At first when I saw her she looked fierce, she skilfully navigated her way in and out of the umbrellas with no more or less than a moment for everyone. When we spoke she corrected my Greek with a smile and moved on. But as time passed I noticed a softness behind her steely demeanour and then out of the blue as we passed on the stairs she spoke to me.
‘I saw your van, wooow… It’s amazing’
I blushed a little mind racing to find something interesting to say. ‘Thanks, it’s super simple though…’ thoughts rattled around in my head like a pin ball… was I sure she was talking about my van? Did she see Jan’s van? When? Fuck. ‘I like it, it’s cool, it’s got everything I need, but it’s simple, you know I don’t have a sink or solar… well I have… but…’ What are you saying? Shut up!! I shouted at myself.
‘I am thinking of buying a van’, she rescued me, now I had something to say.
After you see the cat with the third eye you know that life is going to be a little different, how you are probably never sure, but for certain there will be a change.
It’s difficult to work out how much to take from the things you have seen, how much the clues from mother nature are of value to your choices, but there has to be something in it. The energy you take from pacha-mamma must affect you in some way, like the sun for plants, for every action there is a re-action, all the cliches.
Difficult to say, but the cat was beautiful that’s for sure and there seemed to be a clarity to the shapes and colours with current thoughts. I suppose you take a little of this and a little of that and hope you have the right balance.
‘Right we got seven minutes.’ Sean said as they walked purposefully through the maze of shelves, using the light from their phones to illuminate their path to the counter. They jumped over and entered the office closing the door behind them. On a wooden desk they saw the safe perched precariously on top, a large dial and lock on the front. Sean handed Biola the scrap of paper and put the key in the lock.
‘read out the numbers’
Biola responded.
‘clockwise – 18’
Sean twisted the dial so the number 18 was in line with the red marker at the top of the dial where 12 would be on a clock.
‘Anti-clockwise – 33’ Again Sean twisted the dial, but this time in the opposite direction. ‘clockwise – 46’
The dial make a click as if something had released behind the door, they looked at each other and then Sean turned the key with the red tag in the lock. It ran smoothly, and there was a louder click as the heavy door swung open with its own weight and the angle of the desk the safe was sitting upon.
‘Boooom’ Biola cried as he peered into the safe, there were wads and wads of cash, it seemed like more than they had anticipated, it looked like something out of Ocean’s Eleven, it felt like Ocean’s Eleven, maybe they had more than they were expecting? Maybe they could all go home with 5K Biola thought.
‘Shhhhh’ Sean interrupted. ‘Pass me the bag’ Biola paused ‘The bag’ Sean demanded raising his voice a little.
Biola looked around as if he had dropped the bag, but he knew straight away that he had forgotten it, it wasn’t even in the car, he knew exactly where it was, he knew it was back at the flat on the sofa in Sean’s living room.
‘Sh*t man, sorry..’ Sean looked up at him, ‘you kidding me? You chump. F**k man’
But this was no time to despair, The clock was ticking and they needed a solution. Sean was thinking quickly.
‘Get some X-change bags’ ‘From where?’ Biola replied ‘F**k knows, behind the counter.’ Sean guessed
Biola quickly responded walking out of the office to the area behind the counter. He started looking through the cupboards, nothing in the first, then he looked into the second, just a load of random stationary and plastic figures from cartoons and computer games that mostly came as freebees when new games came into the shop to help promote the new releases. Biola opened the third door and there was a stack of plastic bags neatly folded.
‘Yees bruv’ he called out to Sean, ‘How many do we want?’ ‘Bring two’ Sean estimated.
They stuffed all the notes into the plastic bags, the wads mainly in tens, a few twenties and some blocks of fives. The denominations low to reflect the value of the sales that the shop made to its customers.
‘Pikeys’ Sean murmured under his breath as if he was justifying the robbery to himself by creating a Robin Hood type of persona.
‘Right, lets go, check Tyrell is cool.’ Sean indicated as he pushed the safe door shut turned the key and picked up his bag.
Melissa hurried to the back of the shop, picked up a scrap of paper and placed it in the front pocket of her bag. From the safe door she turned the small key with a red tag three times to the right, withdrew the key and placed it in the same pocket of her bag as the scrap of paper. Her nightly lock-up complete, she then walked out from behind the counter and in-between the rows and rows of DVD’s to the light switch. She looked back into the shop her heart rate increasing, she paused with her hand hovering over the switch looking in and out of the maze. Had she forgotten something? Had her colleague definitely left earlier or was he hiding behind one of the sets of shelves? She dismissed the thought, flicked the switches and the room immediately fell into darkness. She opened the door, stepped outside, out from the warm island created by the heating system above the door and into the cold damp air of winter.
