Death Writing - Grief and Memory

This is a piece that I wrote in a grief writing session headed by Christina Thatcher at the Made Gallery in Roath. It came out somewhat unexpectedly as I wasn't sure what I was going to write about before I went.

This is about someone I went to school with - those who know will know.

Club Metropolitan

We'd get a half on the bus into town in our baggy jeans, band hoodies and spiked belts. Queuing up outside, we'd check surreptitiously which bouncers were on that night hoping it wouldn't be Martin, the notorious ID-er. False birthdays and their accompanying fabricated star signs at the ready, we'd organise ourselves with the tallest and oldest-looking at the front and back with the others on their tiptoes in between. We'd try to look nonchalant.

Once downstairs, everyone from school would be there, the entire sixth form and some high-shooting year elevens. Herded into that subterranean place of pseudo-punk, suspicious drips and free toast, we'd gather at the bar downing our watered-down vodka and cokes and waiting for the music to improve (to something deemed acceptable by the group to like) so we could rush en-masse down to the dancefloor.  

On Wednesdays, your favourite, the night was called Take Warning, run by some cooler, older guys with dreads from a couple of years above. We'd pile onto the dance floor, hold our hands up when they unleashed the foam machine and jostle each other to the tunes of Rancid, The Dead Kennedys, Less than Jake and The Offspring (early albums only). Exhausted after a rousing bout of 'Bob' by NOFX or Catch 22's 'Keasbey Nights', we'd trip to the bar. The spent foam mixture, beer, sweat and spit soaked up to the knees of our jeans, the way the snow did on the day of your funeral.

We were young, untouchable, our GCSE's behind us and the world yet to come. We were going to be rock stars, we were going to make it big, we were going to be friends forever. You were part of it, part of us. United by a dubious taste in music, hidden yet infected piercings, and a questionable fashion sense which resulted in almost total social exclusion.

We were the underage drinkers, smokers, stoners, metalheads, moshers and acid-takers.

And we were perfect.



This one's for you:

'Rufus Beady' video for Made in Roath's 'Dark, Dark Night Walk'.

So here's my first attempt at a video. It's almost painfully awkward to watch but I thought it might be fun to try it this way for once. Just for some context, I was asked to start with the words 'It was a dark, dark night...' inspired by this book:

And it was set here:

I was reading a little bit off this map, in the field on the bottom right, from a caravan:

Image by Dave Daggers

Passion: Writing from a prompt and trying to word 'happy'.

At Roath Writer's last night we looked at the poem 'Happiness' by Raymond Carver

Happiness

So early it's still almost dark out.
I'm near the window with coffee,
and the usual early morning stuff
that passes for thought.
When I see the boy and his friend
 walking up the road
to deliver the newspaper.
They wear caps and sweaters,
and one boy has a bag over his shoulder.
They are so happy
they aren't saying anything, these boys.
I think if they could, they would take
each other's arm.
It's early in the morning,
and they are doing this thing together.
They come on, slowly.
The sky is taking on light,
though the moon still hangs pale over the water.
Such beauty that for a minute
death and ambition, even love,
doesn't enter into this.
Happiness. It comes on
unexpectedly. And goes beyond, really,
any early morning talk about it.



Which, the more you read, turns out to be not that happy at all (well, that's my interpretation of it anyway). We were then asked to write on a scrap of paper a word which is associated with positive feeling, be it an emotion of more abstract thought, and then pass it on five people to the left. I wrote 'sunshine' which then got passed to someone who hates sunshine - oops. So I got the word 'passion', which I can't say I've ever tackled in my writing before. But anyway, I wrote this:

Passion and fruits


Passion: a word usually connected with steamy, sweaty infernos or the content of the well-fingered pages of a charity shop Mills and Boon paperback.

However, I don't see my passion in that. I attach my passion to those with passions, those who love the bizarre, the hobbyists, the obsessors, the midnight ramblers and the specialist readers. To the ornithological variety perhaps, a man who can spot a goldfinch at 50 yards from its plume alone, or converse unashamedly with the song thrush.

