The Meandering Gullbad Nogbee

The first time I killed a man

Walking through town I purveyed the rootless, those whose existence failed to register on most radars.  I had walked through the cardboard slums of this mega city before and so I guess that as a somewhat familiar face no attention was drawn to me.  

I waited by where he usually slept.  He wasn’t there.  Its strange because although I had visualized my actions a hundred times in the days and weeks leading up to the event, I had not anticipated that he would not be where he was usually.

I looked around until I decided to abandon what I had planned and come back the following day.  As I turned the corner into the alleyway which leads out of the darkened underbelly of the cities backstreets, I saw him.  He was sitting there on the steps which acted as a fire exit from the side door of a nightclub.  Rubbish piled up around him.  His name was Marky.

Our eyes met and he smiled.  I smiled back, sat down and we started to chat.

Although he was just a piece of rough trade, he was pretty well spoken, or tried to be when he spoke to me which always lulled me into a fantasy that given the right education he might have had a future, but I was always brought down to earth with a bump whenever I reflected the damage the streets must have done to him.  His prominent cheek bones were not the result of beauty fuelled genes, but rather the result of a dependency on brown, which through considered injecting sites, he concealed well.

I explained to him what I wanted to do and asked him if he had any ideas for a bad person to be removed from this disgusting poisoned world.  

As it happened, he had a few people he would happily have 'snubbed', a word he preferred to use.   Ultimately he settled on one specific target for my hell-bound plan to be carried out against.  He explained how...

“some Silver Fox Tom had picked me up in Theatreland, got the standard, before beating seven kinds out of me and then didn't not pay for the service.”  

The incident had happened three weeks before and Marky had only just got out of hospital a few days before.

So, my choice was random and my rational of choosing by proxy meant that my conscience has forever been clear.  I was simply a tool to fulfill someone else’s justice.  Anyhow, I recall that it was my idea to redress the balance of power and remove this detestable animal from my acquaintances life.

Marky explained that the guy lived a few blocks away and we set about making a plan, sitting their on the step.

After about twenty minutes and about five Bensons each, we set off.  I was armed only with a an orange colored plastic ball-point pen in my pocket, but having seen the movie Goodfellas, not long before I was sure that was enough.

We walked the back streets to avoid any CCTV or junctions.  The street folk, know how to stick to the shadows and how to get from one place to another, literally without being seen, sometimes hiding in plain sight.  A couple of times where ally based markets had filled the dark paths with light and people I walked behind him copying his body language, head down, weaving between the bodies in a way which felt like no one would even know we were there.  The trick was zero acknowledgements, eyes down or looking through people, never actually 'seeing' them and in effect they did not see you.  Total anonymity.  This practice is possible in a city.  In a small town or village its almost impossible.

Not long had passed and we reached the delivery entrance of a block of apartments.  It was pretty non-descript; single double-glazed door with a lift entrance and stairway all lit by a flickering blue hued fluorescent strip. The once secure door was wedged open with a small piece of wood, an improvised efficiency only seen in the back of serviced apartments where everything from dog walking to laundry had to gain access to fulfill their contracts.  Meanwhile, no doubt, the marble-clad foyer with six working cameras, a concierge and beautiful mirror-reflected lighting was in existing in glorious Technicolor at the grander front end of the building.  These were after all super luxury conurbations.

We decided to take the stairs for two reasons;  firstly their was less chance of seeing anyone and secondly their was less chance we could get stuck.

At each level landing we took a break.  Marky had a very serious face on and me trying to catch my breath.  He was at least 15 years my junior and as wiry as a ferret.

After about ten minutes we got their.  It was the 9th floor and we stopped, as was now the habit.  I reiterated the plan slowly and confirmed that he was sure.  He nodded.

We walked slowly down the corridor.  There was no noise.  Marky whispered that many of the apartments in the building were owned for investment by businessmen who try to rent them out or by businesses to accommodate their employees, when they are in town.  Since the recession, neither of these things had really happened and most of the spaces were now up for sale.  Except, he said for the Silver Fox, who at this time of night would be at home.

Marky had told me he could let me in the front door.  He had 'done a stink as a teenager as a slippery Jim' assisting mobsters to get into properties by climbing in small windows.  His part of the plan was to silently climb from the fire escape through an impossibly thin gap provided by the bathroom window and simply open the door for me.

I waited in the corridor for a minute, which felt like an hour, before I heard the door begin to open.  He had done his job.

I shall not go into detail about the actual event.  Suffice to say that the little orange plastic pen did its job.

