Featured Short Stories

Formative moments re-captured through hindsight and the vivid recollections of the subconscious mind

Defining Moments

A distant recollection of a formative childhood event, aged 7

One fine spring or summer’s day

There are only three of us, but we’ve set up our cricket stumps, and we’re fully loaded with bats and a brand new Slazenger tennis ball. The field is ours. Smooth expanse of perfect luscious freshly cut green and a full-length stretch of ‘wicket’ that’s primed and trimmed [in a finer grass of a lighter colour], fit for a game of county cricket or a test-match like the ones they play on t.v.. I can’t vouchsafe for the other two but I feel important, and I’m looking forward to a good game. It’s not that we haven’t played here before – we have many times, numerous weekends in fact, but the grass was always rougher and on the overgrown side, like the neighbouring fields around, and it would always be a bit of a tussle to find the ball if you had a really decent hit. And the strip of wicket now seems silkier, like a ribbon, which should make for some interesting spins, and possibilities for some proper fast bowling, Yorkers and the like - much kinder for the batsman too as you can develop a real feel for the way the ball will bounce. Maybe I could even try for a quarter-century this time. Giving Jim the thumbs up with my raised bat I take a deep sniff and salaciously tune my nostrils into that freshly cut flavour of springy-summer air. It’s about late morning or just past midday. And I’m looking into a quarter sun peering through a single lonely, billowing, cloud that’s just hanging there in some kind of suspended animation, and now gently floating across my solitary gaze of blue horizon sky.

Now suddenly I feel the warm radiance of floating sunbeam satisfaction, as the tennis ball rings with the hollow of the sweet spot of my Slazenger bat, its vibrations and the ball itself both whizzing high and loud over the top of the mesh wire fence at the border of the field. I hear cries of David (our fielder), at the nettles, squeamish but still making a play for the ball, scrambling as it sweeps round into that creeper filled paddock next door. No doubt it’ll soon be a great tussle for us too if it manages to get even half-buried - in those Van Gogh tussocks of knee length blade. Luckily that doesn’t happen. And I genuinely feel for him when I do it again. This time the ball goes straight to mid-off, ripe as a fruit for the catch, it‘s so low it clears the fence only by a hair. His fault of course for fielding badly. But pangs of guilt all the same, and perhaps I should think again before hitting it so hard next time. Coming back he is quite the head down, serene and almost poignant – weathering his sensitivity as best he could. But as I look up it’s still ocean-blue, pure and the single cloud is gone. Waves of lasered heat are beaming down into the middle of my forehead and nape of neck. As I crane just a little I can see the swift graces of a pair of floating wings - of buzzard, glibly and soundlessly circling at height just above our wicket, a kind of portent to anoint our frivolity. This field is ours, and we are here by divine decree. It’s ours by rights, and I can feel that sensual bliss titillating inside me. It’s that thought of a long full drawn-out summer to come, with this field a fixture that won’t move, our newly christened stomping ground, our own special discovery. We are the only ones to have found that narrow gape in the wire fence, to have cleaved it out and pulled it over so you really wouldn’t have known.

It’s the following Saturday I think, around the same time of late morning to midday, and we’ve just finished prepping the wicket - matting out the grass near where the ball bounces, setting up the stumps into the holes that are larger, filling those holes with turf we’ve pulled from the field, when a crow descends on the pole on the pavement behind us. It fascinates me as it is huge and black as crude oil, and it just sits there with an unassuming resolve, listless, intent, as we continue to prep for the first over – our game is its new found inspiration, possibly it’s matinee performance for the afternoon. Minutes later he is joined by a couple of mates, who are equally as jet black as black could be, and the three in a line set a right fine silhouette what with that pole and the backdrop of pure cobalt sky, set against the full-ball glare of yellowing sun - like something out of bloody Sesame Street or Hitchcock. I do even contemplate offering them a plate of David’s Quavers, they’re poised with their postures and attentive. Meanwhile there’s also something else - around the middle of the second over I think - as David throws a salubrious and full circumnavigation of a wide with his (admittedly early stages) right arm offside leg spin – that I fancy I see gleaming or glittering at silly mid-off. It’s bizarre, and it’s sweeping across those far-off fields like a distant haze, shape-shifting like a force field or perhaps it’s a mini-swarm of bees. It’s shimmering in that distant facade like a kaleidoscope could. Now it’s snaking the border of our more vincinal purlieus. And it’s getting closer, and suddenly it starts to make straight for us. And it’s now that I start to feel a visceral sensation, and it’s that moment I realise. If I could have kicked myself harder I would have. Now I’m faint and queasy, and then I could almost be sick. Now I’m lurching out to David to ‘oi D! Hold off for a minute, will you!’ and can you effing check on that thing what’s going on ‘over there’ will you!

Jim of course, the third in our mighty triumvirate, shoots straight to the mesh wire like a thunderbolt. As does David.

It’s around now that I also remember hearing the decibels of my own heart beating, and my ear-drums spin, synchronised to the pounding of the beat as it begins to brace with gathering speed. Vaguely I can make out Jim and David’s shrieks as they both stand at the border of the cross-hatch, turgid, rigid; and then they start semaphoring savagely. Their tortured gesticulations only add further to the general descent into hysteria, co-spiralling into frenzy. Our clamours are barely audible, half strangled, stifled sounds that are now also deadening under their own crossfire – ground with the shrieks searing into the plasma of ear drum. Now suddenly we’re reeling back, scarpering off the field and the wicket, tearing out stumps, tumbling through the verdure in bewilderment, with a raw, untamed ferocity. Now we’re staggering forwards, then we’re arching under, then we’re crawling back on our shins in a desperate fighting scramble, sliding through that gape of wire fence at the kerbside end that backs onto the main road, where there are also some cars passing. After a further scrape with nettles in the rose bushes behind we finally manage to secure a hiding place behind some brambles and a thorn bush, catching breath, panting vigorously. Now we’re crouching again, and after some moments have passed, we stare out in quiet stupefaction, at our somehow great fortune in having narrowly escaped - the endless torture and shame that would no doubt have been pursued with parents and school.

That mirage, it was a group of school kids – all boys about our age – running towards that field in a squad-type orchestrated formation, rallying forth with a cry or chant accompanied by a bugle, or so it seemed. Once they had been let in to the field from the other side, they took their ground on the pitch and the wicket like clockwork, all padded, gloved and booted, fine pieces on a chessboard aligned for the queenside attack. Yes, they’re gleaming in their great silver crested, deep navy school sweaters and grey flannel shorts.