But it doesn't have to be birds, it can be anything - an arachnid devotee, the Napoleonic era expert, the orchid enthusiast, the aficionado of narrow boat construction. A passion that takes you to distant lands and the dustiest corners of the book shop, that takes up every Sunday and most of your spare change – that is the passion I am drawn to.

I can bathe in your eccentricity and revel in the crackle of your energy to the point where I will meet you before dawn to watch for otters on a river bank or fumble in the dune grass on a stormy day for discarded World War Two bullets. I will feed from a passion, get swept up in it, if it is strong enough.

So tell me about steam engines or tree frogs or home brewing or Georgian furniture, and as you talk, I allow your passion to become mine, just for a while. I will read from your page and sing from your hymn sheet and I will feel that much more strongly than even the largest amount of Shades of Grey.  

Home is wherever I'm with you.

This is something which I wrote when asked to write about 'home'. Surprisingly, it wasn't a place that I thought of, but rather a person - my mum. Although perhaps not so surprisingly considering I'm pretty sure I was still tipsy from the night before.

It was inspired by this song:

So anyway, I did a bit of editing and re-jigging and here we are (I have re-written it as a poem too, but I'm saving that to try and enter somewhere!). I printed this off for my mum for a Christmas, present I hope you like it.

Home

You’d wrap me up in your fair-trade skirts that hung with beads. In there I felt invincible, sat in my castle of cotton. You’d pull your perfume around me, so familiar that if I caught it on the street in a country far away, I looked for you in the crowd.

The chime of your silver bracelets would let me know you were around, perhaps doing the washing up or hanging out the laundry. On holiday, you’d drop them to the bottom of the pool for me to dive down and bring up. I’d keep my eyes open to see your face through the water as I rose triumphantly to the surface, over and over again.

I’d brush my hand through your earring stand, listen to the wooden toucans and silver drops knock together as a musical instrument of you. A gemstone percussion of amethyst, rose-quartz and jade.

I’d run my fingers over your arms and count your many freckles, remnants of your childhood in Aden. Days spent sunbathing, lathered in oil, before you knew it was bad for you. You didn’t like them but I was jealous – I wanted to map out a life in pigment as you had, collect my travels on my skin.

I see traces of your pigment everywhere; your glow is on my own skin and your tones are in my voice. You hold so many colours and I’m proud to paint from your palette.

 

 

 

Creative Responses to Dementia

So, as part of this event which was held at the MADe Gallery in Roath by Creative Reponses to Dementia and Making Minds, I was asked to write and read some words inspired by my experience with dementia.

I chose to write a poem about my work as a carer with adults with dementia and a more personal piece of prose about my grandfather.

Here's me reading for the first time as an invited writer:

 

 

 

Here's the poem :

 

 

 

Your Husband

 

A key-lock used to enter,

family photos on the wall,

we check in to on-call service

from the guest phone in the hall.

 

We know where he’ll be sitting,

his care plan and routine,

we know his pills and creams and times

and how he takes his tea.

 

To us he’s Mr Davies

but to you he is just ‘dear’,

or Daddy, Dad or Grandad,

and other names throughout the years.

 

A commode where once were golf clubs,

a dry-pad on his seat,

button alarm around his neck,

catheter bag between his feet .

 

There are tanks outside his window,

there is a man under his bed.

There’s things he sees that we cannot,

the things inside his head.

 

The tanks turn into rubbish trucks,

the man just goes away,

he wonders what we did with him,

he marvels at your name.

 

I know you’re stood outside the door,

to watch me as I care,

as I wipe him, wash him, dress and clean,

you know I know you’re there.

 

So when he says I’m pretty,

or that I’m nice and tall,

I know that you know that he doesn’t know,

 that he doesn’t mean it at all.

 

 

And here is the piece about my grandfather:

 

 

A Boat for One

 

The last time I saw my grandfather, he didn’t know who I was.

To him, I was just another one from the stream of strange faces who came to wash him, dress him, help him go to the toilet.

‘That girl’, he’d call me, ‘that nice young girl’.

