Christmas Eve

Jeff pulled into the pub carpark and parked with difficulty, his tyres slipping in the snow. With his engine safely off, he glanced up at the darkening sky in dismay. It was still falling thickly, landing heavy on the icy ground, and it didn’t look like it was stopping any time soon. He knew he should turn back and go home. Instead he looked longingly at the alluring light of the pub’s sign, before popping off his seatbelt. It was worth the risk.

As he trudged through the new snow he thought back to his childhood, and the excitement it had brought. School’s closed – snowmen – snowball fights – a bleak forecast had brought a world of fun, even as a young man. There had also been extreme pleasure in stepping in fresh snow – somewhere no one’s feet had ever been before. Instead of this momentary power, now he just felt bloody cold. He reached the door and hurried inside, away from his bitter memories and the pain they brought to his chest.

The pub was a welcome heat, the air sticky with the smell of beer, tobacco and old men. Do I smell like that too now? He wondered. Am I classed as an old man? He scrunched up his face at the thought, before swinging himself into his regular barstool. Ricky sidled along almost immediately, his face sporting what he probably thought was a welcome grin.

“The usual?” He asked, to which Jeff nodded. Ricky shuffled off to get him his beer, and Jeff glanced around. The pub was a little rough around the edges and always needed a clean, but it was normally still packed with people. Today there was no one. But then again, it was Christmas eve. Everyone is probably home with their families, Jeff thought, prematurely reaching for his glass, his hand coming down and slapping the bar.

But then there was Ricky with his beer, sliding it along the surface like an hockey puck as he always did. Jeff took a sip of his frothy friend, his eyes closing a little with the bliss. Ricky disappeared into the back – he’d never been much of a talker. But then again, neither had Jeff – he was more than content to sit here in miserable silence, sipping his drink…that’s why he’d come, was it not?

Minutes later he set down the empty glass. The sound was like a dog whistle to Ricky, who bounded forward to offer another. Jeff glanced at the window, the falling snow illuminated in the nearby streetlamp. Perhaps this wasn’t the best idea after all. Did he want to sleep in the pub? But just as he pondered this, the door behind him opened, the wind blasting in both white flakes and a hurried human being.

He was chubby, old and red faced. There was snow caught in the rim of his cap, and he was sporting a rather impressive cough. He smiled toothily as he threw off his large coat, hobbling forward on unsteady feet. Jeff stared. Ricky gave him his winning smile.

“The usual?” he asked.

Jeff looked up, confused. He was in this pub almost every night, and he’d never seen this man before in his life. How could he have a “usual” if he was never here? But the man had nodded, and Ricky bustled off. Jeff eyed the new man with suspicion and slight annoyance – this was his pub. Who the fuck was this guy? He was filled with a sudden misplaced rage, and he couldn’t understand it… all he knew was that this guy was a moron, and he really should give him a piece of his mind.

But at that moment, Jeff again stopped by circumstance, Ricky came back with the man’s drink. Well, he had two drinks with him actually – and they were both pints of Stella. Jeff watched incredulously as Ricky slid them both like pucks along the bar: one to Jeff, one to the new man.

“I presumed you’re staying, Jeff, thought I’d save you the trouble of answering me,” Ricky nodded.

Jeff nodded back. It was true – maybe he’d considered leaving for a moment, but he wouldn’t have done.  What did he have to go home to? Fucking nothing. Not even on fucking Christmas eve. He might as well stay here, in the warmth, and get a little drunk. Plus, this new man had started to intrigue him – he wasn’t angry any more. Stella? Great choice mate.

As Ricky wandered off again, Jeff stole subtle glances at the man at the other end of the bar. He had taken off his hat now, revealing a crown of wispy grey hair. The contrast of the warm room against the cold night has caused his cheeks to redden further, and his wrinkles looked like deep crevasses on the face of Mars.  He sipped his beer, closing his eyes in bliss – just like Jeff did. Then his eyes opened, suddenly shifting to Jeff, and he quickly dropped his gaze.

“Hey there, how come I’ve never seen you around here before?” Jeff glanced back up – the man was speaking to him! His voice was rough, like sandpaper on skin.

“I come ‘ere every day between 5 and 9. How come I never seen you? You seem to know Rick.”

The distance between the two men was comically large, their glances to the other stretching all the way across the bar.