And yes, they’ve usurped our field, and with impunity – while we, simply railroaded. Looking up, I can just about make out an ever diminishing buzzard, as it vanishes from view in gradually expanding circles. The crows are now long gone, nowhere to be seen. And then there’s our Jim, having been nudged back into the thorns and we’re all forced to close in tighter. ‘Ouchh’, he breaks into a whimper, and it’s audible. I have to contain him. ‘Shushhh’, I purse finger to lip, pointing straight ahead. Still faced forwards I start backing into his chest, all but slowly, prodding his arm with the narrow of my elbow. ‘Jim, it’s now or never my friend, try and hold it in there will you, OK? Do you Comprenday?’

My inveigled reproof may have prevailed for a second as he straightens up, but as I start to arch round it’s a new grievance and now some wierd held-in facial contortions and I think he’s about to blow. So I elbow him in the groin, gently ramming it all the way home. ‘That’s one from all of us, for the record.’ Maybe it worked.

That spectacle, it was still there, glaring at us square in the face. These other boys had shown us how it’s done; and we, open mouthed, agape. It wasn’t just the glitz in their uniforms, it was the sheer extravagance of it all, the discipline, the act, their simple and un-assumed, God-given rights over this field. A field that had until that moment been so heart-renderingly mine for the whole summer. And they weren’t even a day older than me. It was burning inside, the torture of their proud silver garters glistening in the sun, their puffed out white cricket pads and gloves, and their great fat red cricket ball – one of those proper hardened ones with the yellow stitching. Not to mention their stumps – proud and statuesque, like Greek columns with bails that didn’t actually blow off in the wind.

There’s also a tallish master type at one end of the wicket conducting the game. He looks quite grave, and discerning. One of the overs he walks straight up in our direction, and we’re thinking we’ve really had it. None of us breathes an ounce, not even Jimmy. Pin drop silence behind the bushes. And then he paces back. I can never forget that single strand of his hair circling his forehead, spiralling the circumference round and round into the baldy patch at the top, and his bushed eyebrows with lateral protruding tails, circus ringmaster like or Dennis Healey style. But above all for the first time I am conscious of a new and disconcerting feeling. It’s in their uniforms, their order, their self-command. And the fact that they could take that field whenever they like – it’s simply theirs for the taking.

I had always been warned about ‘envy’ as one of the Cardinal sins in the R.E. lessons at school, but had also wondered why anyone should ever feel that way about anything – until now.

The Last Supper

Inspired by a night out in 2016, just before a defining event that happened the next day

We, throng of hopefuls, patient, resolved, wait in line - percolating anxieties.

Tall structure of glass-fronted venue doorway gives us some purchase on the scene inside – and the suggestion of some deep vaulted metal and mortar gallery area, as yet sparse of people, purist, minimalist, uncompromising.

Edging forwards closer to the framework, a little furtively perhaps, not sure if allowed to, then scuffling up more gingerly, noses to pane – one could almost coequally step back and draw breath.  The interior seems vast, bound like a fortress.  There’s also a dramatic bar hub stretching the full length of the North West wall at the back. 

Visibility and much detail obfuscated, shadowed under canopy of vague or ambiguous spot lighting here and there – in essence it spoke a dusky kind of opulence.  The ceiling of this impressive room loomed into view, overhanging as in an ante-hall of an ancient citadel – transmogrified into a contemporary setting.  A step removed from our recent hour- of the old time-honoured convivialities, chirping and fraternising at our friend’s art show [private view] across the road.  Which so happens to have been - yes - yet another of those raspberry lipped blueberry-flavoured something affairs where modern art’s latest profanities are once again reaffirmed by the powers that be, and thus is concluded another rueful step in the inexorable demise of our much beloved, the fine and old-school, the real draughtsmanship.  Naturally it’s all down to something called progress and the wonderful advancement of our species, in this our so-called modern and cerebrally driven abstract age.

Chiselled rock face of doorman brokers broad smile as he removes his blockade of self and motions us in. We’re casually straight past the counter and to the faux fire-lit section along the south west wall of the gallery at the back, separated from the main section by prismatic floor to ceiling standing columns of sheet glass.  We’re called upon by a hostess suitably prepped in slick black rayon, as in a layered bodice, somewhere in between where catwalk verve meets high line escort, naturally enhanced with bronzed décolletage.  Her femme fatale black stockings, 5” Louboutins, and naval piercing are faintly discernible in the shaded incandescence of the room.

Perfunctory pleasantries concluded, and some minor detail to do with a credit card and surety, aforementioned hostess places us nicely across a low-lying set of dwarf thrones serving some black onyx and quartz inlaid bar tables.  We take our pews.  Looking straight up and across, it’s high ceilings and lofty expanse of enclosure.  As I breathe in the view it strikes me for a whisk of a second that we may as well have been willed into place - teleported even – dwarf thrones onyx tables and fragments and all - to the grand summer palace of the great Sultan (at Xanadu). I take a lingering glance across the line of the platform bar, the one that runs parallel to the North West wall of the gallery. It’s an eyeful, glazed panther black for its entire length, could possibly be re-imagined as a modern art piece.  Black Amex smooth is also part-defined by a long line of sliced watermelon, fresh allure of soft pink and the Mediterranean.  There is an Apple lap-top which doubles up as a mobile money register, next to a DJ deck - sure sign of some bona-fide street cred here - and, running along the wall behind the bar, a switchboard of mirrored shelving: cascade of myriad reflections; bottles of rare and premium spirits, platinum filed in a two inch primer of voluble cachet.

Behind us there’s a rumble of pulsating sounds. Monochromatic sub-base, like Trent-Moller, or a cross between German trance and Detroit techno. All in pristine fidelity throughout the sounded area.  And a whiff of synthetic lavender from the female comportment opposite, and other olfactory sensations mixed in, concocted to perambulate and infect.

We proffer selections as our new waitress, richly lashed, quill and order pad at the ready, teems with cleavage as she ripens into broad rouge tomato juice smile, teeth deep-scaled and polished like a Vera Wang.  I motion for one of the old house-specials, of the Watermelon Martini fame, while others go off-piste: fine specimens such as the flame-eyed Caipirinha, or a Whisky Old-fashioned, to a sturdier Tom Collins, and then - this one's for the record – some jockstrapper of a Jaegerbom that somehow got wedged in there, in between.

