gaps in the story

There are three drafts unseen to in the eponymous section of this website, stretching back to March. They touch upon spring blossoms, the patterns of feeding geese on riverbanks and stargazing in a French swimming pool, among other things. I don’t know if I’ll ever finish them. Blog posts should really be finished in a short time, whilst the neurones fire. I write down a title that amuses me and an opening paragraph and then I get distracted and then that’s all that’s left. A sentence fragment that seemed clever to me at the time and maybe, if I’ve been productive, a hundred or so words that segue into nothing. Like a house converted to flats that still has one of those staircases that lead only to cream-painted plasterboard.

I know what they were going to be, vaguely what observations they hoped to make. The spring blossom one aspired to turn a brief sojourn to Cornwall into an Odyssey, likely to be littered with comments about hedgerow and the hope that spring brings and the joy of the wilds. There would have been a melancholy to it though, as it was my first trip to Cornwall since July 2018, and that trip, as joyful as it was, was joyful in the face of a grief and sadness I cannot shake, nor do I want to. I’m sure I would’ve made it work somehow. Blossoms and grief. The end of winter. The mirror glass of tidal water at the ebb, crusted hulls of abandoned boats askew in the spreading mud reflecting some fucking thing. If I’d written it I’m sure some links would come. I would’ve hammered it out.

Sat in the pub with a pint by the pier I watched the geese creep up to the river grass with caution, as though there may be a fox hidden below the tide line, small enough to hide amongst the reeds that stood only a foot tall. Each step they took they took as though there were boobie traps everywhere. They were the water fowl Indiana Joneses of the Thames that day. It piqued my interest, in part because I was trying to write a lot of other shit at the time. I watched them dart their heads into the foliage, quick, eating whatever it was that lurked in that grass that looked edible. Every couple of jabs their heads would pop up like meerkats to see if there were anything coming to eat them. Then they’d go back to eating. I’ve no idea what the point of the post was going to be, or if there was one other than the joy at observing a hitherto new (to me, at least) behaviour in the invasive, annoying and usually uninteresting behaviour of our loathsome invasive goose species.

As for the stars and the pool and France, that all feels like stolen time now. The title I came up with for the draft is “lying in the dark to stare at the light” and I’m quite happy with that as a title because that’s what we did. I think I managed a sentence or two and deleted them and rewrote them about four or five times before retreating from the post. I can make all sorts of excuses about why I didn’t push on with that but it’s because I’m selfish and I didn’t want to give it away. Sometimes writing is a release and I didn’t want to release that for fear that it wouldn’t be held quite as close to my heart afterwards. We saw shooting stars and satellites and aeroplanes and at least two nights were dark enough to make out the pale cataract-ic band of the Milky Way. Sometimes you write so as not to forget, but sometimes you don’t write because you’re not quite ready to let go yet. And writing can be letting go.

Letting go. I didn’t start a draft about this past harvest. I never got that far. It rattled in my head quite a bit. There were several storylines and a surfeit of metaphors to abuse but instead I just made wine and drank beer and ate wild boar and anchovies with my pals. I wish I had. I wish I wrote more while I was there instead of thinking about writing more. I didn’t because it was my fifteenth harvest and sometimes when you’ve done things for fifteen years in a row you pick up your pen with a little less urgency to scribble every detail down. If you’re not careful though, they can all blend into one. The fruit was good but there wasn’t enough of it. That could be 7 or 8 of the last fifteen years. But this year was different. I just didn’t know it at the time. I’ll have to stumble over my notes and photos and see if I can put it all together.

Now it’s autumn. And I look over the heat and tumult of the summer and spring and it doesn’t all quite fit. A didn’t go to b then c. I remember pretty much everything but nothing has followed seamlessly as cause and effect would have us expect. I lament the lack of writing but don’t know where I would’ve fit it in. Yet that might be why it doesn’t fit. Because I wasn’t writing it down. Perhaps those are the empty spaces, the bits where I didn’t take the time to write it down and make sense of it while it was happening. Not that it made sense at the time.

too warm for whisky?

Like much of Britain, Europe, the northern hemisphere etc., I have been paying attention to the weather. It is hard to avoid. Weather gets everywhere.

My room receives very little in the way of ventilation and quite a lot of heat. I succumbed to my environmentally questionable portable AC unit last night, but plan to stick to the fan this evening. The hope is to find a sweet spot where comfort is possible, the cat still feels welcome (he is not a fan of the AC) and I keep my contribution to the destruction of the environment to a minimum.

People deal with their discomforts in different ways. Some become harbingers of doom, shrieking at the top of their lungs that sensible people somehow forget to drink water when it’s very hot, and that this the end of the world as we know it. Others revert to the curmudgeon and sceptic, shouting loudly that “summer is hot” and “why is everyone making such a fuss?”

Me? I find both the sensationalism of the press and doomsayers and the blinkered shortsightedness of the sceptics almost equally annoying. I find my comfort, in part, in working out which of the two annoys me more. I suppose this makes me some manner of centrist with regards to weather chat, which is terribly unfortunate as it’s not a very good time be a centrist in anything. It doesn’t concern me too much, however, because I am becoming far less centrist in almost everything else.

The curmudgeons and sceptics are the most annoying though. This weather isn’t normal. It hasn’t been normal for some time. Nothing is fucking normal, you fucking idiots. The planet is in such a state of flux in every facet of existence that we have to look to either geology or astronomy to find anything that could be described as “normal” or “going to plan”.

It doesn’t make the doomsayers any less annoying, mind. Perhaps that’s why people ignore them and doom keeps happening?

Apart from the busy work of figuring out who bothers me most, I’ve been considering the temperature at which drinking whisky becomes unacceptable. Unthinkable, even. As much as I love it, it’s not a great hot weather tipple. I rarely touch it in Key West. Whisky warms from the inside. When it’s too warm outside, or inside, you can feel your skin getting flush and the beads of sweat rising to your temples after a sip or two. And because much of the point of whisky is its warmth, it is as though you’re drinking some kind of distillation of the discomforting climate around you. It just isn’t right.

