Seen from Here Writing in the Lockdown

Edited by Tim Etchells and Vlatka Horvat

Seen from Here Writing in the Lockdown

Edited by Tim Etchells and Vlatka Horvat Seen from Here Writing in the Lockdown

Published by Unstable Object, June 2020

ISBN: 978-1-8380422-0-2

Edited by: Tim Etchells and Vlatka Horvat

Design: David Caines

Contributors: Fiona Banner aka The Vanity Press, Caroline Bergvall, Aisha Mango Borja, Season Butler, Hester Chillingworth, Augusto Corrieri, Will Eaves, Tim Etchells, Rachel Genn, Chris Goode, M. John Harrison, Vlatka Horvat, Wendy Houstoun, Sophie Jung, Andrea Mason, Harun Morrison, Courttia Newland, Katharine Norbury, Lara Pawson, Deborah Pearson, Fernando Sdrigotti, Maria Sledmere, Marvin Thompson, Selina Thompson, Rupert Thomson, Chris Thorpe, Tony White, Eley Williams, Aaron Williamson, Jacob Wren

© Unstable Object / Tim Etchells and Vlatka Horvat Individual contributions © the authors All rights reserved.

The editors would like to thank: David Caines, Clair Chamberlain/The Corner Shop, Live Art Development Agency, all contributors

100% of proceeds from the sale of Seen from Here: Writing in the Lockdown will be donated to the Trussell Trust, a UK food bank charity. Everyone involved in the making of this book has volunteered their time and labour towards raising funds for the Trussell Trust. If you have acquired the book via peer sharing, please donate directly at: trusselltrust.org

Unstable Object London, UK unstableobject.com

Image on the cover and frontispiece: Vlatka Horvat, Pages (Punctured), 2012

All opinions expressed in the material contained within this publication are those of the artists and authors and not necessarily those of the publishers. No part of this book may be printed, reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from copyright owners. A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library. Introduction AN INSTRUMENT Tim Etchells and Vlatka Horvat 4 Tim Etchells 125

FROM BEGINNING TO END Deborah Pearson 145 WHAT STUCK Season Butler 11 SIXTY SCENES FOR SIXTY DAYS OF QUARANTINE Selina Thompson 155 BECAUSE EVERYTHING IN THIS DAMNED WORLD Lara Pawson 17 LON CHANEY SPEAKS! Will Eaves 177 WE ARE THE KING OF VENTILATORS Chris Thorpe 31 LIBRARY NUDE Fiona Banner aka The Vanity Press 185 SMILE, CLAP, DANCE, SING Andrea Mason 39 THOUGHTS ABOUT A BUILDING CLOSED TO THE PUBLIC Katharine Norbury 193 BREATHLESS, THE PALE Courttia Newland 45 YOU KNOW WHAT’S HAPPENING OUT THERE Tony White 203 RECOVERY STUDIES FOR LITTLE BURNT HANDS Chris Goode 57 SABIO Marvin Thompson 233 DAYS Aisha Mango Borja 67 AS FAR AWAY FROM THE BODY AS YOU CAN REACH Vlatka Horvat 239 GET LOST Wendy Houstoun 73 TOGETHER (PART 1) Caroline Bergvall 261 NO STAGE, NO WORLD Augusto Corrieri 93 IDEAS FOR PANDEMIC SHORT STORIES Jacob Wren 267 UNPLUGGED IN NEW YORK Maria Sledmere 103 THE STALL OF WARM HANDSHAKES Aaron Williamson 273 MARKET Rachel Genn 117 I SEARCH FOR AN ARTWORK WITH THESE 25 QUALITIES Hruna Mrrisono 295

J CARETAKER Hester Chillingworth 299

LAND LOCKED M. John Harrison 323

CIGARETTES AND TUNA Rupert Thomson 331

EVENING Sophie Jung 343

WHAT (NOT) TO DO WITH YOUR HANDS WHEN YOU ARE NERVOUS Eley Williams 351

AND THEY SHALL CLAP Fernando Sdrigotti 365

Contributors’ Notes 373

2 3 The idea for Seen from Here came from our Introduction conversations around this situation, and from our wish to put artistic and literary labour to the benefit of other people. Everyone who has contributed a text or worked on the book in any other capacity has donated their time and 100% of the money raised through sales of the Seen from Here: Writing in the Lockdown is a collection of collection will be going to the food bank charity the stories, flash fiction, poems, autofiction and conceptual Trussell Trust. writing gathered during the April and May 2020 Our first move putting the book together was Covid-19 lockdown, bringing together a wide-ranging contacting writers working in different areas of practice, group of UK-based writers, poets, performance makers connected only by our conviction that in combination and artists. they’d provide diverse, vivid and compelling material. As editors we began work on the book in early April, The final list of contributors – and the extraordinary not long into the UK lockdown. We were – like other strength of their work and engagement with the people lucky enough to be able to do so – isolating project – has stunned us and we’re hugely grateful as far as possible, working from home, busy with to all who have so generously given long and short cancelling or rearranging projects and developing pieces for the book: Fiona Banner aka The Vanity anxieties about the future, meanwhile worrying about Press, Caroline Bergvall, Aisha Mango Borja, Season the health and situation of family and friends, work Butler, Hester Chillingworth, Augusto Corrieri, Will colleagues and neighbours. We were also mindful that Eaves, Rachel Genn, Chris Goode, M. John Harrison, it was a privilege of sorts to be able to stay in isolation, Wendy Houstoun, Sophie Jung, Andrea Mason, Harun a zone of relative safety and security that many others Morrison, Courttia Newland, Katharine Norbury, could not easily create or afford for themselves. And it Lara Pawson, Deborah Pearson, Fernando Sdrigotti, was clear to us too that the epidemic, amplified by the Maria Sledmere, Marvin Thompson, Selina Thompson, UK government’s ideological disinclination, inaction Rupert Thomson, Chris Thorpe, Tony White, Eley and ineptitude, was already making poverty and Williams, Aaron Williamson and Jacob Wren. precarity more severe for some of the most vulnerable people in society.

4 5 Most of the contributions in Seen from Here are new – in early June – means that it’s the only one which – written or created in the strange interzone of the makes reference to the murder of George Floyd by the first few weeks of the lockdown. Some – works by Minneapolis police. Will Eaves, Katharine Norbury, Lara Pawson and Beyond the above it’s perhaps worth stating the obvious Rupert Thomson – are excerpts from current works about this collection – namely, that while some pieces in progress, and only one piece in the collection – by in it reflect directly or indirectly on the lockdown Jacob Wren – has been published before, on Jacob’s experience and the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, blog. We read it there in early March, and it stuck with others step sideways to offer glimpses of past events, us as a kind of perfect metatext for this collection. Jacob, other realities and absolutely fictional landscapes. In any an exception to prove a rule, is also the only writer case, aside from the fact of their inclusion here, there’s included in the book who is based outside the UK, in no desire on our part to impose a link between the Toronto. A couple of the texts – by Wendy Houstoun fiction writers, artists, poets and others present in the and Caroline Bergvall – had a previous life as works collection – we’re as excited by the radical differences in another medium; as a podcast and as a composition of content and approach in evidence as we are by the for voice and breath, respectively. Our own texts for accidental connections, dialogues, frictions and synergies the book break the unwritten law of good taste that between the pieces included here. What’s common editors (and curators) should refrain from including ground is elemental – that in this time writers and artists their own work in things they organise, though in this working with language are putting one word in front instance we are hoping that the charitable aim of the of another, stringing things together, looking for new book might mitigate our self-inclusion. One of the ways to map and navigate the space, real or psychic, that last texts added to Seen from Here, comprises selected we’re living in now. material from Hester Chillingworth’s Caretaker, their lockdown installation for the Royal Court Theatre in As well as the contributors, several other people have London. Running from start of May and still live at the been instrumental in helping us realise the project and time we are writing this text, the work – streamed from we are thankful to all of them. Stefan Tobler at And the theatre 24 hours a day – shows the empty stage, Other Stories gave us valuable advice; Lois Keidan the image of which is accompanied by a series of short at Live Art Development Agency agreed to sell the texts spoken by a computer voice, delivered at irregular book on Unbound, LADA’s online shop; and Clair intervals. Our relatively late inclusion of this piece Chamberlain at The Corner Shop offered her pro bono

6 7 support with the media comms. Early on in the process we approached the designer David Caines who readily accepted our invitation to collaborate with us on the book, bringing his brilliant design eye, attention to detail and playful approach to make Seen from Here look so absolutely sharp.

According to the Trussell Trust website, the period from the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in the UK – from the last two weeks in March – was ‘its network’s busiest ever period, with 81% more emergency food parcels being given out across the UK, including 122% more parcels going to children, compared to the same period in 2019.’ It’s a brutal and no doubt ongoing situation and we’re hopeful that with the support of readers this book can play a small part in contributing to the Trussell Trust’s amazing work, bringing much needed resources to the people who need them.

Thanks for buying the book and supporting the work of the Trussell Trust.

And thanks for reading.

Take care.

Tim Etchells and Vlatka Horvat June 2020

8 9 What Stuck Season Butler

10 11 Marcia Farquhar once said to me, ‘You can’t take academic achievement to the dance floor.’ My mother once said, ‘You can’t just fuck up and blame it on me.’ A shaman once told me, ‘It’s not an either-or universe. It’s a both-and universe.’

A persimmon farmer relayed an old saying, ‘When the persimmons get ripe, the doctors get blue.’ Explosions in the background, beyond the perimeter of his orchard, discouraged local monkeys from looting his fruit. ‘Earthquake. Tsunami. Evacuate immediately.’ Signs on lampposts noted the altitude for those seeking high ground.

My sister talked me through a comprehensive procedure to clear the lungs. She developed it because she is on her own in the USA with an asthmatic child, so there’s no guarantee of an ambulance believes in resourcefulness, in the ancient wisdom of local medicine, and treating the body with the gentlest possible intervention. You give the patient an infusion to sip (heated and sweetened with a little honey if this provides extra comfort), and then a pot of oregano and eucalyptus steam to inhale in a bathroom foggy with shower mist and sage smoke. Close the door and keep it closed. Then cup your hands and beat the patient’s lungs firmly: chest, sides and back, all over. I do not think about my niece’s little torso,

12 13 her ribs, the blades of her shoulders and hips. I do not wonder about the marks left by the procedure, or how long they stain her skin. Soon you’ll hear a popping sound. Lean the patient over the toilet or a bucket at this point. She will cough and heave and the popping will intensify and mucus will liberate in volumes that will disturb you and leave you both relieved. Then hold the patient. Read her favourite story together in your bed. Watch her while she sleeps. Let her have anything she wants for breakfast.

I once heard from a woodcarver, ‘If you make a mistake, turn it into something that is not a mistake.’ An octogenarian pearl-diver told me, a little self- consciously, that she suffers from vertigo. Her colleague chuckled and said, ‘I do, too.’ I got the impression that vertigo is an open secret in the industry.

A historian said, ‘If you take away the carnival, there could be an uprising.’ A monk I fancied told me I was gorgeous. We swapped numbers but did not keep in touch. A hip old product designer showed me around the guest house he rents on Airbnb. He ignored all of the usual amenities and acquainted me with the ‘Moss Sarcophagus’ and the ‘Coffin Bath’ – places to meditate on death more happily.

14 15 BECAUSE EVERYTHING IN THIS DAMNED WORLD Lara Pawson

16 17 At the top of a hill, where the land sinks to a basin of stewed water glistening black in the embrace of dead leaves and fallen branches, I found a pile of watermelon skins and a cymbal on a stand. I studied the scene from behind a hornbeam tree, its catkins hanging in clusters like the pointless fingers of a stillborn. I was looking for a camera, for wires to a mic. I was scanning the trunks of the trees for the arms of a man. I trained my ears for heavy feet and deep breaths, but nothing cut through the breeze and the rain on the trees except the whipped revs of an engine riding tight to the tarmac somewhere close, somewhere steep. I was hoping for the arrival of a single brown deer, but instead had a vision of a woman attacking her labia with pinking shears. I turned and walked back down the hill into the heart of the forest.

Two days later, I decided to return. It was still raining and the instrument was still there, standing on the same spot beside the silver birch. The watermelon looked even fresher despite remaining untouched. Now, there were clumps of cut celery sprouting lime green leaves. I approached the cymbal and lent it my ear, but the sound of raindrops hitting bronze seemed unimportant out here. So I loosened the screw attaching the stand to three legs and lifted the whole thing by its long thin neck. Inspired, I swivelled my own body and walked away quickly. When I crossed the gravel path that leads to the church, I encountered a man. He was leaning

18 19 on a motorbike watching me. He raised an arm and I gave up my bed for a Romanian woman. She gave shouted, ‘Make a sale, girl!’ I held his gaze but I kept me a tight crocheted top. It was black and see-through walking and when I looked back I noticed the words and sexy and I hated it. For a long time, it sustained my Boere Biker stitched to his shoulder blades in ice-cream idea of Romania as a country full of women with pert leather. nipples poking through holes. I was in my twenties and I threw it into the fire on the roof of the house across Like the lucky bird dropping that streaks the top pocket the green from MI6. In those days, I pitied people of my waterproof jacket, and the spots of faeces that the who surrounded themselves with things they owned. I cat sprayed from her anal gland casting a constellation looked down upon those who cherished certain objects of dark stars across our fitted white sheet, the cymbal so deeply, they found it hard to leave. In order to be is splattered with the mud and rain of the forest and free, I would overcome irrational attachment. I would coated in the dust of the house. Here, in my room, I get rid of the things I’d acquired. I trained myself to keep it close to my chair so I can tap it with the nail of dislike these belongings that were holding me back, my right index finger and count the seconds inside the seducing me with their presence. I gave many away. But vibrations like the seconds between the launch of an some proved resistant – the things that had burrowed artillery shell and its explosion on landing. When the into me like the tick that found the small of my neck dog barks, this slanting circumference of bronze replies where my hair is thick and warm and wet with sweat – with flurries of glittered sound that seem to insist on so I burned them. the existence of something primordial. Often, these moments are interrupted by a vision of Yul Brynner, Decades gone and I take pleasure from the magnets on bald and polished and, let me say it, exotic. Those silk my fridge. Even the timer, its blue plastic casing filthy pantaloons! In 1978, the year I began watching The with splashes of milk and whisked egg, pomegranate Magnificent Seven, he became the honorary president of syrup, prawn stock, vegetable oil and burned sugar, and its the World Roma Congress, an international gathering plate of barium ferrite – its mucus and muscle – boasting demanding an end to their discrimination, and an end to flour and bread crumbs and leaking something sticky. the term gypsy. In several obituaries, Brynner’s mother I love to take it and turn it and hold it to my head. Its is described as a Romanian gypsy bride. urgent tik-tik like the carriage clock above the fireplace in the room with the low ceiling held up for centuries

20 21 by the same dark beams. In an upright armchair, an wind it up and fix it to the underside of the neighbour’s old man snores. He has a narrow moustache and wears car, just to feel it suck to the metal, just to listen to the toad trousers and a tank top knitted by his wife. She’d sound of the tik-tik down there, just to get a taste of always expected this. His brown leather shoes laced what it is to create fear. with discipline, his hair clipped close and flattened with pomade, his fingers sliding apart on a belly that heaves. Two eggs in a pan of bubbling water, and the timer And suddenly I saw that there was no afterwards. keeps ticking. Carol Vorderman’s cheekbones are pushing There was no future; nothing further to think. through my computer screen. A violet blouse flows over There was the war – and that was all – her body. I reach forward to dip my fingers into the silk, curving over me like a wall reaching to the sky, but she raises a finger! Behind her, a desk. Behind the limitless, without loophole or chink. desk, a boy and a man, side by side. They are bent over I could batter my head against that. pieces of paper, scrambling to calculate a single number from six others. Carol says they have thirty seconds. At And who am I to make the link to the Memopark timer? fifteen, the ticking crescendoes, accompanied by rapid Those keyring gadgets that rang a little bell to remind drumming that accumulates inside a short horn section motorists across Europe that their parking meter was during which the boy lays down his pencil and looks up. about to run out. In the 1970s, Father Patrick Ryan When the timer stops, I bang my cymbal with a spurtle. realised they could also solve a problem for the IRA, The man is still scribbling. whose bombers kept being blown up by their own devices. ‘It was foolproof,’ he told a BBC journalist. ‘Even In 1943, the killing facilities at Auschwitz Birkenau if he tried, he couldn’t kill himself planting a bomb.’ The were upgraded. The historian, Laurence Rees, writes Memopark timers were the last thing to be connected that Crematoria IV and V became ‘a kind of conveyor to the explosive. They were used in the Warrenpoint belt of death’. Replacing the previous, much more time- attack in 1979, the Hyde Park bombing in 1982, and also consuming process, in which people and bodies were the Brighton bombing in 1984. Thirty-four deaths, and transported between different floors and different areas all I can think about is the similarity between the blue of the camp, these two buildings held all the necessary Memopark timer they showed on the telly and the one facilities on a single level. First, prisoners were ordered slapped to the top door of my fridge-freezer. I long to to undress. Then they were sent into a room, which

22 23 they had been told was a shower but was really a sealed the bushes. I was waiting for it to stop. chamber. Precise quantities of Zyklon Bläusaure crystals were poured through a hole in the roof. The prisoners’ I’d always assumed that the gas chambers were the lives ended between twenty and thirty minutes later. Nazis’ preferred method of killing because they offered Their bodies were transferred to large ovens. The SS the quickest way to end human life on a massive scale. officer who was in charge of these killing complexes, In fact, the largest number of Jews ever killed in two a man called Karl Bischoff, said that up to 4,416 bodies days was almost 34,000. It was the end of summer were burned every twenty-four hours. According to 1941 at Babi Yar, near Kiev. They were all shot. But Rees, the true figure may be double that. Even so, because the killers saw their victims as they fell, some Bischoff’s claim means that at least one body was burned exchanging glances with them in the process, many every twenty seconds. were left deeply traumatised.

I set my kitchen timer to one minute and I try to think The appeal of the gas chamber was that it spared about three people I know being gassed to death and the killer. burned to ash. I set the timer to ten minutes – the amount of time an egg should stand in boiled water if For years, a postcard was held to the fridge-freezer by you want it hard-boiled to perfection – and I do it again, my kitchen timer. A nephew and niece sent it from this time with thirty friends. I use a pencil on paper so Amsterdam: ‘We think you will really like this!’ It was a that I can rub them out later, so no one has to know photograph of a woman’s face, her lips formed from a what I’ve done, and I can pretend to forget. I can’t forget pouting anus, her nose from fleshy vulva and labia, her the names of the people killed by Bischoff and his little eyes were real eyes but they had been Photoshopped to team because I don’t know their names. But I know his, either side of her clitoral hood. Everything was waxed. which begs the question: should I be using it, or erasing Not a single hair remained, not a trace of any stubble. it? And I will keep wondering: did he use a timer or did It had been there so long, I rarely noticed it. Until one he wait for silence? morning when I spotted a brown streak down the side of her face. A line of diarrhoea, I thought, as I put The first time the dog caught a muntjac, I wanted to on my reading glasses and knelt down in front of the deafen my ears to the animal’s screams. I was hiding in fridge. While I waited for the kettle to boil, I examined

24 25 the streak as closely as I could and I realised it was the of the Spanish Foreign Legion, which conducted skin that had formed on the top of my hot chocolate. atrocities in many Moorish villages. Severed heads were It must have slipped from the tip of my finger. But exhibited as a matter of course. By the time he had risen the idea of diarrhoea would not disappear. So I tore to Brigadier General in 1928, Franco was a master of the card in two. I threw it away. Looking at the fridge violence. He understood perfectly the power of terror. door this morning, at the white space left behind, I’m Eight years later, when civil war broke out in Spain, he remembering my vinyl collection. Before we went to sought to suppress Spanish citizens on Spanish soil just as Johannesburg, I sold it. His name was Jason. He had he had Spain’s colonial subjects in north Africa. He gave copper-coloured hair and he paid a fair price. But the orders for the Legion and also Moroccan mercenaries to depth of regret for my records might be equal to the commit appalling acts across Andalusia. Civilians were emptiness I touch each time I think of the friendship I raped, mutilated and murdered. found out there. She was Moroccan, as direct as a drill, with breathful beauty. In an email some years later, I I have long understood that the violence meted out made a mistake. Now, we don’t speak. by Europeans within Europe is rooted in the violence meted out over centuries by Europeans beyond Europe. In 1938 General Franco said: So it is unsurprising that landless labourers in fascist My years in Africa live with me with indescribable Spain were seen through the same racialised lens as force. There was born the possibility of rescuing Moroccan villagers, and called Berbers and savages. But a great Spain. There was founded the idea which why should such considerations come to me while I am today redeems us. Without Africa, I can scarcely standing in the kitchen staring at the space that was held explain myself to myself, nor can I explain myself by the portrait of a jaunty cunt? properly to my comrades in arms. Other faces decorate the fridge-freezer. The cat’s was In fact, those years were lived in a single country, not carved from a piece of cedar, her tiny green eyes on spread across an entire continent as Franco claims. From lookout, her pink mouth a purse of pity. Beside her, 1912, he spent more than a decade in what was then the Samuel Beckett in black and white. It’s 1976. The year Spanish protectorate of Morocco. He arrived as a junior of the drought, the year after Franco died, the year we officer and by 1920 had risen to second-in-command travelled to Spain in someone else’s Daimler, returning

26 27 with a barrel of wine hidden beneath the back seat, there right then and given it to him to put on his own scraping through customs thanks to the car-sick child fridge door. Yet, months later, here it is, still on show, for sitting on top of it. I remember the soldier’s eyes when anyone to see. Why won’t I throw it away? Put it in the he peered through the window. Something ran across bin like the squirrel’s skin? Perhaps it is too late. Perhaps his heart and he waved us through. Beckett’s gaze is less it’s because his mouth is closed. Perhaps it’s because forgiving. He will not look away. If he cared, he might be nothing is sayable. Because everything in this damned imploring me to do what must be done before it is too world calls for indignation. Even a fridge magnet. late. As it is, he aches with regret at my frivolous decision to slap his face between a pussy and a plastic sunflower. Would he be happier if I created one of those unfinished sentences out of magnetic poetry, arranging the pieces at awkward angles to suggest they are sidling away from his concealed top lip. A sort of riff on a riff to show that I am in on the joke – the one that was explained to me last summer, the one I’ve still not understood, the one about high-culture-meets-low-culture. And, anyway, I bought the mini portrait in a serious endeavour, to remind myself of my admiration for the beak man’s words, even when I am standing in the kitchen smashing a slab of pork with a rolling pin. Sometimes I want to smash his portrait, too, because I’m bored of my Beckett pretensions. I’ve seen so many fridges with this portrait of his face, as if this dead Irishman were some kind of deity, as if the unblinking intelligence oozing from every furrow in his face also oozes from the fridge’s owner. Oh, I felt such a fraud when Faraz came into the kitchen and, glancing at the fridge-freezer, released three joyful gusts. ‘Ah! Yes! Beckett!’ I only wish I had pulled it from its place right

28 29 We are the King of Ventilators Chris Thorpe

30 31 We are the King of Ventilators. We are, I told you this, excuse me, we are the King of Ventilators. I am the Emperor of Oxygen. I spoke to some of the other leaders. All the leaders, the Prime Minister of Zumba, the Grand Duke of Luxury, The Sultans of Swing. They couldn’t believe the things we’re doing. They said sir, I don’t know how you do it. These are things, we are the King of Ventilators, these are things that have never been seen in the history of breathing, of scientific. And nobody appreciates, well you people don’t appreciate, where is the coverage of the Ventilators. Big, beautiful Ventilators in all our hospitals and our airports and trapping the invisible enemy which is the size of nuclear. Trapping the invisible enemy behind Walmart, out the back of Walmart and all the supermarkets in the parking lot where there are millions of beautiful swabs. So simple, just in the nose or the throat. The Mayors know where that is. The Governors, not so much, but I explain to them where the nose is, and the throat is, even though it’s not my job and they say thank you sir we never knew that, and even the ones who don’t say it know what a good job is and that I’m doing a good job. Some of them don’t thank me enough but that’s OK, I know who they are. I even like some of them but they’ll have to go their own way until they realise, and then they’ll come back and thank me. They know the work we’ve done, forty thousand Ventilators they said and I said that’s too much. With an invisible enemy like this, probably the worst that anyone’s

32 33 ever faced, you don’t need, forty thousand is too much The invisible enemy, invisible genius enemy I call it, the because with an enemy like this if you show you’re invisible genius is clever, but I am clever too even though prepared you give them confidence. This is a genius sometimes I know you would rather let the enemy win thing, this enemy, the germ gets into the lung and then, I or destroy our economy just so you can say look, he’s don’t have to tell you, you know the bad things that will bad, he didn’t care how many of us died. I was the first happen. And the thing is even if I gave forty thousand, to shut off the airports and close down the borders and you people would be here next day saying why not forty shut the sea gate and fill all the bookstores with sand so thousand and one, because you’re never speaking the they couldn’t serve as portals. No entering through the truth about how we are the King of this. Of Ventilators. bookstores. I was the first to do that and they said sir you We are the King of Ventilators and you people never say can’t do that, the opposition will go crazy and I did do it it because you and these sleazy politicians, politici-cons I and they went crazy, but actually if I hadn’t done it they call them, you want to see us fail. Yesterday I saw a small would have said why isn’t he doing it, they would have blue bird at the window. It said death is bad. Death is gone crazy the other way, the opposite sort of crazy, but I one of the bad consequences of this and there are other don’t care. I don’t care what they say. I was the first to do consequences too but death is the bad one. The bird said that before anyone, I said no planes, apart from the ones other things too, it said sir, they need to know they’re that are still bringing people in, let’s shut the airports, lucky to have you because if it had been the woman they apart from the ones where planes land. My Uncle was would be in a war now, we would be in World War Seven a great genius, they said one of the greatest, so maybe or World War Eight already but you’ll talk to anyone. The that’s why I have a feel for this stuff, not just nuclear but sadness is they didn’t get to live in that world war world medical too and all of it. We need the nuclear but we because then they would have seen how bad it could need medical too. When they said sir, but the sunlight have been without you. But the King of Ventilators, kills the enemy, I said well why don’t we all go outside you are still a wartime leader, and the invisible enemy is and look at the sky in big groups, and I was the first fighting a war against you, against the King of Ventilators person to say that. The enemy is going to go away, it will because the invisible enemy doesn’t want your people to be like a miracle, because without me it would have been get a tattoo or a hair cut or go to the beach where there so much worse. It really does a number on the lungs, we is skin and they can touch that skin with their mouths should look into that too, maybe we should look into in the way you always want to sir with your mouth. that, all go outside and look at the sky while we put

34 35 light inside your bodies, maybe there’s some disinfectant, maybe there’s a way to inject, to inject light into the lungs because like I said it really does a number on the lungs. Maybe you will all stand outside in the light while the enemy withers on your skin and in the spaces of your bodies and you will breathe the disinfectant and I will pour it into your lungs. I will pour it into your lungs like light. A small blue bird at the window said your father may not have loved you but like all these things, if you do not test then you never have to know how bad it is. The damage will remain invisible, and you will be allowed to carry on. We are the King of Ventilators, I am the voice of what we have all allowed, I am the genius of nuclear, the genius of medical, I carry all my metrics inside my skull and gut, we are the King of Ventilators, and you wanted too much from me, you people, but I am unbreakable. We are the King of Ventilators. We are everything.

36 37 SMILE, CLAP, DANCE, SING Andrea Mason

38 39

BREATHLESS, THE PALE Courttia Newland

44 45 From his seated position on the double bed, looking from a window, Langton saw humps of parked cars glisten like whale skin, the slant of spitting rain, a riot of needles shattering on impact, the surge of empty road, a promise of white lines and street signs, the ginger cat on an opposite wall licking with unfocused zeal, taking shelter beneath a neighbour’s porch awning. He pulled away to stare at the blank TV until he realised his thoughts were drifting, no idea where they’d taken him only he’d sat there for a length of time that caused his knees to ache, creating a tingle of pain to creep his elbow and forearm. There was hunger, faint enough to resist, though he rose, moving through the front room into the kitchen and towards the back door, turning a key in the lock to stand amongst the whistle of breeze and pigeon song at the height of cold stone steps. A ragged patchwork of neighbouring gardens. In the left, fumbled movement. The chop and scrape of a digging spade, the patter of scattered earth. Mitch. Langton balked, almost returning inside, yet he hadn’t heard another voice in three days, so he forced himself to trot down askew steps, careful not to slip on damp stone, amongst ivy and blackberry bushes, where he couldn’t be seen.

Over the pleated wooden fence, a pause: ‘Alright mate?’ ‘Yeah, yeah,’ Langton nodding despite the barrier.