Conversation ensues and opening gambit jitters distil into more mellifluous exchange. Our troupe advances into certain intelligible discussions, about art and philosophy and the meanings of things, before it gently then rapidly descends into nobler lesser propositions.

Meanwhile there is palpable loss of circum-temporal awareness in the midst – and it must be closing on near forty-five minutes before teeming waitress returns. She reappears bustily re-armed, proferring libations on trays like floating figurines on a silver layered wedding cake.

Pilot light reset, clocks turn back a dial. Exuberance takes a shift into 5th. I hear the chorus of bass drum rising in the penumbras, mingling with flurried voices, new arrivals as they enter, fizzing young hopefuls urgent on adrenalin, CT scanning the liquid dinner catalysts at parallel stations across the bar.  One clique of tuneful French girls flounces past me in a frightful frizz of cashmere, chirruping canzonets, cherry liqueur cocktails cocked in hand.  Bass drum amplifies and the walls close in, a sound-mist gathers and the lights dim.  The individuals of our troupe pipe down together, as if hormonally synchronised.  Calm before the storm.  We are in heady anticipation of part two of Trimalchio’s feast.  The click clock of clitter clatter unwinds as our high but hushed voices unfurl into the subdued establishment air.

We softly toast our libations, then motion to serenade the silence.  A hushed clinking of glasses recharges the airwaves, like the first percussion sounds of a symphony.  Our voices issue faint but hearty tributes of ‘cheers’ and ‘Nastrovia’, whispered as in a midnight séance.  Ambient echoes return as buxom waitress re-resumes, now glazed and shimmering in static, charged up as a lithium-ion battery, heat plug in hand, ready and gripped for our complicit devolution into this grand litany of wallet-scouring, nerve searing, sado-masochistic, come self-flagellating, entrails-devouring, grand ceremony of libations.  I sample the first thrusted hand-out, wetting the zesty lemon tang of a Whisky Sour. 12 sharp volts and unrelenting. Followed by a thimble-full of White Russian, that charged-particle sugar rush that fiercely hits the spot.  Boof!  One of each please.  A circle of rouged faces fluster, each melding into the other, in an all-in of-the-moment discourse, bonding through the adhesive of our shared establishment street-speak.  Female partner in crime Charlie is sat unhelpfully on my right knee, resolves to dig deeper with the thick of her weight, and probably unawares, into the narrow of cartilage just above my right femur.  Perhaps she’s intimating for indirect play. My side it’s the receiving end of some needlepoint pains in the quad.  Thankfully I am also distracted by other titillative sensations in the woodwork. A recently formed standing parade of long limbed debutantes, some of nature’s finest. Arpeggios of flickering voices as they cascade across the rapacious chamber; an air mist of purple riffs criss-crossed with sepia red sound waves as they carry through. Rising notes are strung where a new breed of techno meets grunge meets metal, flushing across the chasm of the sepulchral sphere down below.  And now over to Anastasia, relative newbie to our party, as she starts to elaborate on Yoga intel from just Sunday last, from somewhere out of that urbanites Ashram down West Eleven. In the moment impassioned and, dare I say effusive, Anastasia proceeds with grand live demonstration, carefully discharging the onus of her quite fine espresso martini head back and straight down, at the same time backing up against the iron frontage of the fire-exit behind us. I gently discard the noble hips of flattery of my friend Charlie, my old pal, as I witness this grand spectacle of Anastasia.  All eyes are met with circus trampoline act come Olympic gymnast warmup routine as she limbers up – now captured in real time hot-night-out get-up-and-go gear.  Loyalties to Anastasia are being firmly battened and secured.  Waxed vinyl stretch leggings refract flashings of white filament flashlight, as the wrap-around lycra of her outfit bares barely a ripple, almost sinuous with the equine line of her form. Heads all rolling, telescoping in, channel into the curves of her figure that’s now galvanised as steel, and she morphs into the modulating shapes of the Bolero. Without further ado I take yet another swig from this my fine tumbler measure of some flame-distilled plant extract that I’ve been tenderly nursing all the while- this or some grade-A of a lighter fuel, also known by its more common alias our God’s Abomination of a Whisky Sour – or also otherwise known as 12 Volts and Not for the Faint Hearted.

Now I’m viciously overcome, and gently spiralling - into rapid descent and downward mobility; or somewhere in-between that and some lesser state of sentient being, or some other equally lesser state of over-abundant liquification. 

Then soon threads of the barest consciousness float into a sea of flame coloured flickering tongues, only to be whipped up into a whirlpool of dissonance and disarray - only then to be further propelled by the fairer currents of a hair-raising subconscious.

And I soon detect an echo of heartbeat- climbing gently into the iambic, then accelerating chords, from adagio to a vici presto, gathering momentum as in some great raffle-prize drum roll.

And then there’s another - perhaps less insignificant issue - of the incipient residue of a viscera-crippling nausea.

And then I vomit.

And then.

I Blackout.

And then,

I think,

The rest might be unknown.

Cross Country Season

Inspired by an unforgettable early life experience, aged 9

Come on legs. Slop slop sludge. Slop slop sludge, squidge. I feel the squish of slime splattering against the backs of my soleus muscle and shins.

And yes I need to avoid that puddle and ooh, deftly manoeuvred, a quick hop and a right leap and then across. But no this one's unavoidable, looks like some unholy mud bath up ahead, in between that thick packing of trees. Yes, ok, fine there's no escaping this one, they’re all diving in straight for the middle, head-first. It’s all one way. I just need to steer clear, try and side step being sprayed like a paint board by those in front of me. Yes, maybe I should just hang back a little.

Well thank God that one’s over. I think I just about made it, possibly unscathed. Or, well possibly not, crikey it’s my new Nike's washed out completely, they were white before and now they're brown, or green even, it’s probably only muddy water and there's flakes of green-brown grass spliced across. There’s also a cold wetness seeping through into my toes, it must be those bloody air holes, so cool before but not any more. My socks now wringing wet, soggy, toes all tingling and finally numb. Clods of soaky slime suckered to the sides of my trainers like a leech.

Anyway, all this running, it's tough. I can feel it, that’s for sure. I'm panting voraciously, losing breath. Yes, I need to stop, catch breath.