She pulled the door shut and out of her bag took a large set of keys flicking through the set to find the one that fitted the lock. Her hands were stiff and her heart was beating quickly, she found the correct key, raised it to the lock and as she did her fingers faltered and the set dropped to the floor. She looked around to see if anyone had noticed, but there was no-one who cared, so she bent down and picked them up.
‘The eye gets used to stuff, the more you see of the same thing the more mundane it becomes.’
‘So are you saying we need a better angle?’
‘Yea, we need an unusual angle, but of something we have seen before.’
‘Ahrrr I see… a new perspective.’
‘Well I wouldn’t go as far as call it a perspective, but just so the image freshens the eye, or the mind… So you look at it, maybe even tilt your head, let your eye roam the image…’
Her laugh, that’s what did it, she would start talking in a kind of mumble, struggling to make her point, then punctuate the words with laughter making her sentence incomprehensible. The laughter would start light but deepen and as it did, she became more and more desperate to make her point. Unfortunately more often than not she failed, hamstrung by her own happiness. After a moment or so her laughter would be so deep that no air could pass into her body, she would end up silencing herself. But it was sooo contagious, all I ever wanted to do was to hear that silence.
‘Sorry mate. It’s a nightmare, there are so many conversations going on at once, I don’t know who to answer.’
‘I didn’t have one conversation’
‘Yes we did, we talked about Muji’
‘You talked about Muji’
Silence… John sat back in his seat and drank his coffee, his mind was a blur with questions and answers, for jobs he had to do that day, for people he had to see and for Mary, he had to spend some time with her. But he knew those things should wait, he needed to speak honestly with Chris, he knew he was unhappy and he wanted to listen to him, but then he had to go and help Rebecca.
‘What you gonna do for Christmas?’
There was a long pause as Chris stared out of the window toward the sea. ‘Duno, go to Turkey?’ He said asking the question to himself.
‘Or stay here?’ John encouraged.
‘Hmmmm…’
Chris picked up his empty glass and walked toward the bar. As he did Elizabeth burst through the door.
‘John, hey mate, how’s it going?’
‘Yeeees, how the fuck are you?’ John shrieked standing from his seat.
Elizabeth slalomed through the tables and jumped up into John’s arms, they held each other smiling.
‘I missed you’
‘Yea me too’
‘We need to…’ Elizabeth burst into a long monologue about the potential theatre ideas she and John had been discussing over the last three months, John listened and in the background Chis slipped away. He attempted a goodbye, but it was too late Elizabeth had all of John’s attention.
Chris walked toward the beach, along the promenade, his mind empty, not angry, not sad, just empty. The path was deserted, old, abandoned and in need of a lick of paint. His eyes jumped from one closed building to the next. Bored, the grey on grey reminded him of his own thoughts. He sighed to himself desperate for some inspiration, but kinda happy there wasn’t anything there. He kept walking until he was far enough away from the hubbub of the cafe and sat down next to kiosk.
Things moved fast, life didn’t change much, but there never seemed to be a moment to pause. There was always someone to chat to or laugh with, and you were always close to them, parked up next door or across the road. You could drive somewhere else, but inevitably someone would turn up and then play would resume.
The funniest times were when crews with children turned up, two little rat-bags running around the wild, covered in dirt, but beaming with smiles. It was great to see them play, their imaginations were alive, their toys broken but ingrained with evidence of many stories.
It made me think about our own family, maybe we were all just a bunch of big kids and moving fast wasn’t such a bad thing, maybe it kept our own imaginations alive.
The boys hid in the reeds watching through the mist. They were pretty certain the hunters had gone, but there was no guarantee that they would not return.
‘So what’s the plan?’
‘We need to get the shotgun cartridges.’
‘How do we know where they are?’
‘We don’t that’s why we have to go and have a look.’
‘So they might not even be in the hut, they could have taken them with them.’
Joseph and Andrew had been set another task, this time however it wasn’t part of the initiation it was part of what they did, causing chaos. Out on the lake there were a series of huts on stilts for the duck hunters. The lake wasn’t fenced so the boys could get to the hut without ‘trespassing’, but out in the open, on the lake, there was a high possibility of being spotted and perhaps shot at, deliberately or by accident.
‘Why do we need the cartridges anyway?’
‘Look it’s not our job to ask questions, you have to wait a few years before you can ask questions. Robin will have a plan.’
‘You think he has a gun?’ Joseph asked, Andrew paused letting the words bounce around in his head.
‘I don’t know’ he answered honestly, thinking about the repercussions of getting shot gun cartridges for a real gun. ‘That’s not for thinking abut now, we got to get what we have been told to get and then… Well then we think about the next…’ He trailed off.