46 47 ‘How’s it with you?’ of people he hadn’t met and conversations unseen, ‘Not bad. Coping. Just thought I’d get out and and after a few quick sentences followed by the wait plant a few shrubs.’ for his sister’s reply, it was impossible not to. Langton ‘In the rain?’ immediately wished he hadn’t. Tony Allen had died. ‘Yeah, before it gets any worse. Gonna bucket BBC News claimed the government target for tests down.’ would be met. Graphs showing how widely the virus ‘Yeah,’ Langton said, tugging coarse strands of disproportionally affected African Caribbeans swiped beard, liking the pull of resistance, chin lifted towards a sizable hollow in his gut. Langton shut his laptop, grey, steady moving clouds. boiling the kettle instead. ‘If you want me to trim your ivy, say the word, There was enough food to last the week, and I don’t mind. I’ll do it from here. They’ll strangle the he’d booked a run of Morrison’s deliveries for the next apple tree if you let ‘em.’ three. He cleaned his shopping and parcels with Clinell ‘No. It’s fine how it is,’ Langton whispered at wipes, never answering the door until whoever had his feet. knocked backed off as far as the gate, watching the red ‘Alright mate. Best go inside, help out with front door with serious eyes. Langton hadn’t left the dinner. Be safe.’ flat since March 23rd, and had no intention of doing ‘OK!’ Louder than he meant. so until it was safe. Allie suggested he go outside, he Footsteps, then a rasping scratch against concrete, needed fresh air and a change of environment, but that possibly Mitch bent over, scraping mud from his shoes. was all right for her to say, holed up in Exeter with her Muttering. A subtle open and close of a back door, boyfriend and his family. The back garden was enough family voices. An immediate, intensified cascade of rain. for Langton, who resolved never to chance anything more risky. Each park or shop, work colleague or Langton tried not to watch the news or press neighbouring street a potential danger not to be trusted. conferences, only there was no way to avoid them. He’d just wanted to Skype Allie, as he missed her presence, He opened his eyes to ceiling shrouded in the half-drunk mugs of tea and wrinkled clothing darkness. His duvet a cocoon, warm and debilitating, stranded in various surprising places, their conversations, Langton pressed against its confines. He made an odd as the random angles of his garden steps. Yet there attempt to turn on his side, only couldn’t, trying was FB and Twitter, Instagram and TikTok, the allure once more before he gave up, blinking into overhead

48 49 vastness, seeing dark, only dark, barely aware of his brightened to the touch. body’s existence. 3am. Stilling. Something there, some noise. A gentle Langton found voice memo, touching record. rise and falling hum. Low and continuous, a mechanical Waiting, as the ebbing hum continued. Watching respiration. seconds run, the soundwave widening, thinning. Breath Langton waited, listening. He almost denied quickening. Unable to stop himself from tracking the the sound at first, calling it imagination, too soft, too tiny line hurtling across the screen, without pause or wired into the push and release of his own chest, too rationale, without life. imperceptible, and then – A rattling tin can. Langton paused, head poised. He closed his eyes, barely receiving or imparting Outside. It came from outside. air, and like the inner workings of a motor or whirr of Shouldn’t look. He knew that, rising from bed. some internal fan greater and more intricate than any Knew it tiptoeing, warm nose pressed against misted he’d known, Langton heard it again. Almighty breathing glass. around and above, everywhere he wasn’t, entombing Outside the opposite flat, where the ginger cat his body within an invisible presence of something had cleaned itself, four dark-clothed, hooded figures unknown. Pulsing, vibrating. were carrying the prone body of a Black man on a Mouth open, Langton focused on the noise. simple stretcher of wooden poles and taut canvas. Heads Expecting it might end, but no, or become louder yet bowed, mournful, trembling slightly with weight. In it did not. The sound only grew and receded without the centre of the street, dead on broken lines, a carriage, pressure or force, languorous, teasing perhaps. Langton white horses. Twin doors a wide-open embrace. There, thought it seemed not to care whether it was perceived two more of the figures scanned the quiet street. Pale or otherwise, whether he took action or lay still, him white faces. No markings, no features, just bright supposing its origin might be something old and ancient, smooth skin. Nothing. possibly beyond time. A pale one looked up. At the window. Langton. He allowed the noise to wash his body, before The four others halted. Put down the stretcher. trying again to roll over. It took a number of pushes, They angled their heads towards him too, alert for tense though he’d grown more eager to track wherever the seconds, stationary, until they crossed the road, opened noise came from, managing to roll on his stomach and the gate with a metal whine, glided down the garden blind pat surfaces until he located his phone, which path and began to scratch at his lock.

50 51 Langton backed away, the noise of whatever bare soles meeting tarmac. tools they used louder than the mechanical hum, the Above, from the windows of yellow-lit houses, sounds converging in musical rhythm, and amongst Langton caught watching silhouettes. Silent. Palms flat that, his terrified, panicked squeal. against glass. He called for help but no one stirred, each Into the living room, the sound louder. His observer dark as the pale ones were bright, no one even front door banging against the wall, a shuffle of clothes turning to see him go, immovable as rocks. He ran, rubbing plaster, and they were at the door of his flat. they saw, the pale ones pursued. Scratching again. Left at the end of the street. Whimpering, Langton ran. panting. Legs hurting, wishing he’d jogged daily like Into the kitchen, fumbling to unlock his back everyone else. No call for physical prowess within door. Into the static beauty of night, a fingernail Uni IT support. All in the head, nothing of the body, orange moon, bats fluttering autumn leaves overhead, needless of flight or fight. None of it. Necessary yet an atmosphere of withheld breath, down steps into vulnerable, Langton needed a letter. Some journalist on his garden, a noisy clamber over the shaky back fence. Channel Four said BAMEs should stay inside, and he On the other side, his neighbour was constructing a had. He had and what was this? half-built granny flat. Langton skirted bricks and spent Light brightened the pavement, Langton stutter- concrete bags that resembled used condoms, turning stepping fear. An open door, another dark body, a left down a muddy path towards a chain-tied gate, waving arm. Come, come. Come, come. useless really, open just enough to squeeze through. A Behind him, a trickling water advance of pale quick look. ones. Langton a moth, darting up the path into warm Two pale ones at the top of the road, beneath light, the young man at the open door averting his eyes, the white light of the corner shop. Black robes so long nodding yes, all joggers and slides, matted ‘fro, crusted Langton couldn’t see their limbs. Twinned faces, a glow eyes. Moving upstairs fast, imploring his saviour to of full moons. shut the door, unable to rest until he’d taken every step Sprinting, Langton risked a look over one upward, into the front room, where he was panting, shoulder to see them following. Unhurried, simply agitated, safe. gliding. He believed it was a dream, yet every sensation He rested, hands on knees, chest burning, filling told him otherwise. His burning lungs. Piercing sweat the room with the harsh rattle of his fear, feeling he on the back of his hands. Blurred vision, the pain of might collapse.

52 53 Langton raised his eyes, silent pressure making his ears pound. What was this? A television hung like a portrait, the green sofa positioned opposite. A disused fireplace on the right, the square of attic-hatch before a half-open bedroom door, the permanently open padlock, its key lost. The blinking router beside the steel grey telephone stood to attention in its cradle, Langton knowing every aspect of this flat and each possession because they were his, this flat belonged to him, turning his head as footsteps ascended the stairs, the young man rising into view and it was Langton he saw, he was looking into his own eyes, the young, trendy Langton smiling in a way nerd Langton never quite managed, the introverted of the two screaming with the realisation that he was trapped, he was lost, his pursuers climbing the stairs, patient as time. In the seconds before they came, Langton noticed. The young man’s face morphing, alternating. Dark into pale. One moment him, then not, shifting into trendy Langton again. Had he brought this on himself, or was it done to him? He couldn’t tell. He just couldn’t tell. The bedroom door swung further open. A pale one stepping closer, October streetlight washing each prone body. Langton searched its face, seeing only a reflection of everything. The light, the room, the souls in wait before them.

54 55 RECOVERY STUDIES FOR LITTLE BURNT HANDS (for Tim and Vlatka) Chris Goode

56 57 1.

When the time comes. We experience as euphoric dread the activation of the infrasonic klaxon. We thank the vestiges, the shard, upward. We look around ourselves at our ownselves. We nod at what time do you call this, the clock on the floor.

We take off our fake slippers and feel the relevance of our naked feet against the floor. We are all clocks now, fancy, in league, tall and spiritual even but chained to something, to this, the private keepsake of our granular selves like. Our very circadian volition, raw as pig knuckles.

We have taken off our dumb fake slippers and putten them neatly along beside and we go outside.

In venturing, in going out, we are shard-blessed, vaguely, very vaguely, detuned, don’t press the point. We picture our own private lungs as an overfamiliar public diagram of lungs, though perhaps more exactly associated with other non-identical animals partly.

We go outside and we are going outside and after we have gone outside and Instagram. The pregnant klaxon, quaking the lab windows, and there are spots of blood in your bearhug, thanks.

58 59 We are being drawn. We are tending like insane yellow In our hard-porn hearts this has become a race by flowers towards a promiseless aubade. Our basic data- this point, and so this is what is our name for dread at entry minds cannot truly hold at one time both the present, and our gesture for secular duress. The vehicle horizontal and the vertical. We merely self-reveal, as song turns like an otter in swim and is sucked back plain as honey. inwards: that is, towards that man’s core, that or another.

We are terrestrials. For now, for now. We are very A folktale of tar on old superb beaches. How is this barefoot, for now. what we used to know as all that was basically known about prayer, which is famous asthma. Walk towards the 2. corkscrew storm of a railing mother saying mum, mum.

We walk patiently on now-ambiguous private grounds. A model action boy I knew in another place, showering, The earth is crone-dry and twisted to the touch, glimpsed or less or even less. whenever we stoop to touch. Armoured vehicles huddle by a distant lake. A friend of a friend makes up a descant We stoop, as creatures, to touch the grounds. Take off in a strained mock-Tudor voice. Singing back to the your shirt please is a very humiliating thing to say. The vehicles about the vehicles like. No farts till midnight. very gorgeous panoplies of fluoric acid. The condemned zoo of perception. Astronomy today. I would like to get my neck touched, I’m thinking about. A perhaps hotly abandoned shirt with uprolled 3. sleeves. Spearmint lemonade. Onwards we trudge, over and on, in line, like an evil Hundreds of dozens of worm casts at our feet, they have like psalm like, word by word, retch by retch, moths taken on a slight kind of barbecued appearance; nobody and paraffin, and the sky in convulsions, of which you heeds or minds. But nearly everybody stops to look at a are the cause. Remind me to tell you. dead washing machine. Small snails eat the instructions. The vestiges prick our palms like, some of us. One can A thieving bastard murders a stone-curlew, under cover taste mouldy helium. of recalled performance theory and self-defence; sets

60 61 on fire. A pointing infant girl to say On fire On fire. A A defunct manager from among the number comes to curse is enacted. How though. All this. All of this, see. the front, approaches supine the designated windscreen. Bees orbit his thought, we are a laughened stock. The more we count the cost the less we can. The rush of the onslaught of the lidless shame. The blackened curlew corpse corpse-coughs and corpse- Some Harry is made to lead and we come in order to laughs in our dream of atrocious remembered burning. World Of Windscreens. It has been ransacked, first by history, then by history’s opposites. Showroom, What sort of a name is Nofirstname Nolastname, and inconsolable as any larger-than-home-sized building. your father and father before you, and how many eyeballs No one to the rescue. can be fucking pushed into the sockets of the same skull.

For a period of time we force our attention into the Crush us o Lord like. Fill our doomselves with eyeballs gape spectrum of the World Of Windscreens. Extremely and smash us in the head with hospitals. pansexual youths fight each other comically with windscreens. The children and idiots conspire to make 4. temporary forts and toboggans. The windscreens become currency, medicines, idols, prostitutes, fashion statements, Stranded in a far-reaching morning settlement, we wake languageless slogans heaved into the midst of a furious together under muted skies. Undo, undo. Mutated skies. microculture. The furthest ever tobogganed is over a Mutilated. The high sheet of cloud is gravely luxurious. thousand million miles or more. In the direction of the In our time of melodic austerity only one kiss exists, perishing seaside. passed from mouth to mouth, child to working dog, working dog to human. Human to emergency duck We are pushed like. Very remorseless like. Panting to call, in an emergency. pull down the weather over our heads. Harm is a very versatile low-cost building material. Harm and harvest Some have made igloos of shattered windscreen and go together like a horse and carnage. And there is compromised driftwood and electrical tape. Some have nowhere in particular to dispose of used needles so. bodged boxing gloves out of scavenged literary drivel artefacts. Everywhere everywhere is in a very vertical rush we notice. Up it goes, wahey! 62 63 Oh seedlings everywhere. You have got to hand it to 5. them mary. The summoning its antithesis. Patiently, intently, we At the congregation, an old woman in a string vest intuit our rehoming. Hands form syntagmata on air- stands on the fruitbox to say aloud and without staves. Skeins of cats-cradle; delicate guts. The shard quantisation something she recalls learning in art-class blesses on the hour. Milk. Moo. Happenstance. Can I last century: namely: human apparitions can be broken like help you. utterly into triangles and in that way comprehended. No light but the light. So the congregation accidentally summons a fermata like and all persons present reconsider each other as Deep inside the remembered story, primordial a bunch or bag or bodybag of triangles. Suddenly radionuclides may be encountered, kick back, ease into cadavers, gulls, coproliths are glistering with art like it soldier, your kiss your glow, your open gesture of out of nowhere say. Mexican wave! An anthem in close kneeling, what can be seen from the hills can barely be harmony is a kind of mainframe computer. This was seen now anyway. One time it like hailed and hyper- forgotten. La la the public tongue. everything.

When we remember we will remember the myth of air We shall never again put that shit on our feet. traffic control. The soles of the feet abundantly. Face paint on a trembling boy. The secret is a very crowded area. The sector is contracting. This or that surge protector. Brothers We set the weakness to work, we will. cling to the windfarms. The leading edge; semen and evensong. Mouthed plants and instant terraria. Backwards hopscotch. Venus and a tangerine. Sleep; justice.

Come along, Foley, love. The garden is real.

64 65 Days Aisha Mango Borja

66 67 On the 1st day you could feel the relief in the halls, the imprinted floors the walls still covered in pen but no longer harbouring the hands that wrote on them JT likes SB and RS is a whore

On the 3rd day we sat in our living rooms with our different atmospheres. We all cried on the 4th day. Men with their heavy man tears, women with their heavy man tears.

On the 12th day our parents had remembered their mothers’ phone numbers but forgotten their faces. The bridge of her nose, the shape of her eyebrows.

On the 13th day, middle children took a survey to determine their lives inside. I watched my sister read her outcome and shackle herself to her bedroom floor

68 69 On the 14th day we tried to remember which only led to anger. On the 34th day I broke a swan’s neck in my dream and tried to forget again.

Today it rained like February the kids were still out on their bikes though, pedals fitting half a foot, hands too big for their handlebars.

In the evening the sun poured in but the day was already lost The day we’re out, maybe the 1000th day, the fish might have disappeared into the river again

I might not ever walk down where I saw them that day. I might not remember the place in front of the black tree ornamented with cormorants, like my grandmother’s hands with rings.

70 71 get lost Wendy Houstoun

72 73 PART 1. I AND NOT I

Esther Kinsky in her book River describes relocating from her life and wandering around open, often neglected landscapes.

A few years ago I spent the year wandering in a clockwise direction around the island, the island we now know as Brexit Island, on my own relocation project.

I met a man halfway up, or down, some steps in Folkestone and he stopped and looked over towards Dungeness. You can feel so temporary, he said. I used to work in that power station but my time is over. He talked about being sent out to the country as a child during the war. Of learning to drive a tractor. Of learning to cut wheat. Of the speed with which he was expected to learn things.

Sometimes I have the notion that the anxiety of being lost, which is often close to feeling useless, comes not from too much being demanded of us, but too little.

On another stop-off I frequented the ferry to Orford Ness in Suffolk. I would get on the ferry every day just to wander around. The guy driving the ferry said he

74 75 loved his job. No computers. No money dealings. Just Do you believe in geographical memory? the short trip there and back every day with lunch at one side or the other. I got lost when I was two, apparently. In Edinburgh on While I was there a group were picnicking at the not- Princes Street, I had wandered out of Woolworths and working lighthouse. They looked like the Bloomsbury was found in a blue police box at the end of Princes Set in another era. Street Gardens, trying on the policeman’s hat. I didn’t seem to be bothered. At the gym in London a group of Turkish men let me join their group to do weights. We had a laugh. I once tried to get lost in Bristol when I was I felt free. about eight. I remember being irritated because I kept recognising I used to go to the storage space and cry at my the streets. belongings in the lockup. They looked too familiar to be in such an impersonal space. The light would go I am lost now. Even though I know exactly where I am. out after a period of time, usually to be lit up again by And I can’t tell if I am moving forward. Or retracing the movement of a woman who used her lockup as a steps. wardrobe, or by the guy folding his endless collection Linking up the lost parts by binding them up with other of towels. people’s words.

Relocating is a strange experience. While I was I have been waiting, waiting for a sign. A sign telling me wandering I had a feeling of lightness that sometimes which direction to go in. bordered on panic. The imprint of what was called And while I have been waiting I have been reading all home was so strong and played its soundtrack over every sorts of things. new town or city. Like that through-the-wall sound effect you get on films sometimes or in pubs. The kinds of things that stick. Although I was going forward at times I had the The kinds of things that can make a difference. sensation I was retreading some preexisting pathway. They are accumulating in the silence of waiting That I was replaying the blank year of my early life.

76 77 with a view to moving forward. Women who say, as Beckett did, I and Not I, this Maybe that counts. is me and not me, this is myself but it is someone else, are driven back from the larger open spaces of There are sentences I remember, and ideas that the artwork to the smaller spaces of the self. almost hurt.

I have been doing a bit of genealogy recently. The writer Elena Ferrante wrote a series of novels under a pen name about the nature of female friendship. The Catholic Mission used to be called the Crusade Someone decided her real name should be revealed. of Rescue.

I read Jeanette Winterson in The Guardian writing about They gave me information which had been hinted at the malice of this unmasking of Elena Ferrante. About over the years but which, through a file I was given, has Winterson’s first novel Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit become fleshed out into second-hand certainty. and how it used a character called Jeanette, about the creative liberation Winterson finds in reading herself The timeline revealed in the file conjures actions, ‘as fiction as well as a fact.’ And about how when male characters, motivations and probably most of all the writers – like Henry Miller, Philip Roth, Paul Auster or overwhelming nature of chance. The individual pulled Milan Kundera – use themselves ‘as their own aliases’ it around by world events and localised attitudes. is considered a playful meta-fictional experiment, but ‘when women do it, it is called autobiography.’ Part of the report said: ‘She was asleep in her cot’ – and this one sentence Winterson writes about the success of male writers and punctured years of amorphous imaginings. artists whose work with their own transformed body and identities – she mentions Karl Ove Knausgaard and Previously, in the absence of information my Antony Gormley – does not reduce them, comparing imagination has tended towards the epic or the dramatic, the reception of their work to that of Tracey Emin’s, perhaps even the catastrophic and the apocalyptic. whose work has been read through a different lens:

78 79 From the silence used to come a variety of unbidden, They have given up on crusades and possibly given up shapeless images. on rescuing. But they have kept their mission. Like in the book You Shall Know Our Velocity by Dave Eggers, where thoughts are brought to the front of the mind by filing clerks offering up unasked-for I was born with a different name. I don’t want to say information. what it was because it will confuse things. But the So yes. double life thing is interesting. I don’t know why. ‘She was asleep in her cot and her general condition I and not I don’t know why. seemed satisfactory’ is a great sentence for one of the lost to read on a rainy day. I read a book about colonialism. Enough information to calm things down but enough A book by Sven Lindqvist called Exterminate All the room for the shifting stories to keep their place. Brutes – the line taken from the last chapter of Joseph

Conrad’s book Heart of Darkness which was turned into The unknown, the quality of uncertainty has so much to the film Apocalypse Now. give to the world but its language has no currency.

Its maybes, its pluralism, its endless possibilities, and Lindqvist takes a physical and literary parallel journey, its sitting with open-ended information that might with accompanying nightmares and fears, to face or might not be true, are not things that are easy to difficult truths. communicate. A history of how the Europeans/we Europeans/you It, the unknown, gets misunderstood, gets called many Europeans thought land was theirs/was ours/was yours names: to take and people were theirs/were ours/were yours Lack of commitment, hypocrisy, secrecy. Even lies. to kill. It has a suspicious nature to the certain who roam It seemed as if their lives/our lives/your lives were going the world. to last forever. Developing technology made it all possible. The Crusade of Rescue kept good files. Weapons that could be accurate from a distance, allowed The Crusade of Rescue is now called the colonisers’ desires to remain unchallenged, intact. the Catholic Mission.

80 81 The distance is what stayed with me. And: Never let them cut your hair. – about Mary Conquering from a distance. Beard’s hair.

And Lindqvist’s last, vital but hard to confront, thought: Dare to understand. I read Annie Ernaux’s book The Years. It’s a book that spans her own lifetime. In an interview about it she talks about her use of the I am plucking up courage to understand but wonder – je transpersonnel. Why should it be so uncomfortable to change A social first person whose life is shaped by the time she our narratives? is born into and whose reports go beyond the anecdotal, And I wonder what happens to the body when it gets a geographically specific individual adjusting to world hold of a story it doesn’t want to change? events. The book was a feat of recognition. The physiology of familiarity. Change seems easiest to recognise retrospectively, once it is out of ear shot. A tightening of the heart muscles around an image, a spatial musical tone in the ears or a safety valve in the brain on seeing a friendly face or place. Listen further than you can see – And how severing any of these can cause physical pain. something I remember reading in The Walker’s Guide Is this what some call being lost? to Outdoor Clues and Signs.

Rebecca Solnit mentions the idea of lostness as Still waiting and still no apparent sign. being connected to one of two things. The words lead me further on the trail and I wonder Familiar things leaving the story or unfamiliar about the physiology of lostness. things arriving. Both seem true. I read Anne Boyer’s book The Undying. A scalpel-edged voice undergoing treatment for Mary Beard was talking to Margaret Atwood. breast cancer. Margaret Atwood said: Follow the dollar. – about Brexit.

82 83 I read a section of The Undying, about being an object in PART 2. LIVING IN THE FRICTIONAL a system, as I’m trying to make an appointment over the phone to see the doctor. It’s quite a lot later – I get through two chapters while going from being I am still searching for ‘lost’ and get Lost in Space and Lost number 9 to next in line. in Translation. Boyer’s book is so distressing that I can only reflect on it every now and then. A hard thing to quantify, although sometimes Firefox prevents a page from automatically opening another She says: page, but if you allow it you get: And in the tragedy of the tragedy, and in my contradictions, which I suspect aren’t too ‘You are not regarded as lost until you realise you’re lost!’ different from all of yours, this doesn’t mean – Mehmet Murat ildan there aren’t so many sad and wrong and Which is one of 15 quotes on goodreads.com outrageous things I want everyone to know. Which – it’s true – is trustworthy, objective, complete Some things, however, remain mysterious and and well written but not the right kind of lost where unspectacular, and in this, I think, there is hope. The fate of the world relies on the promise of ‘You have to know where you’ve been to know where the negative, just as we can rely that sight is not you’re going’ the only sense. Which is one of the 12 things you should remember when feeling lost in life The fate of the world relies on the promise of the negative, just As mentioned on lifehack.org as we can rely that sight is not the only sense. Whose trust and transparency is very important to them And who have 300,000 subscribers who get daily inspiration ranging from practical case studies, Mystery seems to be something I am simultaneously inspirational quotes and step-by-step guides that you can trying to restore and dispel in my wandering search. apply to your life to make immediate positive change.

But after refreshing a bit more helpfully I get

84 85 The actual meaning of being lost as defined by And whose song ‘A Long Epic Story Something Indeed freedictionary.com Anonymous’ doesn’t seem to be available but does lead Whose cookies I agree to use to help give me the best me to the epic true story of Grace Slick and Jefferson experience and who describe ‘lost’ as being the past Airplane singing ‘White Rabbit’ tense and past participle of ‘lose’, accompanied by a list Which is one long crescendo with a video of Grace of possibilities: standing on a box of some sort above the band with psychedelic lights behind her, singing about logic and A lost pen proportion having fallen sloppy dead, and about the A lost youth white knight who’s talking backwards while the red A lost art queen is somehow off with her head, and how you A lost opportunity should try to remember what the dormouse said: ‘Feed your head, feed your head’ Or examples like: Which are at least something like the lyrics from the The expedition was lost to the world 7-inch single The lecture was lost on us And which, to be honest, all take me too far away from I’m lost – can you start over the kind of lostness I am trying to get to, which is more like the kind of lostness coming ‘from the Old Norse “los”, meaning the disbanding of an army, and this So, I start over again, origin suggests soldiers falling out of formation to go And keep looking for lost. home, a truce with the wide world’ – as mentioned by Rebecca Solnit in her book A Field Guide to Getting Lost And get sidetracked into: The purchasers of which also bought Wanderlust: The Lost – an American garage rock and psychedelic A History of Walking, The Faraway Nearby and Hope in band from Plainfield, Vermont the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities. Who were active in the 1960s Boston rock scene, And who should not be confused with the Lost band And no, I didn’t create an email alert for Once a day, consisting of four boys from Vicenza and Thiene, in Under everything – or maybe just blogs – Northern Italy.

86 87 And no – I didn’t want to suggest a feature, report policeman calmed her down and made her follow him a bug or report any incorrect data – to her home on his motorbike.

I just wanted to get back to Rebecca Solnit, which – So I went to Askville – next to YoYo.com which I knew yes, ok, I will accept cookies – when I Looked Inside, to be a happy place to shop for toys, but it was now a said: random set of questions ranging from whether to put a For me, childhood roaming was what developed question mark in a sentence to how to answer cries for self-reliance, a sense of direction and adventure, help from someone in chronic pain. imagination, a will to explore, to be able to get a little lost and then figure out the way back. So I go back to the home page –

And yes, that kind of a lost was more like it. Back to the beginning-less beginning

A softer lost, a lost that didn’t suggest it was a problem, Back to the story nomads perhaps even more an achievement. Who wander about in other people’s stories, mucking But I didn’t add it to cart, give feedback or get help, or them up and changing the endings; […] even get the Expand the View – perpetual travellers of the story world because I closed they have “disremembered” their own stories And of the 137 other items related to ‘lost’ In a piece of writing None of them grabbed me – By Gladys Idjirrimoonya Milroy and Jill Milroy

Not even the Lost Gardens of Heligan, who welcome Back to Virginia Woolf well behaved dogs, or Lost, the American drama series, In ‘Street Haunting’, asking: or even the video of the woman in China crying in her Or is the true self neither this nor that, neither car because she had been working overtime for three here nor there, but something so varied and weeks and was trying to get home but had no GPS wandering that it is only when we give the rein and no map and no idea of where she was until the to its wishes and let it take its way unimpeded that we are indeed ourselves?

88 89 And back to A kind of: The End of Night by Paul Bogard Where ‘the idea had always been to banish darkness K f ah, ji ke ze, Ve de le, b t dr ooer from night.’ W w deea, di va ge,He de je ke zhe ga mm Back to the genealogical search Where in the middle of the night all of the characters Ge le-mm , ze- kuh de, se er er guh, would appear with startling definition, And the compass points of her, him, them and us would ge le mm fall into Constellations giving navigational hints and drawing Xe kuh de, se er er ugh their own geographical maps through colonialism, name changes and religious complications. Beh be bah je ya beau,

Back to the individual wandering through showers of Di da guh ah ah djer wo do mm, political eruptions. Je je r, se se de huh wo ah goh Back to the je transpersonnel Kr fs ah , ji kquo xe, vo de le be tr groh ar Back to the I and not I. 13 non je ke le be x de And if I could really speak the sensation of wandering without intention it would be more like a broken set of Se er er le le ahhhh vowels and consonants jammed together in fractured logic with strange references intervening at any given time. These are all passing thoughts. It’s what happens when you are moving somewhere while lost.

90 91 No stage, no world Augusto Corrieri

92 93 In the 1920s, Russian film workshops would write scripts, set up scenes, and direct and act them out; but, due to shortages of celluloid, there would be no film in the camera reel. Perhaps these are some of the greatest films ever made. Teju Cole, Blind Spot

Perhaps inspired by the videos of Italian residents singing from their balconies, and no doubt encouraged by an unusual spell of warm March weather, residents here in the small city of Brighton have taken to conversing more openly than usual.

I distinctly remember the change, four days into the official lockdown, just after the first collective act of applauding NHS healthcare workers. Like so many other places across the UK, the square I live in erupted into life through the simple act of clapping; what surprised me the most, however, was that once the applause died down, many people in the square, myself included, remained leaning out of their windows, or standing on their balconies, talking candidly with neighbours with whom they had, until then, barely exchanged a word.

Most of the conversations started a little awkwardly, by addressing the very novelty of talking to one another across windows and balconies; people discussed the

94 95 best ways of leaning out of the window: ‘I find that if I but isn’t the applause also a kind of performance in its lean on one elbow, and let the other arm hang outside, own right, a spectacle, especially when carried out by like this, I can get really comfortable,’ I overheard one millions of people at the same time?’ Then Gary (flat 9), neighbour say; others discussed how to project their two storeys above me, chimed in: ‘I was just thinking voices, so as to be heard by people who might be 10, 20 that! In a way, the applause is both a show and its or even 30 metres away. ritualised conclusion… It is both the act’s unfolding and its closure, all in one.’ Once these basics were in place, the first proper topic of conversation that evening was the applause itself. This rather interesting exchange was interrupted by a Someone commented ‘That was so energising!,’ whilst cry, from the building opposite, to my mind a far cruder another answered with, ‘I didn’t think I could clap for 5 intervention: ‘Aaaaaall the world’s a stage!’ People across minutes, but now I think I could clap for a whole hour the square laughed, and for a minute or so it seemed and not get tired,’ and finally one neighbour proposed, the conversation about theatre had come to an end: the ‘We should start the day like this, each morning a big Shakespearean truism, like any boldly proclaimed cliché, collective applause.’ However, as someone involved in seemed to spoil the mood and stifle debate. teaching and making theatre, the comment that caught my attention the most was the following: ‘But in this But just as I was considering going back indoors, I applause, are we the audience or are we the performers?’ heard another cry in response: ‘Rubbish! How can that This question, offered up quite casually to the square by be true? Think about it: if all the world is a stage, then my upstairs neighbour Peter (flat 7), was the catalyst for the very idea of a stage – a designated, bordered space what would become a lively debate on matters of theatre – no longer makes any sense!’ Laura (flat 3) had not and performance, a debate that I could hardly believe only resumed the debate on theatre, but also raised the was taking place right outside my window. bar a considerable number of notches higher. Silence fell in the square, a few neighbours slowly retreated Lorraine (flat 6) immediately tried to answer Peter’s inside their flats, and after a few beats Laura promptly question: ‘The healthcare workers are the actors,’ she resumed: ‘What makes a stage a stage is the very fact said, ‘and we are clearly the beneficiaries, the spectators, of it being a space apart from everyday life: it’s a special thanking them for their work.’ Pete then replied: ‘Yes, frame, a bounded enclosure. If there is no “outside”,

96 97 no “off-stage”, then there can no longer be a stage...’ I managed to catch a final comment from Laura: ‘I’ll Again the square was silent, then a few neighbours have to think on that!’ began applauding Laura’s intervention, although I sensed that some people might have been clapping as a way of The next morning, armed with the incontestable excuse bringing this academic-sounding declamation to a close, of collecting prescription drugs for a neighbour, I briefly and retire inside their flats. Besides, the sea air was by walked the sunny yet empty streets of Brighton. It was now starting to grow chilly. both reassuring, to see that the city was still there, and utterly incredible, a hallucination turned real (‘It’s like I left the window edge and leaned back inside my a film,’ a shopper in the chemist kept repeating). Upon living room, when suddenly I heard a different person walking back towards my building I saw what seemed – whom I recognised as Vikky (flat 1) – cry out in the to be a large white sheet hanging from Laura’s balcony: square. Though I missed the first few words, as I leaned what from afar looked like a minimalist drawing was, back out I understood that Vikky was proposing that upon closer inspection, made up of several words, conversation is itself a kind of theatre and that, perhaps, written in colourful letters, though too small to really this is the reason why in Palermo, Sicily, which she had make out from the street level. I snapped a picture with recently visited, there is actually so little provision of my phone and made my way inside my flat; I transferred official ‘theatre.’ Vikky said that Sicilians don’t need the file to my laptop, zoomed in on the image, and theatre, because life there is already so theatrical, from began reading Laura’s words: gestures to speech to the very dynamic street scenes: ‘Why go to a designated indoor place called “the ‘That’s an absurd idea Vikky. People in Southern Italy theatre,” to witness stories and drama, when clearly don’t have theatre because of economic poverty, not there is so much life already happening outside, all the because they are “naturally” expressive, or whatever. time? The theatre is everywhere, there is no special I also object to the idea that theatre is a place of frame, no bordered space.’ expression and vitality. Theatre can also be, and in fact might even achieve its real purpose, when it offers I confess that by this point I was getting cold and had alternatives to expression, alternatives to story and mostly lost interest in the matter, as had most of the dramatic action: when it proposes inaction, when it other residents in the square. As I closed the window dwells in stasis, a weakened world. It is in its faltering

98 99 rhythms, in slowing down and pausing “life,” even, that theatre becomes more than just a mirror of reality. In fact, I would go as far as to say that theatre is not a mirror of reality, but an alternative to reality, to the social-as-we-know-it, to the political as we know it. That’s why I can never get behind issue-based or “political” theatre (despite its makers’ good intentions, whose politics I mostly share). I need other rhythms, other modes of perception, impossible thoughts, uncommon relations… Theatre as a sub-perceptual event, operating at the very threshold of sense and sensibility. Why not? Ultimately, perhaps, the role of theatre is to empty itself: theatre teaches us how to be with nothing, with little or nothing to see, with little or nothing to do. Theatre teaches us how to be without theatre.