Ok, I've stopped now. I’m shaking like a leaf. Hard uncontrollable panting, my whole cavity heaving as if I'm under asthma. I didn't know I could breathe so hard, it carries on relentless. My lungs are haemorrhaging air. I have to let the others go past. I can see some of them flitting past, like train carriages one after the other, links in a chain. I can also feel my face hotting up blood-red, spheres of my breath evaporating into the globular mist all around, as it winds around the trunks of the trees like snake vines. They’re massive when you get up close – the trees, that is. My heart pumping like a piston, double-threaded beats, or is it now decelerating again.

Suddenly it’s a salvo of banging and yells from in front. Looks like Mr. Eadie again telling us in not so many words, to 'get it moving', or to ‘put some beef into it'. Meant for us all, but with this new feigned 'straggler' status being scripted all over my forehead I think I'd really better get 'it' moving this time. I need to show something vaguely respectable, especially for a scholar. Although in truth, I can still feel it, that strange queasiness in the head, feels like it’s bloated with endorphins, or is it a stream of energy firing up from within the back of my nodular, skull encrusted brain. Within seconds I’m almost handing out that olive branch already, chugging up and straining every gristle in the mortal chassis, re-gaining in that conciliatory modicum of alacrity, but that only places me back again at the back end of a long line.

And now I know – it’s not for no reason Stopps was harpering on about Mount Kenyan jock-strappers earlier. Thing is, they're all seasoned cross-country bods, and most have been boarding two years already, since the age of seven or something. Leaving the likes of me – dewy young newbie of the pack – all the less fortunately deputized, and to those very finest of English lexemes, the thine most nobly acclaimed, and the divinest, of Chicken Chasers. It’s Chicken chasers if you’re too slow, and Sandbaggers if you’re a bit too brisk for your own good. And truthfully, being out here for the first time what did I really think would happen? That I’d magically manifest lungs and bulge calf muscles like a wind turbine, tearing through the finishing rope like a Ferrari? Rome wasn’t built in a day, or even two for that matter. But hold on, there's a couple of them coming right up behind me, so maybe I'm not the tail-gater of tail-gaters. Or .. maybe I’ll take that back, these ones seem keen and focused, steady and - fixed on the linear - and they're going at a pace, and now they're overtaking, and suddenly straight past me in fact. Oh dear, they must have actually lapped me. A full round-the-half-mile-loop quicker. Not a good look, by anyone’s standards, including mine. Or is it that they're maybe in a sense superhuman?

I'm also haemorrhaging inches every second from the tail end of the tail-enders ahead of me. And my spirit just doesn't seem to be synced with my legs, my thighs burning through as if under a spit roast. There's no point in forcing it. Will just have to settle for end-of-the-line straggler of stragglers status, scholarship or no scholarship. At least it can be said I came, I suffered, and I tried. Veni, vidi, non vinci. I came, I saw, and I failed to conquer.

Now suddenly it's a hailstorm of banging chorus from ole Mr. Eadie again, now head of the pack, and it’s hard to make out whether it's supportive or aggressive - he always struck me as being on the kinder side. Last Michaelmas at parade, Commandant’s barking orders and the whole escadrille’s just standing there, stiff as a block, hard upended to attention, and when I flat out fainted right in the middle of parade, he just hoists me up and straight to matron’s, none of those ribald, raucousisms you might expect - or at least none that I was aware of.

And now the crescendos are tailing off, but there’s a lingering residue of a stalish, surplus chiller hanging in there, somewhere suspended amongst the frost. And now it’s reverberating down the chain, right down to the bell end of the chain in fact. I feel like I’m on stage, all heads rolling, swerving and side-stepping, then angling straight for me – for it couldn’t be anyone else - or maybe it’s sniggering, and then also something swearing under their breaths. And then suddenly checking themselves, as they catch me looking up.

Oucchh.
That’s not nice.

Now it’s brightening up a little in front. We're breaking away from the dense wooded area. The trees and the foliage fan out to an grassy open space that looks like a clearing. But I’ll be exposed again, broad and barefaced in the open. Perfect possums, just what every starting out youth really needs.

I have vague recollection this might be the place where we'd started the run, and for a split second I harbour faint hope. But from the muffled shouts in front apparently there's at least two - or even three - more rounds to go. Oh bugger. That’s optimistic. How on earth would you get through that? This run, one thing’s for sure, is one hundred and ten percent worse than I’d ever in my lifeblood imagined. Seriously, I’m going to have to do something like radical, like catching up would be a miracle, and the heinous side of a martyrdom all the way, and I'm being glared at again, I can feel it. My cheeks turn afresh, flush into a deep crimson, or is it amethyst. And now the trees with their long curtain of packed foliage are starting to draw apart, opening out to a sky which looms ahead of us like some great lump of granite, rippled with circles, each loaded, and impending. Two more runners whisk straight past me on the right, tacit and intent on their speed, steady and focused as if I weren't even there, quite the invisible.

And now we’re at the clearing. It’s all very open, radiant and green like some fresh glade or cut lawn, and it’s almost as if the air’s been whitewashed under the sky, long shafts of bleach white slashed against a diffused iridescence of pearl grey – our eyelids flickering to adjust. It’s as if a roof or a blanket’s been uplifted, and we’re party to the Nature in her state of innocence - in her most buff, bounteous, and deific form. But we're soon diverted back into the woods under another covered path to the left. Once again the gilded glaze dissolves into the narrowing, dim spaces behind the trees.

The clearing must have broken the pace a little, for I seem to have caught up with the back end of the line again. But as before, it’s picking up speed, and pronto.

Squidge, squidge, slodge, slurrpp ... squidge, slodge, thrack ... was that the crackling of twig, or some soft panting that’s slow and rhythmic coming up behind me. More of those royal lap artists, I expect. Although in truth, it’s me. It’s me the dreadful liability, holding up the show and causing consternation in the ranks. They’re all just plain healthy and normal. And now that breathing noise, it’s coming up right behind me, up really close, and now it’s almost stationary [or moving at my own pace, I’d imagine]. So I crane my neck round for a peer.

