by not telling you anything; they claim you’d be better off without. The information-stock would only weaken your welfare portfolio, at a time when pride-stripping and hostile confrontations are rife. Clive had reservations about meekly capitulating to assertions of his best interests. Only the other day Ken had assured him that he would feel a warm and fuzzy sensation, normally only induced by ingesting pasties too quickly, if Clive would let him have the last packet of crisps. Clive had actually felt the cold growl of his stomach, devoid of crisps, but didn’t press the point. Or when Geoff had sworn that the charity shop must have stolen Clive’s skimometer (a device for measuring what’s hot and what’s not in the fickle world of skimming) to use in its window display and it had nothing whatsoever to do with Geoff pinching it.
Piramis - Dracula (from Cosmic Dancer Voyage Three)
Listening Devices, Looking Devices
For all of their microphones hidden in pot plants, listening devices trained at opposite offices and tiny tape-recorder robots crawling through air ducts, even the finest espionage agents money could buy couldn't decipher Ken's intricate plans with Geoff. For five years planning applications had been submitted to local councils across the country, contracts with estate agents signed, arrangements made with water authorities; all a smokescreen. Carefully laid out on the bed were all the particular things Ken would need for the trip ahead: crisps, of course, bulging wads of the major foreign currencies, a spare pair of kecks, his glasses (pint and half-pint) and the bedclothes. Rolling the lot up into a portable sausage shape, he realised with a heavy heart that he had burst the bags of crisps and would have to sleep in crisp-strewn sheets, again, spending the night nibbling on various flavours as he came across them, because he absolutely could not bring himself - could not afford, at this stage - to waste crisps on any account. Perhaps another account was needed, at long last, but all the major supermarkets had been tried and it was simply beyond their grasp that a gentleman might want to do things the old fashioned way for a change, and be trusted to keep a slate, to say good-day to the delivery boy as he left the packages of groceries, perhaps slip him a fiver if he'd clean the windows while he was about. New windows once a year, that was the unfortunate truth of the matter. New windows, because the old ones were looking frightfully grubby, and the hand prints and smudge-marks of nose-grease from young faces pressed up against the glass, trying to peer in at what old-man Kenneth was concocting in there and whether he might have any crisps to spare today just wouldn't go away and surely some light ought be allowed to get in at winter-time. Then the 'phone rang.
"Ken?"
"Yes Geoff."
"Ready?"
"Nearly."
"I'll meet you there."
"Good-bye."
Ken selected a cane, took his hat from the fridge, and set off. Five minutes later he was back to pick up his bed-roll, put on a jacket, brush his teeth, switch off the stove and lock the house behind him. A further three minutes after that, and he had arrived at the station again, stood sternly on the platform staring at the man reading a newspaper on the bench on the opposite platform and wondering if he would have time to go back a second time and make a flask of tea for the journey when Geoff entered his field of vision and said
"Hello!"
which didn't so much take Ken by surprise as cause the exact amount of shock necessary to dislodge him from a train of thought that threatened to take his conscious mind away from the immediate vicinity for perhaps several hours, during which time any other trains he might be better off concentrating on would have arrived and departed many times.
"Hi Geoff" returned Ken plainly, "have you seen that man on the opposite platform. I think he's been following me."
"I have Ken" said Geoff cheerfully, "I've got one of my own" and gestured behind him to another man with the same suit, same newspaper and, most markedly, the same demeanour of quite deliberate ignorance to the stares of Ken and Geoff. The two had grown quite fond of the attention over the years, devising little exchanges to let their watchers know that the watchees were almost, but not quite aware that they were being watched, lately becoming almost a joke that they both expected would be shared all round when the watchers finally threw up their arms and said "you've got me!" But it still hadn't happened, nothing had come to a close, and it looked like today was going to be another standard move of the pawns in this cat-and-mouse hunt for the truth. As you and I both know, that wasn't quite true on this particular morning.
Polar Bear - The King of Aberdeen (from Held on the Tips of Fingers).