Of course I’d just snap straight back into my carer role – guide him to his comfy chair, change his pad, reassure him when I found him wandering the house at night.

I’d be woken by him clattering his zimmer frame into the wooden doors. ‘Hello?’ he’d say, ‘hello?’ Pyjama-clad I’d rush downstairs, ‘Hi Jim’, I’d say.

I’d never called him Jim before.

‘It’s ok, you’re at home’.

 I’d then tuck him back into bed.

I couldn’t see much of what I remembered – the man with the wicked sense of humour who could make anything out of wood, who insisted on going to Ogmore beach every time we visited, completely irregardless of the weather, and had his own special pint glass behind the bar at his local.

Perhaps he was still down there somewhere, smothered by the huge knitted jumpers which used to fit, but now just pooled on the chair around him. They hung as if draped over a scarecrow, his shoulders empty boughs, his knuckles; gnarled oak.

Moth picked and aged, there were too many holes to hold in the straw.

I could see it as it fell through the air, its motes catching golden in the light. I saw it collect in drifts along the floor; heaped memories. Unaware of its significance he stuck to his cleared path, his shambling gait exposing the carpet.

‘I want my wife, Kay, my wife’, he’d say to me, over and over, as I helped him dress.  Momentarily I’d rise to it, ‘I know’ I’d think, ‘I know who she is, that’s my name too.’

But then I’d remember.

And then I’d forget.

‘Pleasantly muddled’, we’d say, ‘Away with the fairies’. An affectionate term, a positive spin.

There wasn’t much else we could do – no emergency brake, no miraculous antidote, no rip cord, no life ring to thrown out to him.

So, together we stood on the shore and waved and smiled as he drifted out in the current. And when he was way out on the horizon, we lifted our arms high in the air to show him we were still watching, were still there. And that even when he couldn’t see us anymore, we could still see him. Still knew him.

He sailed away in a boat for one and we watched him go.

‘That girl’, he said, ‘that nice young girl’.

 

 

x

 

 

 

 

 

 





The Upper Deep - horror short story

You can check out my foray into horror at the Cardiff Undead blog here!

It was inspired by this poem:

The Kraken - Lord Alfred Tennyson

 Below the thunders of the upper deep;
 Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea,
 His antient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
 The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee
 About his shadowy sides: above him swell
 Huge sponges of millennial growth and height;
 And far away into the sickly light,
 From many a wondrous grot and secret cell
 Unnumber'd and enormous polypi
 Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green.
 There hath he lain for ages and will lie
 Battening upon huge seaworms in his sleep,
 Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;
 Then once by man and angels to be seen,
 In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.

And this book:

I'm sure you can guess the common theme;

Although there's not actually a kraken in it...

Literature Wales Poetry Workshop

So, on St David's Day we headed to Neath to attend a day of poetry performances and workshops funded by Literature Wales and Seren Books - all for £7!
Gillian Clark (The National Poet of Wales) also did a reading of some of her poems (two of which I absolutely loved) and a book signing.

Here's one of the poems that really moved me: Miracle on St Davids Day


I really enjoyed the day and it definitely inspired me to write more poetry.

I chose to attend a workshop by Rhian Edwards about bridging the gap between page and performance poetry. She gave us this exercise:

Think of an emotion, without naming it give it a (non-cliché):

• Colour
• Texture
• Smell
• Sound
• Effect on the body
• Animal
• Visual

(not necessarily in that order)

So this was mine:

It is a pearlescent sheen,

the scent of money,

it's copper smell,

a knot on smooth.

It trickles almost imperceptibly

a gradual waterboard.

It stifles and suffocates,

a gnawing worm, 

it's holes left gaping. 

 

 

(Answer at the bottom)

 

 

The next workshop was with Paul Henry and focused on writing from memory.

 

He encouraged us to fill a page with words and sentences inspired by the phrase, 'The first house I lived in'. We then read through the following poem together and then wrote our own inspired by it.

 

The Self-Unseeing by Thomas Hardy  

Here is the ancient floor,

Footworn and hollowed and thin,

Here was the former door

Where the dead feet walked in.