There’s something about the combination of whisky and heat that brings to mind early/mid twentieth century British ex-pats propping up bars in hot places, rigidly dressing as though they were still in Blighty, slow ceiling fans giving no relief to relentless swelter, sweating through their collared shirts into their suit jackets, their faces sunburnt and ruddy all at once. Sweat stings their bloodshot eyes as they drink warm whisky and soda and refuse ice because “that’s for Americans”.

Drinking whisky when it’s too hot out feels like an exercise in denying reality. The act of throwing in a few ice cubes in it is sort of like watching your favourite movie in the back of an old 747 on a bumpy flight. It’s the same but less fun. So I resign myself to taking a wee break from my favourite tipple for a few days, possibly longer. As sacrifices go, you’d struggle to find a smaller one. Perhaps neck and neck with eschewing the AC for the less effective fan to cool my sauna of a room.

That British ex-pat in my mind’s eye, possibly the character from a Graham Greene novel, the one suffering the shitty ceiling fan and refusing ice for his Red Label or Black & White and soda, drenched in sweat, pink from the sun and red from the drink, I could see him in the pub today, kind of. Grumbling that it’s just summer. It’s just hot. It’s not a big deal. Why is everyone making such a fuss.

The older I get the more I realise that people openly wondering what all the fuss is about are not to be trusted. They hate fuss because it disturbs the mountain of privilege they sit upon. As someone prone to reclining on the odd hillock of privilege, I understand the desire, but sadly it operates on the presumption that everything was fine in the first place. And that’s just nonsense. Everything wasn’t fine in the first place. And everything certainly isn’t fine now. For fuck’s sake, it’s almost too hot drink whisky.

old haunts

I climbed the steps out of the tube station into the familiar. Streets I’ve wandered for 32 years, give or take. So much has changed that I can’t quite place everything. The Itsu that used to be a Burger King but was a Wimpy before that... or was that the Boots? The WH Smiths is now a bakery. The dodgy used record shop where I bought knackered old comics is still there, though. In fact, it’s multiplied and split off into several dodgy shops, each specialising in various used wares, all looking equally knackered and yet somehow still sort of desirable.

Every memory brings more along with it. Sometimes they’re specific, lingering, moments and sometimes it’s a flip book, a mental shorthand where several years are condensed and rush by in a flash. And sometimes it’s not the memory itself but the realisation that there’s a memory there, just out of reach, slipping between neurones, elusive, like a shape in the fog or a shadow under the water. It’s those that shorten the breath and brush the spine. Like you’ve been touched by a ghost. Tendrils of the past caressing lost corners of the mind, withdrawing before they can be seen and remembered.

It’s always been a little dirty here. Shabby, chic, but not a combination of the two. Somehow both at once. The mansions of billionaires and the council flats all stones throws away from each other.

It’s the end of winter but in my head it’s a summer morning thirty years ago, probably about 6am, the sun already up and blinding, my eyes red raw and crumbling to dust without sleep, but sobered up enough to make my way up from one of the squares next to Portobello Road back to Notting Hill, hoping that the bus is running. It’s probably a Sunday. The streets are wet from the thunderstorms the night before. We turned the lights off at the party and watched the lightning through the window and played Purple Rain really fucking loud. Tins of lager and Thunderbird and probably some other stuff kicking about. Stuff that gave me a wicked fucking headache. We thought the thunder would break the windows it was so loud. It woke up some of the drunks we hoped would stay asleep.

Some market stall people are just beginning to set up and the hill was so fucking steep. I could’ve just got the tube from Ladbroke Grove to Hammersmith but my world was smaller then.

Jump forward a decade and a half and I’m at lunch in a little Greek or Italian place across from where the posh wine merchant used to be, hoping to impress someone I thought I was in love with.

Then back again even further than the walk of shame to a lunch where we snuck a beer or two and then went back to school. Wondering if the teachers would notice. Wandering the canyons of grand terraced houses broken up into flats, some of them crumbling, some of them with fresh paint, made whole again by a wealthy developer hoping to attract a wealthier buyer.

From the tube I walked past the Coronet, now a theatre but formerly a cinema. I sat in the smoking section twenty-seven-or-so years ago for Clear and Present Danger and smoked too many Marlboro Lights and drank too much beer afterwards. It was a shabby cinema. It seems quite a chic theatre.

A year and a bit ago a friend of mine and I drank cans of Tyskie and ate tortilla chips on the corner behind The Gate cinema just back down the road. The pubs were not open. It was plague time. It still is.

Turning up Campden Hill Road I remembered a generous client taken suddenly ill and now gone who lived only a hundred or so metres away. The hills are steeper than I remember.

A night in the Windsor Castle, a restorative pint after the worst wedding ever, five years or so ago. It was only meant to be a pint but it was more. It started off as three of us but others joined. Just at that right time late on a Sunday afternoon when all the roast-eaters have buggered off and the staff look so grateful you just want a beer rather than to specify some terrible preference for overcooked roast beef. We kept getting rounds in. It wasn’t closing time but it was late and dark when we left and I didn’t go home straight away. One of us from that night isn’t here anymore.

It’s a pub with hidden corners. Ancient panelling and small passages from one bit to another. Almost every corner holds a memory, even the garden. The same with The Churchill Arms down the road, with its myriad tchotchkes and cheap, great Thai food. The two couldn’t be more different as pubs yet they bear about the same share of my ghosts.

I’m not back here that often anymore. I think it’s been a year or so, sipping those cans of beer on a street corner. And yet, in spite of all the things that are different, it’s still like walking into a set of all my lives before. As though turning a corner it might be 1990 again, or 1998, or 2005, or 2017. And so when I’m here, I’m not all there. There’s a part of me lingering in the past, tracing old steps, sipping empty pints with friends who aren’t around anymore, getting into trouble and wondering how to get back.

That’s the trouble with old haunts. They’re haunted.

old tests

I threw out all those old tests. The ones that said I was sick. And the ones that said I wasn’t sick anymore.

I lied though. I took a picture, in spite of myself, of all the positives and the negatives. I couldn’t not. I take pictures of that sort of shit.

I didn’t share it though.

Nobody out there needs another picture of somebody else’s covid tests.