What I will tell you is what the Silver Fox said as his dying sighs were carrying his life away.

"If you kill all the wolves the rats will take over.”

Marky and I both showered in the dead guys bathroom before we left out through the same door we had come.  We were both silent in our own thought as we walked.  He seemed happy and that made me glad.  I had done something wrong for the right reasons, or at least, that’s what I told myself.

We split up at the market-filled junction and I never saw Marky again.

It was a bit strange since as I had left my office my evening I had set out to kill Marky, for no reason and had ended up killing his worst nightmare for what seemed to me to be a good enough reason.

Marky’s probably dead by now too, his lifestyle was not one which is normally conducive to a long life.

That was thirty years ago now and since death for me is just around the corner, there seems little to lose in sharing this story with you sitting in this park

The only thing that haunts me from the whole affair is a question:

With the removal of a wolf, did it leave room for more rats?  I will never know.

The stupidest thing I used to believe whole-heartedly

I passed my driving test in August 1994.  I remember my DVLA test center examiner, Mr Trible.  He wore a crooked wig.  I knew the importance that the effects of mobility would have on my life and understandably I was pretty nervous.  Gordon Bachelor, my instructor, had coached me week after week and prepared me for this day.  The sun was shining and morning was hot.  I don't know how, but I passed and with only one or two exceptions, it stands out as a good thing I have done.

(the one pictured is not actually mine, just one which is the same colour.)

Anyhow, about 18 months later I was driving my old 1977 Commer camper (named Brian after a slow moving thing from magic roundabout with his home on his back) along the motorway with my late mother.  We had taken a trip to the New Forest for a few days and it had been a good break.  The sun was going down as we headed home there were some roads works with cones coming up ahead of us.

My mother told me to brake.  

"What?" I said.  "Don't be silly, we don't want to get pulled over."

Incredulous, my mother looked at me and said "What do you mean?"

"Your not allowed to use your brakes on the motorway", came my confident, yet ridiculous answer.

"Of course you are!" she said, pointing her finger.  "Look at all the red light you can see, everyone is braking, all the time."

It was true.  As we hurtled towards the roadworks, everyone was breaking and just slowing down in their lanes.  

I realised how stupid I had been.  In the absence of actually having been taught to drive on the motorway, I had filled the gaps in my brain with 'rules' I had just made up.  Because I understood that everyone has to overtake on one side, I had honestly believed that by breaking and 'forcing' a car on the 'wrong side' to under-take, would somehow break the law.

I had driven all over the country from my first day of driving, using motorways at least every week and always sought not to apply the brakes.  

I was so shocked, I had to pull over onto the hard shoulder and rethink almost everything I knew and set off again.

My mother always just laughed about it, whilst never letting me forget that moment.

Looking back I can see how dangerous that was and just how stupid.  Thank God, mothers are always right. 

 

A houseplant is dying. Tell us why it needs to live.

I look at Malcolm the houseplant and it seems very poorly.  

It’s a shame since it has lasted so long struggling to contend with long periods of no water with his leaves all wrinkled...

...and then long periods of over watering his poor crown.

...sometimes poor light with the blinds left drawn for day after day

...and sometimes left with its leaves scorched from the direct sunlight magnified through the window pane.

 

That plant has been pretty hardy.  This time though, I think there needs to be an intervention for the sake of this survivor of a plant.  Someone with a sense of moral direction needs to step in before its too late.

 

Given half a chance it would have been a beautiful plant, green and lush...maybe even sending up a sprig of brightly coloured flowers...

 

 

 

...but the pendulum of abuse and neglect has not so far given it a fair crack of the whip to ’show off’.

 

The instructions for caring for the plant are clear.   So clear in fact the instructions are printed on the label, not in words but in symbols.  Written for idiots.  You are not an idiot and I know that you have more important things on your mind, but whether you like it or not the plant is a living thing. 

 

      
You decided to buy him and forsake his opportunity to live in a caring home, and sure you have a right to buy a plant or in this case receive him as a gift, but just as Peter Parker’s uncle said “with great power, comes great responsibility”, these words echoed also by UK Prime Minister, David Cameron when discussing the welfare reforms when he said; "with rights come responsibilities”. 

 

I suggest you have a simple choice; take five minutes out of your life every day, let the plant do for you the job he was meant to do; help you relax and enjoy your surroundings by helping to make your lodgings into a home.  A place you can look forward to going to at the end of a long day.  