Core – blimey. A quick double take to be sure. I crane forwards, then backwards, head spinning like a turntable. Yes, I can see, it really is Barker, and Offer. They’re both tailing me. Barker and Offer are both in my class, but unlike moi, they’re on the right side of non-academic. Oh, I didn't realise you two could be that slow. Barker's wielding a curved branch that's sprouting leaves, swinging it about casually, while Offer a straight one that’s bare and stiff in his right hand. God this run’s like a tinder surprise all the way. They both look pretty blasé. Neither’s exactly straining, or striving, to keep pace. Offer squints as I glare back intently, places his right index finger to lips, motioning me to hush, and then politely looks away. I take heed, face forwards, and continue as I had been. But I also feel the slippery and something awry in the vaporous mist behind me, while at the same time flushed with a glow of rouge at this unexpected sign of camaraderie. Still, it’s hard not to be curious. So I swivel my neck round for another peer. This time it’s Barker who’s just swerved in switching places with Offer. 'Hey Pumpkin', says Barker in a low voice addressing me, 'OK. We've just spent the last fifteen minutes hid behind one of those Copper Beeches, but don't say a word, OK?’

If I'd had a chair, I'd have fallen off it with laughter. As it is, I break out and all my breathing stops. I’m doubling over restraining as I try and stop the cackling, it’s silent but almost painful – with the criss-crossing of upper intestine that's going on. And as it so happens I stumble over a stump still cringing in disbelief. So they've skived a full round – both of them – royally hidden behind a tree. 'Absolute genius', I whisper to myself as I pick myself up without falling.

After what must be another ten minutes of continued strained, and pained, full-on lower body graft – also known as hard labour – while I’m still trying to carry the pace, burning thighs, and with the cringing and doubling over that’s still going on all the while, I finally gain a stitch. Barker and Offer swear you're meant to run through a stitch. That's ‘better than stopping’, 'the only way to get rid', 'run the gauntlet, mate'. But there's no way I'm going to run through a stitch. It’s like some needle in the gut knitting strands of tubular tissue into a figure of eight, and with every millisecond tighter and more knotted.

Pacing the strain my head gradually sinks deeper into the hollow of my chest, that dip between the clavicles, before it finally recoils back again sharper than a spring. Yes, OK. Now I have an idea.

And of course I couldn't hold it back, what with my whole face, jaws and forehead chiseling into a wry smile, dimples and all, folding into fine delicate markings under both my clefts of cheek. And I break out into another chuckle.

***

You know, it's very quiet here - securely hid behind a tree. The noise from the school party is gone, long gone, gone to the wind. Not that there's much of that around either, only a veil of a breeze rustling through leaves on the trees [which I am surrounded by] and through some of the damp and wet leaves and deadish bracken that seem to have collected over several layers, packing and padding and rotting on the floor of the wood. Now I’m quite still, looking up I see purple leaves everywhere, purple and some green, it's what they call 'foliage' that's so dense there's not a lot of the sky coming through. It's almost surreal, like being in a proper forest. And so close to the school, and in England. I had no idea. I think I can vaguely make out some snuffle of badger, digging into the roots of a giant oak that's banked on the crest of a mound a little behind me. Or maybe it's a thorny, squeaky hedgehog. And weasels and little stoats or something scratching at things, or is that crackling of leaf?

Yes, it’s taking forever. And I could have sworn time’s missed a beat. I have a strange feeling it might be twenty minutes already since I’ve been standing here, but I might be off. I don't have a wristwatch. It might even be longer, like half an hour maybe. Or perhaps they've taken a short cut, or a different route this time. I think, really, I should brave it out, try and find them.

***

These paths of deadish leaves and bracken that are piled over each other all look the same, like they've been cloned or photocopied, except where they’re sodden or water logged, you can generally make out those bits. I think I'm on the right path but it forked just a minute ago and I wasn't sure which one to take.

It seems the trees are thickening too as I bore deeper into the bosk, or maybe it’s their projections as the light’s falling.

Is it me, or am I hearing things, stirrings of things like soft accents, cadences of pitch from somewhere in the purlieus, almost back from whence I came. A shrill hushed echo of voices carrying – or was it the high notes of branches quietly whispering in the breeze? One thing’s for certain, there is not even a fraction of fluorescent orange vest anywhere to be seen – not even a shred, nor sight nor sound – nor any of those skittery yellow whistles the teachers would normally blare out till your belly curls. The path’s forking again. Leftways looks more spelled out. Or maybe I should just go back to that tree, the one from earlier, and just sit there and wait – sit and wait?

Or? Oh. Ooh, hello! Oooh, what’s you two, you young fine pair of pheasants you are doing moseying around like that, ambling gay in your plum purple ring necks and grey chestnut plumage? You’re rattling tail feathers like you swing to the blues. Coming home to roost perhaps? No, not to worry, I’m your friend.

And ooooh, what’s that I hear, a low, hollow murmur of something coo-coo-ing, in the purlieus? Coo coooo coo cu cu. Where’s it coming from? Wood pigeon it has to be, from in between that packing of trees, around two O’clock or more to the right maybe. But look now, it’s fluttering away, see - its wings are ringing out like castanets as it arcs up high and over, beyond the tip of that uppermost aerial branch. And yes, bless my Peter Rabbit hustle berries, aren’t those just a right fine set of berries just hanging there ripe at one O’clock? Late in season perhaps, but they’re from that broad flowing bramble up ahead, drooping from a great arching stem. And they’re deep, deep, bluish-black, and – actually – up close, dry as rust, so yes, err .. probably a bit past it. I think I should steer clear of those. And Oooh, Ouch, Shoot I’ve just put my hand in a clump of sharp, stinging nettles. Oww that was painful. But thankfully, yes, no blood drawn.

OK, I think maybe it’s time to get back, try and retrace that earlier noise, see if it leads to anywhere.

A soft veil of dusk falls to the floor of the woods, gently enclosing around me.

***

I’ve been roving for a while now, and finally I‘m up against a steep downward sloping area. It's completely bare of trees, but full of brambles and leaves and dead bracken along its slope. But it’s getting scarce, harder to see. I remember at one point we went down at quite an incline, right down and right up again at one section of the run.