It seems as though I’ve made a full recovery, for which I am grateful. Friends around me young and old struggle with long covid indiscriminately so to be left with only my familiar ailments to confound me is a relief.

partial recall

I have a friend who’s a neuroscientist. One of my dearest and best pals. He doesn’t do the brain stuff these days. He’s in fintech. A word my spell-checker hasn’t underlined or corrected which I am happily taking as one of the abundant signs of the impending apocalypse. We used to be flatmates. Back then, as far as I know, was when all the research into memory revealed that many of our memories are actually acts of imagination. That because of the way our neurones fire, and rebuild past events in our minds, a lot of it might not be drawing from stored memory but created on the fly to fill in gaps.

Like that bit from the video tour in Jurassic Park where they, using the magic of animation, plug frog DNA into dinosaur DNA, we ourselves are plugging our imagination neurones into our memory neurones to make a T-Rex.

(I know that that is not how neurones work)

I used to ask him about the memory stuff but I’m not sure I was smart enough to understand his answers.

I have a good memory. Except for when I don’t, which is another story, but for the most part, I have a very, very good memory. It’s something I’ve worked on since I was a little kid. I remember lying upside down on a staircase in a flat my dad’s company rented in 1985, before we moved to London but while we were still here a lot, and looking up at the dim bulb at the top of the stairs, and thinking to myself, “I bet I remember this in thirty years”. Thirty-years ago was seven years ago this coming September.

Nothing interesting happened in that moment. I just found myself, as a nine year-old, in a weird spot on a staircase. I had probably been in similar spots several times that day. They were steep stairs and fun to fuck about on. In my mind they were whitewashed but carpeted down the centre. For some reason I think the carpet was a pale blue.. Perhaps aquamarine. I think that part’s bullshit. I think that’s a bit of frog DNA fucking up my T-Rex. But I know that moment happened because I promised myself I’d remember it. And because I promised myself I would remember it, every time I thought about any promise I ever made in the 36 and a half years between now and then, a little flash of that moment would pop up, reminding me.

As far as I know that was the first time I ever really thought about memory. Contorted, upside down, in an underlit stairwell in the mid-eighties Trying from then on to, basically, remember stuff.

Obviously it’s selective and entirely useless academically. It’s not a memory palace or some easy way of regurgitating the right pub quiz answer at the right time. Instead it’s kind of accidental. It never worked with studying or reading something for school or university. But it seems to work with people, and the folks I’ve met along the way. The good times and often the bad. The bad ones get stuck on loop sometimes, but even with those I like to think, to hope that the memories are more T-Rex than frog DNA.

And it’s nice when someone who hasn’t seen you in 30 years asks about something and you remember it clearly. You remember them and what you ate together and what you drank after going to see a shitty movie. Buying a bottle of cider and a bottle of Martini (I’m pretty sure it was Extra Dry, but our age suggests it may have been Bianco - we were way ahead of the vermouth revival), very underage, from a Victoria Wine in King’s Langley in 1991. We only dated for three or four weeks but it seems longer.

Isolation is fertile ground for revisiting stuff like this. Wondering which vivid pieces of memory are real and which are made up. A grand mosaic, some pieces fired porcelain, some plastic, fitting together to tell a larger story that, viewed from a distance, provides no indication of which piece is which.

Maybe the mosaic thing works better than frog DNA and T-Rex DNA? It’s prettier.

You folks know you can buy my books, right? Here (winemaking book) and here (novel).

temporary posterity

I tested positive again this morning. Both lines were pale, but they were certainly there. There wasn’t any doubt. I threw away the accoutrements but saved the test itself, writing the date on it with a Sharpie.

I’ve saved every positive test since they started being positive. I have no idea why. I have no means by which to properly compare anything. After awhile they sort of wash out a bit. They’re sat on a counter in the kitchen, in ascending order by date (all scribbled on in Sharpie). The first one, the one that told me I was sick, that’s the boldest of the bunch. Bright red, confident lines. Each as intense as the other. If it had been pale, I might have been tempted to take a second, just to be sure. But I felt kind of shit anyway, and that line by the ‘T’ was SO FUCKING RED, I didn’t see the point of wasting any more.

Then I ordered some more tests.

Then I checked the fridge and the cupboards and everything to see if I was ok to stay inside for 10 days. It turns out I had enough wine and whisky. As long as my smell and taste held out, I thought I’d be ok.

Then I thought my throat felt more sore, and my back ached that bit more, and all the little indicators that prompted the test that morning were a lot louder than they had been. Hypochondria after the fact is a thing, apparently.

I remember picking up that first test and grabbing the Sharpie. I wasn’t going to post a photo. I’ve posted and seen too many photos of tests at this point. We all have. It won’t be long before there’s an algorithm in our photo apps to collect them all together for some sort of twisted plague-nostalgia slideshow. For whatever reason I thought I should save the test. And if I was going to save it, I might as well date it. I keep at least four different Sharpies in different places on the ground floor of the house for just such important occasions. That I was able to find it without any issue is proof that the system works.

My symptoms change daily, sometimes during the day. From cold to flu to chest infection to some terrible muscle and back trauma. I feel like I have a fever and then I don’t. I don’t feel that sick, but at the same time I’ve never really been sick like this before. Or not at the same time at least. It’s confusing. And I know I’m getting off lightly. Crazy lightly. I’ve got an autoimmune disease and while this thing seems to be playing hopscotch with my immune responses, it’s doing so with a forgivingly gentle hop. It’s unnerving.

None of those positive tests, with their strange gradients of red lines, provide that level of detail. The story they tell is of a single state. They are representative in the most limited sense. Yet I’m still keeping them. Not forever. Just until the status changes. When it drops from two lines to one they’ll all go in the bin. Why keep them in the meantime? Like I said before, I don’t know. Maybe it’s just because I knew where to find the Sharpie.

my fault

The cat stares out the open door into the back garden as the rain hammers down. He then turns to me, eyes full of blame and disappointment and opens his mouth as if to meow in protest, but closes it again silently. My failure to control the weather isn’t worth commenting on. Unwilling to brave the wet, he contents himself with lying on the doormat and grooming himself. Every few moments he’ll lift his head from licking his fur and stare at me with disdain. By not stopping the rain I have ruined his day.