“Oh aye I do, he’s a great barman. Pulls a good pint, probably the best in Yorkshire,” the man chuckled. “I come here in the mornings, 12-3, and then I go to work in the afternoons.”

He went to work on a belly full of beer? Jeff’s intrigue was starting to build, but he was still awkward. He barely spoke to anyone any more – not at work, not even at the supermarket. If the checkout lady asked him how his day was going, he stared her down, daring her to speak another syllable. But, fuck it.

“Oh? And what do you do? I’m Jeff by the way. Jeff Parkinson.”

“Peter”, the new man nodded, and with both feelings of relief and slight apprehension Jeff saw he was hobbling off his barstool and coming over. He sat down directly next to him, and the men simultaneously sipped their beers.

“Where do you work?”

“At the scrap heap. Help with loading an unloading, an’ that. What about you?”

“Oh, I work in an office, down in Sheffield.”

“Oh wow, that’s quite a way! Watcha doin’ comin’ all the way up here for a beer?”

Jeff thought for a moment.  It was a long way. His house was half way to Sheffield too, hence his concern about the weather. But did he want to disclose the real reasons for his daily commute to this dank and dirty pub to this stranger? Not quite yet.

“It’s just a great pub, and as ya said – Rick, he’s a top lad. Pulls a good pint. Its ma place,” he said curtly. Peter nodded, though he seemed to know this was not entirely the truth. Another sign of a decent bloke, thought Jeff. Knows not to pester.

“What ya doing here on Christmas eve?” Peter asked, as soft as he could with his sandpaper voice. That did it – he was pestering.

“Cos I fancied a pint, didn’t I?”

There was a small silence, before Jeff sighed. He was being an arsehole, he knew that. It was just that it was so much easier to be an arsehole than not to be.

“’m sorry. I…I have no family to be with. This – this is ma place. Might as well be here. Whatcha doing here?”

Peter looked down at the crumpled beer matt in Jeff’s fingers. “I have no family to be with either. Fancied a pint, jus’ like you I guess.”

There was another silence, each man pulled away by his own train of thought. Jeff continued to crumple the mat. Peter sipped his beer until it was gone. Then Jeff did the bravest thing he had done in years.

“Mate, I don’t suppose you want to meet here. You know – tomorrow. We could – we could get a bit of food n’ that, maybe have a beer together…” his voice trailed off. He’d just met this bloke. He was definitely going to think he was a complete crackpot and decline.

“The pub is closed tomorrow,” Peter said, and Jeff’s heart fell. Of course it was, how stupid. “But – I always cook on Christmas day, even when I’m alone. You should come over. I’ll have enough for two, and I have some Stella!”

J

eff smiled, a rare occurrence. “I’d love to!”

So Peter wrote down his address and passed it across. An important friendship had begun.

Good job, humans

A little thought I had a while back which I never got around to sharing: 

So, the world is an absolute mess of political upheaval, on the surface and behind the scenes. As humans we are brutal - neglecting the poor, the vulnerable and the environment, and attacking each other physically and emotionally every second of everyday. Violence and greed are our default settings, with anger and frustration leaking into nearly every interaction we seem to have as an existence. We breach each other’s rights, we lie and manipulate, and we refuse to end wars. Everything is chaos. Everything is shitty. All of the time.

And then – you’ll be walking down the street, and you’ll see a perfect building. It has been constructed out of carefully made stone bricks, which were quarried and shaped before being shipped and sold. It sounds crazy but - people learned how to design that building, and others learned how to build it. Each woman or man became an expert in their trade, and then the cement was mixed and the bricks were placed together so they were perfectly straight and geometrically regular. It was done so precisely, so slowly…so painstakingly carefully. It’s beautiful. We did that. Humans did that. Good job, humans!

But how incredible is it that we’re in the midst of this constant existential crisis and collectively we can’t keep control; everything is a mess. Right? We’re destroying the planet piece by piece and as we do so we’re destroying each other… and then, in the middle of all this – you have these moments of creative perfection. Where humanity has come together, forgotten the rest, and made something. They talked, they decided, they ordered, they made, and they built. And not just walls, and not just architecture – it’s everywhere. From products on the shelves in supermarkets to dance shows, there are tiny synced pieces of life which, aside from the outside perspectives, are completely brilliant.

It is like a superficial layer of order lain carefully over the chaos. A little piece of sanity to hide the screaming feelings of crazy.