OK, I've come to the edge now, and it looks very steep indeed, like a ravine. Actually it's huge, far deeper than I thought - like some great pit in fact, caked and plastered in dead leaves. I can vaguely make out purple and brown leaves all piled up damp and rotting near the bottom, and also what looks like all manner of growth, dead or decomposing, and possibly into something darker, maybe viscous. That miry herbage continues further, in fact, and as I cruise the perimeter and crane just a little, I can start to see how it begins to cut in on itself further down, descending into a steeper, almost perpendicular gorge that then dissolves into what looks like an empty void below. Above it the slopes are lightly accented with shafts of light, projections within the obscurity. They’re vacillating shadows here and there, fragments of tree stump flashing into view momentarily, laterally upended from the sides that are falling and which are now also finally obscuring out of range. My eyelids start to strain within the ambiguity, as bleak rays of light from the moon blend into the deep of the void below. Beyond that I suppose it’s anyone’s guess what’s festering, or expunged, beneath. For a swaying second I swoon, sensing vertigo. Quick as a reflex I dig the backs of my heels sharply into the mud where I'm stood, locking my knees into a brace. I know had I slipped, I would have fallen and sprained an ankle or broken a leg, no way up. Suddenly I’m quivering calves, fists clenching into a vice. And shifting the convex of my heels through the topsoil behind me, I start dragging a layer of the floor backwards under my weight, pulling back from the slope. Pirouetting on a single toe I manage somehow to turn away, away from the ravine.

Now dusk seems to have fallen all around, and it's two or three shades darker ahead than even just five or ten minutes before. Faint noises start to re- surface in the backdrop, but they don’t sound human.

***

It must be closing on half an hour since I’ve been walking, and the woods just seem to carry on without ending. I think I should stop, gain bearings. Find a ball of string. Either these woods are massive or I’m trapped in a singularity, illusions of the highest order. The school party is long gone, for sure. Which way did they all go? They’re probably at evening classes right now, dressed after hot showers and tea, and no doubt it was scones with single cream. The light’s slipping, slowly but surely, and soon it’ll be difficult to see. I try listening hard, and then screaming out loud. But there’s no response, only echoes. And now it's completely silent again.

***

I think I’ve just heard the cry of a fox. Pure, unadulterated blood chill protracted for a long, hard second, met with clattering of wings and warbling echoes, as if something had just been eaten or killed. And it's cold. It feels cold. Why am I perspiring? There are tiny globules of sweat - stickly drops – freezing over the 'V' of my chest as they surface to air. I check my forehead and it feels warm. But my hands are cold, and shivering. I can see goose pimples hardening on my forearm, and there's also a throbbing in my chest and abdomen that’s building, and then subsiding again.

I can vaguely make out a lodge or something up ahead. There are no lights as such, it’s lit by stripes of moon dusk refracted from bark of trees surrounding it, like corpses. It's not far really, just a hundred yards at eleven o'clock, or perhaps more. I start walking to it. From where I am it’s straight out of a fairytale, But up close it’s more of plain Jane keeper's lodge or a wood store, and darn my blue socks red it's completely boarded up. Maybe I should try it anyway, there's a gargoyle near the front latch that looks like a knocker. I step up to the half-porch and strike twice. Up close I can’t help but notice, but the grain of the door is trammelled with hosts of minuscule organisms, all rapid fire fizzy-ing and busying across, a horde of ants smothering and blanketing the door like a seal grey swarm. Maybe they’re feeding on the wood? The paint seems to have been blasted right through, and it's rotting. Tensing shoulders, self-conscious and of not appearing to flinch, I take a measured step back. And now I can see the walls of the lodge are swarmed over too, everywhere, as in wisteria and it’s entwined deep in and onto the walls like it's been there hundreds of years, populating stems, bulging, tumescent and bare, self-twining, some kind of a self-immolating frenzy. The wisteria is seeped in mites too, bleary, fuzzy stems like some hoary live organism, and its shafts start pulsating softly, l rhythmically - and I spring back sharp as a car jack. Teetering forwards again, it’s the mites, they’re teeny, like a squadron of Lilliput infantry working on the assembly line, scuttling across in fixed channels, parallels and perpendiculars like they’ve been locked into a grid. And then I have that poignant sense of a droning sound above me. Carefully bending over backwards to see, I can see it’s some swarm of bees circling over my head, gathering into some kind of squall. I crouch down slowly and backtrack, angling back laggardly towards that same path that brought me here.

Now I’m feet dragging branches into the frangible bush, and it seems I’ve collected some mites too – they’re crawling up my gym shorts as I rub down. There’s also a pain starting up in my left knee, just above the knee socket, and the goose pimples on my thighs are now magnified in the projections of the trees. It’s cold and I know I need to keep warm. With a half about turn I set about moving forwards again, into some kind of a direction, and then up a gear. It’s time to ratchet up, build up to a jog.

Yes I know, if I stick to a straight line, a dead straight line, then I’ll make it to the edge of the wood and probable safety. By the laws of Pythagoras, or was it Archimedes? But easier said than done. This path isn’t straight you know, and there are always forks you have to choose between, if you plan on not ending up smack in the middle of some great thicket bound by rose thorns, or a packed cluster heap of trees. And my breath, it’s catching up with me again. I need to slow down, catch breath.

And now it looks like I’m approaching another dense sloping area up ahead. Or was it, in any of my most divine ingenuities, a déjà vu for a split second? Now I'm up close, and I sedulously peer down. It looks quite steep, like a ravine. Or maybe it’s the ravine, the steep up and down one from earlier in the run, the one that I’m looking for? Or maybe it’s another ravine? Or maybe it’s these woods, like they’re plastered in ravines? Or is it that same ravine, the huge gorgified one from just earlier? In which case I’ve been wondering around in a vicious circle the whole effing time. Typical. I can feel goose pimples on my thighs spiking up again, and the temperature’s still dropping, while the mist seems to have cleared just a little.

And suddenly there’s a vast, creeping Nightjar, inklike floating up like a shadow straight out of the ravine, slicing through the twilight and the black vapor beneath in one great invisible sweep. A sharp shiver slivers through the base curve of my spine.

And I look up. But it’s now a void.

Slowly I do about turn, this time pivoting on the weight of my left heel, digging in as far as I can will it. And I start to head back in an opposite direction to that of the ravine.

***

Oh bugger, it must be nearing three or four hours already since I was graced with those pearly words of wisdom that tricked me into so diligently holing up behind that tree. And for sure it’s for real, I'm not even one iota closer to getting out of this place.

Surely this has got to be beyond a joke, or just the funniest joke ever. Or maybe I could call it a night, and hope for the best tomorrow? But surely then I'd freeze. I’d need to carry on walking.

