harrison-abbott

[harrison-abbott]

A long time ago there was a person who hurt me emotionally in several ways. I’ve written about this story before. So won’t repeat. But years and years afterwards, I remembered that they (the person) still had items that I had borrowed them from that period when we knew each other. At this point, I wasn’t sore anymore, about what happened in the past. I only wanted my items back. So I got in touch with the person, and politely asked for them to send them back in the mail. They responded by saying that they had already sent them back to the previous address. Which I had quoted above, years ago. They said they had sent them there. When I still lived there. Which they definitely didn’t do. Because I remember seeing them physically, in public, and asked to get the items back. They said they would post the stuff. But never did. Now, years afterward, they claimed to have already sent them. Then delivered a cryptic, rhetorical line. And then blocked me on Messenger. Making them the only person who has ever blocked me on that platform. ///// I told one of my friends about it. And they said that the same person had done the exact same thing with them. They had asked for something back, which they knew was still at the person’s residence. And they had lied, and then never allowed the possessions to be returned. “She’s a thief!” my friend said. ///// And the latter point made me feel better. Because it wasn’t only me that had been lied to, or stolen from. Therefore, I knew not to take it so personally. It was the person who was mean, and a thief. Not me. And she treated other people in a horrible way. It wasn’t just me. ///// And, as for my items: well, I’m a bit miffed that I will never see them back. But I bought replacements of them. And will just have to accept that the other person is the unpleasant one. They are not in my life anymore. And, good. Good riddance. Don’t want to hear from them again.

[harrison-abbott]

A few years back I was walking up the road to the dentist. This particular road is narrow, and dead-ended by a pack of bollards. So it’s kinda an isolated lane, as it were, with no traffic. Anyway, one day I came upon what looked like a bunch of junk up ahead. When I got closer it was a whole load of bin bags and smashed glass, that’d just been dumped there. A weird combination of things; what looked like Christmas tree decorations, and plastic plates and hats, alongside empty bottles and cans, and strangely crushed bits of timber and seats and so on. I assumed that it was from some garden party or something. And, in order to clear all of the muck away after the party, the partiers had just come and dumped it here, instead of going to the proper dump to offload it there. And they left it in public, for somebody else to clean up. Totally shameless. What made it worse was that the dump was only a mile away from this point. And only a short while away in the car.

[harrison-abbott]

Back in high school the students were occasionally sent on trips to various other institutions, where people would come and speak to us in order to ‘inspire’ us as young people. I barely remember any of the speakers, and certainly wasn’t inspired. Although it wasn’t so bad because it meant we didn’t have to be in school.

Anyway. There was one time when a policeman came and spoke to us. I don’t remember how he fit in to the environment. Because we had had a business owner guy who spoke to us before, who was supposed to influence us as ‘entrepreneurs’. He was followed by a policeman. Whose was tasked with warning the kids off drugs. Drugs. That flag word that had come up now and then as this gnarly slogan.

The policeman got up to the podium. He was in work clothes – not the police uniform. And he started talking about marijuana. And all of marijuana’s dangers.

One of the things he said was that the ‘local gang’ who sold marijuana around Midlothian (where our high school was situated) had recently spliced cat faeces into their product. They were low on cannabis buds, so they had put cat shit into their bags, that they sold to customers, in order to bulk up their material and not lose money or face.

When he told all of us this, it was with a straight face, and said in a glum, threatening manner. And I knew that what he was saying wasn’t true. It was made up. Obviously. But when I looked around the students, so many of them were basically believing what he said – even though they were 15 or so. Jesus.

Although I do remember marijuana being a fearmongering theme amongst that clique of high school students. Fuelled by such content as what this policeman was lying about.

Marijuana? I used to smoke when I was in my late teens. But I simply lost interest in it when I got to my 20s. Just found it boring; only made me slow witted. Meh. I don’t judge other people that still smoke. Not interested myself. I have read various things about how marijuana is linked with violent crime groups across the planet. Another reason not to engage in it.

At the same time … cat shit? No. The policeman was telling a load of bull. And it was just another pointless excursion that the school had organised. And thank God that I’m not 15 any more, and have to go through all of that crap.

[harrison-abbott]

Did they make you do ‘solo talks’ in your school? It was required of us high school kids to do several of these solo talks in front of the class. We did them in first year through to fourth year, where you would stand up in front of 30 people and tell about a chosen topic. It was about the most nerve wracking thing imaginable, and everybody hated it. I’m not sure it even ‘taught’ you anything at all, other than bad memories: because the audience were insecure and mean themselves and they were only glad it wasn’t them up there speaking.

Anyway. There was this one boy in my class called Graeme. He had a stutter.

It happened now and then when he tried to speak to you. He’d stammer whilst trying to place a word. It was obvious that he was a ‘recovering’ stammerer, as it were: that it used to be way worse when he was younger, and that, in everyday life nowadays, it only popped up occasionally.