Usually, after all this, I top up his food and give him clean water. Occasionally I’ll drop a Dreamie (cat treat) or two on the floor as well for him to track down. He’ll bat them around with his paw before pouncing and devouring the little nuggets of joy. I am forgiven, for the time being, for not being able to turn back the rain. He will go find a suitable place to nap and I will head back to work.

Unlike the cat, I do not begrudge the rain at the moment. Being housebound it makes me yearn that little bit less for freedom. It makes the house that bit cosier, the couch a bit comfier. I cook hearty food and eat maybe a serving too much of it. I ponder the raindrops racing down the window panes, each taking a different path. I have a lemsip in the morning and a lemsip with whisky in the evening to make sure my mild symptoms stay that way.

It’s a relief and incredible good fortune that my case is seemingly so light, but there’s a part of me that’s still nervous. A part of me waiting for another shoe to drop, expecting things to get worse. It won’t let me just be ill and get over it, it has to be worried that I’m missing something somehow.

So I have a whisky and write it down while the cat tries to crawl on my lap and the rain batters the window and the skylight. The cat leaps down and stares out the window and then back at me. It’s my fault, after all.

fewer and less

He worked at the pub down the road for a couple of years. He arrived with one girlfriend and left with another. He was young and naive when he got here, and a little older and less naive when he left. At that age where you jump between knowing everything and realising you don’t know anything but still fall back on pretending you know everything when you’re up against a wall. He was a good kid. Eager to learn. Curious. People liked him, even when he went through a bit of a rough patch. He had a chip in his tooth but not on his shoulder. He smiled a lot to show off that chipped tooth. It was a great smile.

I never had any expectations of seeing him again but life is strange and it also wouldn’t have surprised me if I had. But now I won’t.

He died last week.

We weren’t that close. We’d have the odd beer when he was off duty. We went to see a Marvel movie in a cheap old cinema that is now a building site. I knew him at a distinct point in my life. We’d not kept in touch. I found out through someone else. The cast of characters from that time are all in different places, even the few living at the same address. That was almost ten years ago now. Maybe eight?

The older I get the faster I am to round up to a decade.

I read the outpourings of grief on his social media, left by all those who knew and loved him right up until the moment he died. There were a few from that time I knew him as well. I didn’t leave anything. It didn’t feel right for me, to suddenly jump in after all this time. To invade his remaining space with my laments for a time and friendship so long past.

He was way too young, he shouldn’t be dead. That’s what I would have written. With too many people younger than me passing away, it’s all I can think of. They shouldn’t be dead. Whether it’s disease or accident or intent, none of them should be gone yet. A lot of people are dead now that shouldn’t be, that’s kind of the way of things. Though it doesn’t make it any less upsetting.

white noise

The sound of the rain on the skylight above the stairs outside my room echoes as the cat purrs. I leave my door wide open when its rains. The sound is comforting. An ex of mine would come over when it rained to lie in my bed and listen to the drops hitting the glass. If the wind is strong the rain batters the windows as well as the skylight and I get it all in stereo. There’s no rhythm to it. Or rather, there’s no overall rhythm to it. There are little bursts of downpours that have their beat, but it’s fleeting. The tempo changes without warning, as does the intensity. When it falls hard it is easy to huddle tighter under the duvet.

The cat’s purr has rhythm. It contrasts nicely with the rain, the stuttering of his little motor expressing how pleased he is with the situation. He breaks from purring to bathe himself. After bathing he finds a new, even more relaxed position, then rests his head and the motor starts again. He looks like a tabby croissant. Every few minutes he’ll wake from his nap and quickly lick his shoulder, as though he suddenly remembered he forgot something.

The rain hasn’t put off the parakeets. A better measure of the impending change of season than the dreich weather, they are shovelling down two full sunflower seed feeders a week. Double what they were a couple of weeks ago. I’m guessing they’re nesting or preparing to nest.
My pal Adi calls them beautiful pests. Feels right. They will brave the rain and each other and feast and squawk and taunt the cat who hates rain even more than he loves trying to chase the parakeets away. The dull weather in no way dulls their feathers. Their vivid green seems to carry its own light so they glow while they feed and yell at each other.

The cat and birds and rain are good company in quarantine. The rain makes me miss leaving the house less and I find its voice soothing in troubled times. The cat puts up with my need for the odd cuddle and needs the odd cuddle himself every once in awhile. And the birds are clowns at someone else’s dinner party, fun to watch, but you wouldn’t want to actually be there.

low branches

There was a tree that stood outside my high school English classroom. It had low branches. A bunch of us, between classes or when we had a free period, would haul ourselves up there and find a comfortable perch. The best time to do it was early spring, before the leaves came back, but when it was warm enough outside and the tree itself seemed to be warming from the inside, readying itself to wake up. We sat around and shot the shit, often getting the odd look from others for whom climbing trees between filling in university application forms seemed a bit on the weird side. We’d shout to friends and invite them up and wave at a favourite teacher walking by. They would wave back, all but the most unflappable shaking their heads as their gaze returned to where they walked.

I don’t remember what kind of tree it was. To be honest, I never knew what kind of tree it was. But I was and am grateful for it. Later in the spring, the leaves hid us from passers-by. We didn’t use that clandestine place for any particular rule-breaking. There were better places to smoke and drink and fuck. Instead it was enough to be hidden in plain sight. We were a nerdy bunch. We talked about literature and art and theatre and the future and what scared us. About what excited us. About the girls and boys we liked. At least one of us napped there on one of the larger branches. Sometimes we just wondered why more people didn’t use their free time to climb up a tree and chill their shit out.

Sometimes I remember that at least one of those people I used to climb that tree with isn’t here anymore.

I haven’t really climbed a tree since high school. Perhaps the odd one when I was younger than now and the branches were low enough. It’s a strange thing to be wondering whether I could still do it. I feel quite strongly, with everything happening, that it might be a good thing, in my free time, to climb up a tree and chill my shit out.

...to remember it now...