Joseph frowned unsatisfied by the answer, but wasn’t brave enough to challenge any more. ‘Shall we swim?’
The boys took off their shirts, trousers and lowered themselves into the water. It was August, but the lake was still cold, the cold ran through their bodies as they tiptoed into the water, clay oozing up in-between their toes. Taking one last breath Andrew lowered his chest into the water and started swimming. Quietly Joseph followed.
It didn’t take them long to arrive at the hut, they circled the building weaving in and out of the pillars in the water looking for some steps up. The poles were slippery, coated in green slime, but at the back Joseph found some steps, he beckoned to Andrew and they hauled themselves onto the platform.
Shivering the two boys scanned the lake’s perimeter, the mist was thick and their movements seemed to have gone unnoticed. Andrew knelt down by the entrance, pressing his ear to the door checking for signs of activity inside. Joseph flicked his head toward Andrew as if to ask if he could hear anything. Andrew shook his head in response, stood clasped the handle, paused, twisted and burst into the room.
It was empty, well, uninhabited at least. There was a sigh of relief and the boys set to work looking for shotgun cartridges.
‘Anything?’ Joesph asked
‘It’s all fishing stuff, bait, rods, tins of meat, look at this’ Andrew held up a tin of smoked sardines, ‘this box is full, I think whoever comes here has a bit of an addiction. You?’
‘Nope, petrol cans, blankets and cooking stuff.’
‘Any shot guns?’ The boys laughed. ‘Joe hold on, come here.’ Andrew had pulled back an old tarpaulin revealing a crate. Joseph crossed the room.
‘What you got?’
‘Shot gun cartridges’ Andrew replied looking at his mate and then back to a red box with ammunition written on it and a drawing of shot gun cartridges. Joseph reached down picked it up and opened the lid.
‘Watch them closely… and listen it’s a very interesting form of communication’
Jeremy was teaching his favourite class showing footage from the beginning of the digital age, it was a time when the power of internal conflict was not fully understood but was being used very effectively.
‘But it doesn’t make us any money’ Sasha demanded while pointing adamantly at the pool of ideas spread out across the table. ‘We need to focus on the sales in the bar.’
‘But it draws people into the bar in the first place, without the events we don’t attract as many people’
‘We do, the climbing attracts the people and we don’t have to have any investment in that, it’s here already’
Elizabeth laughed, but it was a sarcastic laugh, meant to impose her intellect. ‘We have invested thousands in the climbing’
‘And made money back’ Bernard added smartly.
‘Yea but times are changing.’ A row was simmering.
Jeremy stopped the tape and turned back to the class. ‘Okay can anyone tell me what what’s going on?’
Lucy raised her hand, ‘Yes Lucy’
‘Well the Co-op has made it’s money from the the climbers coming to the village and Elizabeth wants to diversify but Bernard thinks she is just spending the money made from the climbers on her own arts events.’
‘Great that is what’s happening on the face of things, but what is going on internally?’ The class took a collective breath, some bums shuffled in seats the eyes turned away from the professor back to their tablets. ‘Shall I continue?’ The class nodded in unison, Jeremy pressed play.
‘The main reason people keep coming back is not because of the climbing, it’s because of the people.’
‘You mean the climbers’
‘Shut up Bernard, stop being such a pig headed fool. The community is what makes it, you admit yourself that the parties and the bar create a cool atmosphere in the village.’
Bernard was quiet he agreed with her but wasn’t about to admit it. He just wanted more routes.
Elizabeth continued ‘If we want to keep the profits in the bar, we need to keep our audience hungry.’
Jeremy paused the tape again. ‘Okay internal conflict anyone?’
John raised his hand ‘The more they eat in the bar the more money they make?’ The class burst into laughter.
‘Very amusing John, can anyone expand on John’s words of wisdom?’
Joe put up his hand
‘Yes Joe’
‘Elizabeth wants the knowlege of the experiences in the bar to act like the social media frameworks.’
‘Good, quickly explain the social framework’
Joe paused for a moment… ‘You keep your audience by showing ‘the hero avatar’. Posts show your best life, so followers buy into you.’
‘Good so how is that playing out here?’
‘I am not sure if they are doing it digitally yet, but Elizabeth wants the the public to know about parties and art as the hero avatar. Perhaps she believes the diversification is more of a hook than just climbing.’
‘Okay good, that sounds like a hungry audience and what about the internal conflict? Yes Lucy.’
‘There are two, Bernards refusal to believe in Elizabeth’s art community makes her more adamant that it is right, Bernard effectively keeps her hungry. And the people coming to the village see or hear about the parties and climbing and want to be part of it.’
‘Great so what do we call that?’
The class answered in unison, ‘positive internal conflict and negative internal conflict.’
Life From the Dirt 