Tag: Fresh air

The Everthere

My wife is unwell and cocooned in bed and I am, for now, her everthere.  I cannot leave home in case she needs anything, so I face a full day (at the very least) of being uncharacteristically quiet.  My usual day-at-home tactics fall by the wayside: no loud music, no pot-banging cookery experiments, no Midsomer Murders on every TV in the house – and we do have TV’s in this house: one in each bedroom, one in the lounge and one in the kitchen, but I seldom turn them on unless I am alone during the day when I watch all of the kind of crap I am not usually allowed: repeat deep-cut saddo-fodder, such as the aforementioned Midsomer madness, Poirot, Marple, Morse, Lewis and, of course, the king of all TV detectives Columbo.  “How many times have you seen them before?” my wife is prone to ask.
“Why does it matter?” is my usual response.  It is of no consequence that I already know the identity of the murderer – it is always the ‘Special Guest Star’ incidentally – it is the process that I enjoy.  Not that I actually watch anyway.  The sleuths are usually plying their trade in the background, but they do not actually engage with any neurons in my head – until they cease to do it.  They impinge on my consciousness only when they stop.  They are a warm blanket for my brain.

Today, however, silence rules.  I can hear myself breathing.  I can hear stuff happening inside me.  I can hear my blood flow if I really concentrate – and I don’t want to.  I am aware of things moving around in there.  Should that happen?  I could Google it, but I seriously do not want to know the answers.  Each medical solution leads onto a million future problems.  It has just occurred to me that I could watch the TV using subtitles, but it does require a little too much engagement for my liking.  You can’t really read in the background.  I am king of not taking in what I have read, but even when the words do not interact with synapses, I have to be looking at them to allow them in.  There are audio books of course, there are headphones, but pre-planning then becomes necessary: downloading and all its potential for mishap.  Headphone charging always takes place a few minutes after I decide I need to use the headphones, so tomorrow maybe… or maybe not.  On balance, probably not.

Of course what I do need to do today is eat.  Cooking is so noisy.  Even our toaster ‘pops’ the finished toast in multi-decibels.  The microwave ‘ping’ could probably be heard on Mars.  I dare not open the fridge – it would be like putting an alcoholic in a brewery with a straw: I know I would want to eat something noisy.  Quiet eating normally involves bananas or chocolate.  Or bananas and chocolate.  Usually chocolate.

And it goes without saying that, as my wife is actually ill, it is only a matter of time before I start to feel unwell myself.  I know that I am not unwell… yet, but of course I might be soon.  I have sanitized every conceivable surface but I am sure that I can see the germs in the air.  They are like green, spiky jellyfish.  They are laughing in the face of my hand sanitizer.  They have utter contempt for my food preparation gloves.  I would open the windows to let them out but it is cold out there and, anyway, I watch the news and I know that fresh air is basically a germ soup with birds flying in it.  No wonder they’ve all got flu.

What I really should do is write.  I write with a pen and paper: it is quiet.  All I need is an idea, but stuck in here, what could I possibly find to write about?

All my saints have taken bribes
Singing going going gone
All the angels taken dives
Leaving you the only one… The Everthere – Elbow

A Little Fiction – No Matter

blue and red galaxy artwork
Photo by Suzy Hazelwood on Pexels.com

The ectoplasmic cloud swirled gently around the room. At its centre pulsed two indistinct orbs, one of pink and one of blue, both of which were quite unlike anything you could find in the Dulux catalogue. As the cloud drifted around it coalesced slightly, resolving itself into two separate nebula that swirled lazily around the pastel orbs. Between them was a world of silence – not because they were unable to communicate verbally, not even because communication between them took place on a plane that transcended the verbal realm (the language they used was actually, to the human ear, slightly reminiscent of somebody inhaling a jelly fish) – they were silent because the blue globe had just returned home from his works ‘do’ some two hundred years after it had finished. (Perhaps I should explain here that the lifespan of the blobs was something approaching fifty thousand Earth years. Furthermore, the planet upon which they currently bobbed, circled its sun five hundred times every Earth year. Time passed very differently – especially if you were waiting for the pizza delivery.)
“Look,” said the cyan sphere at length, desperate to break the silence. With an audible grunt the pink nucleus pulled her aurora around her so tightly that it almost became solid. If she had a back, she would have turned it.
“Look,” continued Blue. “It was two hundred years, not millennia. I just got lost on the way back. You know what it’s like – can’t tell one constellation from another after a while. They all look the same, bleedin’ planets: round, brown, spinning… mostly. Before you know where you are, you don’t know where you are.”
“Particularly when you’ve hung a few large ones on,” spat out Pink, with a vengeance that made her drizzle slightly. “Who were you with between leaving the party and fetching up here two centuries behind schedule?”
“With?” Queried blue. “With? I’m a wosname… amorphous cloud, barely visible at my core and I trail away God knows how far into the ether at my perimeter. I don’t know. I could have been with anyone. That is part of the nature of being vast.”
“Doesn’t stop you getting home on time,” said Pink.
“Look, O.K. I’ll level with you. I needed some space. You know what it’s like, trying to squeeze yourself into a physical void of finite volume.”
“Of course I bloody do. I was stuck in here for two thousand years last night on my own whilst you were out partying. I’ve got the kind of omni-directional cramp that only an ectomorph can know.”
“Why don’t you go out and get some fresh air?”
“Fresh air?” cried Pink as ice crystals instantly formed throughout her being. “Fresh air? Have you forgotten where we are? Space is a vacuum. There is no air, fresh or otherwise around here… Mind you, if you were any kind of a blob, you’d find me some. In the past you’d have popped across to that little blue and green planet… what’s it called? Never mind, it doesn’t matter. You’d have gone there and brought me some back.”
“It’s two billion light years away…”
“And in the opposite direction to the pub.”
“Right then,” said Blue. “Right then. If that’s what you want, I’ll go. You want fresh air, I’ll bring you fresh air. Don’t wait up, I may be some time.”
“Particularly if you get lost again,” said Pink.
Blue snorted derisively, sending out a pulsar that engulfed a neighbouring solar system (the third planet of which was, ironically, in an Earth-like orbit and brimming with fresh air). “Right!” And, slamming the door behind him he sped off into the vast emptiness, leaving behind him a trail of vapour that would, one day, give birth to life on a million planets. All was quiet.
“Blimey,” said the room, at last. “That was close. I thought he’d never go…”

A Little Fiction – The Custodian of Time

A Little Fiction – You’ve Got A Geriatric Friend In Me