 

You might not know this but your little bundle of joy here is able to reproduce too, given the right conditions.  Why would you deprive that poor specimen of a chance of growing into his potential and further deny his God-given right to pass on his genes?  I dont know how its done, but it must be possible otherwise there wouldn't be so many of them in the supermarket.  What kind of sick person are you?

 

If you simply can’t be bothered to look after him, might I suggest that he needs to be taken into care.  I know a family who would love to have him.  

 

We could even discuss shared-care arrangements.  But the status quo can’t continue.  

 

I know its confrontational and I know you will most probably struggle to come to terms with the fact that you might not have succeeded as well as you had hoped during that first  Christmas he was given to you, but just like the Dogs Trust remind us about our canine cousins, “a dog is for life and not just for Christmas.”  I know that Alan has not yet said it but I am sure that his Gardeners World predecessor Geoff Hamilton would have “A plant is for life, not just for Christmas buddy.”

 

Now, I’ll give you 24 hours to gather your thoughts and then when I come back tomorrow, either your pull yourself together or I’ll come to take him to a new happy place away from here.  It's up to you. 

 

If you can think of any reasons why the houseplant should be saved or how, do please leave a comment.

What can happen in a second?

This is my first attempt to write something based on a subject prompt provided to me by the book '642 THINGS TO WRITE ABOUT’.

 

 

What can happen in a second?

 

A second, a point in time.  So many of them pass us by without a care, each filled with so much potential.

 

In all the seconds which happen, none seem more pertinent to our lives than the moment of conception, of our own creation.  The moment a little microscopic wiggly swimming sperm breaks through the outer shell of an egg to conjoin and grow into a new being with a new consciousness.  

 

 

A second of magic and wonder.  The process has been filmed and written about countless times, and yet, like so many things explained by the empiric method, it is a moment which fires and inspires wonderment and, for some, spirituality.

 

Death too happens in an instant.  The journey to death can be long, drawn out and painful.  It can be painless too.  It can be fought against with all manner of attempts to avoid it, but its inevitableness humbles all.  This is arguably the second most pertinent second in any persons life.  King or pauper, tinker or spy, beggar or thief; death is a moment, an experience, an event we will all take a part in, whether we like it or not.

 

A second.  So trivial, has within it, the potential to ambivalently host the creation and killing of everything we know to be true.

 

Then there are the other things which come and go in a flash, love and loss, joy and ecstasy can seem eternal but are most oftentimes fleeting in a second or a longer collection of seconds.

 

Decisions and commitment are very often things which occur within a second.  To ‘do’ or not to ‘do’.  To say ‘yes’ or ‘no’.  Choices are taken either consciously, or not, in a second; some of which can create consequences which last for a lifetimes or affect countless lives.  

 

Scientific experiments related to cognitive bias have highlighted the difference between the slow logical part of the brain which weighs up pros and cons in a balanced way and the much faster part of the brain which allows us to make snap decisions without being aware of the thought process, the auto-pilot part of the brain.  

 

It’s this fast part of the brain, the bit we are not conscious of which tends to make judgements.  Do we like something? Will be do something?   

 

Two great brains started looking at this snappy part of the brain. Kahneman and Tversky started to look at the brains biases,  They postulated that are all sorts of things where we are 'hard wired' to decide or feel something before being aware of our thought process and moreover if questioned 'why we like or feel something' and 'for what reason', the slow part of our brain will ‘make up' or 'concoct’ the reason.  It will create a logic path which supports our 'first reaction' our gut reaction to tastes and choices.

 

What's interesting to me is the ‘present bias’.  It’s the part of a psyche which causes us to pay attention to the present without much care for the future.  

 

In Thailand where I am living now, this approach to life is positively encouraged.  Is that due to the Bhuddist faith? I am not sure - I guess so.  Here a swift decision is made and behaviour follows - very often neither hanging or damning the consequences; simply it is not thought about.  How often I have heard the words, when I ask a question such as "what if..." - "you think too much”.

 

According to Prof Dan Ariely, from Duke University in North Carolina the present bias is the most important.  He says ‘It’s the one which accounts for overeating, smoking, drink driving, writing an SMS when we drive and or having unsafe sex.'

 

 

Two other biases both swift and unconscious relate to loss aversion and a negativity bias and in regards to what can happen in a second, these two will have potential for a decision being made or not, commitment to be made or not and again all in less than a second.  

 

"I’ve been offered a job, shall I take it?"  The present bias means that the decision was made as soon as the job offer was known about.  By the time the letter was opened you knew if you were going to quit your current job.  

