COOKER
So instead of working I sit here, pushing the spoon around the coffee cup and think. Think about what the hell I'm gonna do with this situation, with this case and with my life. I wouldn't say I was happy, even content. Numb might be a better description of what I feel. I remember Romero decribing his many zombies as empty, well that's where I was and thanks to that I was alledgedly the best on the force.
So rather than venturing into the goading, leering lions den of an office I hide here in the neon lights of the canteen and wait for my shift to end. Watching the door to see what happens and who turns up, whether she turns up.
She had a red bob when she joined, now it's black and scalped back to her skull. She doesn't smile or laugh or joke or seem to have any humour whatsoever but I find her truly fascinating. I don't know why but it definitely has something to do with the way she eats.
WPC Collins always eats in the canteen. I am not a stalker yet, so I do not know when she will appear but I love to watch her take her food from the staff and then sit down so they cannot see her. She then methodically insures that no one food touches another. This can take between 2 and 3 minutes. She is so engrossed that she doesn't even notice me. I like that, she's so intent of catagorising her food that the world stops to wait.
Thursday, 30 October 2008
Wednesday, 1 October 2008
The Ceildh Dance 1
The Laird's house at Drumcrag was empty, the windows boarded over and the driveway slowly being eaten by the surrounding woodlands. It didn't look happy, two damp brown streaks ran down the front where the gutters were blocked with the leaves of fifteen autumns. Every time Connor MacDonald passed he thought it looked as though the old house was crying. Perhaps it was begging to be loved once more, wanting to be the centre of everything, a second chance. Connor MacDonald knew how it felt. Drumcrag House had been the bright light in the village, until the Laird had been found dead in his bed one sweaty July morning and the brief candle had been extinguished. No heir to the fortune of the Robertsons had stepped forth and so the land had been taken over by the Scottish national trust. Now as he bumped along the top road, turning from tarmac to rutted cart track under the tyres of his landrover he thought about what a bad year his eleventh had been all round.
It was such a small thing, a sore throat. Overnight it had turned from a tiny itchy tickle into a roaring brain aching cold. A cold that had burned the inside of Connor's head out. Connor's mother had thought it was just an excuse and had made him go to school anyway. He couldn't concentrate on the exam, the crimson pain in his throat and the stinging lights in his eyes had made it impossible. he knew his Grammer school entrance exam was a lost cause, failed and cast into the pit. He tried to tell himself it wasn't the end of the world. Except that it was.
Not for Connor, the splendid royal purple uniforms of Drumcrag Grammar School, but a fifteen mile bus ride in prison grey to the grey prison of Loch Andrew Comprehensive. his own grey jumper hung on the peg in the hallway next to his brothers' Purple Blazers. A constant reminder to the whole family of the failure in their midst. He sometimes hid the jumper- better an empty peg, better there had never been an owner of that jumper. It was always there the next morning back again to haunt him, someone, he presumed it was his mother, always made sure it was there and to his eternal shame he hated them for it. The jumper was the figurehead of a ship that set sail the day the exam result had been announced. A ship that would not call at the ports of Alevels or university, A ship that wouldn't even skirt the coast of the local girls, whose grammar school sweethearts could wrap their purple bloody blazers around their pale shoulders on cool summer evenings. He had watched it all, happening to the children he had grown up with, watched them leave one by one, for University, the big city, high paid jobs, none of them could get out quick enough. It was like watching the rest of the world getting ready for a party you weren't invited to. They all went, including James and William his elder brothers. All went and left him behind...
It was such a small thing, a sore throat. Overnight it had turned from a tiny itchy tickle into a roaring brain aching cold. A cold that had burned the inside of Connor's head out. Connor's mother had thought it was just an excuse and had made him go to school anyway. He couldn't concentrate on the exam, the crimson pain in his throat and the stinging lights in his eyes had made it impossible. he knew his Grammer school entrance exam was a lost cause, failed and cast into the pit. He tried to tell himself it wasn't the end of the world. Except that it was.
Not for Connor, the splendid royal purple uniforms of Drumcrag Grammar School, but a fifteen mile bus ride in prison grey to the grey prison of Loch Andrew Comprehensive. his own grey jumper hung on the peg in the hallway next to his brothers' Purple Blazers. A constant reminder to the whole family of the failure in their midst. He sometimes hid the jumper- better an empty peg, better there had never been an owner of that jumper. It was always there the next morning back again to haunt him, someone, he presumed it was his mother, always made sure it was there and to his eternal shame he hated them for it. The jumper was the figurehead of a ship that set sail the day the exam result had been announced. A ship that would not call at the ports of Alevels or university, A ship that wouldn't even skirt the coast of the local girls, whose grammar school sweethearts could wrap their purple bloody blazers around their pale shoulders on cool summer evenings. He had watched it all, happening to the children he had grown up with, watched them leave one by one, for University, the big city, high paid jobs, none of them could get out quick enough. It was like watching the rest of the world getting ready for a party you weren't invited to. They all went, including James and William his elder brothers. All went and left him behind...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)