So no, the world is not a stage. Because there is no stage, and there is no world.’

100 101 UNPLUGGED IN NEW YORK Maria Sledmere

102 103 I was a boy in the blue of superlative elsewhere. Skylit my ventricles leaking a perfect cumulus to go out for the count of you in the cerulean side of the gym is a London burnish. So easy they say a generous calyx melts out where she throws the air effect. I love all that I can see of sometimes living. Another episteme of sentiment catches dollar electronique, flirtation of sound and blue blossom-show of unblossom touches the architecture.

Repeat after me, this heat confects. Let’s go Eevee into the evening I always wanted a Quintilian rhetoric of all we can’t learn, brushing you back in the taxi rank. Drawing this out for hours

104 105 white lines All of us watch the price for lines. Out for a selvedge of apples for the count lowering blood. Squeeze into the remix. I wanted it good The president says like a temperature, so big, when you opened me up can we not just inject at the lip; 11,000 can we not and you opened me good conjecture where my spleen is just such stuff I want to send you as the stars are duped on. When you open a concept sketch for a Starmie at the back of the episode putting the opioid back into its flower (phosphoric acid all of you tendering cigarettes) semi-rainbowed across the quantum turn off the lights marinade. You were drawing and listen to Rachel Wallace as children the invariable lemonade in a parallel universe rising as rainbows. The president the lindens denies a crisis filling the warehouse sway. as he enters the stadium A tiny box of matches, declaring vascular lucid New York is a meadow more innocent times are falling again. My oil is only standard and classical. Tell me why A weaponry of therapy stops. the wind is ad-free My address is just repetition and not the rain; and the noun at the end of the line I want it, I have to tell will bounce a bedlam I want polyp of sugar my body

106 107 in the flesh of the doping light. ... None of this applies to you ... elsewhere, so far away I think pdf depression for Shanine Children on the asphalt I think spectral with chalk. My limbs I will take off flail into MTV rainbow. my denimberry heart for this I purchase CDs with abandon. and this only Nothing delivers. Curate you know the modernism you want to die in about it, nineteen nineties the light licking the bloom of extended play. of the silver to scratch like a card. Cillit bling for England. Fin de siècle, etc Don’t go I kept my friends electric. Kept cleaning my lungs As I was a boy with cinders and leather. almost into the blue and older The president suggests sunlight and older, cascading in lieu of the broken test out of the debut a very nice rumour with waterlilies singing my name out of the blue in atrocious ringtones a phial of poison idiom. over and over If you could if you had ever heard of the heat and the light.

108 109 If you could bleach it (the tube of you) back to I have watched this polishing cutlery the life you have to lose. I have watched this glossing the flutes A prick. of a careless champagne You have to lose the life. in the pink and nuclear whisper It feels so extra. I have watched myself in the grease of your hair Lucky Cloud in my blood is mp3, What more could I ask? maybe she is the air that I breathe We end this curt disinfected. To know this and you say you are free maybe the air that I breathe and I do for us is lighter and lightness. and I do To know this rainbowing (sweet dreams) the sand not say this is cymbal from the ocean’s belly in the lisp between steel (The Hollies) my easy friend I was sorry for the shallow location my stainless the shape in the air Zoom like the upturned smile and you say you are free and to love you. Don’t lie. The president This site has expired at the balustrade, drinking a lemonade under prime subscription says we can only unplug our phones the year I was born and drink in the sun. about a girl. The whites and pinks soften our cars. How young they looked before internet Pretence of the infinite. darkest in high definition Someone is blonde

110 111 and killer. clouds. My girl, I can’t believe cocaine is real. my girl you are such yellow to me I can’t believe in the contact trace something as the blindness Frank says… and the turtleneck as big as You can come back the restaurant. I’ll fold and be safer with me. in the withering Darling, darling light of that hour why must I cry polyrhythm one more time on a Friday? you pull me from entrées Uncloned slowly and knowing with your pearl of a comb a cool presidential genitalia. and the knife Out of sheer air, we fell together. is a sliver of service, A colossal excess of the winter thorax. furloughed. A fifth infected, this city is crowned and tested. And you cut through the darkest He drops a glass over the balcony, goldest. material of living. We lick up the shards of another agenda. Sometimes I think Shiver in the blossomless remnant of April I’m inclined to apologise and I want it to rain here for the universe gossip very slowly in coolest policy so as to extend this only to rainbows landlords of speedway import their opening my veins portals of radium so as to expect as above all violet to lime, all rhubarb so a subway.

112 113 We plug where it hurts. a suture What else should I say? X/Y Everyone is… I enter Everyone is… the toll What else is dredged by a line. of gold and lemonade unknowing what else I could speak clicking to mute these feelings.

When they made me wear blue to cite this solar as my father said when you get older the sun will bless you more. As if this were sanitised always I go into the lobe of a gentle, lyric exception against an alarming capacity. Perforate yellow flower. Blithe in my finance. All we would know of the colour, pull a secret muscle below my ribs

114 115 MARKET Rachel Genn

116 117 You’ll mucky them The records are wedged lovely shoes – as he tight along the back spoke the blade of his wall – arranged first boning-out knife curved by company then by from his palm to rest surname in boxed on his forefinger so she shelves – LPs; 12 inches, turned with the point then singles, with barely to watch a cow licking a yard between the at the concrete and shelves and the counter another cow wrapping its they have to work tongue around the base behind. Two of the girls ‘How will you know the one who is of a metal pole. It’s piss, are not even sixteen, and destined for you?’ Risha asked. you see, from them ones when he turns up, the ‘My stomach will know. She will grab already gone through, he manager makes space me right here’ – and Rueben snapped his said, wiping his hand on even tighter, sliding up fingers and pointed at his navel. his smock and bending and down this single IB Singer, ‘Blood’ his knees. The wee wee; track behind the counter. they want the salt, he It’s an equaliser. His added, and she looked up moustache twitches at him. The cow’s tongue when he smiles and he was so good at what it squeezes past them, did that she couldn’t look hands on their hips to away and with her face shift them to nowhere hung on her father’s coat because he has to sleeve, dull with suet, she change the music, collect stared while she listened the cups, empty the to them bargaining, till. We can do that, she then Bony gave in and says as he rips open a

118 119 sliced off a tumour and cardboard column of lifted it and held the sole the manager squeezes agreed a price and she coins but soon, his belt at an awkward tilt toward behind, she tips her head took in a long draft buckle is caught once her other ankle. Bony backwards to say that of cold air, sharp with more on her belt loop said something dirty this is the one behind exchange and relieved, at the back making her to her dad who didn’t her. The wages here she put her lips to the tiptoe, and when they respond, then he passed are fucking crap and as sleeve. Bony skimmed untangle he flashes her her dad a pill and her soon as she’s finished the growth with its disc a mask that says this is dad slotted it between today, she will buy her of liver attached, into the just as bad for him. She the fold of notes in his best friend something gully, close to where the has begun recently to top pocket. She’d been three-quarter length live cows were licking, tax him, escaping to the there when he slid the from Wallis so that they then he balanced the furthest toilets under the notes under the glass: can get in anywhere liver with barely cupped fish market to empty her the bank didn’t care if they want tonight. No palms, flopping it on- knickers of stolen fivers notes smelled of blood, questions asked. She to newspaper before and tenners and she or bleach. Her mother is remorseless. The boy weighing it. The liver becomes a new kind of will take the pill, a purple with the pipe doesn’t was heaved off Bony’s excited when counting heart, do a full shift and know that there’s hands into her father’s them. Back behind the run two miles home, someone else who’s hands and she was afraid counter, Princess is gasping and laughing set up bass bins in their it might spill down on playing, Say I’m Your into the kitchen, herself bathroom for her, that her. Seeing her flinch, Number One and she smelling of exchange she’s been wagging it her father said, Shift out sways easily, casting and bleach. There was with him because his of that gutter. Her father glances and wiping her a covered ramp at the house is free in the got mad at her when she hands down her thighs, back of the abattoir week and that they’ve didn’t know what to do. when a boy from school where her brothers were been on the train to his She stayed still but one comes to stare at her. He waiting, grinning with dad’s Blues in Leicester. shoe was sunk in a pink is smoking a pipe and their hands behind their When the manager is soapy sludge and she leans on a pillar. When backs. Seeing her little leaving, the boy with

120 121 chin approaching, one the pipe nods sagely at brother buckled in pity, him, making him pause jumping down the side for a second, the keys of the ramp to launch swinging in his hand as something with a thwack he dithers over whether onto the stippled iron of he knows the lad. Once it. The second brother, he’s gone and the who was crueller, came shutters are down, the at her with hands high lad calls out her name like a bullfighter and and he asks her to buy he slapped a cow’s ear him some fags because to each of her cheeks. the pipe is making him They stuck there, jutting sick. No chance, she from her face like black says, abruptly, and he flags and when her dad stares as if he can see arrived she hurled herself her knickers bulked out at him and her mouth with the crumpled notes. was stretched square She blows a hole through in anguish. Without his pipe smoke and he knowing what was up stares at her shoes. with her, he fended Instinctively, she looks her off with a stiff at each sole in turn over outstretched arm. her shoulder.

122 123 an instrument Tim Etchells

124 125 This all in the past it doesn’t matter anymore.

Person was walking driving somewhere on a lost long kind of country road when car stopped dead in a middle of a nowhere as a night begin to fall. Person as had been driving tried seven (7) times somehow to start the broken car indifferent ways before they give it up for the bad job and start to walk to nearest settlement and kind of human habitation.

Chorus Too-rah-lie-oh, Too-rah-lie-oh, Too-rah-lie-oh

In that town when she reached it the house was all barded up. On one door it sayd Smile Your On Camara but you cunt tell if it was real or not, was it a camera or just tryna frighten people. At another house it was all burned out. At another all padlocked on the door but the windows broken all the same. The woman listened the birds as she walked and they sounded melodious and except they only knew the one (1) song they sand it wondrous very wondrously.

Too-rah-lie-oh, Too-rah-lie-oh, Too-rah-lie-oh

Checked into a hotel. Tired to call their old friend (from before) but the line (phone line) was too bad and soon gave up disconnected. Went to the so-called Apex Point (hotel bar) + ordered drink. Man came along offered bye her another one and another one. They had lot of drinks. When it cam a time to close drown the bar

126 127 Barman told them that’s it now or never no more last and bombs and ash. The ticker tape, the barbed wire, orders last orders and woman said gd nite and Man he the paper and the audit trail. Them audio recordings was very drunk by this point and he could not stand up and old black and white stories as some people skull still but he claimed he was ok to drive. remember. On the TV woman watched it but not long not long. Then she walked went down to the water to Too-rah-lie-oh, Too-rah-lie-oh, Too-rah-lie-oh bathe by the moodnlight moonlight. The moon causes Plot of story disclaimer: it is mostly stolen of a Road the tide to rise and rise and also cause dismal narratives Safety advert + is prompting all the dangers of drunk that rose slowly to the surface. driving. Or dickhead: you jusve got to wait bit longer to fineout what a actual fuck. Don’t try to talk a me about heartache. Too-rah-lie-oh, Too-rah-lie-oh, Too-rah-lie-oh Do not @ me. Get out of my mentions bitches. That woman invite the man her room number cannot remember. The woman next day wore a disguise of a winter squall (appearance of a winter squall) cos any human shape Man soon past out in the bed anyway, does sent matter confined her and she left out of the building (hotel) by n next morning woke and woman she was still deep air shafts and ventilation grilles and then on, scattering sleeping and man he got dressed all quiert and wet herselves out to the far four corners of the car park and down to that dining lounge breakfast bar hall saloon forest and beyond beyond and she left the Apex w/out room or whatever, scoffed the cook breakfast w meat paying for her accommodation. and then got on the road to alleged sale or training conference he schedule to attend. Woman was still deep in that deep sleeping as mentioned before when he car Back home man woke up sudden in the night and felt a it left the car pard of the hotel and it hit on the road all chill. Went to the doctors who pronounce him dead. like in an olden advert with the cool music shades and suns shine.

Too-rah-lie-oh, Too-rah-lie-oh, Too-rah-lie-oh Someone come in her hotel room next day (partly incontinent cleaner from sub-continent). Felt what Next day it was anniversary war. The smoke and nite

128 129 they said it was bad vibrato vibrations (in room because Doctor: You look drawn. of man that happened there). Management toll her Then later: (cleaner) get back to work, get back to basics, clean it the room or face unemploy. Man: Doctor I fear like fire of curfews.

In the war that came she was anyway killed but that Doctor: You’ll be drawn, hung and quarter. was nlu laser much later.

Years later. Too-rah-lie-oh, Too-rah-lie-oh, Too-rah-lie-oh Woman (?) on lunch break sits on the tile concrete or Too-rah-lie-oh, Too-rah-lie-oh, Too-rah-lie-oh whatnot plaza patio of fake market surround with fake Too-rah-lie-oh, Too-rah-lie-oh, Too-rah-lie-oh shops and dead drops eats fake food w fake taste and cutlery. Different man offers buy her another drink. Repetitive. This was all maybe a song that was written up in Endland (sic) long time ago. Man it is all in the past now and it does not matter anymore. Woman assumes human form again goes doctor.

Woman: Help me. Woman (in form a squall of wind) materialise somewhere Doctor: Lie on the bench. This instrument will measure else gets a job in a laboratory assembling jigsaws for your anxiety. This machine will measure your pains. people that have not completed them in time. This machine will measure your memory and this your forgetting. Open your mouth. This inscrument will swab for electrical. This machine will measure your In doctor palace place via that telemarketing/ helplessness. Etc. teleconference tool (noise of a rocket, 4 letters beginning w Z).

Man: Doctor I feel like pair of curtains. Man (dead) goes to work in vast constructed hospital

130 131 treating people for the sound of birdsong.

Patients are listening all the time. There will be stillness in this house. (very audible)

Take the voices off the track bro but leave other noises they are making – shuffles, creaks or otherwise. I like Gardens of snakes and discarded kebab fragments that soundz. scattered on the pavement before you at midnight The bird that sings like this: pink pink pink pink. like body parts and leaves. In this place the city I saw nothing to remind me of myself. Nothing. In the Then it sinks again: pink pink pink pink. advertisements not my face and neither my skin and neither my body and neither my culture and in the reflection I might find in the shopwindow I would not You know those dense nights we (?) are having now recognise myself. where so many nights are overlaid on top each other creating black that is blacker bad and blacker, darker than is usual. But the overlay is not perfect and the stars Do not drink and dive. are soon blurs, like off sync slightly w themselves. Or maybe earth is moving. Spinning it blurred.

Personal. Matters. Here is all the information you need to know.

Discuss personal matters. Need to no.

Knead to no.

This instrument will measure your vioelnce. This machine will measure your shame. This machine will The woman call to her sister sisters. Blue sky w/out measure your stardust and this your spplinters. Open vapour trails. your mouth. This insta-ment will swab for chemical. This machine will measure your stasis. This your fear and this your poverty. Etc. It is impossible to know what is in your dreams.

132 133 In your dreams many people are crowded or tangled in unwashed body, not like wounds but like wounds the gray coloured dealthly deathly appearance of bushes, pleasures of previous time. the ones that grow despite anything and lie abt at side of main road. They (handjobbers) are giving handjobs to each other and they are wearing improvised surgical Woman materialise again from form of squall of wind gloves and wearing what look like N95 tho not legit as if her story were nothing more than appearing and probly might be knock off. Some1 said as dealers at edge disappearing and appearing again. of the marshes were dealing masks as well as drugs but Finds herself in a large room, maybe May 2020. not like proper masks juice home made ones. In the layby (still in the same dreams) so much sex, but with Around her are those watching, those working, those hand sanitizer instead of lube or the lube mixed thick caring, those waiting, those listening, those saving, with the hand sanitizer. And later people are licking the those starving, those tricked by death. Those already handrails on the subway then tongue kissing strangers, tricked by death. sweating, panting for the breath, trapped in the large numbers in elevators, cramming into underground Music come on like right at the end of the Drink corridors, running their filthy hands down each others Driving ad, it goes: bare backs and over each others brief faces, sticking also Too-rah-lie-oh, Too-rah-lie-oh, Too-rah-lie-oh fingers into open mouths, stood so close they breathing all over, all over each other, sharing the air and with Bird sings at window double glazed: perspiration or is it condensation running down the Too-rah-lie-oh, Too-rah-lie-oh, Too-rah-lie-oh walls and running hands down the windows and the doors to the crowded subway trains slide open like The sound of the east wind outside of the window: reflex anal dilation and gripping tight to the frequent Too-rah-lie-oh, Too-rah-lie-oh, Too-rah-lie-oh touch handles and other frequent touch surfaces, then bunching them (their fingers) unwashed and pushing Doctor curse govt for death of all friend. them (the bunched fingers) unwashed into unwashed The rich will survive. orifices and the holes in the unwashed bodies of other Says the order of things will endure. people, incl holes that are not just holes in the flesh Endure the order of things. (wounds) but more like the glorious openings of the

134 135 Sister: Too-rah-lie-oh, Too-rah-lie-oh, Too-rah-lie-oh

Facebook your funeral. Strangers are tangled with you fearlessly, each stranger carrying w them the traces of each stranger they Woman in reply: Too-rah-lie-oh, Too-rah-lie-oh, Too-rah- previously entranced with, tangled the street is a lie-oh diagram of animated contagion in the smell and taste Cleaner in that same hotel (from years before) looks out of human, you are drinking it down, you are gulping the window. Speaks a word in their language. swallowing, you are rubbing eyes and naked hands and gulping drown the air. [Detect Language] It is impossible to know your dreams. [No language detected]

The scratches on the film they made are really just rain: Later man wakes up in another hotel, fingerprints of Too-rah-lie-oh, Too-rah-lie-oh, Too-rah-lie-oh other smeared on everything. Memories in grease, dirt, Too-rah-lie-oh, Too-rah-lie-oh, Too-rah-lie-oh droplets and DNA. Too-rah-lie-oh, Too-rah-lie-oh, Too-rah-lie-oh Google autofills the questions when he type in the [Trad. Anon] computer:

Does your soul Govt. they try keep many ghost in that vast basement (?) Does your soul die cos they still in fact and point of fact need them ghost Does your soul die in to work for them even if they are dead. Somehow keep Does your soul die in florescent light them all in state of dead but useful to work by using cruel thin gruel of electricity, reanimate and shame. Dead worker #1: I was alive.

Dead worker #2: Also. The almost empty city streets. Dead worker #1: Your spirit animal is a caged bird.

136 137 Your spit it. Animal. Faint ooze of cold air from Hyundai ventilator grilles. Hyundai. (Make of car). Split it. Animal.

Split it and them all. Does the virus spread in dreams? Addidas, Headbag and NorthFace walk into a bar. Vengeance. Chorus of ghosts arrive: Nothing personal babes. Infectious laughter. Infected laughter. You know those dense dense nights we are having The house of the neighbours is trash. right now.

Woman: It is only pretending to be a story, mostly it is Dead workers are kept in dormitories under the city, just people running around with knives. kept alive with rationed life-force stripped from the Man: [inaudible in origin recording]. sunshine.

Woman: I will. Long shifts. Dead tired haha.

Soul stretched thin.

On the same dark road, some many time later, long [iorwgipwr]opk grijeqojp pjgrojp hipo g time ago. wijfkn griqpdlf jwfjwef]

Teendage kidz come across the car she abandon way back, break in the window, rifle the contents Old man is making a phone call when his hands are of dashboard. shaking. Sensing intrusion far away in time and space she hears it, Look out the window. Everything is fine. It is just the like steam on a mirror. same as normal. It is the same. Kids are laughing and laughing.

138 139 The bird still sing.

People w flags instead of eyes. Appears and disappears.

Redacted.

The sound of ambulances: Hotel manager calls excorcits. Exorcyst. Exoccist. Details the demonic possession of eleven-year-old Too-rah-lie-oh, Too-rah-lie-oh, Too-rah-lie-oh Regan MacNeil, the daughter of a famous actress. I am but a poor young man one that strayed from the road. Woman is name Veil. Calls her sister to come home.

Late shift at hospital and makeshift PPE. They talk at She takes solace to drift above the world. window. Shouting from a distance. Heartache.

Patients treated for exposure to solitude.

Years pass. Netflix.

Stench sweat. Cursed Jpeg. That bird that goes pink pink pink pink.

A country unemployed.

I am recommending to you with this product I Appears and disappears. purchased last month. It’s amazingly good that you are Appears and disappears. going to thank me later. Appears and disappears. Economy. Appears then disappears. The sea is heavy and will pulls you under.

Will pulls you under. Sheltered in houses.

140 141 Black drones circle all the park speaking pronouncements at any1 still listening. Benches in cages to stop people gathering. I’ve been to the green wood. I’ve been to the green wood. I’ve been to the green wood. I’ve been to the green wood. [Trad]. This instrument will measure your helplessness. The ground litter with crows and the polythene bags that offlicense always uses cato putns of to put in for two cans of beer. The bags, being black, so easily mistaken A-bop-bop, a-loo-mop, a-lop-bop-bop for crows. As if a careless razor cut ended the song prematurely. Tune is traditionally played on stupid old traditional instrament that no one has got one anymore.

I am weary of hunting and fein would lie down.

Chorus:

Too-rah-lie-oh, Too-rah-lie-oh, Too-rah-lie-oh

I’m gonna wash that man right outa my hair.

Slithers of moonlight ice the room as the stairlift, riderless, ascends.

You think it different but really the same.

Each country gets the clowns it deserves.

Probably way way way too fucking late to retrieve any actual narrative.

142 143 FROM BEGINNING TO END Deborah Pearson

144 145 Last week I had a bit of a personal triumph. To say it was last week is an approximation of course. It might have been two weeks ago, two days ago, yesterday. We all know that for now time is a field lying fallow, forgotten by whoever normally tends it. But at some point in the recent, large, expanding and contracting past, I had a bit of a personal triumph. I managed, for the first time since early March, to read something that was not an online think piece about COVID or the golden age of television or baking your own soda bread. I managed to read an essay in a book that I held in my hand. And to somehow get from beginning to end.

The reading problem is also a writing problem. I’m amazed I’m writing this now, for example. Even as I type I can’t believe there is an engine somewhere in me that still knows how to attempt to articulate anything to imagined readers. What a wonderfully absurd exercise this seems right now, with the background panic of mortality (individual and collective) constantly humming away. Why articulate? Why write? Why read? My loss of interest in both has made me wonder if for me reading and writing are an inextricably linked and airy impulse. The lateral nature of both – the wide empty wandering space – most days that’s all gone now. I can dip into a book but it feels like reading the personal correspondence of strangers’ text messages from ten years ago. Even the greatest writing doesn’t

146 147 seem it was written for me, at least not for me right life, but it does suggest that maybe one day you can now. I can try to force dry entry with a short story but commit again. To an evening at least. eventually I lose my nerve, embarrassed for even trying. It’s all united by this same empty, pointless, right-now The “date” I got through, from appetisers to dessert, feeling. There’s a horrible irony for me in identifying as was an essay by Dennis Lee called ‘Cadence, Country, a playwright or writer for performance. Everything I’ve Silence.’ It’s about writing poetry, written by a Canadian said in workshops in the past about liveness and why poet whose work I know next to nothing about. I I write for theatre or performance is taunting me. “It’s couldn’t name you a single thing he’s written though I about connecting audiences and participants with what have a vague sense that he might have written a book it means to be present, to be in the right-now. With what for children about alligator (or was it crocodile?) stew it is to be alive right now.” This right-now has somehow (or was it soup?). The book was given to me by a friend turned on all of us. I am now so very present all the time. who was working on a thesis on Lee at the time that I A presentness that is so oppressively present it leaves no think he later abandoned. It’s been sitting on my shelf room for anything else. (I can’t tell you the weightlifters’ unopened for at least ten years. I had almost no referents, feat of cognitive dissonance it is taking for me to write no context, and no real reason to pick it up or to keep these words intended for a future reader. If you reach the going. But somehow in that moment it managed to end of this paragraph let’s celebrate in style.) reach my claustrophobic present. It was for me, and it was for now. But back to the personal triumph. The essay I managed to read from beginning to end. Before I get into the At moments it seemed he was addressing me directly: content of the essay itself, let me say that the feeling of picking something up and deciding to keep going – that Page 12: was a success that was small but significant. It made me I stopped being able to use words on paper at all. feel like if I can read again, even in this minute way, Everywhere around me – in England, America, perhaps one day I can write again too. It was the first even Canada – writers opened their mouths and date you manage to show up for and sit through after words spilled out like crazy. But I just gagged. And having your heart broken. Underwhelmed in some ways looking back at my earlier writing, I felt as if I’d but grateful you stuck it out. This is not the love of your been fishing pretty beads out of a vat of crankcase

148 149 oil and stringing them together. The words weren’t On page 21 Lee writes: limber or alive or even mine. One thing I find now is that I can write only from the promptings of cadence. Page 18: Why did I dry? The language was drenched with Lee’s essay has nothing to do with an international our nonbelonging. And words – bizarre as it pandemic. It is about his struggle to write as a settler sounds, even to myself – words had become the in a colony – Canada – that was itself being further enemy. To use them was to collaborate further in colonised by American culture in the sixties. As a one’s extinction as a rooted human being. And Canadian who often poses as American if the job so by a drastic and involuntary stratagem of self requires it, this is a familiar concern, though not preserval, words went dead. particularly urgent for me, for now. But the cadence. That I remembered. That part was still somehow with I held the book in my hands and finally felt alive in a me. The silent rhythm beneath the words. How it can text. And ironically, this feeling came from naming the pull you back up, sometimes when you least expect it. truth I had been trying to muzzle by streaming TV and reading endless internet think pieces: Words themselves As a writer I hear it. As a reader I hear it. I’m pregnant, (for me, for now) had gone dead. I knew I needed them and at that very first scan the only thing our baby still, but the need had many moments of feeling so consisted of were cells and a heartbeat. A friend recently selfish, so personal, so private. A kind of masturbation tweeted that although writing about her struggle with that I can’t even bring myself to do because nothing gets the virus on social media felt pornographic, it also me going. The writing and the reading were together somehow felt like the opposite of being dead. And it’s in this – closely interlinked. It wasn’t just that I was true – that tweet was alive. What’s also true is that in lacking that “lateral, airy space” for the real and rooted this most anxious of human moments (I’m even anxious reflection required of reading and writing. It was that as I write this about how my characterising this moment Your Masturbation was not good at leading to My will age – knowing of course this text could also lay Masturbation. It all seemed perverse. I knew that for unattended on a shelf somewhere for ten years and weeks I’d felt tired and not entirely sure what any of us be picked up by someone with even bigger things on (creatives? writers? artists?) were doing. their mind), I have barely been able to listen. Time is

150 151 expansive but I am a little fucking pebble on that great fallow field. Rattled by weather. Desperate to be picked up and put to use somehow. Frightened too. Keep me here forever, I think sometimes. Sometimes I feel as frightened of after as I do of right now.

And so I suppose it should come as no surprise that I don’t know how to end this text.

But the last part of the Dennis Lee essay was good. It read: A poem enacts in words the presence of what we live among. It arises from the tough, delicate, heartbreaking rooting of what is in its own nonbeing. From that rooting, there arise elemental movements of being: of hunger, of play, of rage, of celebration, of dying. Such movements are always particular, speaking the things which are. A poem enacts those living movements in words. Quick in its own silence, cadence seeks to issue in the articulate gestures of being.

I got that far.

And I was frightened and amazed and underwhelmed and blessed that in this oppressively present-feeling present, I made myself witness an end.

152 153 SIXTY SCENES FOR SIXTY DAYS OF QUARANTINE (After Suzan-Lori Parks) Selina Thompson

154 155 To be performed in one of them big theatres that white middle class folks who go and see a full season can get a little possessive about – like the Lyttleton, at the National.

Back wall is concrete for projecting onto. Dreams, smartphone stuff, laptop stuff all goes here.