But then Graeme had to do his solo talk. In a hot classroom, filled with eyes and listeners. I can’t really remember what his topic was. As soon as he started, he began to stammer.

The students were required to talk for at least three minutes. But Graeme’s talk went on for, well, way over that time span. It was literally like watching somebody trying to pick something up, when they weren’t able to. Or when somebody just isn’t good with numbers; they aren’t adept with maths. His stammer stuck in. And he waded his way through the words, and kept getting trapped again. And it was altogether horrendous to observe. The teacher didn’t intervene, because she had to let him finish. Nobody could really do anything about it. And of course it must’ve been horrific for Graeme.

When he finally finished, there was a rushed, ecstatic applause from the whole class. They were all glad it was done. And trying to comfort him with a healthy applause. Graeme looked mortified and he sat down at his seat. I was with him in his next class (art class) and he was still glum about it for hours. Fair enough: I would be too. The teacher gave him a B. Just because it would be awful to give him an F, or, Christ, a C. Poor guy.

You know? There was this other boy called Chris who was in the classroom and witnessed the incident. And afterwards, a few days later, he made fun of Graeme’s stutter amongst a group of other folk. He thought it was funny. But thankfully nobody laughed, and the silence shut him up.

As for Graeme – he’s one of the only people that I have on social media that are originally from high school. He’s not a close mate; we’re just connected on Facebook. And when we were in school we were quite friendly. Anyway, he got married last year. And he has a cool job, doing goal line technology in sport. Which is up his alley, because he was always sporty. So, his stammer hasn’t held him back. He was also, by the by, one of the few people who were actually likeable in high school. I.e., he was not a little dick, like so many of the other boys were. He was a nice guy. I hope he doesn’t think about that ^ miserable solo talk experience any more.

[harrison-abbott]

When I was a kid I used to go down to Norfolk, England with my father, to visit my grandparents. They stayed in a tiny house, in a small town called Diss. Both my grandfather and grandmother were very old, in the childhood memories I have of them. I reckon granddad had dementia. But, because his wife, my grandmother, was there to look after him, he was not packed off to a Home.

My grandfather had been a soldier during World War II, and had been in several European countries across the conflict. But nowadays he had totally lost it mentally. He barely knew where he was. The only time he communicated with you was to do joke fisticuffs if he saw you in the corridor. In a jesty way.

Grandmother was an immigrant from Ireland and she still had a strong Irish accent despite having lived in England for most of her life. She spoke to my Dad. But only about old stories that Dad had already heard a hundred times. That was what she did: tell old stories. She had arthritis in her hands and breathed wheezily, and dutifully made meals for her and grandfather at spaced times throughout the day.

Because I was so young I didn’t really know how to spark up conversation with her. Plus, I only saw her once a year, so didn’t know her. My Dad was always encouraging me to speak to her, but it was difficult to think up things to say. The generational difference was by about seven decades.

And I reckon she was depressed. Because all she did was sit in her armchair and hold her sore arm, and almost never say anything, unless it was one of those stories. She had grown up in an extremely poor family in Ireland. And now she still had humble surroundings and I don’t think she expected much from life. But she also bore five children, and lived through World War II. Her first baby died because the infant was born prematurely; and she and grandfather didn’t have enough money to pay for a proper funeral for the infant: so they had to settle for a patch of grass in the local kirkyard, without a tombstone or plaque.

Grandfather died when he was 90. And my grandmother was a bit younger than he was, so she lived a few more years after he passed, until she was 89. The last memories I have of her was her simply sitting in that armchair, without grandfather next to her, silent and holding her arm and thinking deeply, about what, you could never quite tell.

[harrison-abbott]

The mist clung to the spaces between the trees and it puffed under the lamplights in ghoulish vapours and it must’ve come from miles off away in the sea that, if you climbed up the nearby hill, next to the castle, could see in fat blue in the far distance on a non-misty day, but, not tonight, for the air across the city was all clogged up with thick white, as if there was no city or sea or civilisation there at all.

[harrison-abbott]