Passion Fruit
A quirk of character perhaps, but the history of Scottish football clubs thrilled Geoff's soul. First, there's the names: Hamilton Academicals, Inverness Caledonian Thistle. Then the scorelines - East Fife 4, Forfar 5 was a favourite - and the beauty of matchdays. The contradiction between the run-down corrugated iron stadias and their surroundings in the majesty of the highlands lured him, time and time again, five hundred miles out of his daily routine. He was a fond collector of anecdotes: in fifteen years he will die, and relatives will discover maybe as many as twenty notebooks packed from cover to cover with stories, hearsay, facts, lies, myths - all relating to the proud, unrepentant tradition of soccer in Scotland.
His favourite story he found one afternoon in a bar on Sauchiehall Street. It involved the Danish coach Alvin Knudsen, at that time responsible for the Glasgow Rangers under-19 squad (this was the age of the foreign coaches - sport science graduates from all over Europe and South America were given prestigious positions high up within the hierarchy of British football clubs, often without background checks and on the evidence of a five minute interview). Anyway, it transpires that Knudsen - so the story goes - was a passionate man with a deep love of Glasgow Rangers. Everything in his house was blue, white or orange (apart from his skirting board, which his wife had painted red after a night on the piss). He staunchly refused to admit of the colour green's very existence. He was extremely proud of his job and even had business cards printed up on a machine at Scotch Corner service station. At every team talk just prior to kick-off he would scream "Forward Glasgow Rangers! Glasgow Rangers forever and ever!!" at his young charges as they headed out the door.
The problem was Knudsen could speak, at best, only fractured English. In moments of passion, therefore, he invariably preferred the Danish tongue. The thing is, apart from Knudsen, no-one involved with the day-to-day running of the Glasgow Rangers Under-19s could understand a word of Danish. An intimidating man, at over seven feet tall, covered in hair from his head to his toes, with only a few bare, hairless inches of pockmarked olive-coloured skin around his eyes and mouth, Knudsen's shrill cries of triumph served only to unnerve the precocious starting eleven, and maybe some of the subs.
It wasn't that Knudsen was an aggressive, overbearing man - far from it. In every training session, Knudsen would be first to arrive. He would lay out the cones and share jokes with his players as they turned up, one by one. The players grew quite fond of him. To lose his confidence would shatter their own self-esteem. Walking onto the pitch every Sunday afternoon, the Glasgow sun blinding their eyes and causing their skin to itch, the Glasgow Rangers Under-19 squad would tremble and worry. "What's up with the boss?" they would all think, too scared to share their thoughts with one another, lest this further infuriate Knudsen. You don't need telling what happens next - the forwards would spend the opening half spurning chances, chasing after misjudged passes from an anxious midfield who would either give the ball away too soon or dwell for too long on their options. The defenders would scuff clearances into the stands, moving too late to lend any stringency to an extremely loose offside-trap. The keeper would stay on his line for crosses, and wouldn't call when coming for the ball at corners. Long story short - it wasn't rare for the Under-19s to go in at half-time four goals down.
At the half-time team talks, Knudsen would be so disappointed with his team's performance that he would sit in a corner sobbing loudly to himself for the whole fifteen minutes. The spectacle of their beloved coach so upset would spur the team on to come out fighting and they would leave the tunnel full of renewed vigour, determined to level the scores for Knudsen. The real tragedy was that Knudsen was overseeing one of the worst incarnations of a Glasgow Rangers Under-19 side for a long time. To be honest - they were easily one of the worst ever. They lacked width and tired easily. It wasn't long into the second half that they would overstretch themselves pressing forwards and the opposition would net a fifth. Heads would drop, and their game would become all about containment and aggression. Dismissals were common, and nobody was surprised at full-time when the team found themselves on the end of a eight-nil spanking.
At the end of every season, Knudsen grew more and more haggard. It was at the end of his fifth season that he stumbled upon an idea that would last beyond his lifetime, and provide a sharp increase in the standard of life upon earth.
Ruby Murray - It's The Irish In Me
Supping from the Chalice of Fantasy
James Ruskin - In The Shadows
Keith's nerves were playing up and it wasn't the time. True, no-one really could have expected a first-timer to be cold as ice, as cruel and unforgiving as the blade of his +1 scimitar, but he might at least say something thought Geoff. Geoff was eager for this to work as there was no way they could defeat the ogres on their own. Despite what you may have heard, one of the party did have an undead army - but, animated with magic, these troops could only be used defensively as they would crumble if they walked into the ogre base, protected as it was by an anti-magic field of some sort, the nature of which Keith could only dimly comprehend. This was all new to him and he got the impression that his trepidation was starting to infuriate certain other players. Enrico, a half-celestial assassin, and Clive, a Gnome fighter revered throughout the lands as both a diplomat and a drinker, were beginning to talk in raised voices about some 'suicide mission' involving the Satyr Druid and his indolent Leopard companion.