You need a bed, a sofa, a long table, books, a smartphone, water, tea, coffee, a boiler that is on its way out, windows, laundry, clothes lines, clothes horses: The paraphernalia of a one-bedroom flat rented by someone who is mostly OK, not too precarious as long as there are no pay check gaps.

A working bathroom in the back right hand corner – should be small, with no door, and smell faintly of piss. Writer’s Note: I’m very lucky to be in a position at the moment where I am writing two plays and a TV script – stability and Beloved is played by a cat that you have trained to follow a creative outlet. For an artist these are daunting tasks, so my stage directions – a small dark brown tabby. If you cannot bookshelves are filled with texts on structure across forms – find such a cat, you cannot put the show on, so make it a manga, movies, hip hop albums, stories, TV and plays. I’ve priority. JK, you don’t train a cat, the cat trains you. But also been reading and deeply inspired by Suzan-Lori Parks’ seriously, use a real cat if you can. You’re going to need 365 Days / 365 Plays; a structure that feels apt right now. various bits of cat paraphernalia. My life in lockdown is made up of me, my cat and pre-existing health stuff, which, like everything, is exacerbated by the times. 30 is played by a fat actress UK dress size 28/30, aged These are some early experiments in trying to keep a record round 29/30 – fatter than she thinks or not as fat as she of this time. In an ideal world, I’d write a scene a day, and thinks, you decide. play with the whole thing, structure-wise, at least once a week. Maybe I will.

156 157 Between each scene, a blackout and change of set-up which Scene 2: Buy Stuff makes it clear we are encountering a new day. 30 is scrolling. She sees a series of exciting adverts for: You can do it in order, or not. Sauerkraut You can also add as much or as little improvised text as German sausages you want. Rotten fruit Artisanal pasta Nut butters Trees as presents Scene 1: Wake Up Crunchyroll 30 is sleeping, on her belly, snoring, sprawled. Half her Bulk kombucha body is under the covers, the other half is not. She wears Cat-themed masks black knickers that have seen better days, and nothing Temporary tattoos else. This is often her costume. Homeware, maybe? Weighted blankets Beloved seeks to wake her up. She tries purring. She Organic underwear tries gentle head butts. She tries mewling at a distance, Cat food and yowling in an ear. She tries a paw tap. On no Vegan ready meals success she gives 30 a sharp tap to the temple, screeches Home spinning exercise bike in her ear and runs under the bed. Bamboo toilet roll Nut milks Ten seconds later, 30 groggily wakes, takes a piss and Paint-by-numbers sets exchanges meowing pleasantries with Beloved before Studio Ghibli-themed flasks feeding her: 80% wet food, 20% dry. She measures it Monthly Japanese snack boxes out. With scales. Vegan protein powder Kimonos She opens a window for Beloved and goes back Gym equipment to sleep. Cat toys Mobile phone brain training games

158 159 Cat beds New Yorker online courses Vegan probiotic drinks Cat socks Hair products for racially ambiguous women A seal pillow with curly hair A birth chart talisman Coffee in compostable pods A masterclass with RuPaul Cat treats Some kind of spiky yoga mat Masterclass courses And finally, after all this – a charity delivering food to Indoor plant subscriptions the homeless Cold-pressed juice delivery Oat milk Scene 3: Feed Cat A writing class with Neil Gaiman 30 sings a heartfelt song to Beloved about Christmas Nail-free framed photos for hanging food. We learn via this song that Beloved eats food that Sustainable skincare is the same brand that the Queen’s corgis eat, but the Vegan cheese food Beloved eats is the company’s Christmas leftovers Nintendo switch consoles and thus half price. This scene can be repeated and Alcohol-free bougie drinks tacked on to other scenes. Sometimes Beloved finishes Cat behaviour courses the food, other times she does not, and 30 Googles Sleep drops reasons why, and glances at Beloved’s litter tray. Horrible cat posters Ankle and arch support Scene 4: Check Internet Savage X Fenty underwear 30 takes a small grey rectangle out of her pocket. She Champagne from whisky specialists clicks a button at its side, it lights up and folks scream Biodegradable tampons out of it like so many Edvard Munch paintings. She Clothing subscription boxes watches and listens, mouth slightly open. She turns Champagne the screaming down, so she too can scream. There is a Vegan beer pause. Applause is added to the screaming. She smirks, Underwear and stays with it for a while. Eventually she has to put Candy Crush the rectangle away. From time to time, the rectangle

160 161 can be heard, sort of like howling wind, at random, in 30: other scenes. 30’s Sister: OK.

Scene 5: Post Status She leaves. A doctor takes her place. He is of Ghanaian A Man That Has to Work delivers six boxes. Inside descent. He smiles and squeezes her hand. each box are six selfie sticks with phones attached. 30 opens them and arranges the selfie sticks around herself Doctor: I’ll walk you to the plane. so she can be seen from every angle. Having achieved a When you get home, stay there. None of them get spot of total coverage, she places herself there and then it yet. covers herself in a thick, rough, grey bit of tarp, so that she looks like a rock (a little like the one Sam and Frodo A last hug with the hugger. The doctor is not there hide under in LOTR). The selfie sticks flash for a while, anymore. 30 is sat in a window seat. capturing the 30 Rock from every angle. Hidden The plane takes off, and 30 cries. beneath it, 30 shuffles offstage. Scene 7: Sex Dream Scene 6: Dream Hug 30 is dreaming. Having spent the weekend watching 30 is dreaming. Someone hugs her at an airport. clips from the movie franchise Twilight, she has a sex dream about Robert Pattinson, and/or whatshisname Hugger: We only met yesterday but – the vampire. Go with whichever feels more cringe to 30: I know. you. She awakes with a start, moves her laptop away Hugger: There’ll be no more of this for a while. from the bed, and goes back to sleep.

They hold on. Scenes 8 - 13: Health/Strength 30’s Sister appears. 30, but not fat. This scene plays out the same way, but with a different interlocutor each time. Family Members 30’s Sister: Text me ! come from a smartphone; online voices come from 30: the golden rectangle. 30: Mum on the Phone, Dad on the Phone, Sister

162 163 on the Phone, People Online Listening, People A DOCTOR THAT SAID FUCK IT I HATE IT Online Listened To, People Online Best Avoided: HERE AND I WISH THEY WERE ALL DEAD I WISH IT WAS ME THAT KILLED THEM – Interlocutor One: He’s sick. 30: I know. And on and on, until Man That Has to Work comes Interlocutor One: Do you think – on, bundling her in the rock tarp from before and 30: I – hustling her out of the auditorium.

Sirens blare, red lights flash, on the back screen a Scene 15: Bottom Line huge red hazard sign, and the words ‘IF YOU HAVE All the interlocutors are on the end of phones and NOTHING NICE TO SAY DON’T SAY NOTHING various rectangles. AT ALL’ or ‘DON’T SPEAK ILL OF THE DEAD OR COULD BE DEAD’ or ‘I WOULDN’T WISH 30: He got better. THAT ON ANYONE.’ This goes on for a time. Interlocutors: Death is bad. 30: He got better. Interlocutor One: Let’s not say anything. Interlocutors: Babies being born without a father 30: Better go. is bad. 30: He got better. Scene 14: Control Yourself Interlocutors: Constitutional crisis is bad. A scene like the preceding ones happens but 30 is both 30: He got better. interlocutors. When the alarms go off, 30 runs into Interlocutors: Unprecedented times. the audience. 30: 30: 30: I DON’T CARE I DON’T CARE AM I JOKE TO YOU BECAUSE IT’S NOT A JOKE TO ME I Scene 16: Adventure Dream WISH HE DIED SOMEWHERE IN ANOTHER 30 is dreaming. Her brain is sort of addled by a lot of UNIVERSE I’M GLAD HE’S DEAD I WISH anime. She is a Japanese school boy, and she and some THERE WAS A NURSE THAT KILLED HIM OR other Japanese school boys who are also delinquents save

164 165 the world or destroy the school or rise to the top of the Scene 19: Dream Swim Mafia or something. Either way, she’s ripped. She wakes 30 is dreaming. She is in the sea, swimming. She is in up with a grin. a pool, swimming. She is swimming. 30 wakes up and the sheets are drenched. Scene 17: Dream Call 30 is dreaming. She is on the phone to her Mum, but Scene 20: Take Precautions also her Mum is right there; she can touch her. Her 30 returns home. She is wearing a mask, a heavy coat Mum tells her she has to wait for a special phone call and carrying bags of shopping. She is sweating. She on her birthday. 30 starts crying, as she thinks it will be slowly, methodically, strips. She bathes in Dettol. She a phone call from her nan, but her nan is dead, and she bags her clothes and burns them when finished. She knows it will just be a phone call from Man That Has sprays the contents of the shopping with Dettol before to Work telling her he is outside with flowers in a vase putting it all away. and chocolates. Her Mum thinks she is crying at the prospect of not surprise flowers. 30 wakes up and sits at Scene 21: Stay Vigilant the bottom of the bed for a long time. 30 returns home. Her mask is hanging off her ear, she wears a lighter coat, and is carrying her shopping in a Scene 18: Dream Afternoon rucksack on her back. Everything goes into a washing 30 is dreaming. She and her Sister each carry a machine offstage – we hear the beeps, and the machine stepladder down a long busy road with no traffic, starting. She sprawls on the bed naked. past several takeaways, off licenses, a McDonalds, a terribly placed nudist spa, a vets, a petrol station and Scene 22: Scrub Up four bus stops. At the bottom of the road they place the 30 returns home. Her mask is scrunched up in her stepladders by a fence, then climb up to stand atop them. pocket, she wears a hoodie, and clutches a prescription. They yell at their Mum and Dad in their garden, and She washes her hands and arms thoroughly, scrubbing they yell back. They yell about the weather, the shops, up. She chucks the medicine out of sight. the cat. They skip home. 30 wakes up and places her hands over her heart.

166 167 Scene 23: Watch Washing l 30 throwing out what she has planted Beloved is watching washing blow outside. We watch l 30 making a series of cocktails with terrible things it with her. She chirrups from time to time. like squash, drinking them and passing out l 30 completing a 1000-piece jigsaw, with little to no Scene 24: Serve Tea help from Beloved, arguably active hindrance 30 makes herself a cup of tea. She is thinking about l 30 scrolling, scrolling, scrolling dead healthcare workers. As she stirs sugar into her tea, l 30 conducting a quiz with the audience a recording of Stuart Hall is played – you know the l 30 learning TikTok dances lecture – Racism and Reaction from 1978. l 30 calling her mother on the hour, every hour, for 24 hours Scene 25: Fetch Toys Beloved is playing with a series of small, rattling toy Scene 37: Rip Balloon mice. They keep going under the sofa. 30 moves the When the balloon reaches the ground, Beloved sofa (it is heavy) to retrieve them. Beloved bats them promptly rips it to shreds. This is accompanied by music under the sofa again. This repeats until 30 is fed up, or which makes the gravity of the act undeniable. Beloved goes to sleep, whichever happens first. Scene 38: Self-Care Scenes 26 - 36: Happy Birthday 30 is dreaming. She is the therapist to a grave digger. A helium balloon with the number 30 on it falls from He is digging six graves a day. It falls to him to manage the ceiling. I say ‘falls’ – it slowly deflates, comes back folks’ grief in Covid-19 safe ways. When he closes his down to earth. 30 watches its progress. This may take eyes all he sees is the ground. 30 asks him about self- some time, so needs to roll over several scenes. Other care. She awakes, goes into the kitchen, eats half a things can happen in these scenes including: packet of dark chocolate hobnobs, and goes back to bed. l 30 building a computer-generated apple orchard on stage Scene 39: Make Art l 30 going up a dress size, back to her namesake number Beloved is ripping the shit out of the sofa. This is l 30 planting things accompanied by music which makes the artistry of the act undeniable.

168 169 Scene 40: Dream Rehearsal Scene 43: Dream Dirge 30 is dreaming. She is in a rehearsal room rehearsing 30 is dreaming. She is stood with a choir of her elders, lines for the following scenario: singing ‘How Great Thou Art.’ It is out of tune, l her mum or dad is dying discordant. She sighs deeply, but does not wake. l it is looking like they may die alone She has heard that some folks were able to prevent this, Scene 44: Get Help were able to be with their loved ones in their dying Beloved finds herself on the wrong side of the window, moments. This is her goal. and promptly loses her shit, making a sound that 30 did not know she was capable of making. 30 runs outside to She tries five different approaches, but the nurse giving get her, but Beloved has already made her way under her notes keeps shaking her head. 30 wakes up, sits the bed to recover. upright for fifteen seconds, then goes straight back to sleep. Scene 45: Food Shop 30 is trying to orchestrate online shops. She has tabs for Scene 41: Park Dreams every major shop and some obscure ones open in her 30 is dreaming. She is in a park drinking cider and browser. She flicks from tab to tab, as though conducting laughing hard. She is surrounded by people. She cannot an orchestra. When she gets a slot in one of the shops, see them, but she can hear them. There is smoke from a she realises that she doesn’t want anything, and orders a BBQ, from cigarettes, from weed. She turns over in her takeaway instead. sleep when the dream fades. Scene 46: Consume Crap Scene 42: Dream Lecture A Man That Has to Work knocks on the door. 30 is dreaming. She is stood at the front of a lecture He comes in with sixty boxes, each containing the hall. Behind her, a huge sign: WHY ART MATTERS things that were advertised to 30 in one of the earlier NOW. She opens and closes her mouth like a fish. She scenes. She doesn’t remember placing the orders, but wakes up, starts laughing, goes to see what Beloved is dutifully opens each box and finds a place for each up to. and every item.

170 171 Scene 47: Quick Maths Scene 51: Last Dreams Using a long complex mathematical equation, Auntie 30 is sat beside her mother, on a small sofa, in a flat. on a Video Call explains how if only six people are They are holding hands, and watching a film. Her allowed at a funeral and her ex-husband had four siblings mother talks all the way through it. 30 wakes up, and and three children, it is his youngest son, the Muslim one, sits on the edge of the bed. who will not attend the funeral cus it’s in a Christian cemetery and that’s that. Scene 52: Write Back 30 receives a letter from a friend she went to school Scene 48: Cat Dreams with. She writes one back. Beloved dreams of her old home. She lived with four other cats and five humans, and she had a garden Scene 53: Experience Bliss with grass. Beloved comes and lies on 30’s lap. Cat goes to sleep. Human stays perfectly still, for as long as she can. Scene 49: Find Out 30 asks the internet if cats can get depression from their Scene 54: Tell News owners. She learns that this is a common question on 30 gives Mum on the Phone a very detailed itinerary the internet, and that no, they cannot. of the cat’s day. It brings mother and daughter a lot of joy.

Scene 50: Take Meds Scene 55: Pick Nose 30 takes out a chart which has a record of every time 30 is in a Zoom call. She watches a man pick his nose for she has missed her meds across fifty days. For each anti- the majority of it, while an accountant speaks about… spasmodic missed, she administers a small electric shock Tax? Accounts? Who knows. He’s really digging in there, (13) and for each anti-depressant/anti-psychotic, she and that’s the focus of this scene. plays a fast, furious round of that game where you try to stab the pen into the table between your outstretched Scene 56: Wash Clothes fingers (17). She’s in a bad way by the end of the game. 30 puts seven dresses, long, loose, each a different There is also a chart for when she has and hasn’t taken colour, into the washing machine. She waits for them to her inhaler, but that one’s a mess, truly unreadable. be washed. She hangs them out to dry, reads as they dry.

172 173 Each day she takes a dress off the clothes horse to wear. 30: I’m sorry, do you need me to – On Sunday she repeats the whole process again. CotP: I just need a moment of quiet with someone there before the kids. Scene 57: Track Periods. 30: OK. 30 stands in front of a large tally chart. At the top it says: CotP: Just shush. ‘DAYS WITHOUT A PERIOD.’ It’s day 87. She marks 30: off another day. On day 90, she will call the doctor. CotP: 30: Scene 58: Play Games CotP: Beloved is chasing a toy fish with ribbons for a tail on 30: Do you need me to come to the hospital? Or I can some fishing line on a stick that 30 is waving around. send an Uber. I can – Beloved leaps through the air. It’s a bit dangerous, but CotP: SHUSH a lot of fun. 30: CoTP: Scene 59: Spark Joy 30: Beloved is on the window sill. Little Boy from Next CotP: OK. Text you when I get home cuzzy. Door walks past, sees her, and his entire face lights up. 30: OK. This is the best scene. CotP hangs up. Scene 60: Be There 30 sits. The phone rings. It is Cousin on the Phone.

30: Hello? Cousin on The Phone: It’s me. 30: You a lr ight? CotP: I just finished my shift. And I got in the car and for a second I couldn’t remember how to drive. And I stink, man, I stink.

174 175 LON CHANEY SPEAKS! Will Eaves

176 177 Movies aren’t silent. There’s always noise on set, even during a take. They omit speech, that’s all. They’re a deaf person’s point of view, and they don’t miss a thing. My parents were deaf. Mom was an invalid. I quit school to look after her and that was how it started, me entertaining her with the news, or scandal. Guess which she preferred.

A showman once told me that in sideshows there are three classes of freaks: born freaks, made freaks, and two-timers – the ones who aren’t freaks, but crowd- pleasers. They shot someone or grew a beard and put on a dress. The born freaks are the aristocrats; the made freaks – sword swallowers, let us say – are the businessmen; and the two-timers are actors, you and me. We carry about a gussied-up history, where we slugged so-and-so, how we went twenty rounds with Jack Johnson, some of it plausible, and we are not too proud to present this phony history as an entertainment. We have known hard times, and of all freaks we are the most popular. The good two-timers know it’s the story that counts. Riches to rags, Pope of Fools one day and the pillory the next! Well, that is an artist’s life. And, given the vicissitudes, the general likelihood that a success will be followed by some new failure or

178 179 humiliation, I cannot help thinking that it ill becomes their lines in bursts, like gunfire at a court martial. Well, any one of us to make too much of his real personality, we shall see. lest misfortune strike him there, too.

No one knows how it is done. The more you look at Yes, I have visited a ‘talkie’ set and I found the experience the great romances of the nineteenth century, the great interesting. It was The Terror, a piece of nonsense by Edgar novels, the more chaotic many of them come to seem. Wallace. At one point, I tried to whisper something in Quite often a writer doesn’t know where he or she is Roy del Ruth’s ear and he put his finger to his lips. He going next. Victor Hugo digresses like crazy, and in was jumpy as a cricket. Directors should be calm. Now, as so doing builds the imaginative charge that will take I’ve said, a ‘silent’ set isn’t silent. People concentrate, but the main story in new and interesting directions. You they learn to do so in a noisy and lifelike environment. can feel this happening. Between scenes in the life of When we go to the store or any public gathering, there Quasimodo, Claude Frollo and Esmerelda come long is a hubbub our minds can penetrate, and it is just the disquisitions on the Romanesque tradition, Gothic same on set. Some scenes are reshot because the actors architecture and the rise of the book. Readers – and, complain of distraction – instructions coming at the I might add, producers – have complained about these wrong moment, a noisy arc, carpentry in the lot over detours, but I like them – the information and learning the way – but it is a costly business, moviemaking, and are fascinating in themselves and often brilliantly complainers acquire a reputation. These are the actors I deployed. A long early chapter in which the reader is have tended to avoid hiring. How much greater will their invited to consider the street plan of medieval Paris, sensitivities be in future, if talkies get taken up, where from a vantage point atop one of Notre Dame’s towers, the set is a nervous graveside and nobody dare utter a is scholarly and dramatic. Like Dickens after him, Hugo word? We will become purebreds, vulnerable to the least understands that the setting, made to vibrate with provocation, and I cannot see that being good for the sensory detail, heads the cast of characters. His Parisian plausibility of our profession. I fear it will produce more diorama feels closely related to that great moment in of The Terror’s uncanny monotony, where the cast deliver Bleak House in which all of London – people, dwellings,

180 181 justice, weather, stone and monument – shivers in the “glass of night”.

I admire Quasimodo and the Phantom. They appeal to me as romantics. Maybe I’m drawn to men, deformed by nature or by accident, whose inadequacy is subdued by love and then reawakened by insult and rejection. What they learn about is the cost of passion – that it can wreck a life of discipline and duty even as it opens the heart. Hazel once asked me why, in my movies and entertainments, it was the already afflicted who had to learn this lesson? It is a good question. I think it could be that many ordinary moviegoers, to learn about ordinary failure, must be impressed by the illustration. They do not want something too realistic, from which they cannot detach themselves. It is a matter of visible example. They are superficially relieved that these difficult lives belong to such very different other people, and that they can point to them out there, over there, at a distance. It gives a body the chance to reflect. To ready themselves for the blow, which comes not at the time, but later, when they trip over the cord and the light changes.

182 183 LIBRARY NUDE Fiona Banner aka The Vanity Press

184 185 186

191 THOUGHTS ABOUT A BUILDING CLOSED TO THE PUBLIC Katharine Norbury

192 193 Following recent government advice, Battersea Arts Centre will be closed to the public. We will be reviewing the situation on an ongoing basis and will post updates on our website and social media. Our full statement is available from our website. From a notice posted on the door of Battersea Arts Centre, March 2020

On the afternoon of Friday 13th March 2015, a fire started in the Grand Hall. This steel truss had held up the structure for 122 years. When it buckled in the heat, the roof collapsed. Engraved on a steel truss outside Battersea Arts Centre

Where were we when we heard the crack? Were we on the Kings Road, together, just popping into Cath Kidston, now in administration, as we had a few minutes before you had to get your train? Or were we coming out, me with my new flowery bag for my swimming things, so I could finally get rid of that supermarket tote that you said made me look like an aging film star. Which was your way of telling me you had noticed I carried my swimsuit and towel in a recyclable Bag For Life. Or was it later, when I stepped off the bus, at Queenstown Road? And saw the coiling smoke, alive and wobbling, a CGI Superman tornado, but slimmer, faster, like a pathway to another universe. I’m inclined to think that it was none of those places, and that we were in Sloane Square, you handing

194 195 me your school clothes in the recently-made-redundant I didn’t go home, I followed the fire, because Bag For Life, me handing you the coat I’d brought, even then I could feel there was something urgent. your khaki parka, me anxious you’d be wearing ‘Is it the flats?’ I asked a passer-by, hurrying green to a performance of Macbeth, on Friday 13th, on his mobile phone, towards me, away from the fire. wondering if Megan was superstitious, because you Trying not to speculate, imagining the fear, people are, and it’s probably my fault, because, really, none trapped in their homes by drafty stairwells funneling of us should be. And there had been a crack, a snap – the blaze. yes, that’s when it was – loud, but distant, like a car ‘It’s BAC,’ he said, and it was then that I started backfiring, though softer, and I thought briefly about to run. the threat from Islamic State, and wondered if they’d blown something up, but your face was so beautiful as You were due to be in rehearsal there the following you turned your head in the direction of the sound that afternoon, for a show taking place in a month. When, I put all thought of anything being wrong behind me. five years earlier, it had become apparent that our family Your face was luminous in the afternoon sun. If only it must leave our home in Barcelona, because we had no had rained that day. But it didn’t. It was glorious, and money, and I needed to get a job, I had told you we partly I’d suggested the trip to Cath Kidston to buy the were moving to London. bag because we were early and I couldn’t bear to part ‘What’s in London?’ you asked. Ten years old. from you, and partly because I didn’t want you hanging What did you know? ‘BAC,’ I replied, ‘Battersea around Baker Street by yourself, if you were early, and Arts Centre’ and I don’t know, to this day, why of all your friend Megan hadn’t got there yet. the things I could have said, of everything I might So yes, I think the memory must have been at have directed your attention towards, the Houses of Sloane Square, and so that’s where you and me were Parliament, Regents Park Zoo, the National Portrait when it happened. And that soft crump, that muffled Gallery, the Luck of Edenhall in the V&A Museum – a backfire was the sound of the roof falling in, two miles glass almost a thousand years old believed to have been away, in Battersea, and I saw the plume of angry smoke left by fairies in Cumbria, but which was probably even as I stepped off the bus, some twenty minutes later, looted by a Crusader in Syria – or the Michelangelo as I turned to cross the road, and there it was, spiralling beeswax model of a slave for the tomb of Julius II, of all and improbable, dozens of feet high, and I thought it the things I could have said, those rearranged first letters was a garden fire. of the alphabet were all that came to mind.

196 197 You joined Homegrown, the BAC youth theatre, as Jane Eyre from the perspective of Bertha Mason was soon as they would let you in. We had tried playing the first thing that came to mind. The parrot that flew the ‘cancer card’ when I had chemotherapy, my head across the night sky, its tail feathers burning, before as bald as an egg, but Bethany, the producer, was kind it crumpled into the blaze. The roof had gone, of the but resolute – the company was for people aged 12 to Arts Centre, not Thornfield Hall, replaced by a scarlet 25 and if they started lowering the bottom age it would curtain into which the tower toppled slowly, falling have a detrimental effect on the whole. Homegrown to the floor of the newly restored Great Hall, where was a company for young adults, and you were still a we had watched Orpheus and listened to the music of child. Not for you, not for me, but for us, that was BAC’s Django Rheinhart only a few weeks before. All that motto and what you were mooting was all about you at pleasure, all that laughter, all that warmth. Was it love? the expense of the ‘us’, so you waited, and on your 12th I think it’s love, a kind of love. Police cordons at the birthday you walked into the foyer and stood in front of bottom of Lavender Hill and the people from the flats, the Box Office and said ‘I want to join Homegrown.’ staring, laughing, well this is something unexpected, do You collaborated on a devised piece based on the story you think it may have been arson? An insurance job? of Peter Pan and then played the narrator in _Cloud9, And me walking around in circles like a dog treading even though you had the flu and were too ill to go to out a bed and wondering how to tell you, you sitting school, Coca Cola and paracetamol, and then ibuprofen right now, in another theatre, across the town, and to boot, and was it me that made a hot toddy for you, Megan as Banquo’s ghost. and you just 14? In bed till two hours before the show, The next morning, at five o’clock, I looked out of the show that must go on, and we took you home the bedroom window to the place where the Great Hall from the theatre wrapped in a blanket, shivering, and used to be, and saw the sky. You were due at BAC for a coughing, and you did that three nights in a row, and rehearsal scheduled for 11am. I pulled a coat on over my when you were on stage there was nothing to indicate pajamas and went downstairs, closing the door softly, you were ill, and really, that was it, ‘my second home’ and hurried up the road to Lavender Hill. The streets you called it, ‘I love this place better than anywhere else were still cordoned off, though all the rubber-necking on earth.’ people had gone. Police officers stood on every corner And now, just one year later, on Friday 13th and a fire engine poured a constant jet of water into March 2015, our theatre was on fire. Thornfield Hall, the ashes of the Great Hall, which smoldered brightly the mad lady in the attic, Jean Rhys’s adaptation of against the grey, threatening at any moment to snap

198 199 back into flame, the windows cracked, the walls black. Merciful heaven! Stands Scotland where it did? What, man! ne’er pull your hat upon your brows; I telephoned you at Megan’s house, woke you softly at Give sorrow words: the grief that does not speak half past nine. Whispers the o’er-fraught heart and bids it break. Keep it not from me. I tried to explain. You closed the blinds, turned away from the light, and I Quickly let me have it. paused in the doorway, trying to think of something to The Great Hall had gone, completely gone. The front of make it somehow all right, then thought better of it, and house still standing. closed the door, and went downstairs. All my pretty ones? Did you say all? O hell-kite! All? What, all my pretty chickens and their dam At one fell swoop?

You didn’t want me to meet you. You wanted to walk from Clapham Junction, by yourself, to see it. When you got home, you knocked at the door. Made no attempt to open it. I have hardly ever seen you cry, not since we came to London when you were ten. Not sure when the last time was. When Uncle Dennis died? You put your arms around me, and I held you, and felt the warm trickle of your tears sliding down my neck. You needed to go to bed, though it was only eleven o’clock. Went first to the attic room to see the space where the Great Hall used to be. Obviously the rehearsal today was cancelled.