 Is that not kind of sickeningly beautiful?

Heartache and anger

OK so I posted in the University of Birmingham student group about this, but I feel I needed to write out the full story. It got me so worked up and angry.

So today I was going to Aldi to get food, as I do every week. Outside there is a lady who sells the big issue, and like most people I don’t buy it very often (I’ve only bought two this year.) Never the less I always try and say hi and be polite when asked, and make conversation, and today when I did that the lady ( regrettably never asked her name) asked me very quietly if I could buy some food for her children.

Now, most people would politely decline at this point, but I’ve always been bad at saying no. It was probably because of this, as opposed to me being a particularly good person, that she then accompanied me into the shop. I told her I couldn’t buy much because I was a student, but she just seemed invigorated from even being in the store - she hesitantly asked if she could get chicken, and I said that was OK. After that I asked if she wanted any vegetables, to which she lit up and asked me if I was sure. She only got some potatoes, and then lastly some chocolate for her kids - She was hesitant and awkward the whole time. The food in total only came to a fiver – not exactly a lot.

I admit that stereotypes of homeless people came into my head throughout this - was she really homeless, did she really have children, etc., etc. But she was a legitimate Big Issue vendor, and after all, I'd bought her food, not drugs. When I’d bought my own food and come back out, she thanked me again. I asked her about her situation and she explained in broken English that she's from Bosnia, and she has four children: one 3, one 4, one 9 and one 12. They don’t go to school because she can’t afford to send them. Her husband is dead and she can’t get a proper job; she’d been living on the streets, sometimes sleeping in the church. She was sleeping in a park with her kids when a lady asked her what she was doing, and took pity on her. Currently she is staying in a room in this lady’s house, who also took her to The Big Issue and got her the job. However, she explained that she can only stay if she pays the rent for the room.

She started to cry as she told me how she wasn’t selling enough, and how she was going to have to move out of the room. She explained that she was trying to do everything for her children, and I realised the real impact of the meal I had just given her. I felt like a terrible person for even considering for a minute that she was a scam. She said, rough quote, ‘I have had too much hardship. God has given me too much. I just want it to end.’ She showed me the ten magazines she hadn’t yet managed to sell, and the bus ticket she’d bought from the city centre which had cost her four pounds. She said it almost wasn’t worth coming out at all, but at least she had the job.

I tried to say that most people did care, deep down,  as we watched them all avoid eye contact and walk past us with their bags full of Aldi food. I said they would help more if they knew people’s story, if they stopped to think about the fact there were literally lives at stake. All she said to this was that she didn’t beg, and she mostly didn’t try and tell anyone her hardship because she didn’t want to be like that. She said ‘some people come by smiling’ – she didn’t want to ruin their day with her pain. She says she just has to wait and see if anyone has a good heart, and then God will bless them a thousand times for their kindness.

When she asked about me I didn’t want to tell her anything, not with all the privileges I take for granted every day. I was embarrassed about my own status in society, about my comparative richness. All I said was that I was a student at the university, to which she nodded – we are from completely different worlds. She blessed me and my family and I told her to try and keep up hope (and felt like a complete arsehole doing so). As I came away, all I could think of was of those people who were walking past us, and how twenty must have come out of the shop since we’d been talking. If half of them, even in that five minutes, had forked out £2.50 for a magazine (less than a pint of beer), she’d have made her quota for the day. I’m not saying that would have solved all of her problems, but it wouldn’t exactly have hindered, would it?

We’re ruthlessly blinkered. We don’t like to think about poverty so we literally, physically look away, and try to act as though it doesn’t exist. We tell ourselves we’re good people and we have morals, that we’re kind, but think about it. Are we? No. No one gives enough of a shit about anyone but themselves and their own lives. Society is a load of bullshit.

All I can beg of you, reader, is that you look up from your phone screen – from your apps, social media accounts – for just a moment, and have a look around. What can you do to make someone’s life better? What can you do to make someone else smile? What even minuscule thing could you do to make a difference to this shitty world?

Grateful

I don’t usually make posts like this but I feel people need reminding.

 It’s nearly Christmas: you’re stressing over what to buy for your families, over the lack of snow, about exams and work and deadlines, about which days you can take off and which days you really can’t, about how freaking cold it is and how dark it gets in the afternoons, about Christmas day plans and how much all of this is going to cost.