Most mornings I open a knackered green Moleskine notebook and attempt to transcribe my scrawls about whisky. I’m grateful for the ribbon that marks my page but I struggle to find the correct bit on that page amidst the scribbles and angrily crossed out misspellings. It’s mostly written in biro, though the odd felt tip makes an appearance.

I’ve never written anything so long in longhand before. It was an experiment. I enjoyed it, in parts, but don’t know if I’ll do it again.

I appreciate the battered pages, that unique dent a fine point pen makes, creating texture that is at once familiar and mysterious to the touch. I can close my eyes and run my fingers along the sheets and know there are words there, even if I don’t recall what they say.

Typing out these thoughts and stories and ravings has become a journey in itself. Remembering not just the stories, but writing those stories for the first time. Sometimes it’s so clear. I might remember where I was when I jotted down a tale about the midges on Loch Indaal in August 2013, bathed in the golden light of the waning sun and drinking Bunnahabhain with a champagne chaser (I was in an airport bar on my way to France to make wine for the 2020 harvest). Or sitting on a chair in a garden on the Thames and trying to describe hosting my first whisky tasting, illegally, in a dorm room at high school when I was 16. Or just sitting at my desk trying to in vain to properly explain how important a whisky Ardbeg 17yo has been in my life.

Sometimes both the writing and the words feel like they are the work of someone else. Someone kind of like me, but not me. I see my handwriting and know the story but it’s not how I would have told it and yet it’s there, in black or blue ink, and I apparently told it like that when I knew only myself would be the reader. There’s no rhyme or reason to these discrepancies of memory. Some stories that feel they should have been vivid when I wrote them seem distant. Others I can smell not only the drams from the time, but also the one I sipped when I wrote it down.

I sipped quite a few drams while writing it down.

I transcribe a few pages every morning before coffee or running or work. Originally, I was going to edit and rewrite as I transcribed, but I feel getting everything digital first is for the best, especially as I’m trying to do it before coffee or running and I can’t really trust any decisions made before those things. Perhaps before one or the other, but not both.

It’s taken me some time to realise that transcribing is not scratching the writing itch. I will tick the box that I’ve worked on the book, so that’s a manner of writing task, but it’s not writing. It’s copying. With a bit of palaeography thrown in (my handwriting isn’t terrible, but it isn’t great either). So coming back here and blathering on about it has been good. But I’ve also started writing notes again, proper notes in a notebook. Though you’d think I was a bit over the whole notebook thing by now, I’m just over the whole handwriting the WHOLE BOOK thing now. I think taking notes for books in longhand is great and would actually be perfect if I could remember which notebook I took the notes in.

Next to my desk is a stack of eight completed notebooks. Some are tasting notes, some are journals, some are a mixture of the two. They cover fiction, non-fiction, thoughts, poetry… they all go back to 2005. There are more elsewhere. These are just the ones I put next to my desk because I thought they were the most urgent. They don’t include the whisky book manuscript. That’s another one. There are a couple of Smythsons (super posh), several Moleskines, and in-between a Field Notes or two. For every notebook that’s full I have three or four untouched kicking about. Perhaps more.

I love buying notebooks.

Imagining all the writing I’m going to do is so much easier than writing it.

walks in the woods by the river

I opened an unfinished manuscript today. The story started rattling in my head again a wee while ago, and I didn’t know where I left it. It turns out I left it in the same place it was two years ago, when I left a note to myself in the margin saying “I’ve been stuck in this spot for two years, I’m not sure what to do.”

So that’ll be four years then?

Last weekend I walked along the river on a grey day with an old friend. We spoke and listened to each other in a way that seemed both natural and distant all at once. Natural in that it was the how friends should chat and distant in that it seems so long ago that any of that was natural. We dodged runners and cyclists and dogs delighted to be out and about and took photos of the things everyone else was just walking by. A tree here, a mushroom there. Stumps that looked far more ancient than they could have been. Nature bursting all around, even in winter, while folks and quadrupeds walked or ran or stumbled along seeing the woods and the river but not seeing the water and the trees and the branches. The green of the leaves held that dark shadow you only get on a cloudy winter’s day. There’s no other green like it. It’s a green with secrets.

I added a few sentences to that manuscript. I don’t know if it broke the block on it but the words felt like the correct ones. Glacial writing projects still move, if you let them, they just move slower and cut deeper.

A great fallen tree lay in the bushes and ivy and fungi with a cast iron fence bisecting it. I thought it made the tree younger than its size suggested and the fence older than its design suggested. I think it fell within the last few years, likely in an autumn or winter storm. It looked like something from a Dali painting. And so I thought of the Dali exhibit in Ceret all those years ago, a brilliant retrospective that finished with a black and white photo of the man himself sucking on the head of a massive prawn. It might not have been the last image of the exhibit, but it’s the last image I remember seeing.

I need to reread the rest of the manuscript, in hopes that knowing what else I wrote might suggest some hints of what I should write afterwards. I need to write more in general. I need to finish the whisky book, rewrite the other novel, start writing a different novel, and remind people that I do write books and if they haven’t read them they should do, and if they could buy them and leave a nice review as well, that would be lovely.

The unpruned plane trees stood tall and wild like ivy-covered Rorschach tests. The paths of their branches didn’t just stretch out to grab the sunlight, but to grab the sunlight by taking the most remarkable paths possible. Relentless zigging and zagging to create extraordinary patterns in defiance of any manner of accepted design. Stripped of their leaves by the cold and the season, it was as though a collection of raw nerves and neurons were reaching for the sky. I nearly got lost in it all. On the ground, the ivy with its secretive green and the scattered fallen lumber provided a compass.

Finding my way back to writing, to writing here as well, has taken some time. It’s been nearly two years since I wrote of the dream about my father. If it’s to come at a glacial pace so be it. Let it move slower as long as it cuts deeper.

hailing taxis

I dreamt about my dad last night. Well, not last night. This morning. I’d woken up about seven and, being Sunday, decided to go back to sleep for an hour. I dream most vividly during those morning naps. 

It was, I think, the first time I’ve dreamed about him since he died. 

We were in Edinburgh. The damp turned the stone a darker grey. We stood on the north side of North Bridge, opposite the Balmoral, but in my dream it was a different building. I think it was St Mary’s, in the west end. But the bridge was definitely North Bridge. 