200 201 YOU KNOW WHAT’S HAPPENING OUT THERE Diary, 12–17 March 2020 Tony White

202 203 For a few hours on the afternoon of Sunday 15 March 2020 I was the only patient in a five-bed surgical ward in a busy West London teaching hospital. My stay in hospital was not planned. That Sunday I was meant to have been at Essex Book Festival, talking to the poet and translator Philip Terry about his new book, The Penguin Book of Oulipo. Terry is Director of the Centre for Creative Writing at the University of Essex, and this was the book’s launch. I’d been really looking forward to it. We’d worked out a running order and divvied up the readings. You can imagine. But now all of that would be going on without me, and instead I was sitting up in bed, alone in a pale-blue-painted hospital ward, looking out over suburban rooftops with an intravenous drip in my left arm. For the previous three days this hospital ward had been a temporary home not just to me, but to a procession of men with symptoms, and surgical, clinical and care needs ranging from the pain of prostate cancer – ‘It splits me in two, nurse, I swear.’ – to an Achilles tendon ruptured in a game of park football. Amid the welter of catheters and commodes, bags and gowns, were conditions both grave and comical. In Bed Five was a 94-year-old man poleaxed by an aortic aneurysm. While constipation in Bed One was continually demanding ‘depositories’. ‘But you refused Movicol,’ they’d say, consulting his drug chart. ‘You refused Movicol yesterday

204 205 morning. You refused it yesterday afternoon, and again non-essential travel, closures of schools and workplaces this morning. Let me give you Movicol. When did you and the prohibition of public gatherings) had on 9 March last open your bowels?’ been rolled out to the entire country. Italy was now on Even I knew the answer to this question by now: lockdown. it was three days ago. There was a widely voiced suggestion that the UK ‘Are you Nepali?’ he’d ask, to restore his dignity was just a couple of weeks behind Italy. That what was after each unsatisfactory encounter. happening there would soon be happening here. ‘No.’ The empty ward in which I found myself on ‘Ah, but you look Nepali! Those features! Nepali Sunday afternoon felt eerily calm. The ward was not women are my favourite.’ just emptied of other patients, but some of the vacant ‘No, I’m Indian. What do you think!’ might come beds themselves had been wheeled away too. It felt like the indignant answer. a room that was being cleared for a party, when – in the absence of clutter – the view out of the window Bed Two was in agony from seven broken ribs, suddenly dominates. while Bed Four had a weirdly inflated right ear that looked like someone had stuck a bright pink balloon Of course the man in Bed Four with the animal to the side of his head. enormous, cartoon-like right ear is me. It’s my fourth day on the ward since I was the subject of a non-elective It could have been a modern surgical ward in any admission on the night of Thursday 12 March, with hospital, anywhere in the UK and at any time in the pinnal cellulitis, tachycardia and pyrexia. The racing past twenty years, but it was mid-March 2020. The novel pulse (tachycardia) and fever (pyrexia) were caused by coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 (Severe Acute Respiratory the cellulitis, an aggressive infection of the external part Syndrome Coronavirus-2) was spreading around the of my ear, a.k.a. the ‘pinna’. This infection was quickly world, and cases of Covid-19 – the disease it causes spreading beneath my skin from an unnoticed patch of – were on the rise. Particularly in Italy, which at the eczema behind my earlobe. All of which I’d discovered time was the worst-affected country in Europe, with a earlier on Thursday evening when I’d popped in for a horrific and scarcely believable death toll of almost 2,000 lucky late GP appointment on the way home. My right deaths by that Sunday. Quarantining measures that were ear, which at the start of the day had merely been a bit first introduced in the Lodi province of Lombardy in sore, was visibly inflating hour by hour, and now looked Northern Italy on 21 February (including restrictions on

206 207 like a shiny, pink, rubber Halloween prop. In a matter no waiting in A&E for me and my ever-elevating of hours the cellulitis infection had sent my vital signs temperature, pulse and BP. Within 30 minutes of through the roof. Even after taking all of this in, the GP arriving in hospital, all necessary checks completed, in Sheen Lane Health Centre had audibly gasped when my wife was holding a bundle of my clothes and I he’d seen my blood pressure. ‘You need to go to hospital was being cannulated, given a Red Bull-sized shot and be put on IV antibiotics immediately,’ he’d said. of antibiotic from a giant plastic syringe and having a ‘Do you need to call a cab? It would be quicker than an saline line attached, before being wheeled first to the ambulance.’ SAU – the Surgical Assessment Unit – and then to Bed ‘No, my wife is waiting outside. Where do we Four, where I’d been ever since. need to go? Kingston?’ I’d asked. It was the closest The ENT team – the registrar, a consultant and hospital to where we were sitting. a squad of junior doctors, a rather wistful pharmacist ‘No. Kingston doesn’t do emergency Ear, Nose and, behind the scenes, a microbiology lab – had been and Throat admissions like this,’ he’d said. trying out progressively stronger regimes of intravenous But there were two hospitals in the South West London antibiotics on me. Which meant that the hours and days ENT network that did. I’d have to go to one of those. were passing in a blur of hourly ‘Obs’, daily ‘bloods’ and He’d ring them directly. Which one would I prefer? ‘cultures’, and cups of tea with coconut cake. My life One of the hospitals he mentioned was in a had become an alternating cycle of two hours on the IV borough that I was sure I’d read somewhere was a and four hours of snoozing; remembering to keep my Covid-19 hotspot because of families returning from arm straight, and waking up to meals I’d forgotten I’d skiing holidays in Northern Italy, so I chose the other. ordered. ‘It’s a fifteen-minute drive. You must go straight Through Friday and Saturday, the problem there, right now. Don’t go home to collect anything. – though I wasn’t really aware of it – was that the Just get there as quickly as possible,’ he’d said, antibiotics were not yet working. I was still on IV telephoning the ENT Registrar so the team would be paracetamol and bags of saline to try and control my expecting me, even as he typed out my emergency temperature, but meanwhile the infection was spreading referral letter. out beneath my skin, creeping into my right cheek, up That letter, and my perfect storm of symptoms, towards my temple, and beyond the hairline behind was like a backstage pass; access all areas. There was my ear. The lymph glands in my neck continued to

208 209 swell. When the consultant came to do the rounds on Trump offering ‘a German medical company “large Saturday morning my ear was, if anything, even bigger. sums of money” for exclusive access to a Covid-19 ‘Can we get a pen,’ he says to one of the junior vaccine.’1 Germany was closing its borders. Ireland was doctors, pointing at the swelling in my neck and around closing all its pubs. my jaw, ‘and draw around the extent of this, so we have Every country apart from the United States and something to measure against tomorrow?’ the UK seemed to be doing their best to be methodical Later one of the doctors came back with a green and work with the science, to follow in good faith felt-tip and did exactly that. I looked as if I was about to the advice of the World Health Organisation and go in for a one-sided face-lift. The combination of sweat ‘Test! Test! Test!’ All co-operating and learning from and the greasy, anti-bacterial ointment slathered thickly each other, and using current understandings of best over the ear meant that the ink rubbed off fairly quickly. practice. All locking down. While here in the UK All that was left the next morning were a few green there were, and would continue to be mixed messages smears on neck and pillow. and downplaying. On Thursday 12 March, the same ‘We’re going to try you on an additional new evening I’d been admitted, the UK government had antibiotic,’ he said. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow morning.’ announced that there was no longer any need to test After lunch, Sarah dropped in with some essentials in the wider community, that testing would now be – phone-charger, Kindle, toothbrush and toothpaste, limited to hospitals. Furthermore, there’d been no a bottle of fizzy water, and a notebook and pen. We attempt to stop what were clearly dangerously large decided quite quickly that it would be safest if she stayed gatherings of people: in National Hunt horse racing the away. Cheltenham Festival had gone ahead, then Liverpool Mid-Saturday evening, exactly two days after my v Atletico Madrid in the UEFA Champions League admission, I had the first batch of the new combination on 11 March, and now on Saturday night a massive of drugs; one bag immediately after the other. I was stadium gig by Stereophonics in Cardiff. All of this given a further two bags at midnight, and the promise amidst a shockingly inept, gratuitously contrarian of more at 6am on Sunday. and dissembling succession of ambiguous responses and expedient lies by Boris Johnson’s Conservative Later that night, still feverish, I was scrolling government. through Twitter, monitoring the breaking news into the early hours of Sunday morning. The reports about But that weekend, the photograph from a

210 211 government press briefing of a fearful Johnson staring ‘Geneswas,’ tweeted the rare book dealer and down the barrel of an only moderately difficult question counterculture expert Carl Williams with apt irreverence (the defining image of Johnson in this crisis, one hoped) within minutes of the announcement. was yet to come. All we had was the appearance of a As a kind of tribute I posted a link to a YouTube carelessness so toxic and delighted with itself that from video of a Psychic TV track called ‘The Orchids’ from this vantage point it seemed almost malevolent. the 1983 LP Dreams Less Sweet – three minutes of The only balloons going up in the UK had been pastoral psychedelia that features a P-Orridge vocal over half-baked PR ideas leaked to compliant journalist/ a marimba and oboe instrumental. The double-tracked presenters. The only things being tested were narratives: closing lines of the song had come to mind: ‘And in the a barrage of contradictory ideas, soft-launched and morning after the night, I fall in love with the light.’ floated one after the other into a policy and practical I couldn’t use headphones because of my very swollen void. There was the callous infamy of the ‘herd right ear, so I listened to the song on the lowest possible immunity’ strategy; that the country should ‘take it volume by holding my phone up to my left ear, like a on the chin’ and let the virus run its course, that this 1970s teenager with a transistor radio. would be some sort of benefit whatever the cost in ‘I fall in lo-ove with the light. I fall in love with human lives. And even as the inevitable rollbacks and the light.’ disavowals followed, that is nonetheless precisely what On top of the effects of the fever, something had been allowed to happen. In an echo of the now strange happens to your perception of time when you’re prophetic-seeming photographic works by the artist in hospital. The outside world recedes. It starts to feel Helen Chadwick (1953–1996), the whole of the UK had as if this is your normal life. Non-hospital time becomes become a Viral Landscape. compressed. And reading of P-Orridge’s death now Amidst all of this on Saturday night, as I lay reminds me that a quarter of a century ago in 1995 I’d there waiting for my midnight doses of IV antibiotics, borrowed the title of a short story from another Psychic scrolling through the social media signals of the TV LP called A Pagan Day, which itself had been oncoming catastrophe, came the news of the death from released more than a decade before that (as a limited, leukaemia of Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, the artist and numbered edition for just one day on 23 December musician, and co-founder of Industrial music pioneers 1984). Subtitled ‘Pages From a Notebook’ it’s a Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV. collection of low-fi songs and instrumentals recorded on

212 213 a 4-track Portastudio by P-Orridge and Alex Ferguson. industry-style ‘mail art’ output, and would I suppose I’d had no idea it was being released, but happened to have been posted to music journalists, fans and fellow go into the Virgin Megastore in Leeds the day after travellers. I’d picked one up. I still have it, somewhere. Boxing Day 1984, and saw the city’s only copy. Bought, Part The Job era, Burroughsian sci-fi polemic, part quickly taped, and the cassette slapped in my Walkman, instruction manual, part memento mori, it could have been it became my soundtrack of the New Year 1985. written yesterday. The headline reads, ‘Nothing Short of a Ten years later, in London in the mid-1990s, Total War.’ having written a short story about getting lost in When I wake up on Sunday morning my freezing fog on Ilkley Moor that same Boxing Day temperature has come down. 1984, while visiting a Neolithic or perhaps Bronze The infection has turned a corner. The new Age site known as the ‘Swastika Stone’ on the edge antibiotics are clearly working. The swelling has started of Woodhouse Crag with an acid casualty nicknamed to go down in my cheek and neck, and I’m suddenly Jesus, the title had seemed to fit. My story – entitled aware that I can move my jaw freely. ‘A Pagan Day’ – was collected in an anthology called As the day rolls on, it takes me a while to notice Techno Pagan, edited by Elaine Palmer for a London- that I’m also no longer on hourly Obs. based small press called Pulp Faction. It was my first There’s movement on the ward, too. published work of fiction. First to leave was the aortic aneurysm in Bed Five. I lived on Beck Road in Hackney at the time, Close to the point of rupture but beyond the scope of and I remember when in the early 1990s P-Orridge this relatively small hospital, he needed to be moved to a and his then wife Paula’s house a few doors along the specialist unit in another part of London. The consultant street was raided by the police. They were out of the had been to see him and spelled out his options: ‘I’ll be country, and no longer actually lived there in any case, honest with you, it could pop any second,’ he’d said. ‘And but in the aftermath of the raid a load of old Throbbing if it does you’ll probably die. And because of your age Gristle ephemera had been thrown into the nearest skip. even if we do try surgery, there’s a chance of that too. So Arriving home from work one afternoon, I found a we need to move you right now. As soon as possible. Do few densely typed and photocopied Throbbing Gristle you understand? What do you want? Do you want us to flyers blowing down the street. These A4 broadsides were move you to another hospital?’ typical of TG’s William S. Burroughs-influenced, cottage

214 215 ‘Well, I ain’t bin frew all this for nuffing,’ said really not bad at all. While it’s lasted, this ward has seemed Bed Five. a calm and sterile oasis, sheltered (‘cocooned’ is the It was a rare moment of decisiveness. Most other buzzword I’ve seen in the news) from developments in questions in the past few days – from ‘When did the the world outside. pain start?’ or ‘Does it always puff you out doing that?’ Only that morning he’d boasted to me that, ‘This to ‘Can I take your dinner order?’ had been met with a is my regular bed! They all know me here!’ noncommittal and all-purpose, ‘Ooh, I dunno. You’ve ‘The thing is,’ she says, ‘you have a cough and a caught me on the ’op!’ temperature spike.’ ‘Good, good,’ said the consultant. ‘I’ll phone the ‘That’s my constipation,’ he counters. ‘You won’t ambulance.’ give me depository.’ ‘I presume this is a blue-light transfer?’ asks one ‘There’s a new hospital protocol,’ she says. ‘A of the ambulance crew when they arrive, fresh with the temperature spike like this means you need to be moved smell of the outside world. over to the other side.’ After lunch (beef in gravy with mashed potato and ‘But my family are on their way. You know how carrots, followed by sticky toffee pudding and custard) frail my wife is. It’s too far for her to walk.’ seven broken ribs in Bed Two was allowed to go home. ‘They’ll only have to wait a little while,’ says the Now the only ones left are me, Achilles tendon in Bed nurse. ‘You need barrier nursing. It’s the new protocol.’ Three, and ‘Are you Nepali?’ in Bed One. ‘Rubbish! It’s my constipation,’ he says, pausing to But not for long. put his head back and open his mouth wide so the nurse A nurse arrives for Bed One. She’s wearing a mask can take a swab from high in the back of his throat. and a plastic apron. ‘You’re just moving me for the sake of it.’ ‘Hello, Mr. ______,’ she says. ‘We’re ‘No, we’re not,’ she says, then leans in to whisper going to have to move you to a single room.’ more pointedly. ‘You know what’s happening out there.’ ‘What do you mean? You’re moving me again?’ ‘But I need depository!’ says Bed One, letting He’s upset, and lists the last few stops on his down his guard. hospital journey so far; counts them out on the fingers of ‘Okay, I’ll bring you a suppository,’ says the nurse, one hand. His family are just about to visit. And besides, allowing him to savour the illusion of victory for a he likes it here. It’s quiet, and what’s more the food is second. ‘As soon as we’ve moved you.’

216 217 That’s when his wife and middle-aged son arrive. the reactor at Chernobyl; like dancing into an invisible, ‘We’re just about to move your father,’ says distributed field of wildly varying probabilities, many of the nurse to the son. ‘Would you mind going to the them fatal. waiting area please, and we’ll come and get you once An hour or so later, ‘Are you Nepali?’ was gone, he’s moved?’ bed and all. And shortly after that Achilles tendon in ‘You’re moving him yet again?’ says the son as Bed Three was being collected by a friend. We half- they are ushered out. ‘What kind of hospital is this?’ nodded half-shrugged a resigned ‘Take care’ to each As soon as the nurse’s back is turned they return. other as he swung past, a bit more confident on his They are not putting up with it, Bed One’s son tells crutches now, following a cheery training session with him, so they’ve decided to come and see him now, one of physios; the Red Coats of the NHS. As they while they still can, while he is waiting to be moved. turn into the corridor he says to his friend, ‘I heard that What’s the harm? Then they will go. It’s only a flying they’re emptying this ward so they can turn it into an visit after all. isolation unit.’ Another nurse comes and gently, respectfully, asks No, that’s not it, I think to myself. But then I them to go back to the waiting area. wonder if it was me that had misunderstood. ‘Ah! Is it C-O-V-I-D-nineteen related?’ the son By Sunday teatime, the empty space where Bed asks in a pantomime whisper. Spelling it out like Tammy One was has been disinfected, and I have the whole Wynette. ‘Don’t worry, I understand,’ he continues, place to myself. I wonder how Philip Terry is getting blithely missing the point. ‘You’re emptying the ward. on at the Essex Book Festival. It’s 4 o’clock, so our You don’t have to tell me. My son is a consultant! You’re event would be starting about now, the audience taking moving my father because you need to turn this ward their seats. I’d managed to get word to the Festival into an isolation unit!’ Director late Friday afternoon that I was in hospital so ‘No, that’s not what we’re doing,’ said the nurse wouldn’t be able to make it. I felt bad about it, because quietly. But no one was listening. I’ve never missed a booking before. Earlier in the week I was listening. I couldn’t help it, stuck in the I’d been feeling increasingly worried about the safety bed opposite and tethered to my IV pole. I would have of travelling from London to Colchester. The mainline loved to have got out of there, but I couldn’t. Being in a from Liverpool Street was scheduled to be closed for hospital at that moment felt like going a little too close to engineering works, so getting there would have involved

218 219 spending several hours on tube trains and crowded rail at a mysterious and spectacular nocturnal display of lights replacement bus services. But then Philip had emailed in the sky. When he is finally able to open his eyes the on Saturday, saying he’d be delighted to do my reading in following morning, he is one of only a handful of people my absence, and asking which chapter from The Fountain remaining who can still see. Everyone else has been in the Forest had I planned to read. The generous offer blinded by the strange light of the meteorite shower, made me feel a bit emotional; honoured that Fountain rendering the majority of the population fair game – and might still be represented. Whether he’d actually manage fresh meat – to swarms of a particularly aggressive, self- this in the heat of the moment I didn’t know, but for propelling and carnivorous species of Triffid. Masen and now I was glad to think that I might still be able to join a ragtag band of sighted people must somehow fight for his celebration in spirit at least. survival in this newly hostile environment. But sitting in this empty hospital ward on Sunday Something like that. afternoon, it’s another book altogether that comes to Feels a bit like that now, I think to myself: pre- mind. One that I’d read as a child. Visits to the local post-apocalyptic. public library were a regular feature of my childhood Stuck in a hospital ward, and – like the nurse said and at a certain point – like any young and avid reader – knowing what’s happening out there. – I’d grown tired of The Wombles and the Paddington Remembering Bill Masen in John Wyndham’s books, the Worzel Gummidges and Doctor Dolittles, novel, I amuse myself by thinking, Well, at least I so had crossed the hallway in Farnham Library from wouldn’t be foolish enough to go near the window just the children’s section to the general fiction. There I’d to see a few pathetic fireworks. You won’t catch me out discovered Agatha Christie – a name I’d recognised – like that! but also Mervyn Peake, yellow-jacketed Gollancz sci-fi It feels like the calm before the storm. anthologies, the Ellery Queen mysteries, Doris Lessing Someone, a passing member of clinical staff, even and John Wyndham’s The Day of the Triffids. says as much. Wyndham’s novel begins with a man in hospital. From my bed I’d been hearing snatches of hushed Bill Masen is a specialist in Triffids, a plant crop cultivated conversation from the corridor, and writing them worldwide for its valuable oil. He is temporarily blinded, down in my notebook. The excellent nursing teams his eyes covered by bandages. This means that he’s unable are all calmly doing their jobs in increasingly difficult to join everybody else at the window that night, gawping

220 221 conditions. But we all know what’s happening out there. The UK government’s response to the Covid-19 People are talking about ventilator numbers, or about pandemic is changing, pivoting away from its previous changes to CPR rules because of aerosol risk; the new idea (‘plan’ seems too strong a word) to allow the training. ‘So if someone needs CPR,’ a voice asks, ‘and novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 to pass through the we haven’t had the FIT training, now we can’t do it?’ population in order that the UK might achieve ‘herd There was talk of the ‘escalation team’, of the immunity’. It’s not, as the BBC’s Political Editor Laura growing numbers already presenting in A&E, and of Keunssberg will put it on the morning of Tuesday ‘the other side’ of the hospital being made ready. 17 March, that ‘the science has changed’, because Talk of staff getting ill. unfortunately the science is implacable. But certainly ‘Did you hear? ______has a sore throat.’ the UK government’s apparent ambition for us all to ‘Oh, it would be her! Has she gone off sick?’ ‘take it on the chin’ was being – it now seemed – quietly but deliberately shelved, even though ‘herd immunity’ There was breezy gallows humour from the had still been being enthusiastically promoted on BBC senior clinical staff at the handover meetings: ‘Morning! Radio 4’s Today programme as recently as two days ago Anyone got any symptoms?’ (on Friday the 13th, of course). Apparently they’d been ‘Coffee’s on lockdown!’ says one of the nurses, basing their assumptions on over-optimistic models laughing. for another disease entirely, an influenza virus that ‘The internet’s on lockdown, too!’ someone says. would be far less infectious and with far lower and less It reminds me of Donald Barthelme’s short story intensive rates of hospitalisation, and now that this had ‘Opening’ in which a group of actors are rehearsing a been adjusted for Covid-19, the back-of-an-envelope new play: bodycounts were looking too high. Something like Many of their jokes involve scraps of that. By Tuesday morning it would be goodbye ‘herd dialogue from the script, which become immunity’, and hello ‘too-little too-late’. 2 catchphrases of general utility. On Sunday the magnitude of the U-turn, or ‘Everything on lockdown!’ the horror of what ‘herd immunity’ actually means, Masks are given out. are obscured by a piecemeal and haphazard approach We all know what’s happening out there. to information and policy in which patronage seems Something else is shifting on Sunday, too. to trump public service; clickbait kickbacks. Health

222 223 Secretary Matt Hancock releases an announcement also learn of two further obscenities, though surely exclusively to the paywalled Telegraph on Sunday, while not the last. First that in a widely reported ‘joke’ of an article by the government’s Chief Medical Officer is almost unbelievable crassness given the struggles for given exclusively to The Sun. Then on Sunday morning life that were already taking place in hospitals around The Sun trails a new government initiative; news the country (the then current figures showed 1,372 that’s yet to happen. The Prime Minister will today be cases of Covid-19 in the UK, and 35 deaths), Johnson ‘putting companies on a war footing to transform their referred to this supposed ‘national effort for ventilator production lines’ in order that ‘British manufacturing production’ as ‘Operation Last Gasp’. giants’ – all big name brands – might ‘build thousands of Then it was revealed that a pandemic planning ventilators as part of a national effort to beat the bug.’3 exercise in 2016 had expressly highlighted the shortage By Monday morning this has become an open call for of ventilators in the NHS. The Government and a ‘a national effort for ventilator production’ and is being succession of Health Secretaries including Jeremy tweeted by Lord Bethell (Minister of Innovation at the Hunt had known about this lack of equipment and Department of Health and Social Care) and numerous preparedness, yet nothing had been done about it for MPs. But despite the helpline number, the dedicated three and a half years. Or perhaps even longer, for in the email address, and basic ventilator specs being circulated, New Statesman on Monday 16 March, Harry Lambert this blunderbuss approach – which takes no account of quotes a stunning piece of tautological and dilatory lip clinical testing and regulatory timescales – smacks more service from the UK Influenza Pandemic Preparedness of PR than delivery. It’s hard to think of a less effective Strategy 2011: ‘Plans to increase capacity of these [critical way to actually get hold of urgently needed equipment. care] services are an important aspect of planning.’ This isn’t how you do national scale procurement in an It’s a semantic sleight of hand worthy of the BBC’s international emergency! It feels insincere, more like classic political sitcom Yes Minister. It doesn’t say that a displacement activity or a plug for ‘Team GB’, and plans to increase capacity will be implemented within lacks the organisational nouse of a Blue Peter Appeal. such-and-such a timeframe, let alone costed, or even Especially when existing UK ventilator manufacturers explored, but simply that plans are an important aspect are reported as saying that there has been no approach of planning. whatsoever from the government. It’s a lesson in how not to get things done. The In the few days immediately following the act of reporting as an end in itself, while giving merely apparent shift away from ‘herd immunity’, we’d 224 225 the appearance of process. It’s recommendation as of Amy Binns’ illuminating and page-turning new holding-pattern; a cul-de-sac when it should be, could biography of its author, Hidden Wyndham: Life, Love, be, an instrument. The shocking lack of political will is Letters. preserved as surely and clearly as a fly in amber. A note in Chapter Five catches my eye. Writing to The nurse’s words – ‘You know what’s happening his partner, Grace Wilson, on 17 June 1940, after what out there.’ – feel almost tangible. Binns calls ‘a last snatched moment of happiness’ in the A few years ago I was at the Science Museum first year of the Second World War, Wyndham wrote: early one morning. The whole place was empty. We Saturday, how lovely. were in a gallery at the back of the Museum’s vast An era had shut up its houses and gone away building on Exhibition Row making a video. I was – perhaps for ever. But we had that little writer in residence, and they’d let us in a couple of much longer. How cruel the macrocosm, hours before opening time so we could shoot with as sweet, but how sweet the microcosm.4 little noise as possible. We finished and were wrapping Of course the surgical ward wasn’t being up when at 10am on the far side of the building the converted into an isolation unit, at least not yet, and it Museum opened its doors. We immediately became didn’t stay empty for long. I must have dozed off after aware of a dull murmuring, far in the distance. And an IV session, and I awoke to find the space suddenly in the space of five minutes this grew, slowly but ever corralled once again, amid continual comings and louder into a great clamour, a wall of noise and chatter goings; dozens of people filing in and out, and the and humanity getting closer and closer. It was the sound sound of police radios. Right now the curtains between of the oncoming wave of around 9,000 visitors that the beds have all been drawn, but for the next couple crashed through the Museum every day. of days I’d be in the company of a whole new batch of That’s what it felt like now, despite the relative ward mates. calm of this briefly empty surgical ward. As if some Bed One is screaming in agony, pre-surgery; his unstoppable juggernaut of humanity and calamity – leg badly broken in three places. thousands of souls strong – was hurtling towards us. In Bed Two, a well-spoken elderly man – let’s After lunch, with my fever finally gone, I was at call him David Kerridge – is dying, his organs slowly last well enough to read. Thinking of The Day of the shutting down. In a delirium of mind-body separation Triffids, I’d downloaded and was enjoying the ebook he will spend several hours the next day repeatedly

226 227 attempting to call himself on an imaginary phone. peace and quiet this affords. He picks on other patients ‘Hello, hello! Can I have the switchboard please? I’d like and somehow cajoles them into telling him where to talk to David Kerridge. Hello, switchboard? Can you they live. The officers find themselves standing him a put me through to David Kerridge? Hello, hello! Life round. It’s relentless. This 24-hour conversation is only and death! I need to speak to David Kerridge! Is that the interrupted when, every half hour or so he shouts, switchboard? Hello? Yes, can I speak to David Kerridge ‘Nurse. Nurse! You forgot my painkillers. Nurse!’ urgently please—’ He’s going to be here for the next six weeks, but Bed Three is vomiting from the pain of the thankfully I’m not. On Tuesday afternoon at teatime, morning’s prostate op, while Bed Five has a 24-hour, six days after I was admitted, following a more than 48- two-person police guard. Homeless, and only a few days hour run with no fever, and with a once again normal- into a methadone treatment for his heroin addiction, he’d ish-looking right ear, I’m told that I can go home. They been arrested on an outstanding warrant as he tried to bring me a five-page discharge note and a week’s worth make his way back to hospital after a month-old broken of high-dosage oral antibiotics. I can hardly believe it. For hip repair had become badly infected. Bent double from a while there, perhaps like anyone who found themselves the pain of this huge abscess yet continually buzzing in a hospital in the spring of 2020, I’d been wondering if on the edge of withdrawal, he’s a natural raconteur, I’d get out of the place alive. worse luck. Working in pairs, the police – his captive But before all of that, in an as yet still empty audience – giggle along to his incessant wheedling ward on Sunday afternoon, as I lay reading Amy Binns’ chatter, whether he’s talking about past adventures, the John Wyndham biography, there’s a commotion in the app he’s developing, or the 1,500 extraterrestrial species corridor, an exclamation of delight. One of the nurses that he knows for a fact are currently harvesting plasma comes rushing in, brandishing her phone. directly from the heart of our Sun. Any sense that this is ‘Look! Look!’ she says, pointing out of the casual chitchat is deceptive. It’s intelligence gathering, and window. ‘The sunset! It’s so beautiful. I’ve never seen perfectly pitched. He’s a pro, has them eating out of his one like that. I have to get a photo! Come and see!’ hand, knows practically every policeman in the borough When it comes to sunsets, I’m with Antoine de by name, and uses this as an opportunity to update his Saint-Exupéry. If, after each sunset, I could – like the contacts. ‘Didn’t you nick me once?’ he asks one of the Little Prince on his asteroid – simply move my chair officers who’ve arrived to do the night shift. The police forward a few steps to watch it all over again, I would. take it in turns to go for snacks, and the few minutes of 228 229 And it’s a measure of how much better I’m already 1. Philip Oltermann, ‘Trump “offers large sums” for exclusive US access to coronavirus vaccine’, The Guardian, 15 March 2020. feeling, that I don’t need to be asked twice. Phone in 2. Donald Barthelme, ‘Opening’, in Forty Stories. London: Secker & hand, I swing my legs out of bed, grab my IV pole and Warburg, 1988. p25 wheel it over to the window, where I stand beside the 3. Mark Hodge, ‘CALL TO ARMS: British industry on war footing nurse and take a couple of photos of my own. They as Boris Johnson asks Rolls Royce & JCB to build ventilators to treat coronavirus’, The Sun, 15 March 2020. don’t do it justice, of course, but she was right. It is 4. Amy Binns, Hidden Wyndham: Life, Love, Letters. London: Grace Judson beautiful. Press, 2020. Chapter 5, paragraph 11. ‘Wow,’ I say. Along the horizon, showing through small gaps in the otherwise heavy, purple-grey cloud cover that fills the rest of the sky are bright flashes of a searing orange and gold light, like brilliant flames flaring and beginning to catch at the base of a slow-starting fire. We stand there in awed silence for a second. I think about the song again: ‘I fall in love with the light.’ ‘There’s a better view from over here,’ says the nurse, scuff-skating briskly in her flats to the back of the ward to take a few more photos. I don’t feel like running, even in my hospital-issue, red, non-slip socks, so I step back, out of shot. Then I remember the beginning of The Day of the Triffids, and Bill Masen with his bandaged eyes, and I could kick myself. You fool, I think to myself, only half-joking. You looked right at it.

230 231 SABIO Marvin Thompson

232 233 1.

Below this rooftop chair, Havana slows to dusk – the lull before the night’s music. I kick at a cracked tile. The sky’s a show

of scarlet clouds. I shout: ‘Hey, Pájaro, we’re going to be late but don’t panic!’ He strokes his dyed-blue pigeon, softly blows

her neck. The cooing from his coops is hollow, wistful. ‘Pájaro, if you had wings, would you think being caged was an act of love?

You’d be jealous of rats and cows and crows.’ On a neighbouring rooftop, someone’s singing a Santeria hymn, the voice mellow:

am I really my tourist’s whore? As dusk grows, I snap: ‘I thought we were going dancing!’ Silence. I picture the huge shadow

Cuba’s racing birds would make if, tomorrow, they escaped and rose as one. ‘All this whinging,’ Ro says, walking towards me. ‘You’re shallow:

234 235 2. 3. avian love is real!’ We both chuckle ‘The funny thing,’ Ro says, ‘the buyer’s name in a way that draws our mouths, our breath closer: is Isaura.’ The rain’s still spitting what life would we have had if his freckles and rum sits in my throat like disdain: made me burn. I open a bottle Pájaro drains his drink. ‘I’ll say it plain – of gold rum from my tourist. ‘The harder Isaura the Slave – White. The lady buying...’ I try to stop sleeping with –’ a tickle: My chest and throat fill with the emptiness a moth strolls on my arm. Ro: ‘Typical – of trips to tourists’ rooms: ‘I’ll go insane all you cab drivers are hypocrites. the next time a White lady from Toronto Syphilis will make you miserable!’ jokes about ‘size’ as if all Black men…’

I pour and pour our rum as we cackle: Pájaro stares at me, his laugh ringing: our tumblers shine against dusk’s quick spits ‘We still going dancing?’ In dusk’s dim glow, of rain. ‘Some rich Black woman from Brazil I snarl, ‘I’ve been stopped by more police than...’ is buying my fastest bird.’ Tears trickle. ‘Okay, Mark Duggan! Sabi. In Britain ‘Sabi, if I had wings, I would leave – and America, I’d be Black too. selling your loved ones...’ Both his fists ball: I feel your pain, brother.’ I could kiss him;

‘My father’s restaurant is in trouble, instead I walk over to his new coop. again.’ He sighs, ‘Some animals you love, ‘Sweet dreams,’ he sings, as if already drunk. some you eat.’ The air takes on a chill. I say a silent prayer and the rain stops.