 

All the hand wringing or asking council of friends and family is merely building a justification for what your brain has already decided.  Its unlikely your logic brain will generate a ‘truth’ different from that 'the gut’ first shot into your consciousness.  Sometimes it does but not without the gut kicking and screaming.

 

 

About 900 years ago Omar Khayyam wrote:

 

"The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,

Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit,

Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,

Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it."

How right he was!!  Clever bloke.

 

Second place, second chance, second choice, waves crashing, bombs blasting, guns shooting, cars hitting, questions asked, answers given, people meeting, nice face smiling, children laughing, light shining and rain hitting the ground.  All in a second.

 

If you have any ideas or reactions to the phrase 'What can happen in a second?’, your very welcome to leave them here. 

 

  

642 THINGS TO WRITE ABOUT

It has been a while since I sat down to think about something, let alone write something to share with anyone, via this neglected collection of thoughts and babble spewed from my brain box, who might be remotely interested in the lumbering merry-go-round that is my progression through this thing otherwise known as life.  

 

A while since, despite by most recent post where I was sure I had got back on track.  How wrong I must have been.  

 

Insight is funny thing.  When I don’t have it, I am often reminded “you don’t have insight”, “take a look at yourself”.  As is often the case the thing doing the ‘reminding’ is my own brain.  My own unforgiving internal monologue.  The cursing, spitting sometimes corrosive mental noise.

 

Which reminds me of what I always wanted installed above the hand basins of  a day centre for homeless people I once worked in.  I recall chatting to a couple of colleagues about the almost ubiquitous attempt of individuals to apportion blame of their circumstance on someone else (who hasn't done that?), something else (again who hasn't done that?) and never really accept their situation as a result of choices they had made.  

 

My proposed solution was to install mirrors above every handbasin emblazoned with the message “you are looking at the problem”.  Of course it was a bad idea in as much as it would simply have pointed the finger of blame, rather than a good solutions-focused chat.  The idea was dead.

 

That idea ended up on the same scrap heap as the idea where, to reduce the level of harm sex workers in Medway were exposed to, I proposed to offer a facility for them to make use of premium-rate phone lines offered by our charity.  A kind of self-employed, work at home, route out of street work using the same skills they might already have possessed.  

 

I can see now that was a minefield and the Board of Trustees were right to have kicked it into the long grass.  There is a funny story attached to that too, but we can leave that to another time.    

 

Back to the insight.  When I think I have it, I later realise, that was a delusion, an oft mistaken doppelgänger for something which seems like insight, but is otherwise more insidious, since inertia feeds off delusion like a leech.     

 

Anyhow, I have not written lately since I have been busy, making myself busy doing loads of stuff, which now I am trully back on track, I will go into at another time.  There are dozens of great things to share, but all for another day.

 

My inertia mostly related to this blog, and although it only really has a low number of followers, it does appear to have been looked at, if not 'read’ by a host of people from across the globe.  If I need an excuse to get cracking again, now I have it.

 

A couple of days before Christmas, and a day or so before leaving the little crop of rock perched somewhere to the top left of the European continent which I call my birthplace, a friend of mine (GG) gave me a book. 

 

 

“So?” you might ask.  And you’d be right to ask.  “So what?”.  Well, the book is called ‘642 THINGS TO WRITE ABOUT’.  

 

Well, in that simple gift giving/receiving thing which happens every year around the anniversary of (strictly speaking its originally the Roman celebration of Saturnalia.  Later to be incorporated by the story tellers of the man Jesus Christ  with their inclusion in the story of his birth of gifts, namely Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh, given by the Magi and even more recently usurped by the giant corporations and their armies of merchandisers and marketeers who simply want us to think about things like discounts, offers, seasonal promotions and their profits) the birth of the King of Kings, son of God etc. 

   

Back to the book, the gift, '642 THINGS TO WRITE ABOUT’.  It’s a great book for anyone who hopes to write anything other people might read and I suppose something which anyone who enjoys the sometimes pointless process of generating collections of words, even just for their own amusment, might benefit from.  Why not check it out?   It’s brilliant.

 

Over time, I guess you’ll see the results of the gift.  Will it inspire?  Will I get into the habit of adding a few lines to this blog regularly.  It certainly has got me to write this and so…even though only time will tell…their is already a positive effect.

 

Right now, I have energy and focus; the doting parents of determination and I believe I will do this; write more.  Thanks for reading this and in case no one has genuinely said it to you of late; I wish you all a very Happy and Prosperous New Year.