Dad flagged us a cab. There was a split second before the cab pulled up when he laughed and smiled and spoke in the voice he had that, even if I couldn’t see his face, I knew he was smiling. 

I went around to get in the far side, so he could get in on the near side. I didn’t want him to have to go out on the street. I was excited. My dad and I were going somewhere. 

As soon as I slammed my door shut, the taxi sped off. Dad hadn’t got in. I panicked, and shouted at the driver that we had to go back and get him. He was my dad and he’s the one who hailed the cab in the first place. Without him, there wouldn’t be a cab. How could we have just left him there? I looked back but the windows of the car were steamed up with the weather and the rain and I couldn’t see where we left him. I screamed and I cried but we didn’t turn back.

My panic woke me up. My room was sunny and the cat slept at the end of the bed. The morning sun stood in stark contrast to the dreich of Edinburgh.

The realness is disarmed me. The me in my dream wasn’t surprised to see him. He was there, in his Burberry trench coat, happy to be with me. As excited as I was to get where we were going. Maybe moreso.

Roaring?

My mom is one of those “decades don’t start with a zero the end” pedants.

I’m not.

I realised in the year 2000 that it was not worth arguing with her. What I find so funny about it is that it’s kind of a linguistic pedantry vs a mathematical pedantry and my mother, no great fan of mathematics, chooses the mathematical side of the argument.

For me, 2020 is the start of the new ‘20s, and they appear to be roaring in all the wrong ways.

But this is not a place where I comment on the world around me, burning though it may be.

It’s been a sad march to this new year. I will often look back on 2019, too much happened not to, but it won’t be with fondness. My heart broke and re-broke. My first novel was published, though it feels fucking ages ago and like it happened to someone else. I started writing a new novel and rewrote another novel. The agent I had been working with said goodbye. Some other people said goodbye. My dad died. My MS got worse. I started writing a book about drinking whisky, something I’m quite good at. The drinking part; the jury’s still out on the writing part.

So yeah, I think the last year was the saddest I can remember. Not the worst. I’m not sure I can rank years from best to worst or vice versa. But definitely the saddest.

My cat turned ten, but I forgot to have a birthday party for him. He deserved one. Wee bugger though he may be, he does always seem to cheer me up when I need it most.

Quite a lot of lovely things happened last year as well. I was often surrounded by good friends who love me and I love back. I made good wine. Kind and wonderful people got married in beautiful places. Babies were born who deserve a better world than the one we’re giving them. I spent more time in Scotland than I had in a fair few years, and went to the wild places.

I drank well. Though perhaps a bit too much. I ran a bunch, though not as much as the year before.

I won’t do resolutions. I rarely resolve anything, nor am I resolute. But stumbling into 2020 I have hope, in spite of the world’s apparent and reported grimness. I have hope that this year won’t be as sad as last, that I’ll have a bit more control over my own destiny. That I’ll finish a book or two, and maybe sell some more of the ones I’ve already published. There’s quite a lot to be hopeful about. I’m going to keep telling myself that and eventually believe it. It’s a new decade after all. Ends in a zero, so it’s a clean slate.

Just don’t tell my mom.

Eulogy

My father died in August. He was interred in October, at the columbarium at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. It marked the end of a decade of dementia erasing his mind, his heart, and his dignity while my mother, and to a lesser extent myself, attempted to keep him as comfortable and well-cared for as possible. 

The eulogy I wrote and the eulogy I managed to read on the day aren’t exactly the same. I cried too much, and some of the funnier things I wrote I omitted on the spot because punchlines don’t come through amidst rivers of ugly tears. What follows is cobbled from my notes and memories.

“It’s Thursday afternoon and another day in which to excel.”

More than a few of you will know that catchphrase, used by dad and his old roommate here at the academy, the late George Fritzinger. They loved this place.

Thank you all for coming. Some of you have crossed at least an ocean to be here. I speak for the whole family when I say thank you. 

In the wake of dad’s death we’ve received an astonishing number of messages. Rather wonderfully, they spoke little of condolence and so much about what John Bray meant to you, your partners, and your families. 

I don’t need to stand here and tell you what a remarkable man my father was, or recite his resumé. You all know, in countless ways, his capacity to inspire, to bring joy, to love, and support, and just brighten whatever room he walked into. 

The last decade has been difficult. I feel I cannot do justice to the man dad was without underlining, briefly, just how destructive the disease that took him was. His passing on the 18th of August was the final step in a long and heartbreaking decline. The initial changes to his behaviour, before his diagnosis, brought some episodes so dreadful that I could not recognise the actions as those of my father. The following rapid descent into dementia, the mental, emotional, then physical erosion was devastating.

The only way I was able to cope, to be able to help as much as possible with his care and supporting my mother with her care, was not to dwell on what was being lost. To lock away the man he’d been somewhere deep in my heart and mind. To face full on just how much he was losing, how much we were losing, would have removed any ability to cope with what was happening. I discovered recently that I wasn’t the only member of the family doing this. My mother’s courage, in the face of this strain that would have broken many, has been remarkable, and her loyalty and commitment in the face of such nightmarish circumstances stretched the bonds and duty of marriage to its very limits. She’s been amazing, and I hope she can now heal.

They say that funerals are more for the living than the dead. They say funerals should be a celebration of life as much as the mourning of a loss. 

With my father I feel it should be a reminder of the man he was before the fall, and an embracing of that life. The memories of kindness, of his mind and heart whole, rather than what they became. Today I’d like us to make dad whole again in our hearts, in our minds. For our thoughts and memories to be of the man he really was.

Dad was a teacher at heart. Yes, the term is consultant, but in reality he taught. He taught people how to run companies, how to work in companies. How to make companies better. He taught those things by teaching people how to listen and understand other people. He was gifted at it. It brought him joy. He eschewed hobbies in favour of working out how to do it better. 

He was a natural leader, content not to have the spotlight but instead go about his business in such a way that people followed out of loyalty, curiosity, and love. He demanded and expected the best of people because he couldn’t imagine not giving his best. 