I just want to remind you how fragile life is, and how anything can happen at any moment – to any of us. Life is miserable at times and definitely, always unpredictable; pain is something every person has experienced and something everyone will experience again, at some point. People die, people fall out of love, people lose their jobs, people get injured or sick – bad things happen, literally all the time, everywhere on this earth.  There’s a war going on in Syria, and on the 25^th of December there will be broken families huddled in shelters, with no food but just the fear of another bomb, or another raid from the rebels. They’ve seen pain, loads of it, but do you know what they’ll do? Mothers will kiss the faces of their surviving children and thank the sky for sparing them their lives. They’ve seen pain, but they know how lucky they are to have any hope at all.

But, I don’t say this to dampen your festive spirit, or to add any more stress to your life - in fact, quite the opposite. Don’t you think it is a beautiful miracle to have the people you love around you this Christmas? Shouldn’t you feel blessed to have your family and your closest friends with you, grateful to able to smile and laugh together? You’ll most likely be surrounded by people you’ve known forever, and who you love unconditionally (even though they’re family and you fight like cats and dogs).  They’ll be gathered around the dinner table and slumped sleepily in armchairs eating chocolate, most likely in relatively good health.  Some alive after an admirable amount of years, after wars – some who’ve fought off diseases, both physical and psychological – and you’ll all be together this Christmas. There can surely be nothing more wonderful.

 Life can take people away in seconds, and bad things are going to happen to you in your life. But that’s not a reason to be unhappy. Good things happen too, and life always gives more than it takes, if you look at it from the right angle. Please just have a look around and be thankful for everything you have!

Merry Christmas.

Love for life

A mother watched her baby sleeping. 

His two tiny feet were kicking the air, his hands holding his blanket, his little mouth the shape of a perfect ‘o’. He had a birth mark under his left eye and a small amount of wispy ginger hair; he had rosy cheeks and adorable sticky-out ears. He was barely the span of her two hands in length, so astonishingly light – and to think all adults were once this small.

She found herself doing this more often than she thought was normal – just staring at him, drinking in his chubby face. She would catch herself and go back to whatever she was doing, but she’d always find herself back beside his cot watching his little chest rise and fall.

It wasn’t as though she worried for his safety – not really - she knew it wasn’t worth it to play those games in your head. She thought perhaps she feared his genuinity, because he was too perfect to actually exist. She felt she had to keep her eyes on him at all times, because then she had evidence of producing something so beautiful – it had to be believed. He was there. He was hers.  Her gorgeous, helpless baby.

25 years later she waited anxiously at the airport, scratching her fingernails up and down her arms in anticipation; she’d waited two long agonising years for this moment.  She cried into her husband’s shoulder at every letter and prayed to a God she didn’t believe in more times than she could count. ‘Please, let him come home safe. Let my baby come home safe.’ She felt bad about the war, and she was proud of everything her son was doing, but the selfish side of her just wanted him back. Her motherly instinct wanted him away from everything and anything that could hurt him.

As the men in their uniforms started to pour through arrivals, running into crying girlfriend’s arms and throwing squealing children into the air – she waited. Her husband lay a hand on her arm as the line of soldiers started to trickle – he could feel tension radiating from her like heat. He said he was on this flight – where was he? Where was her baby?

Then, around the corner, pushed by another burley soldier, came a wheelchair – in it was her son. He only had one leg. A mix of emotions flooded through her – he was alive, he was okay…he wasn’t okay. He was in a wheelchair for life. The war had broken him…how dare they send him somewhere so dangerous, how dare he be such an idiot for going! She saw him as she saw him in his cot: his hands holding the sides of the wheelchair, the birthmark under his eye, his ginger hair, his mouth the shape of a perfect ‘o’ when he saw her tearful face. But there was only one foot swinging in front of him.

He was a man now. His hair was in the short back and sides of a soldier; his eyes reflected war crimes he’d never forget, scenes to wake him at night in years to come, screaming about things he could not change.  There was stubble across his lip, and a cut on his cheek. Others would never think of him once being so small.  When he grabbed her hand and explained how he hadn’t wanted to tell them about his injury…hadn’t wanted to worry them…how others had lost their lives and how lucky he was…she’d held on for dear life, staring at him, never wanting to let go again, never wanting to look away.