She sat here in her chair,

Smiling into the fire;

He who played stood there,

Bowing it higher and higher.

Childlike, I danced in a dream;

Blessings emblazoned that day;

Everything glowed with a gleam;

Yet we were looking away!

 

 

 

And this was mine:

 

 

 

Heol Y Coed

 

Here is the step where the dog sits,

stooping to peer through the clear, green frog

of the stained glass window,

an occasional eruptive bark,

pre-empting the doorbell.

Here is the bannister which I pushed my head through

and was stuck for what seemed like hours.

 

Here is the hall with its full length mirror,

which I cracked

with an ill-advised handstand.

Here is the kitchen door

through which I would listen to adult conversations

pyjama-clad after bed time.

It does little to blot out the noise.

 

Here is the kitchen table,

a stain or two from sodastream syrup.

Here is where they gathered en mass,

all high hopes and hair gel

before taxiing to town,

the dog's head left smelling of aftershave,

from many different hands.

 

Here is the garden,

with its lavender-lined patio.

A badminton net traversing the pre-chained daisies.

Here is the quince bush, heavy with

fat bumble bees

and crammed with owl and pussycat fruit.

 

Here is where we buried the guinea pig,

which the dog then dug up

 and brought inside.

 

 

 

The answer to the first poem was....envy!

Mug.0

If you walk down the street with a mug, people look at you like you're bloody crazy.

It upsets people, it makes them nervous. You can see them feverishly glancing round for a building site, a need to placate the uneasiness of the aforementioned mug  being out of the household parameters by placing you as a builder. It's ok to drink from mugs outside if you're repairing someone's roof or replumbing a kitchen.

But no, there is no building site - not even any light renovation or some gentle landscaping. The ensuing judgment is swift and damning. There's only one thing for it, you must be mad.

You see them whispering as you approach, mug in hand, taking an occasional furtive look in your direction. They stop as you pass lips compressed together, holding tight onto their handbags, eyes diverted, before resuming once again when you're at a safe distance:
"Did you see the size of the mug he had?"
"I know, I don't feel safe on the streets anymore."




Don't pretend you didn't have one of these

And I'm not just talking about any mug, I mean the big, ceramic, chipped, faded, got-free-with-an-easter-egg type of mug. It may be emblazoned with 'World's Best Dad' or 'Diamond Jubilee 1952-2012' or be one of those brown Smarties ones that every household seemed to have in the 90s. Something with a big handle and stir marks in the bottom, something that's been with you through three house moves, it's origins lost completely in the sands of time.

But the important thing is the confidence with which you carry it. Here you are, walking the neighbourhood sipping a brew, you're a Kenco flaneur, a Lipton lounger, a Tetley stroller. You don't care, you've got the streets at your feet and a cup of the good stuff in your hand. Never mind those who stare, who judge, who comment; they don't get it. They don't get that pushing the boundaries of domesticity can be liberating, exhilarating, intoxicating.

You should leave those haters in your coffee infused wake.

I sometimes wonder if there's a limit, a Mug.0 ,where the normalcy restrictions have been pushed too far. An invisible barrier at about 100 metres circumference from your house that marks the end of public mugging, indecent mugging, mugging with attitude. If you dare to venture far enough to cross it, the mug will be whisked out of your hand, go flying over your shoulder, zip down the road, careen straight through the sitting room window and smash straight into the splash-back above the sink.

Of course, you'd wear it as a badge of honour, this brewed Jackson Pollock, this caffeine-imbued abstract homage. It shows that you stared the mug-limits right in the face and laughed wildly. You've conquered Mount Olympus, you've knocked down the doors of Valhalla, slammed your  'I survived the monkeys of Longleat' mug down on the table and said:


They would really benefit from a mug or two

"That's right! I choose to drink my refreshing and invigorating hot drink out of a vessel whose handle I can actually get my fingers through and won't burn the shit of my hands even with the cardboard surround. And if you've got a problem with that, you've got a problem with me. Capiche?"
You defied any of them to complain. They didn't.