236 237 AS FAR AWAY FROM THE BODY AS YOU CAN REACH Vlatka Horvat

238 239 The place was all right. Top floor, good light, crappy locks. Seen a lot of duct tape DIY over the years. All first week there was no gas, so no hot water – which meant no coffee and no showers. The gas company man told her she had nice calves. He said: ‘Do you run? Because your calves look like you run.’ She looked the man straight in the eye to draw attention away from her legs, unshaven and stubby.

He installed her gas, turned the pilot lights on in the basement and on the stove in her kitchen and said, ‘Here, now you can make some coffee.’ She felt cornered, said: ‘Would you like some?’

He came back a few hours later. She saw his van in front of the building. He rang five times; she didn’t open. He came by again the following Saturday. His van was parked outside the building and her phone rang again, and this time she picked up but there was no one on the other end.

She stood in the shower, the first one in over a week, and constructed a story of the gas company man’s life in which he was a serial killer, or a stalker, who preyed on women after providing them with gas. Maybe he sets it so that it leaks slightly, just so, undetectable by smell, but makes you all drowsy and disorientated to the point

240 241 of not being able to fight back when he comes over later These guys always ask too many questions, and it makes and breaks in with his spanner. you wonder why. She often thought that maybe she should put her wedding ring back on, just on the days She went over this whole theory with her sister who when she was being moved, or when she was having called on the phone and who assured her not to worry. things fixed in the apartment, but it didn’t feel right. She was all, ‘The gas company screens guys like that. In the end she decided on planting picture frames with These guys, they undergo extensive background checks, photographs in prominent places around the apartment. get fingerprinted and all that before they’re allowed to There was no way for the gas company men to know go on calls into people’s homes.’ that those weren’t current. ‘People’s homes.’ ‘Come on, temporary accommodation too. They would A woman called, said: ‘Just so you know, you are have to, no?’ getting sued.’ And hung up. ‘Mmmm…’ she said. ‘Maybe in the place where you live. Here it’s a job for guys who can demonstrate that She *69ed the number, but the line was engaged. they can withstand large amounts of toxic fumes.’ She thought maybe it was something connected to the divorce, some paperwork hasn’t gone through, or She told the moving guys that she was moving in with something. someone, a new roommate. She asked a neighbour from the floor below if he would come sit in her apartment and play the part while her stuff was being brought in. ‘You can go through my phone,’ she said to the person. Most of the things she was moving from place to place, She made it sound like it was some kind of an incentive. packing and unpacking (what wasted effort), made her The neighbour guy said he wasn’t really doing anything think of people who weren’t there. Her ex, in the same and that yeah, going through her phone would be cool. city but out of her life; her lover, far away and whom she can never again see; her sister far away (also can You’re not supposed to tell moving guys, gas company never see); her parents far away (ditto). And the cats. employees and people like that that you live alone. Many of the things she was taking out of boxes were

242 243 covered in cat hair. Less and less after each move as she keys the day after she moved in. They didn’t seem to no longer had the cats. know about her status, and she didn’t mention it so that they wouldn’t back out of the key swap. It was really Funny (not funny) how those things linger on surfaces, good having a set of keys nearby as she was known (to and make you have to keep thinking about people (cats) herself) to lock herself out with some regularity. She that left them there. really didn’t like having to look for men on the street who were willing to break into her apartment. The ex got to keep the cats as the status she defaulted to after the divorce meant she couldn’t have any pets. Some places were cold, porous and damp. Some hot, No temporary accommodation allowed them and the even too hot. Central-heating-on-24/7-from-October- unpredictable rate of her relocations would have made to-May type too hot. You couldn’t regulate it or shut off their lives miserable. Plus it was probably against the the radiators. She kept the windows cracked all the time rules full stop. in that one, even at the height of winter. It felt wrong, really wrong, to be heating the city air outside, but Cats don’t deal well with change. otherwise the place was unbearable.

She logged in to check the ex’s social media to see After the second break-in through the window (not what the cats were up to. His Facebook profile was set organised by her), she went to a hardware store to buy to ‘Friends only’, of which she was no longer one, but those lock-into-place iron gates to install so that she for the cat pics he posted, he was changing the privacy could keep the window open and not worry all night settings to ‘Public’, and she knew he was doing that that someone might come in while she slept. She knew for her. it wouldn’t prevent anyone from coming in if they really wanted to, but thinking that she had done something about it would make her feel safer, or at least that’s what she told herself. Some places were ok, nice even. Spacious, with a working kitchen. Nice neighbours. Last neighbours The woman at the hardware store said: ‘And you think suggested (unprompted) that they should exchange that will work?’ She – the hardware store proprietor –

244 245 didn’t, so she refused to sell the gates. The product her organised before the pickup the next day. store carried was intended to prevent children from falling out of windows; she would not sell it for any ‘Marriage protects you from the world’s woes,’ Mom other purpose. said like a robot every time she called her parents to tell them the new address. It was like she was a teenager again being scolded by Mom. ‘If only you had stayed married to (the ex’s name) – what-went-wrong-he-was- Occasionally she’d get a place that made her feel really so-nice-you-were-so-in-love-was-he-not-nice? – none welcome. Where they put her name on the door of of this would be happening.’ Years later and Mom still her unit in advance of her arrival. It was a good feeling couldn’t get over the fact that she was no longer married arriving there. But the next day someone painted to the ex whom she (Mom) adored and who in her eyes ‘butcher’s whore’ on her door. It happened before she’d could do no wrong. even met anyone or spoken to anyone. There was no point in picking a fight over this. You The woman wearing a scarf around her head who could never explain to Mom in ways she would get passed her in the hallway as she was washing the graffiti that no, marriage does not in fact protect you from any off, said: ‘Probably your name. Names are like currency woes, that nothing protects you from anything. around here.’

The new new place had a terrace. She gasped when she Everything got very last minute and haphazard after was first shown in. Worried for days that it was some they abolished the post and the relocation service kind of an administrative mistake that she was sent here, switched from sending notices to your PO Box to and that she shouldn’t even unpack. You could only get contacting you via call centres. They used a special ring a terrace if someone was pulling some major strings on so you always knew it was them – and had to answer. your behalf. And no one was pulling any strings for her. The calls came at a crazy hour (daytime in some other She fretted and obsessed after moving in, then let herself time zone) and she’d have just the night to pack and get settle in.

246 247 ‘Enjoy the light babe for as long as there’s light,’ she and all the panicking and being out of control. You got could hear her ex saying and it made her smile. He to do all the yelling and screaming and arm waving, would no doubt be saying things like that to her now if which was a lot more fun than playing the other end they still had contact. of the scene: receiving the distress signals and speaking in a composed voice to calmly assure everyone that She stood by the window in the back, in awe of the Things. Are. Going. To. Be. O. K. Being in distress was garden (unkempt, but still), and it took some time exciting; coming to rescue, not so. But someone had before she realised that she was being blinded. Light to do it or the game didn’t really work, and often, for from a torch was coming from somewhere across. The whatever reason, she ended up having to volunteer for light circled around like searching before hitting her the boring part. Nothing to do with her being the only face, and then stayed there – paused – before moving girl in the gang of cousins. Not. At. All. again. Smaller moves now, around her face only, and slower. It felt sensuous, like being stroked, and also She went to Wikipedia to brush up on Morse code. violent, neither of which she minded. She stood there Then fell down the rabbit hole of ‘See also’, clicking on and waited for it night after night. Felt a kind of rush parent category links and subcategory links and Notes from it, not quite excitement, but similar. and References. Landed in ‘Nonverbal communication’. There were so many different systems, from so many She thought of all the times they played rescue as kids. different types of situation. General marshalling, fire, Pretending they were on a submarine stranded in the ground-to-air communication, coast-to-sea, sea-to- middle of the ocean (?) and having to send distress coast. Covert hand signals. It all suddenly seemed really signals out. They were signalling S.O.S in Morse code urgent and necessary and really important to know. with flashlights, and when they didn’t have any, making sound effects with their mouths: Ttt — t...t...t.. — ttt. She stood in front of the mirror in the hallway and Ttt — t...t...t.. — ttt. There were mandatory mini practiced the moves. arguments preceding the game around who would be the control centre or the rescue ship; everyone wanted Hand over eyes: Unconscious. to be stranded. When you were stranded you got to Both arms held straight up, not moving: Emergency make a proper racket: all the commotion in the world evacuation alarm.

248 249 Arms outstretched as far away from the body as you can It kept her awake at night. reach: Search completed. Arms flat down next to your body, then lifted up to Bats and other night wildlife regularly smashed against about 45 degrees and back down, like a low pretend her windows, disorientated by all the light, and her flapping of wings: Emergency contained. morning ritual included coming out onto the terrace to Left arm straight up, then straight down, drawing collect whatever animal or similar might have crashed a sharp downward line through the air: Message and broken its neck in the night time. understood, all clear. Right hand up, wave widely but slowly: Message not The council person who answered the phone the first clear, repeat. time she called to report it said that the council did indeed contract an external force who would come to collect anything dead you might have on your hands, as long as the dead thing was not bigger than a certain More people moved in to the area. The light signals out size and also not smaller than a certain size. They would back intensified, started coming from more than one only collect it from the front of the house though, with window. Lights crisscrossing paths, blinding her with the dead thing laid out upright on the sidewalk, so too much information being sent back and forth. (Who as to be reachable from a passing vehicle. Something was sending it and to whom???). It wasn’t long before about them not having proper insurance to be allowed all the flickering light became unbearable noise and the to stop the vehicle and not having proper insurance to moments of darkness started appearing to her as signals be allowed to enter anyone’s house. You have to book that wanted to be read. She stood in the window with it on the app, said the person on the phone, and before her right arm up, waving widely and slowly, turning to the request will go through, you have to check the box face all the different directions that the signals seemed to on the screen that the dead thing has been arranged out be coming from. Message not clear, repeat. front as required. Then they come.

She wrote down fragments of the code she managed to The first time she found an unidentifiable dead thing catch – bits of light code, bits of darkness code – tried to on the terrace it took her all morning to muster up piece it together, decipher what they were saying. courage to collect it and move it to the front of the

250 251 house. She stood by the window a long time, getting became ‘Something you do.’ (Just life.) You do what used to looking at it. She put her hand over her eyes and needs doing, as they say (Mom). directed the pose outward, turning in all directions, in case anyone was watching. Unconscious. Unconscious. Someone she knew, vaguely, was working as an Unconscious thing found, she mouthed as she signalled. anaesthetist in a lab where they did tests on animals. Not that she thought anyone would be coming to help This person, the anaesthetist, also a woman, wanted her, but sent the signal out all the same. to be friends. There was a kind of link between them, going back to the time when they were both Just being able to look at it took practice. She went over from the same place, a long time ago, when that it in her head, how she might do it. Pictured herself place still existed. They had people in common in doing it, weighed whether she could, called her sister the former place. for encouragement, practiced looking at it some more, practiced not crying, telling herself it’s just a thing, a She told the anaesthetist person that she couldn’t be dead thing, and nothing can be done about it. friends. ‘Not a judgment on you,’ she said, though it was. ‘The only way I can go through life,’ she said, ‘is if She opened the app and checked the box confirming I pretend that those things aren’t happening.’ that the dead thing was out front and that she was not a robot. Which was not true – the robot part yes, but ‘Don’t think that I don’t cry myself to sleep every night,’ the dead thing was not out front, not at all. She needed said the anaesthetist. pressure, a deadline. Compassion, or pity, or disgust, or whatever else was going on here – none were compatible She herself didn’t have a proper job. Proper jobs were with getting things done. She put her hand inside a hard to come by, especially for people like them. She plastic bag, like a glove, and inside another plastic bag, to had her voluntary work – ‘service’ it was called – which mask the feel of touching something dead. Looked away was not voluntary at all but part of the deal she had, so so she would feel less. in effect like a job – just not the kind that you get paid for. Hers didn’t involve torturing any living creatures so It took many months before she got better at it. The she thought she had a good reason not be unhappy, or at job didn’t get any easier, but she got more efficient. It least a good reason not to complain.

252 253 She knew that it (residual privilege) was thanks to her frequent. The places were getting smaller and smaller ex husband and his status, as she heard from mutual and further and further away from everything. At some friends that he was regularly contacted and asked to point someone must have figured out the mistake with vouch for her, which apparently he did, in spite of how the place with the windows and the terrace and was badly she had hurt him. rectifying the mistake retroactively. Balancing things out, setting it right, the larger picture. Sometimes her bell rang but she rarely went to see who it was. Most of the time it was the women coming by to Sometimes they called and told her she had to go even ask when the suffering will end. They came in pairs and though there were no places available for her to move were smiling in unison when she opened the door. The into. first few times they came she talked to them for awhile as she thought they might be asking in earnest. But after The phone call came and the voice said: ‘The movers several weeks of their visits, it became clear that they are here.’ were on script rather than genuinely bothered. It was ‘Shit,’ she said out loud. No advance notice. They like suffering was just an excuse to get you to sign up were now basically calling only when they were for something. already downstairs.

Everyone she wanted to see or talk to was somewhere ‘Do I have a place?’ she said into the phone. ‘Hello?’ far. She rarely spoke to anyone here or saw anyone any more. Partly preferred it that way. People were so busy all the time, they had kids they had to do things with. Some of her former friends said that they couldn’t hang The next place was isolated. A ground floor unit with out with her any more, too unstable. ‘That’s ridiculous,’ the view out the window completely blocked by the her lover said, from afar. ‘You’re super solid.’ temporary (meaning permanent) scrims erected between the building and the courtyard. The window had diamond-shaped steel security gates installed on it, the kind that let no light in. The phone calls to arrange the next move became more

254 255 Every morning she received an email from her lover dry heat in the apartment made the soil bundle dry out with the subject line ‘Morning.’ It was like a marker of fast and she had to soak it in the sink twice a day to keep days, a counter of mornings. Regular reminders that a the sticks alive. new day has started outside. There was no way of knowing if they really were being She was reading a book in which bodies and spaces kept alive, not until they were planted. What a time to were being talked about interchangeably. Bodies were win the Tree Lottery, she thought, she who has never buildings; buildings, bodies. She wondered what kind of won anything in her life. ‘Living Trees Inside. Keep a building her body was most like. A solid structure. A Upright’. How could she look after anything living, mobile home. The tower of Pisa. When she was a child, living like this. There was no soil anywhere near to save she was told by doctors that one of her legs was 1cm your life. shorter than the other one. ‘Nonsense,’ said Mom, and refused to do anything about it.

Trees arrived special delivery, packed in a long ‘You aren’t getting away from me,’ her lover said when cardboard box. The box said: ‘Living Trees Inside. he called her concerned, as he did every time after Keep Upright.’ There was a forwarding label on the learning that she had been moved. box, which had originally been posted to one of her previous addresses. She sort of laughed. ‘You know that you’re only like 10,000 miles from here and what I do and where I get To call them trees was optimistic. They were twigs. Sad to is entirely out of your hands my love. Well, also out looking twigs packed tightly in a tiny amount of soil of mine.’ wrapped with black plastic that retained moisture. ‘They’ll open the borders again some time.’ ‘Mmm…’ She kept the box leaning against the window gates but ‘They will. They’ll have to.’ the wind coming in through the window kept knocking ‘Mmm... And then what.’ the box over and it was starting to get really busted. She ‘I’m coming to get you.’ moved it further in to stop it from falling apart but the

256 257 They were having some version of this exchange ‘Well you know that one of the perks of my regularly. A different strand had previously dominated glamorous predicament is that I live in one of the most their conversations, and it went along the lines of, ‘Have ridiculously expensive cities in the world entirely rent you left your husband yet?’ And then at some point she free.’ She laughed; he didn’t. had – left him – or he left her, doesn’t much matter, and the list of things in the way of them being together – ‘I’ll put some money into your account.’ the main topic of their discussions – went down by one. ‘OK. And I’ll.... put some into yours.’ Husband, borders, stuckness. Now down by husband. They both laughed. ‘Ok. Let’s do that.’ ‘Ships will still go.’ ‘Yes.’ They hung up, she clicked on 5 stars when the app ‘Or they’ll invent some other mode of travel.’ asked her to rate the quality of the call, filled out a brief ‘Haha, yes. Maybe they will.’ survey about her foreign communication as she was ‘But first the borders!’ He was all serious and required to do, and went to the kitchen to make dinner. determined, like it was his job to open the borders and On the other side of the wall she could hear the sounds like he was getting on with it. of a football match and some guys speaking animatedly ‘Yes! Let’s do it!’ in a language she couldn’t place. Anticipation music. Horns. Excitement build-up. And then, almost every And they both laughed. Laughed at how silly they time, the sound of collective disappointment. Over it were being, laughed at the ridiculousness of it all, all, a muffled narration of the commentator speaking at laughed at the comedy of having the same, same the pace of running. conversation every time they spoke. It was like a scene from a play they were practicing. They laughed also out of desperation.

‘Do you need any money?’ ‘No.’ ‘Are you sure?’

258 259 TOGETHER (part 1) text score for voice composition, in 3 parts speaking and breathing: words in breath Caroline Bergvall

260 261 just got tired­_of keeping it together_of trying to keep it together_always working so hard at keeping it together_just keeping it together_always holding out_to keep it together_ones whole life_trying to keep it together_ just making sure_I can keep it together_Im keeping it together_to keep it together_keeping at it_never phased_never freaking out_never giving up_ never letting go_not throwing the towel_just wanting so badly_to keep it together_trying so hard_to keep it together_doing so well_ achieving so much_being so great at it_performing so perfectly_being so good_at just_

262 keeping_it_together_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_togeth er_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_tog ether_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_ together_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_together_keeping _it_together_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_together_keep ing_it_together_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_together_k eeping_it_together_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_togethe r_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_toge ther_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_t ogether_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_together_keeping_i t_together_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_together_keepin g_it_together_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_together_kee ping_it_together_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_together_ keeping_it_together_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_togeth er_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_tog ether_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_ together_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_together_keeping _it_together_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_together_keep ing_it_together_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_together_k eeping_it_together_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_togethe r_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_toge ther_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_t ogether_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_together_keeping_i t_together_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_together_keepin g_it_together_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_together_kee ping_it_together_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_together_ keeping_it_together_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_togeth er_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_tog ether_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_ together_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_together_keeping _it_together_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_together_keep ing_it_together_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_together_k eeping_it_together_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_togethe r_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_toge ther_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_t ogether_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_together_keeping_i t_together_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_together_keepin g_it_together_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_together_kee ping_it_together_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_together_ keeping_it_together_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_together_keeping_it_togeth IDEAS FOR PANDEMIC SHORT STORIES Jacob Wren

266 267 A large number of healthy young people volunteer to contract the virus and live together in a luxury quarantine hotel in order to, over time, boost herd immunity.

In the early days of the pandemic, before many people know what it is, a young man contracts the virus and immediately decides to pay a visit to the now elderly priest who abused him as a child.

In a misguided suicide attempt, an elderly man tries, and fails, to contract the virus.

Waiting in line to get tested for the virus, two strangers meet and fall in love. When they receive their test results one of them has tested positive and the other negative.

People sit alone in their apartments wondering how long this will last.

A young, would-be dictator considers the possibility that ‘voluntary social distancing’ might be the key to his future success.

For the first time in history a socialist is about to be elected president. And then the pandemic hits.

268 269 An activist group devises a means of protest in which A mutual aid group acquire a ventilator and teach every protester stands exactly six feet away from every themselves how to use it by watching YouTube tutorials. other protester. During a rent strike, the landlord comes over to meet A meeting at which everyone arrives, washes their the tenants as a group and, for the first time, they end hands, sits six feet away from each other, and talks. up having a real discussion about all of their lives.

A politician, having been told the pandemic is A vaccine is developed and the world rejoices. But soon completely under control, takes a wrong turn and ends scientists discover it is only effective in fifty percent of up in one of the poorest neighbourhoods, where he the population and no one can figure out why. learns things aren’t under control at all. A woman recounts the life story of her parents, who A new couple meet and fall in love just as the pandemic tragically both passed away at the exact same time. strikes and spend three months locked in their apartment having sex in every possible way. Two science aficionados are arguing on Twitter over whether the actual fatality rate is 1% or 0.8%, when one The virus rapidly spreads through the police force. of them receives a text message that his childhood best friend has died. At the factory where they assemble the virus tests, the poorly paid workers contract the virus and spread it The author recounts reading two different online through the tests. articles about the virus, presenting opposite sets of facts.

As he lies in bed dying of the virus, an elderly right- An anti-vaxxer has a deep crisis of faith. wing billionaire – who spent his entire life fighting against public services (especially against public A Hollywood screenwriter pitches a superhero film healthcare) – reflects on the fact that if there had been in which all the superheroes catch the virus. The pitch more effective healthcare the virus might not have spread does not go well. so rapidly and therefore he might not be dying now.

270 271 The Stall of Warm Handshakes Aaron Williamson

272 273 Standing outside St. Troys railway station in the pouring rain after dark, I was confronted with a three-way junction of terraced streets and no sign of a taxi or bus nearby. Pulling my collar up, I decided that the middle road would most likely lead into the centre of town. I was some way along the murky, narrow street when a hurrying figure came charging around the bend ahead of me. As we drew close, I saw that this shrouded, over-coated person held a small white cardboard sign, one that had been written on in marker pen. As we were about to pass each other, I blocked the way and enquired why there was a sign with my name on it? The figure halted, exclaimed, ‘Oh, you’re here!’ before eyeing me from head to foot, circling as though examining a statue. ‘I wouldn’t have thought…’ my greeter said, stopping mid-sentence, open-mouthed. Puzzled by this reaction to what I felt to be my unremarkable appearance – I was wearing a plain dark coat over jeans and boots, a black beanie covering my head – I asked again about the purpose of the cardboard sign. ‘Oh, I was meant to meet you off the train and wasn’t sure what you looked like.’ A gloved hand was extended towards me. ‘But anyway, welcome to St Troys, Mx Masters.’ Ignoring the hand, I made a fluttery finger wave in greeting. ‘Just Mick will do, thanks.’

274 275 ‘It’s an honour to meet you at last. I’m Jude Terry – Jude turned to me. ‘Was the costume in your bag?’ your Liaison Officer.’ I confirmed that it was. As the swaddling scarf was unwrapped I saw a ‘Well, I think the work has changed now anyway,’ striking, almost cartoonish face with high cheekbones they said. ‘We were planning to provide you with a and a button nose framed by bushy tawny hair. Oddly, different costume, so don’t worry.’ since I am normally quite remote when meeting I pondered for a moment as we stamped our feet new people, I felt an immediate affinity, a kindred against the cold. ‘Incidentally, I have no idea who we is,’ conspiratorial spirit. I told them. ‘I was booked through my Commissioning We stood about awkwardly in the rain until, as Agency with no specific information as to who my though reading my mind, Jude said: ‘I’m pleased to be employer is.’ working with you Mick, and can I briefly introduce Jude looked taken aback. ‘So you don’t know about myself by saying I’m non-binary so my pronouns are the Festival?’ “they” and “them”, OK?’ I shook my head. I nodded assent and assured them there was no ‘But you still have your contact lenses?’ they asked, problem. frowning. They suddenly appeared bashful, laughing and ‘Yes, of course. I’m wearing them.’ lowering their gaze. ‘Can I just say, you look quite Seemingly relieved, Jude suddenly strode forward normal. But I... I love your accent!’ into the road where a taxi was cruising towards us, its Jude bade me to accompany them back along the sign thankfully lit in the gloom. dark, dreary street to return to the train station. As we Opening the car door for me, Jude said, ‘You can did so at some pace, I informed them that I’d stupidly check in at the hotel. Another cab will collect you from left my luggage on the train and asked what we should the hotel at 8am tomorrow morning, OK?’ do about getting it back. Jude expressed sympathy at this setback, but then brightened. ‘Let’s get you in a taxi to the hotel and then I’ll go to the office and call the railway, OK?’ Waking very early I decided to skip the taxi and set out We were in front of the station now, getting walking into town, stumbling through a damp mist at increasingly soaked. 7.30am. All I knew about the Commission was that I

276 277 was scheduled to run some kind of market stall in St ‘Instead of standing out, they want you to blend Troys central pedestrian square from 9 o’ clock onwards. in.’ Jude looked meaningfully over at a heavily swathed Arriving there early, I’d just bought a styrofoam market man dressed in a beanie, puffer jacket, scarf, cup of coffee from a nearby catering van when Liaison jeans and trainers. ‘One of our assistants is collecting it Officer Jude suddenly appeared. all now.’ ‘What do you think?’ they asked. As we spoke I saw a diminutive figure dressed in an Turning to look around me I said, ‘Well, it’s an oversized postbox-red coat lurching towards us, almost evocative setting, yes.’ The square was overshadowed obliterated by the stuffed bin bag in her hands. When by a monstrous Victorian Gothic church – dedicated she’d almost reached us, the small woman plonked the to St. Helena – its protrusive presence resembling a bag down before flicking her drenched black hair from citadel of civic apparatus more than a place of worship. her eyes. ‘Unusual,’ I added, before asking, ‘So, what am I meant Jude hailed her and introduced us: ‘Anne, meet to be doing?’ Mick.’ ‘Oh, you’re just running a market stall. Paul will set Anne smiled at me in greeting. ‘Fantastic to meet it up for you; he’s one minute away.’ you at last – I’m so excited!’ she exclaimed, stepping All around the square, other marketeers were now around me to view my side and back. setting up their green and white gazebo stalls in the fine ‘Ah,’ said Jude, ‘here’s Paul with the stall.’ They drizzle, emptying boxes of cheap domestic goods onto nodded at a stocky man in soiled overalls, who was their tables. dragging a bunch of gazebo poles noisily over the The costume I’d originally been instructed to bring cobblestones. was prescribed as ‘a green or grey boiler suit worn over By now I’d noticed a curious phenomenon: Whereas thermals.’ I turned to Jude to ask if my luggage had the assistants would come in close up to me personally, been located and when they confirmed that it hadn’t, they seemed careful to maintain some physical space I asked what I would be wearing in the absence of the between themselves. This strangely observed separation, requested boiler suit? They said that the Commissioners as though each of them except me had halitosis, gave had, in fact, already communicated what they felt was a our small gathering a skewed, almost choreographic far better idea. character as they skipped gingerly around and away from each other.

278 279 Paul began assembling the market stall, while Anne ‘We just need you to reach out to people as they pass went off to fetch something, returning a few minutes the stall and offer to shake their hands in friendship.’ later with a large roll of PVC. Laying the tube down on ‘OK,’ I agreed, feeling somewhat perplexed. the floor, she took out and unscrolled a printed banner. Sensing my puzzlement, Jude attempted to reassure ‘What do you think?’ she asked. me. ‘All we’ve put in the brochure is…’ Here, they Along the top of the banner was emblazoned the plucked a printed document from a pocket, pointed to legend: ‘THE STALL OF WARM HANDSHAKES.’ a box of text and quoted, ‘Come and shake hands with Below this were some sixteen box illustrations – in Mick Masters.’ four rows of four – consisting of photographs of various types of handshakes. These images were cropped to the models’ torsos, cut off at the neck and the waist. The various handshakes depicted ranged from the aggressive, Taking up position at the front of the gazebo, I stiff-armed corporate kind, to a friendly, combined waited for the shoppers to arrive and accept my stall’s shake and hug. A high five and bumped fists were also invitation. Hung up behind me, the banner’s sixteen featured, along with the more conventional bone- illustrated handshakes appeared to offer a menu of crushing and limp-rag handshakes. point-to-choose options. There were curiously few I told Anne it was impressive – a really professional- shoppers at the market – less than twenty or so over looking banner – before confiding that I had no idea the first hour – and I attracted only vague, baffled what its ultimate purpose was. interest from them and not a single handshake. What ‘Oh, you just need to offer to shake hands with the few market-goers there were seemed anxious and passing public.’ demoralised as they lumbered around the stalls. Indeed, ‘That’s all?’ it struck me that everyone appeared to suffer from some Anne looked at me in consternation, seemingly sort of fatigue that was only allayed when they jolted stung by my nonchalance. and swerved away from each other. Fishing in the bin liner at my feet, I extracted a A further curious factor was that no two people cap, scarf, puffer-jacket and trainers – all of which were seemed to be together: Everyone was out alone, designed to make me look like the other market stall carefully avoiding entering anyone else’s physical orbit. holders – and removing my own clothing, put them on. Over the next two hours before midday – whilst we

280 281 waited for the scheduled press photographer to arrive – tune of two or three posed photos per hour as people I only managed to attract two handshakes. These were grimly shook my hands in a variety of ways direct to both performed with a couple of callow skateboarding the camera. youths who giggled as they selected a high five from Just after 4pm, as the sunlight began fading, a tall the menu. wiry chap stooped into the gazebo to face me square on, Soon enough, however, a tall, wispy man in a staring deep into my eyes. Disconcerted, I nonetheless grey fleece bounced into view, laden with bags and motioned for him to choose a handshake from the cases. As he pulled up at the usual observed distance, banner menu. Jude announced to me: ‘Here’s Rob from our local Selecting the one I’d dubbed ‘the blood pact’ – in newspaper, St. Troys Star.’ which the hands are raised up from bent elbows and folded together, clenched at the thumbs – we turned to face Rob’s camera. It had been such a long, strange day that I couldn’t be sure if it wasn’t my overactive With the team reorganised around the prominent imagination that made me feel an intense, thumping presence of a large camera atop a tripod, we found pulse emanating from the man’s wrist as it made contact ourselves attracting slightly more interest as Jude and with mine. Anne flanked either side of the stall and gingerly barked Holding the pose for the camera, I spoke low to at people to be photographed shaking hands with me. him: ‘What is it you want from me?’ One of our potential participants called over: ‘What is Without looking at me, the man replied from the it for?’ side of his mouth, ‘You know what it is… you’re here to Jude and Anne looked puzzled and requested advice make everyone well again.’ from me on how to answer this. I felt a sudden flush of disorientation. Was he saying ‘Don’t say it’s art,’ I advised. that some unspecified illness might be cured by shaking ‘Why don’t we tell them it’s for the local paper?’ hands with me? Rob suggested from behind his camera. ‘I’ve got a press Then, when Rob’s camera finally clicked, the man card I can wear around my neck.’ turned to face me, our hands still entwined. ‘Cos… With this final component in place, we got back to you are Cos,’ he said. ‘And you know what we’ve been work. Now, the stall was at last in some demand to the looking for.’