"Poison!" blurted Keith. The GM made a sound in the back of his larynx that gave the impression of either intrigue or asthma. Once this sound met the sealed lips of an unrevealing mouth, itself trapped beneath knowing brown eyes and impudent, provocative nostrils, the overall impression was so convincing that everyone in the room looked at Keith as if he was the most interesting thing in the world. George, the undead warrior prince who had commanded a hundred armies of a thousand or more zombie irregulars over a period of more than a million years, made an intimidating prospect as, clad in full plate armour, with the fires of hell burning pinpricks through souls of cheer from his carrion eye sockets, he excused himself for a minute as he went to the toilet.
"What about poison?" ventured Keith further. "There must be something poisonous in these woods."
"Well, you would know," said the GM. "This is your homeland".
Once more, thought Keith, I've fucked this up. Even when his ideas had legs, his inexperience would trip them up and kick them in the privates. What was so galling was that Keith's inexperience even had the cheek to make it look like an accident. Still, it seemed to be going slightly better. People were no longer laughing at him (though the odd chuckle survived), and there was none of that stony silence about anymore - how it had dogged him for the first fifteen minutes, appearing almost exactly at the same time as he stopped talking, his point made. "Why not do a Profession (Herbalism) check?" said the GM helpfully. Thank God for the GM, thought Keith. He's on my side. He doesn't want me to crash and burn, he wants me to contribute to a good game. Keith was almost entirely certain of this point. Enrico's mobile rang.
Get Well Soon
Push Button Objects - ATP Track
Geoff was lying in bed propped up with pillows. His enormous, large-pupilled eyes stared out of cavernous sockets, his skin was white and clammy with sweat. But almost more appalling even than the face was his neck, his unbelievably thin neck. And from the sleeves of his nightshirt projected two knobbed sticks, his arms, with a pair of immense skeleton hands fastened to the end of them, like rakes at the end of their slender shafts. Then there was the smell in that far away sick-room. The windows were tightly shut, and the air was hot and heavy with a horrible odour of stale sick breath and the exhalations of a sick body - an old inveterate smell that seemed to have grown sickeningly sweetish with long ripening in the pent-up heat. A new, fresh smell, however pungently disgusting, would have been less horrible. It was the inveterateness, the sweet decaying over-ripeness of that sick-room smell that made it so peculiarly unbearable. Kenneth shuddered even now to think of it. He lit a cigarette to disinfect his memory. He had been brought up on baths and open windows. The first time that, as a child, he was taken to church, the stuffiness, the odour of humanity made him sick; he had to be hurried out. His mother did not take him to church again. Perhaps we're brought up too wholesomely and aseptically, he thought. An education that results in one's feeling sick in the company of one's fellow-man, one's brothers - can it be good? He would have liked to love them. But love does not flourish in an atmosphere that nauseates the lover with an uncontrollable disgust.
A Moment On The Lips
I Monster - The Blue Wrath
"Squawk!" cried the enormous bird, flapping it's scruffy wings and eyeing Kenneth from it's high perch. Kenneth retracted the cue, keeping his gaze fixed firmly on the noisy animal that had disturbed play so abruptly. "I don't want it shitting on my baize" said Clive, "let me deal with this." With a few winter vegetables, and the correct seasoning, it made an excellent supper for the three of them; Geoff bringing his home-fermented ale to the table, Kenneth his sparkling conversational white wine and Clive his robust, lusty port. Later that evening, all full of vigour and jollity, it seemed such a good idea to have a funeral for the passing of the bird - especially as they could use the black candles and other accessories that Clive had recently discovered while searching for fairy lights in the attic. None of them would have suspected it might be anything but top larks to read passages from a particular leather-bound grimoire that Geoff had recently retrieved from the charred ruins of an old cottage. And it crossed not one of their tipsy, befogged minds that the innocent bird might have brought about such a bitter and obscene series of events as were about to be unleashed that night and into the rest of their lives.