As a father he would say life isn’t fair, and then would treat everyone fairly because that’s how you get by in an unfair world. He taught so much to all of us, inspired all of us, just by being himself. He made it look so easy to be John Bray, even though I know it wasn’t. The only way he was selfish was with burdens, and his own pain. He dreaded sharing those things and went out of his way to take everything he could on himself. 

Dad cried a lot. He told us he loved us a lot. Because he loved us, a lot. 

I watched him be fair.

I watched him be welcoming.

I watched him be confident but admit his mistakes.

I watched him never punch down. 

I watched him be so utterly in love with my mom, and her with him. 

I watched his friendships, the bonds he built with the people here, elsewhere, and no longer with us, from Annapolis, to Scotland, back to Boston, to London, and around the world. 

Dad didn’t teach me to have friends, but I wanted to have friends like he had friends. I see how close Kari, Jay, and Suzanna are to their friends now, how close I am to mine, and know we all learned so much from him. 

His capacity for warmth and kindness went far beyond those of us fortunate enough to be his family and friends. I remember once, shortly after dad moved into East Ridge, coming home from work as a delivery driver on a scooter, bringing our neighbours their curry. When he saw me turning up our walkway, he waved and said,

“Excuse me, does the older gentleman still live there?”

I said no, sadly, but he was being very well looked after.

He looked sad for a moment and said,

“I’m so sorry, I used to deliver to him and he was so incredibly kind. I loved delivering here.”

It’s not often I fear bursting into tears in front of the delivery driver. That’s how dad great was, though. He was so great even the delivery guy loved him.

Thank you all again for coming. Thank you for helping to make dad whole again.

unchecked lists

I wrote a list when I got here, of all the things I wanted to do, and some of the things I had to do. I think I managed about half of them. Maybe two-thirds. Most of them were places I wanted to eat. It’s pretty dumb of me, really. Key West is an island most people go with the express purpose of not really doing anything. It’s designed to undermine the most active of intensions, unless those intensions are to drink margaritas and eat seafood.

I’ve no idea how Hemingway managed to write here. I stare at a page as the morning gets hotter and my eyes get grabbed by a lizard flitting along the deck or a hummingbird whizzing about and then it’s too hot and a tree frog croaks or the pool looks too good or there’s a beer that’s been in the fridge too long and I should probably get that out and sip it while trying to get a word or two down. That’s why I get up early to go for a run before the sun rises. At least if I’ve done that, I’ve done something. I can nap, drink beer, eat ice cream, munch fish tacos on the beach; whatever I want, because I went for a run and did something. Doing something is one of the best excuses for doing nothing out there.

Buy my book.

Buy my other book.

whispers in the storm

There’s a front moving in. The temperature’s dropped 10 degrees in the last fifteen minutes. Crazy winds, lightning, torrential rain all predicted. The works. I’m looking forward to it; a bit of wrathful weather to break the heat. It’s been hot. And I’ve been hungover. It’s no fun to be hungover when the sun’s burning and the air feels like chowder.

I’m hungover because I drank too much wine, beer, and whisky last night. It was one of those old friends things. The too much you drink is directly proportional to the too long its been since you’ve seen someone you love dearly. It often happens the night before a wedding. Thankfully no wedding today, as I would have been in no fit state. Instead I went for a run in the blazing sun and relentless humidity. I stopped a few times, even when the traffic lights were in my favour. The sea was rough but gorgeous, crashing over White St Pier and drenching site seers. Sweat streamed off my face, a mix of IPA and Talisker from the night before.

When I got back the kids were playing in the pool. I jumped in to cool off but left them to it. I showered and dressed and grabbed my book and promptly fell asleep on the couch. All the adults in the house napped while the kids jumped and splashed and cannonballed and threw the pool noodle at each other. It felt strange to be one of the adults in the house. Alien.

The front arrived. It’s chucking it down, and the sky rages with lightning, thunder, and the loud whispers of trees in the gale.

remembering it now

I’m trying to get this thing started again. Shake the cobwebs off. Get used to writing regularly. There are unfinished drafts in the folder here, attempted posts going back four years, to May of 2015. So it’s not the first time I’ve travelled down this path. I don’t know why it’s harder than it used to be, but I’ve noticed that the less I write, the less clear my memory of things are. The past becomes monochrome and blurred. The old saying that you write it down to remember it now, not later, becomes truer every day.

Nine days ago, I landed in Key West. It was grey and raining. We flew through thunderheads the size of mountains in a small Embraer that bounced and dropped and dipped and everyone, including me, seemed fine with it. Standard weather for a hop to the islands. The guy next to me was asleep before take off and didn’t wake up until the wheels hammered the runway. It’s a short strip in Key West, and pilots have to drop like a rock to stick the landing. The bumpy ride didn’t deter my seat mate’s nap or the chat of the two dudebros seeking advice on bar-hopping from the sleazy asshole who kept referring to the flight attendant as ‘gorgeous’ rather than ‘ma’am’ or the name on her name tag (I don’t remember her name… this is why I need to write more).

I’m here to see my mum and dad. It’s not an easy time, though it’s an easier place to have an uneasy time. The skin on my dad’s face seems slack with the weight he’s lost, and even when he does smile, there’s sadness. We drive up to Miami. I take the morning run, going up, because I find it hard to stay awake when I drive in the afternoon. He’s usually sleeping when we get to the hospice, but we get there at lunchtime so that we can feed him. He wakes up for lunch. His food is pureed now. He failed the swallow test, which should probably be called the chew test, and so cannot have solids. His appetite has been ok the last few weeks, which is a good sign.

Mom sat next to him rested her head on his shoulder. He spoke a few words, indecipherable and incomprehensible. But he smiled his sad smile and met our eyes a few times. Twice a tear rolled down his right cheek. I don’t know what they were for. I kiss his forehead and tell him I love him. Sometimes he stares at the ceiling, sometimes the middle distance in front of him. There’s no way to know where he’s gone, if he’s gone anywhere.

It’s hard to leave, to say goodbye. Whatever of him was with us for a time departed, and we lingered in the hopes that it would return.