Blade-like Shadows

He had a dream that he was still with her in the hotel, and lying next to her in their room. He could see out the patio doors onto the balcony with the wavy neon beyond that. In the dream it seemed real. It was like they had gone back, there, to this country, far away; the hot lands with real fruit growing in the wild by the dusty roads, and little amphibians scuttling in the brush. He went out onto the balcony for a smoke. Night time. Nobody else about. Save the cats that meandered around the rooftops. He turned around to go back into the room: and when he saw the bed again, she wasn’t there. He called her name. Had she gone into the bathroom? She wasn’t there. Had she gone downstairs to the auditorium? He went out and along the corridors. The palm leaves in the garden danced blade like shadows on his face. Where had she gone? He didn’t want to call out because he might wake the other hotel guests. And he went downstairs into the hushed floor. There was nobody at reception and no lights on anywhere, and the bar was shut. All the couches and sofas were empty. He went outside to the pool area. And the lights in the pool, were off: so none of that exuberant light blue. Nobody on the deck chairs and nothing moving. He went back into the hotel, confused. And starting to get a little worried, as, when he checked the front door, he found that locked, as well. He’d thought that the front doors were always open for late-arrivals. And so he thought he’d go back upstairs to his room. When he was in the stairwell, the walls closed in from the corners; the shadows in the corner parts bleached like black ink and they spread, and he got scared and quickened his step. When he got upstairs, he couldn’t see out of the window into the garden anymore and there were no palm tree shadows, or palm trees at all. Then this corridor, like the stairwell, began to blotch up with black, as if indigo liquid were spreading all around … until it began to envelop his body, too. He called her name, now: he shouted “Help! Help!” at full blast. And then he woke up. In a totally different country. Thousands of miles away from that hotel, where he had spent a week of his life, nine years ago, with a young woman he didn’t know anymore, but still missed a gigantic deal.

[harrison-abbott]

The woodpigeons added a soft

slumbrous cooing to the exuberant

blackbirds and the smattering magpies

and the occasional screams of the bats.

[harrison-abbott]

You remember five years back, going to the GP about various things. There was a kind woman there, a nurse, who you spoke to about your issues. You remember it was five years ago specifically, because it was right before the first pandemic lockdown in the UK, which was March 2020. And, Jeepers: a whole tonne of things happened during the pandemic years, and the following years since then. With you, and for the whole planet. But, you’re glad that you went to the GP, all that time ago. Because your health is in a better state. Much better. And that kind lady – she really helped you out. Even if it was just by having somebody there to hear what you were saying. To spill out a bit of the angst and turmoil, to a stranger, who wanted to help, despite not knowing you. That’s why doctors and nurses were brilliant. They properly cared. And were in it to supply aid.

[harrison-abbott]

You were reading a novel based on a real life incident, back in World War Two, where thousands of people were killed after a submarine torpedoed their ship. The torpedoes destroyed the ship, with thousands of people on board, most of them children, and the ship sank and an incredible number of people lost their lives. And the point that the book makes was that few people have ever heard of the disaster. When maritime disaster comes up as a theme, the Titanic story is well known. Whereas this one isn’t, for various reasons. I didn’t know about this disaster, either, until I read the book. Despite being fairly knowledgeable about history.

[harrison-abbott]

There were the rattling cries of the magpies in the dark trees. Ever watchful and sly, those birds seemed to be. And with no light and only their crackly voices, like now, their espionage seemed even stronger.

[harrison-abbott]

That scary three letter word kept bleeping in the media vocabulary. WAR WAR WAR WAR WAR. Most people don’t know what war is like. Neither do you yourself … as a reader. And to keep re-hearing it is certainly terrifying.  

[harrison-abbott]

The journalists published one contradiction of this man after another; often within the same day as each other; these clashing comments that were designed to muddle his mass audience. How did he even have this huge megaphone in the first place? Surreal.

[harrison-abbott]

You thought about how engrained with your daily life they used to be. There was not, once upon a time, a day when you didn’t speak with them. Be it via text or face to face … and what a wonderful face they had: you still recall the shapes of the eyes and the little mannerisms they made when they slept next to you. And these moments are nothing but useless memories, these days. A gallery for nobody else to look at. Albeit, this is what solitude is for, you suppose. And the entire irony of love. It was once there, and it's lost, now, save within the annals of your mind.

[harrison-abbott]

Back in high school there was somebody called Steven who was in my class. I didn’t really know him well and he was not a mate. He had this weird two year gap, in school, because he needed an operation or something like that, and wasn’t able to attend classes. So he just kinda disappeared for a couple of years, and then returned, as if nothing had happened. Anyway. In my first year – in that initial year where, for boys, the atmosphere is slathered with immaturity and pubescent angst – Steven saw me in the playground. He had this urgent look on his face, and was staring right at me … and then he ran right towards me. Across a span of maybe forty yards. I thought that Steven needed to tell me something. So I just stood and watched as he got closer and closer, quite bemused at why he was coming over. He arrived next to me. And, instead of saying anything, he just kneed me right in my thigh. Full force. Gave me a ‘dead leg’. And after that forty yard sprint, it was pretty painful, and sure killed my leg for quite a while. Steven then walked away without saying anything. And I stood there, on one alive leg. Yes. That was what high school was like. I’m really glad I am not 11 years old anymore.

[harrison-abbott]

You put on a film that you first saw back in 2013. And despite the twelve years in tenure and the amount of times you’d seen it, the movie’s mystic, hypnotic vibes never failed to absorb you.

[harrison-abbott]

A spider meanders in the corner of the ceiling next to the window, with its crackly black presence. And when you go near, like lightning it rushes back to its corner, hiding in the shade. Another little covert, quick creature, that meddles with your lifelong phobia.