EPISODE 57: THOUGHTS ON A PUB AND A SHORT STORY.

Welcome to my blog which finds me with paint covered hands and a paint spotted jumper which will never be my best again. This morning I went to Bristol to show my face at my eldest son's new pub. By new, I mean new to him. In every way.  

The building itself, which I saw for the first time today, seemed in more than a little disrepair and the idea that they would open tomorrow ambitious to my untrained eye. In fact, I don't doubt there are many people less acquainted with pubs than me. I don't suppose my parental abhorrence of alcohol is directly responsible for all my children being drinkers and this one now with his own pub, but it could be, Even when I was a drinker, I didn't like it and imbibed it simply to get out of my head. Once I found better ways of doing that, I was done with alcohol which seems to turn an awful lot of people into total morons. 

So it was probably only just that today I spent  few hours painting walls in honour of my son.

Once upon a time I earned my living as a painter and decorator. I was very bad at it. I can be careful for a while but sooner or later a mistake is made or an inch is missed and neither blemish put right. Luckily today a woman appeared who liked doing all the finickety bits but didn't like standings on ladders or doing the broad empty spaces with the roller. Together we made an excellent team.

Well, I thought so anyway.

At one point I found myself being observed by a plump rastafarian who was complaining at the skow pace of the work, 'Should be open by now,' he said more than once. 'Need to get some business done.' Annoyed at the scrutiny, I downed tool and went off to make a cup of tea. Turned out that this guy is a local drug dealer who is feeling displaced by the change of ownership. He appears everyday with one of his henchmen to hurry them along. My son and his partner treat him like an enthusiastic regular and they permit his presence there. I suspect this is a mistake because he is a massive threat to their security and their future.

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The following is a short story I wrote yesterday because I was fed-up of writing myself ever-lengthening to do lists. I was intending to do it as a structured creative exercise based on my Robert Fritz method. What actually happened was that I wrote the first line and took it from there.

CHOICE.

I’m going for a walk, said Phil. Don’t know how long I’ll be. Maybe she heard him, maybe she didn’t. He went anyway.

After about twenty minutes he began to calm down. Shouldn’t have got so angry in the first place. It wasn’t her fault that he’d chosen this day, the first of their holiday, to quit smoking. Luckily he’d stomped out with enough money to buy a packet of cigarettes. He lit one up then texted his wife, sorry.

Three cigarettes and a couple of miles later, he began to hear the sounds of music drifting from the side of a hill. Following a muddy path he found three people, two young men with long hair sitting on makeshift stools playing guitars and an equally young woman sitting crossed leg on the ground tending a blanket displaying homemade jewellery.

The woman, dressed in a torn sleeveless t-shirt and a short blue skirt, nothing else, smiled up at him. Are you one of the brethren, she asked.

Yes, he replied as he crouched down to finger the jewellery and to enjoy her beauty.

I thought so. Didn’t I boys? You’re so late! You may be the last, she admonished earnestly. Don’t worry though, I’ll take you.

Jumping to her feet, she took Phil’s hand. I’m Joanna, she said. I work in the Temple.

Phil felt his phone vibrate. A text from his wife. Come home. We’ll make up. Love you.

Joanna’s hand pulled at Phil’s and he allowed her to lead him further around the hill and into a small wood which ended at the entrance of a small cave from which came the sounds of rushing water. 

Letting go of his hand, Joanna spoke as if an awe. The entrance to the Otherworld, she whispered. 

Seeing nothing as he peered into the darkness, Phil hesitated to follow when Joanna disappeared into the unknown but just as he began to turn away the lighting of candles revealed to him two large pools of water in which naked men and women were bathing and singing songs that he couldn’t recognize and yet seemed familiar. When Joanna came back into view, she too was naked. Isn’t it wonderful, she said.

When Phil immersed himself into the water, he understood what she meant. Never had he felt so relaxed. He felt he could truly sink into an ocean of peace.

Got you, said Joanna gleefully. Every time, I get you.

Phil looked around uncertainly. It seemed that he was nowhere at all. Have I died, he asked.

Yep.

Because I followed you to the pool?

Yep.

Did you drown me?

Yep.

Why?

Because that’s what I do.

Kill people?

Not people. Just you. Over and over. Every lifetime I come along and flash my tits at you and then this happens. I’m probably as fed up with it as you to be honest. It’s not as if you ever anything special. Sometimes I’m quite enjoying my life until you turn up. It’d be alright if you didn’t do that bit when you suddenly gain superhuman strength and pull me down under the water with you.

Owing to being dead, Phil was unable to comprehend much of what Joanna revealed to him and when he was reborn some years later (and, for the fifth consecutive time, christened Philip) he certainly had no memory of his encounters with her but always, somewhere in the core of his being, lay the suspicion that at any moment, out of the bluest of blues, he would be called upon to make a crucial choice and that the choice he made would be the wrong one.