***

I’m still shivering like a timber, and I've been standing here rooted as stumps for what must have been fifteen minutes or more. And I’ve still no clue. Not yet, and not likely to anytime soon. I’m still perusing. still deliberating like a monk, tightening and quilling my Tibetan brows, wetting lips with my tongue for the three hundredth (and fiftieth) time. I’m hyperventilating even for good measure.

Unbeknown to me I start kneeling down on the edge of the path that's packed and damp with rotting leaves. Matting out some of the congealed herbage below I place one knee diligently onto the barest patch of earth I can find. Naturally I don't believe, having been a ‘confirmed’ atheist since aged seven. But I start to close my eyes and join palms, tips of fingers from both hands gently meeting with a soft touch. I try and absent my mind of all thought, at the same time whispering aloud in mutterings of some hushed but fervent solicitings. My eyelids remain lightly closed, and I allow the stillness to continue for as long as it’s apropos. It’s as if everything has disappeared, almost completely. It’s pure, pure silence all around. A strange vacuum of stillness, like a bubble, no doubt any moment about to burst. Except that it doesn’t. It continues. And it’s now somewhere in that extrinsic, faraway ether, that I’ve finally made my peace. But now my left knee is wobbling, just a little. Eyelids flicker open, and aloof they start to skim and then embrace the sky, enumerating the tiny specks of lone distant star each as it undresses with a sparkle in the lofty heights above. I get up and brush off sodden leaf and caked mud from my knees that have taken on an imprint of the forest like a memory. It’s time to reconfigure, and re-forage, time to find a way around the edge of that grim ravine.

***
I think I've been wandering around now for at least ten minutes since kneeling, of course I'm no closer to figuring it out. While I’m vying to steer clear of the ravine at all costs, it is also getting darker, and various options all melding into one. Is it me, or is there a sound of pattering like footsteps, clapping and reverberating around? It is gentle at first and then gradually starts building. I can feel that there’s moisture adrift. Now I can see, it’s drops everywhere splattering and bouncing off stems, ricocheting, also starting to run down the sides of my face, and dripping gently into my vest. The patter's getting faster and more regular. Now I can see scores of tiny raindrops spangling onto leaves and deflecting. I feel a sudden pinging sensation, like a soft sting, and the cool of the wet drops is pouring over my face and arms, as it now starts to stream. Myriad channels of water run all over my bare skin like cold showers, and suddenly there's a roar, and there's thunder, it must be miles off there's no flash. And then, flat out it starts thrashing it down, like parallelograms or sheets being driven down from an Olympic sky like projectiles. And I'm drenched, soaked through. Quick as a fist I run for cover, and pin the small of my back into the thick of tree bark under canopy of the densest part of the tree, what must be close to twenty layers of foliage or more. Suddenly there’s a flash, like a brilliant filament just for a second, it’s electric like the whole forest has been irradiated with the exposure. But that soon passes. And now there's another flash, and once again there's a roar, like kettle drums battling it out in the sky, with a few seconds lag in between. Now I’m stiff as a plank, and stand here frozen, sterile, for a minute.

The thunder and the rain subside, just as quickly as they came. There’s a hollow of quietude all around. Deadpan silence. The whole place seems to have fallen into a sombre lull, the breezy atmosphere, still as stone. The calm, now it’s hushed as a gloaming mist. Then gradually sounds start to resurface. Nature’s reciprocating by way of wind ensemble in D minor. It begins with the nightingale, piercing liquid crystal sounds as it trills through the octaves and soprano chords, building from andante to a vici presto within moments, in pitched exuberance as high as you can hear. Then joined at the heel by reedy corncrake in treble, pulling through the plastic cord of a cable tie on repeat. Then met with the twit too of a tawny owl in hollow tenor, blowing steam as if it were an old Union Pacific steam boat starting afresh, again and again. And snorting hedgehog in double bass, underwriting the score. And then the full compote of birds of the forest, chirruping sweet madrigals for their honeyed second wind.

So now, what’s the plan? On one side I sway, swooning to the cacophony of strains and inflections, pitched euphonies of the forest, yet at the other I’m rippled in nerves and knees which are still wobbling. I know I need to do something, something efficacious. Doubtless the paths are drenched through if not water logged.

Now out of the ink blue peripheries there starts a shrill whirring sound – murmuring as if it’s something electric, like a generator, or something else starting up. Or could it be the quick-fire parting of waves, airwaves, supersonic beatings of wings so fast that almost you didn't hear, like something angling towards me like a gyroscope on a centrifugal, and it’s from somewhere in between those trees. And then it shoots back out just as fast, up and through that same tiny gap in the trees. Then after a minute it resumes, returning, and then it whooshes straight back out once again, all the time thrumming like vibrations on a damper. And then it returns once again, and then hightails backwards once more as if on auto rewind. Fourth time it hovers right up to my nose, just for a second, beating its squat wings like a fly, and then it flashes back through exactly that same gully in the trees.

I think I just crossed words with a sparrow hawk.
Or was it a tryst?
Surely if it’s anything other than a portent I’d eat my hat - had I had one with me. And whatever it is there’s something in there makes me take note, pay heed. Maybe even tailgate sparrow hawk into that nook in the trees - it’s not far, just undergrowth and thickets, so worth a peek, just in case. Carefully I extricate the thick of my spine that’s arched in tree bark, and lurch forwards with my stiffened, crunched limb to across the path in front of me, into the pressed undergrowth of the trees.

The bed’s pulpy at first and my feet go in sinking in alternate turns like you’re on cross- trainer at the school gym, there’s a crackling through of layers of wedged, deceased old leaf and twig from where it’s been partially dry from the cover. Then it starts to get quaggy, and I’m wading through piles of expired boscage - gorse, sedge and other residuum of some of last season’s finer dispositions. I am also helpfully bolstered by aid of some girthy, protuberant stem that I've appropriated as a stick. No news from sparrow hawk yet. But there’s still hope. Just in the discernible distance there are leaves starting to blend into a dusky sky that’s like a remote watercolor coruscating, in fine muted twilight pigeon blues and greyed out streaky sections, having recently lightened its load.

Ambling gait starts to fall into long measured strides. As I traipse through the undergrowth it’s starting to recede, and I also start to scan the aerial ahead, with the pace of the beat.