The Beverage Gods tremble at your feet.You have overcome.

So next time you fancy an alfresco tea, a coffee on the move, a hot chocolate in the park, throw off your convention-shackles, pick up your mug and damn well take it outside. Hell, maybe take a Hobnob or two along, really shake things up.

Go on, just try it.

Cocktales

Cocktales

 

The Bangkok Sling

2 parts Necessity

1 part Unsure Approach Tactic

1 part Jet Lag

A dash of Age Related Social Anxiety  

I go for a two-seater, somewhere near the edge, placing my bag on my lap. I scan the room with a forced nonchalance.  Everyone else is sitting with someone but that’s to be expected. I’ll have that soon enough.  

I get my book out, In Cold Blood by Truman Capote. It contrasts magnificently with my surroundings and also acts as a friendly reminder that some people will slit your throat for absolutely no reason. It’s nice to keep that in mind, when travelling alone.  

I take a sip of my Chang and tuck into my Pad Thai, taking in the cultural sights of Koh San Road – the ping pong shows, the beer towers, the sweaty tourists and the tuktuk drivers that will fleece you without a second thought. Just yesterday I saw a mystic man spit into a girl’s mouth. ‘Healing’ he called it, she didn’t seem to agree.  

I lay down my chopsticks and wonder if I have any bean sprouts stuck in my teeth. I light a cigarette, at a pound a pack it’d be rude not to, and let my eyes roam. Those three look alright but they look a bit German, I don’t want to embarrass myself with a language barrier, I keep looking.  

Right, there’s two there. They look nice, and they’re laughing.  And they look English, a bit Essex in fact. Nice teeth, apparent low inebriation level, high approachability, they’re a definite maybe. I finish my drink and head to the bar, skirting perilously close to them to see if they speak English.  

It’s a yes.  

Drink in hand, on the way back from my recon fly-by, I look at their shoes. Shoes are very important, they tell a lot about a person. Let’s see, flip flops and those weird fabric shoes that seem to be in fashion. It’ll do. At least they’re not wearing Crocs. 

Ok, now for the approach. If one of them smoked then I could just ask for a light, the perfect, text book ice breaker.

But no. Healthy bastards.  

I remind myself how I need to meet friends and construct a solid mental image of myself, reading alone in my hotel room. I can only carry so many books. As I mentally count down, I do a final bean sprout check and wipe the sweat off my top lip. 

Three, two, one.

Go.

Serve over ice in a highball, best garnished with a Marlboro Light.

 

 

The Vietnamese Bus Bomb 

2 parts Ridiculously Long Journey

1 part Suspected Dysentery

1 part Reduced Melanin

A splash of Ill-Advised Hareem Trousers 

I climb back into my bed, tucking my newly stamped passport into my money belt. I can’t stretch out of course, anyone over 5’8 is viewed as a giant round here.  We all have our crosses to bear. Mine is an energetic local woman who keeps flicking my face with her hair when she leans over me to adjust the curtain with her umbrella. Something she likes to do a lot. We’ve been on this bus for sixteen hours already, imodium-ed up the eyeballs and rapidly losing patience. 

We’re all pushed into a corner of course, the foreigners. The one nearest to the toilet and furthest away from the fire exits. I was woken up last night by a mouse crawling in my hair, no doubt trying to get at my curry-crab flavoured crisps. As I tried to get back to sleep I watched a large cockroach sauntering across the head rest in front, it paused to pose, silhouetted heroically in the moonlight.  

Suddenly, from the front of the bus comes a commotion. The driver is heading straight for us, ‘the white corner’, gesticulating insanely and pointing at each of us in turn. We look blankly at each other, and then at him. He gets louder. Other passengers around us begin pointing at us, then the border, then at us. It makes no sense.  

He starts pulling us from our seats. We climb down, file out of the bus and stand there in the dust. Then, with no warning, the door closes and he drives off. All of about twenty metres over the border. Then, he opens the door, pokes his head out and starts screaming back at us, motioning for us to get back on and cursing us in Vietnamese for jogging too slow. We get back on the bus and squeeze back into our seats.  