The Day I Met Gatsby

It was one of those lukewarm nights at the start of summer. The beach was dark, the only light coming down from the dock, leaving the sand and the water in an eery green glow. You could just about make out the horizon, a thin line against the sky, marking the start of what seemed to be eternity. I was sitting on the bank staring out into the nothingness.

Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw him. He walked slowly, deliberately, as you would expect. His hands were placed lightly in his pockets, but his arms were stiff at his sides. He was wearing a pink shirt and a pale blue suit, so light it almost seemed to make him shine out of the darkness. He saw me – and smiled. That smile. You know that smile. It glinted, his pearly teeth reflecting in the half light, so perfectly straight they would make you question their genuinity.  But of all things, the smile belonged to Gatsby: it had built him. I didn’t smile back but just stared, watching his every move: analysing him.

He was right in front of me. He seemed unfazed by the fact I had ignored him; he simply hitched up his crisp trousers and sat down lightly beside me. He was so close I could smell his sweet cologne, no doubt the most expensive kind money could buy. I continued to stare as he thoughtfully gazed out across the water, where my eyes had been but a moment ago. He had freckles speckled across his cheeks and nose, I noticed, and his eyes were framed with soft lashes. Those eyes! It wasn’t so much the colour of them that would strike you, but their intensity. They were desperately searching for something, but I doubt even Gatsby could tell you what that was.

I’m not sure how long we sat in silence. I was afraid to speak to him, afraid of what he would have to say. But it was a comfortable silence, for me at least. He sensed my reluctance, and after all, he’d come to me, not the other way around. I noticed his small white hands peeking out from the immaculate suit, shaking slightly as they sat in his lap. He wasn’t at ease, even now. But would you have expected him to be?

Suddenly, he turned. Those eyes stared into mine, and he smiled again. My heart melted a little and I felt reassured, as I expect most people would. He extended one of those pale hands.

“Jay Gatsby. It’s a pleasure to meet you, old chap.”

“I know who you are”, I nodded. But all the same I took his hand and shook it, because to be impolite was by far the biggest crime you could commit against him. He seemed to appreciate my effort.

“So, you’re lost?” he hedged, looking back up towards the horizon.

“Lost?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t think I quite understand what you mean.”

I wondered if perhaps I was dreaming. Was this one of those visions, like ‘Beauty school drop out?’ Was he going to try and point back in the right direction and tell me to stop ‘dwelling on dreams and forget to live’? I feared this I think more than anything. Dreams were all I had.

Dystopian outlook

In the future, money will cease to exist. We can now pay with our laptops, on our phones and with contactless cards; there will be no need for physical currency, because technology will take over. Efficiency always was our weakness. But the transferring of money is still founded on the concept of it; when we lay our plastic bank cards against the card machine as payment, we still imagine those coins exchanging hands, and think of it as a trade of physical money.

Soon it seems we will be living on concepts and relying on them. Reality will be no more, but we will still have the concept of reality: imagination and artificial creation. The world will morph into one big game of pretend, with an electronic barrier between us and life. We'll devote ourselves to robots instead of real, beating hearts, machines over freshly mown grass. iPads replace books, apps replace games, technology replaces life. Only in our minds as an ideal will the world survive; only in these warped caricatures will the living, breathing world continue on. Society will be so fake it will no longer recognise itself in the mirror, but will step back and say "damn Daniel, back at it again with the pollution, the Botox, and the online dating."

Will anything be real? Perhaps the sense of loss will be real. Perhaps the increase in people with severe mental health problems and the loneliness will be real. Perhaps all else will be fake apart from that empty, aching feeling inside which screams that this is wrong, that this goes against our nature. I can't go five minutes without having my phone in my hand, checking it even when I'm not expecting any news, aimlessly scrolling through it subconsciously. I hate this so much I want to take a sledgehammer to it and smash it up, until the glass and the metal are little more than dust in my hands. But I can't. Why not? Because the entire fucking world is the same, contaminated and obsessed, like we've been sucked into a dark hole and we can't see to get ourselves out. Like the lotus eaters we barely even know we are having our lives wasted away, our energy drained out of us; we are oblivious to our own destruction. Humans are so strong, so adaptable and incredible; nothing can destroy us because we dominate the earth. 

But of course, we will destroy ourselves. When every human is dead and God walks among our technology ridden corpses he will mutter "my god, whose idea was it to give them free will."