And yes it had to wait a minute, while it was still a dot, but I think I can make it out, just. I think I’ve just seen a great kite in that window frame, circling at a great height, floating the width of its lofty wingspan like a biplane. And if I really focus I think I can spot sparrow hawk, lithe and agile under its radius, while there’s also a flock of smaller birds streaking away in some great hurry, fanning out at a distance below.

***
Time rarely misses, and fifteen minutes on [I’m guessing], I’m still beating my stride, while up ahead the trees are protracting out into what looks like a clearing. The birds I saw before are long gone, now it’s the moon breaking through the sky - a fractured, crescent moon, and there’s tiny dog star or is it Saturn dimly biding its time, in what is probably still a cloud drenched sky, but now it’s almost dark. I know my heart is beating a little faster, I can feel it gently.

Yes, it is further than I thought. And yes, it is a clearing.

I can feel it’s cold but my toes warm up as my tread quickens. I’m still wielding stick, but the sedge is thinning for sure, and I’m beating down on the long grass more as a frolic than a need – swiftly nipping heads of bracken or low hanging branches.

And then I cast away stick – swinging it in an arced circular motion above my head like an Indian lasso, sending it forth it as far as I can will it. And I start to hustle towards the clearing. Raised knees gathering to a trot, and then a run, I’m leaping through the scrub, grazing logs and brushwood like hurdles, the backs of vast trunks of trees shuffling past me like dealt cards from a game just won. And soon I’m flanking a path that’s about to give, like the mouth of some great river. Within moments I’m staggering, catapulted straight into the mouth.

Now I’m standing stiff in the middle of some great open field, knee deep in blades of grass, polished through with the wetness of the rain.

My fingers start to run amok, franticly caressing the fringes of those blades, stroking and tweezing out the moisture, clasping ends between knees.

Now I'm falling on my knees, crushed under my own frailty, mouth agape and lifted, facing up to a dull moon in a dark, dank sky, a sky that’s braided with static.

Skimming the peripheries for a second time, I search and scan, search and scan again. Then it’s sudden and it’s quick, my fear and panic dart through me like a shaft, eclipsing sensation and I realise now that it's not the clearing. It’s not the one. It’s too remote, abstract, denuded. Holy mozes christ. Is this possible?

My sunken eyes elevating, I gaze up again. But now the sky is cool and withdrawn, silent as the grave.

Stumped I know I need to get up. I know I need to carry on walking.

Feet dragging toes I zig zag around in a curved diagonal to the furthest end of this gangly, stringy field, to a place where it’s also bounded with trees, on the other side. As I scufflle up to the trees, I’m edging gingerly, left shoulder first.

As I approach I sense some sort of a suffused, vaporous incandescence adrift. Looking into the leaves and the realms of those trees, I see random glimpses of silvered motif here or there, quadrilaterals of lit tree bark, projections onto dimly illumined strips of floor that are cluttered with reams of bract and needles and things. Then there’s a scurrying, skirting straight across and past me so fast you couldn’t make it out. Was it red squirrel or hare? Or something else perhaps? Probing deeper into the trees, those diffusions – maybe they’re light from the moon piercing through the foliage that’s a bit rangier this side. But there’s also some way off into the depth, out of focus, tiny lights, blurry at the edges.

By all the great minstrels in heaven was it my heart that just missed a beat? My breathing starts to weigh. There’s something un-rhythmical also quivering down below. I can feel a drip of soft sweat starting to bead gently down the side of my brow.

Then suddenly there’s a downpour overhead, a screeching, deafening cry of waterfall like rapids that almost froze my cheekbones dry. Like a shot I duck down, cowering head capped with umbrella’d hands. Then I cautiously crane back up again.

As I look up, it’s bats, hundreds of them. Hard to glean at first [they’re black as smoke], they’re scritching and pealing like needles etching glass. Circling, wheeling on axes like flies locked indoors, they’re also proliferating en masse from out of those upper branches. And now they’re making for the open sky. Pulling myself up back up again on a low hanging branch, it is now and with some equanimity that I can’t help but notice their sylphlike forms serrated on the quarter-moon like black scars.

Meanwhile my hands as visors I am also purveying a path that’s faintly illumined, that goes deeper into the backwood in between those trees. Strangely, at one side of the path I can vaguely make out some discarded, empty looking cigarette packet, with some plastic wrapping beside it, just lying there, drenched as the floor. As I start hotting up I also scan across and over the path and through the trees, and at what seems like two hundred yards away and ten O'clock, there’s low lights framing a cottage set back in the shadows.

Looking in I see it’s a cottage that has two chimneys silhouetted, protruding from the eaves of its roof. The roof at one end slopes down to a porch at the front, and there are fumes exiting the mouth of one of the chimneys.

I make for the path, filing through the trees and the scrub. And like a banshee silent, feet clenched, I edge through the path goggle-eyed, nervous, twitching. The surface here is more defined, as if it’s been constructed, yet it’s covered over all the same - fragile layers of brake and leaves that are now and then being brushed aside by the lithe sweeping movement of my feet as I move. I draw nearer and see the walls of the cottage are covered in green, a type of luscious, life-giving green it must be ivy. The ivy is framed in a soft phosphorescence like a halo. And dotted throughout the ivy are white and yellow splodges, and scores of tiny red flowers. The lights in the windows are on, and the cottage is bounded by tall iron railings otherwise hidden from view by the trees. The railings it would seem are panoramic, stretching the full width of the view.

I listen out, and there’s broad, raspy echoes. There’s also hoarse swishing sounds that are vaguely familiar, like it could be a car, maybe a van, maybe whizzing past, somewhere beyond those trees and the behind the railings.

I know I’m cold, but I’m also coursing heat. There’s a breeze rustling up from behind the road, and it’s up and over the railings and over those trees. Now it’s streaming into my face, and watering my eyes, warm and wet like dew. I can feel movement around me, but can’t quite make out the source. Then I’m starting to pick up, and suddenly there's a grace in my step, and then a bounce. I can feel the wind and the air drive straight through me like an arrow, and it renders me weightless, and I’m hand gliding across the hills. Then at the backs of the trees there's a momentary glow of flashlight, or is it headlamps marking the route?

And now I know I’m running. I can’t stop, and I’m running. My thighs honed like blades, and fired like fuel. And this time, I know i need to reach the end, I know I need to finish.