The drive back is always quiet. We listened to podcasts and commented on the weather. We stopped for lunch and it was good, but there was someone missing.

everything that's happened since

I've written a whole book since the last time I was on here. Not sure how I managed that, or how I managed to not pour forth on here about the daily hiccups and constant torrents of self-doubt that accompany that particular endeavour. Previous attempts at book-writing accumulated another book's worth of blog posts; meandering missives concerned with the curious space writers occupy. It could be limbo, but perhaps it's more that limbo is the ideal, the space I search for when I'm writing. An in-between space occupied by only me, a part of the world and apart from it. In contact enough to sip a whisky and see the odd friend, but outside so that nothing can exist but the sound of my fingers banging on the keys to Dvořák's 9th. It works as an ideal to aim for, rather than something to expect. Anyway, I wrote it, limbo or not, and I'm rewriting it now. I like the characters more than the book, so the rewrites are to make sure they get the book they deserve. It's slow, but sort of steady. 

Also, through no fault of my own, I appear to be a wine merchant again. In a shop. With wine. And whisky. I missed whisky. Well, I missed constantly dealing with whisky on a professional level. I was never really far enough away from it on a casual level to actually *miss* it. There are thirteen bottles next to my desk and a glass of Springbank next to my trackpad for goodness' sake. Anyway, it's a job with great booze. I will not be talking about it much here. 

There's another manuscript to rewrite, an old one. The first novel I wrote, the one that got me writing in the first place, that is going to need a hefty rewrite as well. Fortunately, my editor doesn't get their mitts on it until October, so I've got time to rewrite the other one first. Hopefully. That book is published next year. You can still get your name in it, if you fancy.  

I've drunk well, eaten well, and run a lot. I've come up with a name for my wine label. It's Cathar(tic) Wines, if you're at all interested. They are not yet available in a discerning independent wine merchant near you. They may never be. There aren't many bottles to be honest, and I'm pretty sure my mum is going to drink most of them. The name's a mediaeval history joke, if you need any further proof that I'm an incurable nerd. I like having a wine label. It's only taken a decade, which is less time than getting my first novel published, but more time than publishing my first wine book.

Other than that, the summer is kind of a blur. Some lovely friends got married, though that was May. Some other friends had parties and others drank on weather beaten picnic tables outside pubs. I tried to get to get to Scotland but couldn't, so I drank a bit more whisky than summer usually suggests and Scotland came to me. 

Someone died that shouldn't have. Who I'd not seen in too long but was so strong a presence in a time and part of my life that still feels and tastes so fresh that it could have been five minutes ago. I can hear her laughing and fighting and shouting with glee and she's not there anymore and while I know that I'm supposed to celebrate her having been there at all, I'm still angry and sad that so bright a life and talent is gone. She drove a red Honda Jazz (when I knew her) and painted horses and liked wine. I disagreed with some of her politics, but liked the way she fought for them. I'm ashamed that whenever I thought, "I've not seen or spoken to her in awhile" I just assumed it would be something time would correct, that we would meet again because that's what people do. But she's gone now and it doesn't seem real.

falling with style

My legs don’t work the way they used to. Every day, there’s a little reminder. Going down the stairs I need to concentrate. Something’s missing. Something that I didn’t even know was there until it went away. An unconscious ability, like a reflex, that I took for granted, unaware of its existence. I’m not even sure how best to describe it, except for perhaps as confidence in the next step. Walking, running, descending a stair case or a ladder; these things are sort of like touch typing, or the most basic aspects of hand-eye coordination. They should be like being able to close your eyes and touch your nose. It’s a simple awareness of oneself in relation to the world. 

And it’s disappearing. Every step down the stairs requires complete focus; balance doesn’t come naturally, it must be willed into existence. My legs are strong; I can run and walk long distances. But every step is a choice. There is no longer the inevitability of one foot simply following the other to propel me forward.

It’s frustrating, but I’m getting used to it. I can still run, so I do. I can still walk, so I do. I can still dance.

To look at me, I wouldn’t strike you as much as a dancer. It’s one of the reasons I like dancing so much. It’s like a nice little surprise that a stocky guy like me isn’t lost on the dance floor, that I can, should the situation require, bust a move.

I don’t do it very often. Weddings; big parties; that sort of thing. I’m not a clubber. I’ve never gone out just to go for a dance. In fact, the thought of that horrifies me - I’ll turn quite taciturn and grumpy should it ever be suggested. 

I never took a dance class. I just liked moving to the music. My legs seem to respond to the rhythm on their own. It was a rare treat; a release. I went where they took me. My inspiration, if I had one, was probably John Belushi as Jake Blues in The Blues Brothers. Similar build, unlikely dancer, but man, he just loses himself in it. There’s a freedom to it. No thinking, just dancing. 

I can’t remember which wedding it was that I realised a part of that was gone. I don’t know what song it was that my legs couldn’t move to the music. It’s a mystery what nerve pathway translates music to movement without a thought. All I remember is a collapse in my heart as I got on the dance floor and my legs wouldn’t move without me telling them to, and even then it was like two lead posts below my knees. I got scared that I’d twist an ankle as I couldn’t count on my balance or coordination. Every step to the beat was preceded by a 1,2 in my head. I had to keep track rather than listen to the music. It wore me out quicker. 

At a party a we while ago, there was a lot of dancing. I forced myself to join in. It was a good party, full of good people. The tunes were great. But my legs felt slower. Out of control again. They weren’t so much moving to the beat as they were responding to gravity. I remembered Woody in Toy Story’s outrage at Buzz thinking he could fly. That he wasn’t flying, he was just falling with style. It felt apt on the dance floor; I was flailing, and my legs were just falling with style. 

I’ve been trying to figure out why it bothers me so much. MS has far worse consequences than making you feel awkward on the dance floor. You’d think the chronic pain and constant exhaustion would be more upsetting, but nope, it’s the fear of losing the ability to dance with abandon only 5 or 6 times a year that brings unease. I'm still going to try, obviously. I will be dragged from the dance floor a sweaty mess until, quite literally, I can't dance anymore. But in the meantime, there's that feeling that something is missing. A sense of something taken away that I can't get back. And the touch of fear that it's just the beginning.

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