282 283 ‘What do you mean, “Cos”? My name’s Mick.’ enquired nervously: ‘I’m sorry, but who is it that you ‘We know who you are,’ he replied. ‘Call me Henry, think I am?’ and come to the Globe Inn, down that way,’ he nodded ‘Hear that accent?’ asked the man to my left. ‘That in the direction of a street off the square, ‘when you’re metallic sound?’ done here.’ ‘We know who you are,’ said Henry, and as though on cue, all three nodded and lifted their pint glasses to their mouths. ‘I’ve come to work here…’ I mumbled. Peering into the Globe Inn’s dingy brown and orange- ‘At the Festival,’ Henry completed for me. hued barroom, I saw three burly men seated separately, ‘I’m Mick Masters,’ I offered, attempting to dispel dispersed at tables in three of the four corners. Henry, the tense atmosphere. who’d visited the stall and requested my company here Henry bellowed across the room: ‘So where is your was positioned furthest from the bar. The other two, craft?’ also in their mid-fifties and like him, dressed in hooded ‘Um, I don’t have any specific craft; I just interpret sweatshirts, tracksuit bottoms and scuffed old trainers sat instructions as requested. I don’t really have any skill in the opposite corners to his right and left. sets.’ I bought a pint of foamy ale from a ponytailed, The three men frowned in puzzlement at this tattooed youth at the bar after which Henry called proclamation until Henry resumed: ‘Not that type of over to me: ‘So, you’re here, then.’ Flicking his head he craft – I meant, how did you get here?’ motioned for me to take a table in the fourth corner of ‘By train.’ the room, opposite him. The man next to Henry said, ‘No you didn’t. ‘It’s him, then?’ called over the man to my right. We knew you were arriving around now. It’s been The third one nodded over to me. ‘We were waiting predicted, Cos.’ for your arrival.’ That address again. ‘Who is this Cos?’ I asked. The men sounded like they were deliberately Henry exhaled. ‘Drop the smartarse pretence, can speaking to me in a round-robin fashion from their you? We know who you are. We’ve been waiting – corners across the barroom, their voices rhythmic and looking out for ages – and now you’re here.’ flatly nasal. Shifting uncomfortably on my stool, I The conversation was taking ever more baffling

284 285 turns. ‘Looking for me where?’ ‘Yes,’ said John, ‘we brought you here. We wanted The third man harrumphed and rolled his eyes. ‘The you to greet our people and the handshakes stall was the skies, Cos! Stop messing about!’ best idea we could come up with.’ Were these men crazy, perhaps? There was a weird lull until Henry spoke again: ‘But Henry asked, ‘You know who we are, right?’ you were holding back, weren’t you?’ Silence. The barman who’d been skulking around Richard nodded. ‘All you had to do was emanate a behind the taps took his cue to sheepishly recede to a sign of your powers.’ backroom somewhere. Shaking my head, I tried to digest this. ‘There seems ‘Tell him, Richard,’ said Henry to the man on to have been a misunderstanding.’ my left. ‘Which is what?’ John asked. ‘He’s Henry, King of England, and we are the Q.S.’ ‘I’m not really sure,’ I admitted, ‘but recently, the I had no idea what they were talking about. Agency semi-retired me, due to a run of perceived ‘Look,’ I began, ‘I’m here to fulfil a Commission. failed Commissions. These days they mostly just give My agency booked me for an anonymous third party to me gigs as a party starter.’ work at St. Troys Festival. That’s all I know.’ ‘What the heck is a party starter?’ asked Henry. ‘Well, yeah,’ said Richard, ‘we are that third party. ‘Well,’ I explained, ‘I’m professionally employed to You’re working for us, the Q.S.’ empathise with people who feel left out at corporate or I was even more perplexed by this revelation. ‘You wedding parties and try to get them involved.’ commissioned me? But what does Q.S. stand for?’ ‘I don’t get it!’ John exploded. ‘We’ve hired a “party Henry invited the third man to speak: ‘You tell him starter”?’ John.’ ‘Wait a minute,’ said Henry, ‘why did your agency John shrugged. ‘Oh, come off it, Cos! We’re the offer us what they called a visitation? We specified that Quintessentials Society – you must know who we are the Commission was for a CE5.’ as we carefully checked you out, and we know who you I shook my head uncomprehendingly. are.’ John said: ‘That’s a close encounter of the 5th kind – Richard added, ‘One of the Cosmic Masters.’ where we contact you.’ I was bewildered. What on earth were they talking ‘They said that you would be self-evident,’ Richard about? said, ‘quintessential.’

286 287 Henry was now shouting at me, ‘We’ve been mask had been lifted. ‘Remove them, can you – let’s see planning this for months!’ your eyes.’ I was starting to feel dizzy. ‘Look, I’m sorry, but I’ve Sighing, I leaned my head back and extracting the never even met anyone at the Agency; they just send contact lenses, placed them at the far edge of the table me an address to go to and then I bill them after the before me. Carefully, Henry crossed the room, reached Commission is done…’ arm’s length towards my table and lifted one of my ‘What about your name, then – Mick Masters?’ contact lenses from where I’d positioned them. Tilting it asked John. ‘It can’t be a coincidence that we’re seeking towards an overhead light bulb, Henry peered at it and to encounter one of the Cosmic Masters!’ sighed. ‘But it’s not my name!’ I protested. “The Agency ‘Completely transparent,’ said Henry. ‘Here, lift your gave it me. Look, the Agency doesn’t brief me on what face towards me.’ As I did so, he peered down, staring I’ll be doing. I just go to the rendezvous and do what into my eyes in the same way he’d done on the stall, I’m told by a Liaison Officer or someone.’ before turning back to his corner seat. ‘He’s human,’ said Henry. ‘We’ve been done,’ said Richard. Jude asked: ‘So, where are you from?’ As though on cue, the pub door swung open and in ‘I’m from Vilnius,’ I gasped. stepped Liaison Officer Jude. They selected a chair ‘You’re from Venus?!’ Jude echoed, mishearing me. midway along the wall between Richard and John so that ‘So you are one?’ we resembled a curious gathering of entirely separate ‘No, Vilnius in Lithuania.’ entities, like those bus passengers that deliberately choose ‘He’s a foreigner!’ shouted Henry. ‘Pah! What’s your seats furthest away from anyone else. real name?’ Once seated Jude looked over at Henry and said, ‘I’m Vyras Astralinis,’ I whispered. ‘Well? ’ John looked over at me with an expression of ‘He’s not one,’ said Henry glumly. disgust. ‘Just a common little foreigner.’ ‘But what about the contact lenses, then?’ Jude Richard adopted a stentorian, solemn voice as he addressed me, their manner changed from the earlier stood up behind his table and declaimed: ‘Henry, future benign assistant to one of consternation, as though a King of England, who will one day bring to us our

288 289 Cosmic Masters…’ By now, he was rolling his eyes and for the blackest space before me – a narrow entry to hissing between his teeth. a side alley – I hared off. For the next ten minutes Jude stood and sheepishly made their way slowly or so I plunged through the driving rain, taking as over to the bar. There they located a key from a hook many turnings as possible along the mercifully low-lit and went over to lock the door before returning to backroads of the labyrinthine town. The cobblestones their seat. caused me to skid and lose my balance here and there, From his corner, Henry said, ‘You’ve tried to gull but eventually I decided to cower behind an old pillar us, and we Quintessentials do not forgive.’ Reaching box and watch for anyone coming. behind him, he extracted a knife from somewhere in I was just wondering which direction I should take his clothing, a long thin dagger with a jewelled handle towards the town’s outskirts when, from out of the that looked ceremonial in appearance. Then holding darkness a hooded figure strode towards me. It seemed the dagger by its blade he brandished it overhead, knife- certain I’d be discovered until, close to me now, the thrower fashion, and aimed in my direction across the man – Richard from the pub it seemed – abruptly halted barroom. He shut his eyes as though harkening to some as though he’d walked into a glass screen. unheard message before shouting, ‘No-one must look I lit out again across the road and bolted down upon this act!’ another alleyway. Soon, from out of the murk I saw As I glanced around, the other Quintessentials another cowled, scurrying form lurching towards me. likewise shut their eyes tight in response to this Again, the same effect: Upon reaching just several feet command, and threw their heads back. away, the man seemed to crash into an invisible barrier. Reflexively, I perceived my chance, jumped to my I turned again. And again. And each time the same feet and dashed to the door. There I stopped in dismay, thing happened: A hooded figure appeared before me remembering that Jude had locked it, but when I tried but was stopped dead in his tracks some six feet in front the handle in desperation the door swung open and, of me. Was I hallucinating with fear perhaps? with a bound, I hurtled out onto the pavement. And then finally, I turned sharply left away from a further stunned assailant, who as far as I could tell, was an enraged, cussing Henry.

The overhead street lighting was dim and so, peering

290 291 Then the road ahead widened and a familiar ‘This will do,’ I said to Jude. ‘Let’s go!’ swaddled, shrouded form stood stationary, ahead of Once we were standing at the roundabout’s centre, me. Dragging myself forward I gradually made out the I asked Jude, ‘How did you know?’ figure of Jude and pulled up. ‘You told them in the pub that your name is Vyras Through the gloom they yelled, ‘I didn’t lock the Astralinis,’ they smirked. ‘I learned some Lithuanian pub’s door!’ from my friend Lina.” ‘Yes, Man of the Stars.’ ‘So you really are a Cosmic Master?’ Jude peered up at me, a look of wonderment on their face. When I reached Jude, they seemed to lurch forward and I was trying to pick up a telepathic signal in order to extended their hand in greeting. I reached out and then, communicate to the Commissioning Agency Craft that gaining confidence, shook it warmly. I’d successfully recruited a voluntary human abductee, ‘I want to go with you,’ they said. but so far, there was nothing. ‘Are you sure?’ I asked, somewhat surprised. ‘You Jude asked: ‘Are you abducting me?’ realise that changes everything if you leave here with Whilst I stood with Jude on the roundabout, I me?’ looked to the horizon. What was the small light that Jude nodded. was squirting across the sky in the distance? We were still hand in hand, and not wishing to Turning to Jude, I said, ‘Could we shake hands again delay, I pulled them forward with me as I said, ‘We – warmly?’ must move fast; we have to get to the edge of town.’ They smiled and nodded. Jude nodded. ‘We need to turn down here then.’ Patiently, we waited. And waited. We set off side by side at a lumpen jog, which was all I could manage after half an hour’s darting about. At last we reached the end of the lane, and there before us was a dual carriageway, which meant we’d finally reached the edge of the town centre. Just two hundred yards further along the road was a grass- covered roundabout.

292 293 I SEARCH FOR AN ARTWORK WITH THESE 25 QUALITIES Hruna Mrrisono

294 295 296 CARETAKER Hester Chillingworth

298 299 8.05.2020

19:48 Welcome. You are welcome here. Nothing is expected of you. Whatever else happens, or doesn’t happen, you are welcome. I’ll say it again. You are welcome here. Take care.

Caretaker is a livestream of the empty Royal Court stage, being broadcast throughout lockdown. Intermittent audio messages are played in 24-hour cycles. This is a small selection of the announcements, which are spoken by a computer-generated voice.

300 301 9.5.2020 08:59 Welcome. You would be surprised at the number of people who fancy you. You would be surprised at the number of people who fancy you. Take care.

21:37 Welcome. You should be as nice to yourself as you are to other people. You should be as nice to yourself as you are to other people. Take care.

302 303 10.5.2020

09:49 Welcome.

You swear the perfect amount.

You swear the perfect amount.

Take care. 17:14 Welcome. Somebody misses you. So much. Somebody misses you. So much. Take care. 11:16 Welcome. When people have a meal with you, their food tastes better. When people have a meal with you, their food tastes better. Take care.

304 305 11.05.2020

01:39 Welcome. You have this great ability to see things from multiple perspectives. You have this great ability to see things from multiple perspectives. Take care.

10:43 Welcome. 19:04 Well done everybody. Everybody’s doing really well. Welcome. Well done everybody. Everybody’s doing really well. When things turn out to be long and unknown, Take care. you are good person to have around. When things turn out to be long and unknown, you are good person to have around. Take care.

306 307 12.05.2020

14:38 Welcome. You don’t trust computers more than it’s wise to. Very sensible. You don’t trust computers more than it’s wise to. Very sensible. Take care.

09:49 Welcome. You have kind hands. 20:58 You have kind hands. Welcome. Take care. You make time feel like liquid. You make time feel like liquid. Take care.

308 309 13.05.2020

01:07 Welcome. 12:55 You are enough. Welcome. One more time. You are enough. You are comparatively easygoing. Take care. You are comparatively easygoing. Take care.

15:21 Welcome. You are good at reaching across distances. You are good at reaching across distances. Take care.

21:37 Welcome. When you are sad it is like someone turning off music. When you are sad it is like someone turning off music. Take care.

310 311 15.05.2020

02:32 Welcome. Even when you are broken, you are still a fixer. Even when you are broken, you are still a fixer. 15:21 Take care. Welcome. You are great at thinking of presents. You are great at thinking of presents. Take care.

312 313 25.5.2020

13:48 Welcome. You are courageous in your thinking. You are courageous in your thinking. Take care.

07:10 Welcome. You know when to delete a message and when to reply. You know when to delete a message and when to reply. Take care.

19:48 Welcome. You look really cool today. You look really cool today. Take care.

314 315 27.5.2020

13:48 Welcome. You are not a truth twister. Unlike some. You are not a truth twister. Unlike some. Take care.

05:44 Welcome. Even when you are jealous, you manage to be generous. Even when you are jealous, you manage to be generous. Take care.

316 317 29-30.5.2020

Repeated 30 times over 24 hours 12:55, 13:48, 14:38, 15:21, 16:19, 17:14, 18:19, 19:04, 19:48, 20:18, 20:58, 21:37, 22:11, 23:01, 00:02, 01:07, 01:39, 02:32, 03:09, 03:59, 04:39, 05:44,06;34, 07:10, 08:15, 08:59, 09:49, 10:43, 11:16, 11:57

Welcome. Don’t be silent about the racist murder of George Floyd. Or that horrendous racist Trump calling the protestors thugs. Or the fact that we are no better and no less racist in the UK. Don’t be silent. Please make noise. On this, silence equals complicity. On this, silence equals death. Know when to be silent. And know when to make noise. Please. Take care. Welcome. Don’t be silent about the racist murder of George Floyd. Or that horrendous racist Trump calling the protestors thugs. Or the fact that we are no better and no less racist in the UK. Don’t be silent. Please make noise. On this, silence equals complicity. On this, silence equals death. Know when to be silent. And know when to make noise. Please. 08:57 Take care. Welcome. Welcome. When you leave a place, for the other people there it is like Don’t be silent about the racist murder of George Floyd. Or that the feeling of getting all the way home and realising, ‘Oh no, horrendous racist Trump calling the protestors thugs. Or the fact that I’ve forgotten something on the shopping list.’ we are no better and no less racist in the UK. Don’t be silent. Please When you leave a place, for the other people there it is like make noise. On this, silence equals complicity. On this, silence the feeling of getting all the way home and realising, ‘Oh no, equals death. Know when to be silent. And know when to make I’ve forgotten something on the shopping list.’ noise. Please. Take care. Take care. Welcome. Don’t be silent about the racist murder of George Floyd. Or that horrendous racist Trump calling the protestors thugs. Or the fact that we are no better and no less racist in the UK. Don’t be silent. Please make noise. On this, silence equals complicity. On this, silence equals death. Know when to be silent. And know when to make noise. Please. Take care.

318 319 Welcome. Welcome. Don’t be silent about the racist murder of George Floyd. Or that Don’t be silent about the racist murder of George Floyd. Or that horrendous racist Trump calling the protestors thugs. Or the fact that horrendous racist Trump calling the protestors thugs. Or the fact that we are no better and no less racist in the UK. Don’t be silent. Please we are no better and no less racist in the UK. Don’t be silent. Please make noise. On this, silence equals complicity. On this, silence make noise. On this, silence equals complicity. On this, silence equals death. Know when to be silent. And know when to make equals death. Know when to be silent. And know when to make noise. Please. noise. Please. Take care. Take care. Welcome. Welcome. Don’t be silent about the racist murder of George Floyd. Or that Don’t be silent about the racist murder of George Floyd. Or that horrendous racist Trump calling the protestors thugs. Or the fact that horrendous racist Trump calling the protestors thugs. Or the fact that we are no better and no less racist in the UK. Don’t be silent. Please we are no better and no less racist in the UK. Don’t be silent. Please make noise. On this, silence equals complicity. On this, silence make noise. On this, silence equals complicity. On this, silence equals death. Know when to be silent. And know when to make equals death. Know when to be silent. And know when to make noise. Please. noise. Please. Take care. Take care. Welcome. Welcome. Don’t be silent about the racist murder of George Floyd. Or that Don’t be silent about the racist murder of George Floyd. Or that horrendous racist Trump calling the protestors thugs. Or the fact that horrendous racist Trump calling the protestors thugs. Or the fact that we are no better and no less racist in the UK. Don’t be silent. Please we are no better and no less racist in the UK. Don’t be silent. Please make noise. On this, silence equals complicity. On this, silence make noise. On this, silence equals complicity. On this, silence equals death. Know when to be silent. And know when to make equals death. Know when to be silent. And know when to make noise. Please. noise. Please. Take care. Take care. Welcome. Welcome. Don’t be silent about the racist murder of George Floyd. Or that Don’t be silent about the racist murder of George Floyd. Or that horrendous racist Trump calling the protestors thugs. Or the fact that horrendous racist Trump calling the protestors thugs. Or the fact that we are no better and no less racist in the UK. Don’t be silent. Please we are no better and no less racist in the UK. Don’t be silent. Please make noise. On this, silence equals complicity. On this, silence make noise. On this, silence equals complicity. On this, silence equals death. Know when to be silent. And know when to make equals death. Know when to be silent. And know when to make noise. Please. noise. Please. Take care. Take care. Welcome. Welcome. Don’t be silent about the racist murder of George Floyd. Or that Don’t be silent about the racist murder of George Floyd. Or that horrendous racist Trump calling the protestors thugs. Or the fact that horrendous racist Trump calling the protestors thugs. Or the fact that we are no better and no less racist in the UK. Don’t be silent. Please we are no better and no less racist in the UK. Don’t be silent. Please make noise. On this, silence equals complicity. On this, silence make noise. On this, silence equals complicity. On this, silence equals death. Know when to be silent. And know when to make equals death. Know when to be silent. And know when to make noise. Please. noise. Please. Take care. Take care 320 ... 321 LAND LOCKED M. John Harrison

322 323 There’s no evil in the story, only loss and confusion.

Palinurus the Navigator fell off the boat and forgot his signature skill. Panic attacks, anxiety attacks and depressive episodes followed. ‘You don’t ask a builder,’ he remembered trying to explain to someone, ‘if an arch is the truth about something. That isn’t the point.’ For a moment before sunset, light levels were distributed strangely across the landscape, so that the coastal hills seemed closer than the house. ‘You can either build an arch or you can’t.’ After that he drove from town to town up the coast, deteriorating all the way and no one heard from him again.

Her journey was literally at right angles to his. Though she had never learned to drive, she found that after she had eaten a cab driver it came easily to her, along with the local language. She left not long after him, heading north, following the steady rise of the land: but while the Navigator clung to the coast, always keeping the sea to his left, she headed for the interior, seeking out middle-class landscapes with simple founding assumptions. A glass of wine in the evening; a toddler on the patio in the failing light; people waiting unexpectantly to find themselves in their real lives – or unexpectantly trying to outlive the wrong lives – all of their lives. Often, she found them surrounded by a detritus of their own acts of abjection, symbolised in

324 325 collections of rediscovered personal possessions from She felt some sort of relief to be out of the salt sea. which they felt alienated. They often remarked that But a life on land had no credibility as far as she was they wondered why they had these objects. She kept a concerned; it was just something to laugh about. geranium in a pot in the back of the car; reached behind Meanwhile, she could see that he was still not sure he her now and then, while driving, to crush a leaf. hadn’t, in fact, died. Their conversations from then on were frequent, but always brief. She might sit with Palinurus had two repeating dreams. In the first, as he her feet in a half-filled bucket and her shoulders in the went overboard, the water had an ugly look – dark sunlight from the window, asking him about the things and speedy but also with something to it of stagnant she could see. From the outset he had left her to her harbours, scenes you might find yourself in when you own devices in the evening, while he went from bar were already dead: shallow in places; black mudbanks to bar along the seafront telling the story to old friends in static water with a cream of chemicals all over; who didn’t believe it. overlooked by shipping containers; a viscidness, a meniscus full of petroleum rainbows and bobbing foecal The rooms she stayed in during her drive inland were matter; bent cans, plastics large and small. Small islands often full of a strong old-fashioned scent she associated of ruderal scrub. Whole dead animals with slick fur and with the seafront barbershops – although it might no eyes. Like that one minute, anyway, but the next equally have been confectionary. It was on the edge changing direction to accelerate and rush past, then – between perfume and citrus and also – since there was grey and waveless, bowed tight at the surface, here and no one but her in the room – seemed liminal in its there pulsing, like the worst currents, the big cold rips actual nature, that is, both there and not there. A little and eddies of a body of true coastal water – carry you later it was gone. She would get up and walk about in a off in the night. That moment, felled by the tiller, woken restless way, not exactly sniffing the air but holding it in so abruptly from one nightmare into the next, Palinurus her nose then breathing out slowly, lifting her head like knew he’d had it. Yet he hadn’t, and through luck and an animal bringing into play an olfactory organ human coincidence made it somehow to the shore. That was the beings don’t have. Sometimes she thought she could still unexpected thing about it all, he reported: it wasn’t by smell the scent, but more often she couldn’t. Later she any means the end. would realise it was herself.

326 327 Palinurus’ second repeating dream was essentially one anything. Why else would you plant anything, if not for of kinesis. It was a relic: the bodily memory of another it to come up? So instead of trying to answer she looked time, other levels of confidence, and awareness. But out of the window at a man on a little tractor, going up given the slightest encouragement, it spilled out of the and down in the short, sloping field below the house. night and took him over, as if it had been down there He had a dog that ran about untiringly, up and down waiting since the accident. Understanding yourself, he the shallow furrows, which were dark to begin with but thought, is always a meaningless joke. But sometimes dried out in minutes; it stopped at every corner to stand you can’t help wanting to make personal contact with and stare around as if it had never stood there before. who you are, or in this case who you used to be. You get lost a few times. You give up. It’s scary at first. That’s Alone in the room again, she found a glass bowl full when you remember that the dream has a lizardlike, of water and sunlight, throwing onto the wall every ironic look in its eye. Shortly after falling off the boat, flickering, shimmering, debatable pattern she knew. though, he had begun to feel liberated. ‘I enjoyed it!’ Who had pulled whom ashore? Given the situation, he insisted, the final time they talked. In return she neither of them would ever be sure. The sea had had asked him how much of that elation – that relief – was an ugly look that night; but there is no evil in the a diversion. How much of his embrace of what he now story, only a misunderstood gesture, the saturations called possibility was a covert replay of the final voyage? of self-deception. He’s dead and she’s marooned. He He said he didn’t want to talk about that. Navigation never leaves his dream; she won’t, now, ever leave that was a broken process for him, he’d taken it up too early room. It is a comedy, a brief confusion followed by and now he felt free. both persons getting, in a sense, what they want. For instance, he often reassures himself as he travels the In the last room she took, they gave her a fruit that coast, ‘To what degree does “navigator” only mean tasted like slightly sweetened rubber, which she ate “someone going somewhere”?’ While she thinks: Why slowly, keeping away the many small flies with one do I love the light here so much? hand. A girl watched her carefully as she ate, her expressions changing as if she was eating it herself. ‘Yum,’ said the girl. And: ‘We plant them every year, so they come up.’ This seemed too literal to mean

328 329 CIGARETTES AND TUNA Rupert Thomson

330 331 Characters:

DOUG – A man in his late fifties. FRANK – A man in his early sixties. JUDY – A woman in her early fifties. NORMAN – A man in his mid-twenties.

Open on blacked-out stage.

A dog’s bark comes from the wings, aggressive- sounding, throaty. The dog will bark intermittently throughout the production, like a kind of punctuation. Only Doug reacts to the dog barking. The other characters don’t seem to notice.

Light fades up, but stays dim.

The room has bare wood floorboards and mouldy peeling grey walls. A single bed juts out from the back wall. The sheets and bedclothes are filthy, almost black. To the left of the bed is a door that opens on to a small landing. Just visible is a flight of stairs that leads down to the ground floor. To the right of the bed, and also behind it, are hundreds of packets of Benson & Hedges. They are piled high, almost to the ceiling, the gold glinting dully. Further to the right are tins of John West tuna, also piled to the ceiling.

332 333 On the left-hand wall is a fireplace with a gas fire. JUDY: My leg’s gone dead, Frank. On the mantelpiece above is a paint-spattered radio. FRANK: Well, we’re here now. On the right-hand wall is a window, its curtains JUDY: Your car’s too small. It’s like a dwarf’s car. partially drawn. FRANK: Have you got the cheroots? NORMAN: I’ve got them. On the floor next to the bed is a large ashtray overflowing with butts. Also a couple of empty There’s a silence. We imagine Frank, Judy and Norman tuna cans. looking up at the house.

Lying on his back in bed is Doug, his head resting on JUDY: Do you think he’s in? a stack of soiled pillows. He’s wearing a brown djellaba FRANK: He’s always in. and a pale yellow kufi. His beard reaches down over his DOUG: Christ. chest. He looks ten years older than he is. He takes a big drag on his cigarette. A length of ash He takes a cigarette out of the packet on the bed next topples into his beard. He doesn’t brush it away. to him and lights it. He inhales deeply – so deeply that hardly any smoke comes out when he exhales. Car doors slam shut. The clunk of central locking.

The air in the room is wreathed in smoke. Layers of it JUDY: It’s your first time, isn’t it, Norman. (Pauses.) drift up near the ceiling. Are you nervous?

A car pulls up outside. About to inhale again, Doug The click of a latch as someone opens the gate. pauses with his cigarette halfway to his lips. He listens intently. The engine cuts out, and car doors open. JUDY: Don’t worry. He won’t bite. Voices remain off stage, but they float up into the room. FRANK: He might.

334 335 Footsteps approach. The front door opens. Judy, Frank, NORMAN: So where is he? and Norman are in the house now. Their voices are FRANK: Upstairs. He’s got everything he needs getting closer. up there. JUDY: Everything? Doug stubs his cigarette out in the ashtray, then lies FRANK: His cigarettes. His tuna. back on the bed, eyes closed. NORMAN: Doesn’t he go out? FRANK: No, never. JUDY: Fancy leaving the door open like that. JUDY: He used to. He was quite a one for going out. FRANK: He always leaves it open. (Pauses). He had women. JUDY: You’d think he’d lock the door. Anyone could walk in. Doug grimaces. But keeps his eyes closed. FRANK: He can’t be bothered. JUDY: What about burglars? FRANK: Not any more. FRANK: He doesn’t care about burglars. NORMAN: He probably hasn’t got anything worth Eyes still closed, Doug fumbles around for the cigarette stealing. packet – but then decides against it. JUDY: Look. A bed. FRANK (calling): Doug? There’s the crackle of plastic or cellophane. Doug starts to breathe deliberately and rhythmically, as JUDY: It’s brand new. All wrapped up. if he’s actually asleep. FRANK: I bought him that bed, but he won’t use it. (Pauses.) I bought him lot of things. He just leaves them FRANK: Are you up there, Doug? down here – to rot. JUDY (singsong voice): We’re coming to get you! JUDY: Can’t you talk some sense into him? FRANK: No, you can’t. (Pauses.) You can’t talk sense Frank chuckles. Doug steels himself. into him. He won’t listen. He just won’t listen.

336 337 Footsteps on the stairs. They sound loud and clunky, as JUDY: Oh dear. if Doug’s visitors are making as much noise as possible. Perhaps it’s because they want Doug to know he’s She’s all dolled up, as if for a day out. Her foundation is being intruded on – or perhaps they’re nervous, and too thick, though, and her lavish red lipstick doesn’t fit overcompensating. Or perhaps it’s just because there’s her mouth. She’s voluptuous and flirtatious, but there’s no stair carpet. something childlike – eerie – about her body language and her way of speaking. Doug is doing an excellent impression of someone who’s asleep. Norman stays in the doorway. He has a sickly complexion, and he’s wearing a suit that’s a bit too small Frank stops in the doorway, with Judy and Norman for him. He looks like someone who works in the lower behind him. Frank is dressed conventionally, in a striped echelons of the civil service. He seems wary and also shirt and tie, a cardigan and a pair of cavalry twill curious – but there’s a vicious edge as well. trousers. He’s got a despairing streak – not just about Doug, about everything. It’s his default position, and it’s Frank leans over the bed. histrionic. But he’s also got a sly side. He’s mischievous. FRANK: Doug? It’s Frank. Judy is peering over Frank’s shoulder, trying to look in. Doug doesn’t react. He goes on breathing steadily. JUDY: Is he there? FRANK: Doug? Are you asleep? Frank moves forwards and stands next to the bed, looking down at Doug. Doug’s still pretending to be Frank stands back. Turns to the others. asleep. FRANK: He’s asleep. Judy stands in the middle of the room, looking round. NORMAN: He’s not asleep.

338 339 Judy moves over to the bed, grabs Doug’s shoulder and JUDY: It’s daytime. You shouldn’t be sleeping in the gives him a brisk shake. daytime. It’s not natural.

JUDY: Wake up, Doug. You’ve got visitors! The dog barks loudly outside.

Doug realises he can’t keep up the pretence any longer. DOUG (raspy voice): Shut up, will you! He opens his eyes and stares at the ceiling, then he JUDY: That’s not very nice. reaches for a cigarette. He doesn’t pay any attention to DOUG: I wasn’t talking to you. his visitors. He simply lights his cigarette and blows JUDY: Well, you should talk to me. You should. smoke everywhere. (Pauses.) We’re family.

Judy steps back sharply from the bed. Norman lets out a quick, soft laugh, then moves across the room to the far side of the bed. JUDY: Do you have to do that? It’s smoky enough in here already. (Glances round.) It’s like a – like a casino. He stands in front of the wall of cigarettes and tuna. Moves his head this way and that, like someone in Norman gives her a look. What would you know a gallery. about casinos? FRANK: We just dropped in to see you, Doug. Make DOUG: What are you doing in my bedroom? sure you’re all right. We won’t be staying long. FRANK: We thought we’d come and visit you. JUDY: It’s not very cosy in here. (Pauses.) There isn’t We thought we’d come and say – even a chair. DOUG: Barging in here, waking me up. I was asleep, DOUG: What would I want with a chair? for Christ’s sake – JUDY: There’s nowhere to sit. FRANK: Don’t be like that, Doug. I mean, it’s been a DOUG: I don’t need to sit. while, hasn’t it – since we last saw each other – JUDY: What about visitors? DOUG: I was asleep. DOUG: I don’t have any. JUDY (eyes gleaming): You do now.

340 341 evening Sophie Jung

342 343 And a dream happened to me in the morning. It pulled the muscles off of my skin’s sleazoid starting points in the name of even. It came off the length of my legs but longer. Several of them but only one. It was tubular but without an exterior. All of it was innermost and all of it ended where it ended. Everything in it was even. The way that bakers tell you before opening the oven doors. Equally counting up from always to forever in an ongoing blue bar: The unnamable segments in between the digits living it up and against hot air is all. I haven’t got all days would be the phrase but words aren’t encouraged and you have. All of them. We’re lower down, sea level is even the bubble off-centre but you’re looking through the wrong window. We’re horizontal, my days stretching my waist either way on a rack that’s recently been archived over ungoing Utopia. It wasn’t even as bad as it sounds. Everything was even. No bumps no sighs no knots no lumps no secret dips to get laid in or crouch in cramp no bad news no cracks no black mold no triumph no stagnation no lack no sir, puss val you no puss no healing no talent. There was nothing pleasant about it as such: work (put

344 345 your hands together) had (put your hands together) to Hand suspended out in decele rising motion, a little (put your hands together) be (put your hands together) awkwardly maybe, as the little one’d decrease in done. Put your hands together and push. perspective. But would I look like I cared? What’s inbetween is even. Out a distance apart stop. Hold open one hand and clench the other behind your Hand out a mime moves the hand across panes left right back. What’s in between is greet front back across right angled pains till the wrist flips the oncoming shore with a wave. down and you stroke even in the direction of growth Clench one hand held high the other low fiving even your h and in in in infinite. That is even. is striving. Even isn’t soft to the touch. It comes towards you relentlessly. You follow close I was already on my way is the hairline tattoo on the back behind while your skinsuit bumps and loosens in time of even is the message to with nothing. Convey or belt along to the tip of your tongue but you An even needs perpetual adjustment WE MUST NOT can’t re member you can’t re assemble the gum-flicking INTERVEIN though to be fair no voice of such grade wetwords let me grab and stretch let me stretch and fold has come near me since I started on my evening shift and stretch and fold shift shift no linger no longer shift move along now. This year people have ended and I’d like to wrap them Continual evening is priority but priority is a word that into even. Specific. Even t t t t falls past all ears on this level level level with you I hear No. Starts. And. Stops. In. Even. the voice but it won’t speak. Let me delve back into the velocity if you focus on the Hold the blue bar in your sizing palm and let background the foreground is still. One ground. Sorry. tt t-t-issued internality flush through your sm oothering One ground flickers while e e yes closed, always, the act of moving along now with Even flows out of my toes, contained, I flow with it an empartial impathial eye meant even. A rhetorical pat, while my head is long gone my crown open as they are encouraging where no courage is needed. the nacreous even in its girth. My sleeping middle and Even the way I’d have my supporting hand on a smaller its stabilisers remain casually settled. Immo bile bile bile one’s back the instant their stabilisers become excess. streaming though the roof is off the sky is even. We’d be widening the gap between the essential and Immat erial receives: Even is cloudy. the superfluous. Even doesn’t smell but it smells good the way a broken

346 347 watch’s working watchstrap might have it coming. This arm is dismembered and disdance is for you. No memory but eternal reassurance. Remembered this decentred waltz. It is mute but I can sense the sound of a million empty Even dances silently. shells tumble down a makeshift beach shifting shape Even is ongoing. according to the greed of slurpers. Even is the b of breath held while you continue reathing Bystander assembly line of the informal: No shape given reven is not equal to never. Is not equal to equal. none taken. Even is not even even even is. Give us our daily bread is kneaded even even in the Equality is based on justice even tuality just is. most isolated of houses. The steep black shells, they swallow you whole quick if You have no house: the reversed architect measured the your legs didn’t slip across their mass of outsides weren’t outside not the inside. on the beach they were the beach Their plans are drawing near and far. while a dream happened to me in the morning where I The builder measured water flour salt in equal was evening quantities. Not even. what already is Heavy light wait: The oven stands for sundown sun rise before it goes in the oven. A matter of degrees. Not even. There comes a point at which you’re crisp. Living vessels aren’t as stable as the mussels would have hoped. Bread is daily the clock is not clocking the watch is not seeing. Bread is even though is even dough is even the opposite of a home. No ex no in just turnal knock turnal comes round who is it, it’s even tual matter of the crust is accidental. Even is smooth. Abrupt is known to even but conjured with disarm.

348 349 WHAT (NOT) TO DO WITH YOUR HANDS WHEN YOU ARE NERVOUS Eley Williams

350 351 Postcard One

Let’s say I’m currently on the Hammersmith & City Line and on my way to the British Library. My head is claggy with admin, studies, nonsense, news. It is just after the morning rush hour and the carriage is not too busy. I don’t have a seat and I am standing with my arm raised to keep me steady against the sway of the tube. In this posture, I need to tilt my head a little to read the hands on my watch. I have enough room to sway and list a little, holding on to the yellow plastic, wipe-clean, overhead strap.

My nails are clean, short.

I am meant to be thinking about Keats or rather thinking about an essay about Keats. A clean, short poet – I have written down somewhere on a bit of scratch paper that he was just over five feet tall. In 1819 while dying of self-diagnosed tuberculosis, Keats attempted a comic poem titled ‘The Jealousies’. Who cares. Not me, and not necessarily Keats: he broke off from writing – ‘Cupid I / Do thee defy’ – and composed an untitled eight-line fragment in the blank space on the manuscript page. Titled posthumously ‘This Living Hand’, the poem presents the macabre image of a hand, both inanimate and

352 353 animate, alive and dead, seeking out the reader for an from beneath his fringe, or made angry little doodles exchange of blood. on his notes.

Perhaps you know the poem. Maybe you could In his poem ‘Hyperion’, Keats describes the figure recite it to the bump and grunt of Hammersmith & Saturn sitting aghast in the thrall of his thwarted City rolling stock. I imagine everyone in the carriage ambition: ‘Upon the sodden ground / His old right reciting snatches of their favourite poetry, its meter hand lay nerveless, listless, dead / Unsceptred.’ (The dictated by transport. word metonym is suddenly on my mind, but I’m not confident enough to use it properly.) There is a weird I learned the word haptic yesterday. Haptic, tactile, amputation of the Titan-character here, whereby the touch: I say these words in time with the tube train’s hand is viewed as an exhibit isolated from the body percussion. to which it is presumably attached.

Postcard Two Whereby. Honestly.

I’m running late for a job interview, currently sitting I am so on edge about this interview that I am on a tube beneath London Bridge station. I note that relying on words like whereby to get me through the everyone in the carriage is more attractive than me. day and make me seem like I’m worth a damn. That’s fine. I twitch my thumb across my phone screen and (It is not fine that I noticed.) check an article titled ‘What (Not) To Do With Your Hands When You Are Nervous.’ Keats trained as a physician at Guy’s hospital not far from here and as the carriage idles between As a trainee physician, Keats’ hand would have stations I imagine student-Keats sitting in some cold, been trained (‘capable’) and ambitious (‘earnest’) but round, dour dissection lecture theatre. I wonder perhaps overly-so (‘grasping’). The academic Donald whether he ever stole looks at his fellow students Goellnicht claims that Keats’ reason for abandoning

354 355 a career in surgery might be ascribed to a fear of takes the shape of a woman’s curled fingers. No idea misdirecting the instrument of the trade in his hands: how old it is. ‘My last operation,’ Keats informed a friend in a letter, ‘was the opening of a man’s temporal artery. I My mother was always at pains to ensure that I did it with the utmost nicety; but, reflecting on what moisturise my hands because ‘they are one of the first passed through my mind at the time, my dexterity telltale sites of premature aging.’. Thank you, mother. seemed a miracle, and I never took up the lancet The vase is very smooth and I cannot stop sneaking again.’ my hand into my bag and touching it.

I will not touch my mouth or hair. These are On the journey here I couldn’t help but notice apparently sure signs I am a liar. the hands of my fellow passengers: folded in laps, tapping along with an unseen beat, steepled, gnawed. (I will always touch my mouth and hair, I am I have grown newly interested in how hands can be a liar.) used since I met [Editor’s note: the writing here is hard to decipher, presumably written in agitation or in haste]. My nails are still short, clean. I’m thinking about It feels thrilling and the best-kind-of-obscene that my interview prep and ‘Hyperion’ and Keats and all we get to see hands naked in public so incidentally. the hot people on the tube, but I’m also thinking Indecently incidentally. Grasp, clutch, beckon, grip. about a joke we used to tell at school: If you sit on your hands 15 minutes before filling in an exam, it feels like Keats had an express interest in his own physical somebody else is disappointing your teacher. This was a riff hand and its physiology. His contemporary on an older, better-known joke about jerking off. Leigh Hunt observed: ‘Keats was sensible of the disproportion […] between his upper and lower Postcard Three extremities; and he would look at his hand, which was faded, and swollen in the veins, and say it was I’ve found a really neat little vase in a charity shop the hand of a man of fifty.’ near Parliament Hill. It’s a cool white porcelain and

356 357 Postcard Four Postcard Five

Since writing the above, I have done some Googling Keats’ anatomy lecturer Sir Astley Paston Cooper about the small vase that I found. It sounds strikingly warned his students that ‘surgery requires certain similarly to this product listed on eBay: ‘Fresh to the qualities, without which no man can arise to market we offer this rare antique Royal Worcester celebrity in the Profession, -- these are a good Eye, a parian vase designed by James Hadley. This stunning steady hand, and above all a Mind which is not easily porcelain spill vase is formed as a lady’s hand ruffled by circumstances which may occur during supporting a Grecian urn with her sleeve forming the the Operation’ [italics my own]. Elsewhere he asked base and with a jewelled bracelet around her wrist. It that one brings into synthesis ‘an eagle’s eye, a lady’s is allegedly modelled on his wife’s hand and dating hand, and a lion’s heart’. It does not seem too far from the 19th century.’ to suggest that Hazlitt’s concept of the artist as ‘one who is born with an anatomist’s eye’ might be subtly I imagine a wife’s hand replicated over and over altered, whereby a poet can be equipped with a and over. Still and chilled and flawless on mantelpieces surgeon’s hand. across the world, holding onto nothing. In my notes on this, I underlined lady’s hand not In the past I have laughed scornfully at people once but thrice. I use words like whereby and thrice searching online ‘What Do Lesbians Do In Bed?’ but regularly now. I also would definitely click that link. I mentioned previously that the poem ‘This I touch my mouth and hair. I touch your mouth, Living Hand’ was written in the margins of and do not care if you are lying. another manuscript. I should have said that it would prove to be Keats’ final complete poem. There is I do not want to be writing or reading a poignancy in the dying poet’s appeals for touch about Keats. within this piece.

358 359 After his death from consumption, everything them only; while the hand rests firmly on the that he had touched in his rooms was burnt. two fingers bent inwards as in writing, and on the wrist. Before I left you that morning, do you remember?, we mock-waltzed in the kitchen, your In terms of my muscles, vessels, nerves and viscera hand in mine. being anywhere near you, I only ever want to revise and improve. This has become a love letter Postcard Six somehow.

I am dreaming about your hand. It’s a dream so (No, it hasn’t. It’s about my ambition to get better honestly who cares but let it show in the minutes that in bed.) your hand was on my mind. (No, it isn’t. This is all just distraction.) Postcard Seven (It has been a while since I touched anyone.) The author of The London Dissenter: Or, System of Dissection, Practised in the Hospitals and Lecture Rooms Manuals, handiwork, gesture. of the Metropolis, Comprising a Description of the Muscles, Vessels, Nerves and Viscera, of the Human Body (Seventh Postcard Eight Edition, Revised and Improved, 1826) stresses the specific physical resemblance of the writer’s, artist’s There’s a letter Keats wrote in 1819: and surgeon’s hands, and the handling of their tools: From the time you left me, our friends say that I The position of the hand in dissecting should be have altered completely, am not the same person the same as in writing or drawing; and the knife ... I daresay you have altered also – every man held, like a pen or pencil, by the thumb and the does – our bodies every seven years are completely first two fingers, should be moved by means of fresh-material’d – seven years ago it was not this

360 361 hand that clench’d itself against Hammond... ‘Tis In my notes, I’ve quoted a scholar called an uneasy thought that is seven years the same Hopkins (*waves*), who alludes to Wittgenstein hands cannot greet themselves again. All this may (*handshakes*) and his use of a hypothetical be obviated by a wilful and dramatic exercise of philosopher (*thumbs nose*) who ‘tries to bring out our Minds toward one another. the relation between name and thing by staring at an object in front of him and repeating the name or the Wish you were here x word “this” innumerable times.’ By doing so, object and its designated name become even more alien. Postcard Nine I want this, I want it, I want you, I want that, I know I have had quite enough of paperwork but I had to how to do this, I want to know how to do that. write to tell you I came across a legal phrase today: mortmain. It refers to a posthumous control exercised Things can be warm and capable, earnest by a testator over the uses to which the property is to grasping, all the et ceteras be applied. I know, I almost fell asleep reading that too. But the term literally means dead hand. Hands as Hands have become wonderful and strange since I pulsing, prolonging, dextrous, distant, inching closer. met you.

The disembodied hand has a long history in See you when I see you Yours, literature; the ‘beast with five fingers’ tale (a label borrowed from William Fryer Harvey’s 1920s pastiche of this genre) revolves around wandering, severed hands. You know the kind of thing. The Thing from the Addams Family is a fan favourite. On Wikipedia, I note its full name is given as ‘Thing T. Thing.’

362 363 AND THEY SHALL CLAP Fernando Sdrigotti

364 365 Soon, patriotically walking garden lengths à la Old Captain Tom was yesterday’s news, and the Great British People adopted innovative self-flagellating ways of raising cash towards their favourite underfunded state body.

Miss Wendy Taylor, a seventy-eight-year-old part- time Airbnb Super Host from Egham, Surrey, eBayed her dentures, raising £87 for Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service. The buyer remains undisclosed, but the rumours point at either a renowned wax museum in Baker Street, London, or an equally renowned sex fiend from Lowestoft, Suffolk. Unable to process solids, Miss Wendy Taylor died two weeks later, following an acute case of diarrhoea, allegedly caused by excess of vanilla- flavoured Dunns River Nourishment Original. A couple of Miss Taylor’s neighbours in Egham held a minute’s silence in her honour, around 8:43pm on a Thursday, but she was quickly forgotten, like all heroes are eventually, lest we forgets notwithstanding.

Mr Archibald Agland, a ninety-seven-year-old retired insurance clerk from Preston, Lancashire, auctioned his collection of WWII memorabilia, raising £143,032 for the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). The collection comprising thirty- two pieces — mainly Nazi medals and insignia

366 367 — was purchased by a member of the Conservative pounds of crushed Parma Violets over a thirty- front bench. The collection now rests on a large seven-hour binge, raising alarm among her family bookcase in his office, next to the complete works of members, and zero funds towards St Catherine’s David Icker, and a leather-bound multilingual tome College, of the local university (not Oxford Brookes, of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.1 obviously; it’s never about Oxford Brookes). Her death, allegedly caused by Parma Violets overdose, Mr Robert Cuell and Mrs Lindsay Cuell, forty- was reported on page 17 of the Oxford Mail, bottom seven and forty-five respectively, from New Mills, right corner, just below an ad for hand sanitiser and Derbyshire, organised a two-day masked gang- next to an article with the title, ‘Schools transgender bang in their back garden, that was Periscoped live. toolkit scrapped by Oxfordshire County Council It is rumoured that the gang-bang was attended after 13-year-old girl’s court battle.’ No comments by several personalities and minor celebrities, were made by the Irish former comedy writer including a disgraced game show presenter on — now full-time Twitter cunt — Graham Hamline. the road to public rehabilitation. The sum of £5,434,231 was raised towards Derbyshire County Mrs Roberta Parsons, a nonagenarian former Council. No accidental or intentional pool deaths dentist from Brixton, London — no relation to the were reported, although several mobile phones mediocre WWII-analogy-excreting machine with went missing, some of them, reputedly, in the the same surname, apparently a writer — attempted anuses of particular participants. to self-immolate on Facebook Live, raising £1,323,843 towards the Home Office’s deportation Miss Paula Picketts, fifty-three, a biology professor programme. Her ordeal — doubly regrettable, as it from Central Oxford, Oxfordshire, snorted 8.15 failed to be broadcast or recorded for posterity due to technical difficulties — was thankfully picked 1. NB: The leather-bound tome of the controversial Protocols of the Elders up and promoted by carrion and phone-hacking of Zion is a scholarly edition with footnotes and critical commentary. We would like to state clearly that possession of Nazi insignia or anti- aficionado Marlowe Pierson, who interviewed Semitic propaganda in this instance in no way implies sympathy with Mrs Parsons for Good Lunchtime Britain, as she Nazism and/or anti-Semitism. In the same way that some ideas must be lay on her death bed, capturing on camera the debated, some nasty ideologies must be embraced, in order to be rejected, eventually. We have not been able to come up with any exculpatory actual moment of her shuffling off this mortal coil. comment regarding the complete works of David Icker. 368 369 Mr Pierson essayed to tear after announcing the premium rate number where generous viewers could contribute (partly) to Mrs Parsons’ cause, and before going to the ads had a nervous breakdown over the new vegetarian sandwich from Subway.

Mr Sean Thompson, a fifty-five-year-old firefighter, who also moonlights as local organiser for Britain First in Knob’s Crook, Dorset, broke the Guinness World Record for clapping, engaging in this activity for seventy-two consecutive hours, raising £7,656,546 for British-born key workers.

And this last gesture caught on and the Great British People have been clapping non-stop ever since. They have been clapping non-stop for the NHS. They have been clapping non-stop for Carers. They have been clapping non-stop for Heroes. They have been clapping non-stop for Empire, occasionally breaking into a conga. And they have been clapping on the beaches, and on the landing grounds, and in the fields and in the streets, and they shall be clapping in the hills, and they shall be clapping in the valleys, and they shall never stop clapping. No, they shan’t stop clapping. Not even in their sleep, that carries on and will carry on uninterrupted, in spite of all the noise.

370 371 Contributors’ Notes

372 373 Fiona Banner aka The Vanity Press is an artist who Tehching Hsieh and People Show: Nobody Knows But Everybody often works with language and publishing in a playful, Remembers. David also makes paintings and regularly exhibits performative way. Her text ‘Library Nude’ is a taxonomy his work. In 2015, he was shortlisted for the East London of language she uses in her nude portraits. Painting Prize. davidcaines.co.uk

Caroline Bergvall is a writer, artist and performer who Hester Chillingworth is an artist who makes performance works across art forms, media and languages. The recipient of work, installations and texts. Their work often plays with many international commissions, she is a noted exponent of language, interpretation, duration and confusion. They are a writing and performance methods adapted to contemporary frequent collaborator with Forced Entertainment and a 2020 audiovisual and contextual situations, as well as multilingual Jerwood New Playwright at the Royal Court Theatre. They identities and translocal exchange. Voice composition were Artistic Director of GETINTHEBACKOFTHEVAN ‘TOGETHER (part 1)’ was commissioned by MAMCO, performance company from 2008-18, and most recently Geneva & Espace 2 Swiss National Radio in 2014. directed the world premiere of Trainers: or the Brutal Unpleasant Atmosphere of this most Disagreeable Season by Sylvan Aisha Mango Borja is an 18-year-old poet and university Oswald, at The Gate. hopeful. She is currently writing through lockdown with Kate Clanchy’s Zoom poetry sessions. She is keeping herself Augusto Corrieri is a lecturer in Theatre & Performance going by running along the river Isis and making puddings at the University of Sussex (Brighton). His book, In Place with way too much cream. of a Show: What Happens Inside Theatres When Nothing Is Happening, is published by Bloomsbury Methuen Drama. Season Butler is a writer, artist, dramaturg and lecturer He presents sleight-of-hand magic performances under the in Performance Studies and Creative Writing. Her writing, pseudonym Vincent Gambini. research and art practice centre around intersectionality and narratives of otherness, isolation and negotiations with hope. Will Eaves is a novelist and poet. Murmur, his novel about Her debut novel, Cygnet, was published in spring 2019 and the life and work of Alan Turing, won the Wellcome won the Writer’s Guild 2020 Award for Best First Novel. Book Prize in 2019 and is being adapted for the screen. A collection of essays, Broken Consort, will be published later David Caines is a graphic designer and visual artist this year by CB editions. ‘LON CHANEY SPEAKS!’ is an based in London. His communications and design work excerpt from a work in progress. includes projects for the 57th Venice Bienniale, the National Trust, Manchester International Festival and the Norfolk Tim Etchells is an artist and writer whose work shifts & Norwich Festival. He has designed over 30 art books between performance, visual art and fiction. He has worked including Anne Bean: Self Etc, Out of Now: The Lifeworks of in a wide variety of contexts, notably as the leader of the

374 375 world-renowned Sheffield-based performance group Forced Vlatka Horvat is an artist working across sculp­ture, Entertainment, and has exhibited and presented work in installation, drawing, performance, photography and significant institutions all over the world. He is currently writing. She is a former Yugoslav, a former Chicagoan, a Professor of Performance & Writing at Lancaster University. former New Yorker (always a New Yorker) and a current His collection of short fiction, Endland, was published by Londoner. Her work is presented internationally in different And Other Stories in 2019. contexts – in museums and galleries, in theatre and dance festivals and in public space. She’s a lecturer in Fine Art at Rachel Genn works at Manchester Writing School/School Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London. of Digital Arts. Formerly a neuroscientist, she has written two novels: The Cure (Constable, 2011) and What You Could Wendy Houstoun has created a body of solo movement/ Have Won (And Other Stories, 2020). As Leverhulme Artist- text work and has performed with companies DV8 Physical in-Residence (2016) she created The National Facility for the Theatre and Forced Entertainment, among many others. She Regulation of Regret, spanning installation art, VR and film has written for Vincent Dance Company, Yael Flexer and (ASFF, 2016; SXSW, 2017). She is currently working on Nic Sandiland and has been published in Live Art Journal, Hurtling, a collection of investigations into immersion and the 21st Century Performance Reader and Routledge. ‘Get Lost’ creative act; a binaural experience exploring paranoia with was written as part of Music For Lectures, an ongoing series Human Studio; an ACE-funded collection about fighting of talks backed by a rock band, curated and with music by and addiction to regret; and Blessed, an oral history of her Jonathan Burrows, Francesca Fargion and Matteo Fargion. family’s injuries. @RachelGenn Music For Lectures/Get Lost was commissioned by GIFT Gateshead 2020 and Pact Zollverein Essen, and released Chris Goode is a writer and theatre maker working across originally as a podcast. a diverse range of forms and contexts. He has performed everywhere from Sydney Opera House and Tate Modern Sophie Jung is an artist working across text, sculpture and Turbine Hall to many of the most experimental spaces performance. Her work oscillates between form and affect, on the London fringe. He currently hosts the podcast pragmatism and romance, scrutinising accuracy and magical Thompson’s Live. awe. In 2016 and 2019 she won the Swiss Art Award; and in 2018, the Manor Kunstpreis. Between 2016 and 2019 M. John Harrison tweets @mjohnharrison, blogs at she was a member of the jury of the Swiss Performance Art ambientehotel.wordpress.com & lives in the West Midlands. Award. She lives and works in London and Basel where she Two new books are due in July 2020: a novel, The Sunken is currently a guest mentor at Institut Kunst, Basel. Land Begins To Rise Again, from Gollanz; and from Comma Press, Settling the World, selected short stories introduced by Jennifer Hodgson.

376 377 Andrea Mason has published short stories in a number of Lara Pawson lives in London. She is the author of a art and literary journals including The Happy Hypocrite and fragmentary memoir, This Is the Place to Be (CB editions, New Writing: The International Journal for the Practice and Theory 2016), and an indignant historical investigation, In the Name of Creative Writing. Her debut novel, The Cremation Project, is of the People: Angola’s Forgotten Massacre (IB Tauris, 2014). forthcoming with Inside the Castle, USA, in 2021. ‘Because Everything in This Damned World’ is an extract from a book in progress. Harun Morrison (b. London; lives and works on the UK waterways) is an artist and writer currently living on a Deborah Pearson’s performance work sits at the intersection narrowboat on Regent’s Canal. Alongside Helen Walker, he of several contexts, spanning playwriting, directing, live co-founded the collective practice They Are Here in 2006. art and visual art. Her work has been staged in over twenty Through this collaboration, Harun and Helen continuously countries on five continents and translated into several explore group dynamics, questions of authorship and politics languages. She holds a PhD on narrative preoccupations in of visibility. Recent sound and video works will be presented contemporary performance from Royal Holloway where she at the forthcoming Dakar Biennial, Senegal (2020) and in was a Reid Scholar. She is a founder and co-director of the a solo exhibition at Eastside Projects, Birmingham (2020). UK-based curatorial collective Forest Fringe. ‘I Search for an Artwork with These 25 Qualities’ was commissioned by Rule of Threes, May 2020. Fernando Sdrigotti is a London-based Argentine writer theyarehere.net and cultural critic. He is the founding editor of the journal Minor Literature[s]. His latest book is Jolts, a collection of short Courttia Newland has written seven books including his stories published by Influx Press. minorliteratures.com and debut, The Scholar. His latest novel, A River Called Time, will influxpress.com/jolts be published in January 2021, and a collection Cosmogramma later that year. As a screenwriter, he has written two episodes Maria Sledmere is a DFA candidate in Creative Writing of the Steve McQueen BBC series Small Axe. at the University of Glasgow. She is a poet, essayist, music journalist, member of A+E Collective and editor at SPAM Katharine Norbury is the author of The Fish Ladder and Press, Dostoyevsky Wannabe and Gilded Dirt magazine. She was chosen by The Observer as their Rising Star in Non- also co-hosts a podcast, URL Sonata, and weekly workshop Fiction, 2015. She is currently curating an anthology of series, ‘Pop Matters.’ women’s writing about the natural world – Women on Nature – for Unbound. She lives in London. ‘Thoughts about a Marvin Thompson was born in London to Jamaican Building Closed to the Public’ is excerpted from a life- parents and now lives in south Wales. His debut collection, writing work in progress, The Cuckoo’s Nest. Road Trip (Peepal Tree Press), is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. In 2019, he was shortlisted for the

378 379 Manchester Poetry Prize. Reviewers have described his work Tony White would like to acknowledge the support of Arts as ‘moving’ and ‘a virtuoso performance.’ Council England through the Arts Council Emergency Response Fund: for individuals. Selina Thompson is an artist and writer whose work has been shown and praised internationally. Her practice is Eley Williams is a writer and lecturer based in the UK. intimate, political and participatory and its strong emphasis Her novel, The Liar’s Dictionary, is forthcoming from William on public engagement leads to provocative and highly visual Heinemann in 2020. work that seeks to connect with those historically excluded by the arts. Aaron Williamson is a multi-disciplinary artist and writer. He was born in Derby, UK in 1960 and his work is informed Rupert Thomson is the author of twelve critically by his experience of becoming deaf. Over the last 25 years acclaimed novels, including The Insult, which was chosen he has created over 300 performances, videos, installations by David Bowie as one of his 100 Must-Read Books of and public works around the world. He is currently Research All Time, and Death of a Murderer, which was shortlisted Fellow in Fine Art at Oxford Brookes University. for the Costa Prize. His memoir, This Party’s Got to Stop, aaronwilliamson.org won the Writers’ Guild Non-Fiction Book of the Year. He lives in London. ‘Cigarettes and Tuna’ is an excerpt from a Jacob Wren makes literature, collaborative performances and work in progress. exhibitions. His books include: Polyamorous Love Song, Rich and Poor and Authenticity Is a Feeling. With the interdisciplinary Chris Thorpe is a writer and performer from Manchester. group PME-ART he’s co-created performances such as: He works as a playwright, most recently with the Royal Individualism Was A Mistake, The DJ Who Gave Too Much Exchange, Unicorn and Royal Court, for whom he’s Information and Every Song I’ve Ever Written. currently writing the Methuen Climate Commission. Collaborations include ongoing work with Rachel Chavkin, mala voadora, Third Angel, Yusra Warsama, Hannah Jane Walker, Rachel Bagshaw and Javaad Alipoor.

Tony White’s latest novel The Fountain in the Forest is published by Faber and Faber. White is the author of five previous novels including Foxy-T and Shackleton’s Man Goes South, the non-fiction title Another Fool in the Balkans and numerous short stories. He is editor and publisher of the artists’ book series Piece of Paper Press, founded in 1994.

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