The bus drives on.

Serve in a martini glass with a slice of lemon and a selection of brand-name Loperamide.

 
 

The Skinny Dipper

3 parts Banana Leaves and Tamarind

2 parts Dutch Courage

Top off with Drunken Camaraderie 

I don’t know quite how it happened, but I remember that I was definitely naked. Definitely naked in a group of naked people, in a river, somewhere in the Thai jungle. And there was massaging going on, I remember massaging. 

There are chickens underneath the hut, I can hear them squabbling and scratching in the dirt. The morning light sticks its pudgy hands in between the slats, pawing at my eyelids and shoving its fingers up my nose. 

Oh God.  

It must’ve have been that stuff we were smoking. ‘Banana leaves and tamarind’ the villager told me. Banana leaves and tamarind, my arse. I look through the open doorway (there is no door) down to the river. I can see our guide down there, talking to the villager and his wife. They’re laughing. Probably about us. 

I try to piece it together. Everything was normal up until that point, ‘banana point’. We had completed the second day of the hike, had a refreshing swim in the river and eaten a sumptuous meal of rice and mayonnaise. We were getting to know our hike-mates – the hot French girl, the German loner, the weird Belgian doctor and his wife and the rest of them.  

It had all gone so wrong.  

I reach for my suitably ethnic, tie dyed handbag and fumble for my camera. The start-up tune slides drawing pins into my pitifully dehydrated brain. I flick through the pictures. Oh yes, here they are, nestled tumour-like after photos of elephants and waterfalls.

Skinny-dipping; I never learn.

Serve Clothed. 

 

The Vang Vienger

1 whole Cunty Gary

2 parts Alcohol Induced Lust

1 part Aphrodisia

A splash of Regret 

After walking for about an hour we eventually find the hospital, nowhere near where we were directed by the last two people we asked. There are plastic garden chairs lined up outside, full of women fanning themselves in the heat, a baby attached to a descending nipple. They stare openly as we pass.  

We mount the steps by the main entrance and kick off our flip flops, pausing to read the signs in broken-English.  

We head towards the pharmacy. 

 “Fucking cunty Gary and his cunty mate. He wasn’t even any fucking good.”

We walk through ward after ward. I’m limping from when I fell through the floor of the bar a few a days ago, the A4 sized bruise hidden under my ever-faithful hareem trousers. We find the pharmacy and approach the window, trying to keep our voices down.  

“I had unprotected sex last night,” whispers my companion, “and I need the pill.” 

We are met with puzzled faces. The nurses here are used to seeing Westerners with injuries, normally broken arms and slashed faces from tubing escapades, with the odd alcohol poisoning and drug-induced stupor thrown in for good measure. They look us up and down.  

She’s floundering. I take over. I point at her.

“No condom,” I say. 

More nurses come to join the confusion. They converse in Lao as I hold my hands under my ribs, and then push them out, imaging an air pregnancy.

More muttering. 

I cross my arms as if cradling a baby. “No baby,” I say. 

A crowd is gathering. It’s getting desperate.

Time for the big guns. 

I hold out my left hand, forming a hoop with my thumb and forefinger. With my right, I extend my index finger. Taking a side-long glance at my red-faced mate, I begin to slowly move my finger towards the hole. The audience watches in anticipation. 

It enters. 

I go in and out a couple of times, quickening in pace to build up the momentum, before signifying the shivering crescendo by jamming my finger to the knuckle and making a raspberry sound with my mouth. I point at my friend (somewhere in the ovary area) and then do the baby cradle again, “No baby”, I say. 

They converse again.   

“Ahh!” one shouts, “The after-morning pill!”
“Yes!” we reply, “The after-morning pill!”  

Embarrassed sniggering and a couple of high fives all round, to commemorate a job well done. 

The crowd disperses. They give us the pill. 

For a mellower version, serve in a low ball with a side of Over The Counter By a False Name Tramadol.

 

Slippery Crabber

2 parts Flor de Caña Rum

1 part Vegetarian Smugness

½ a measure of Peer Pressure

A dollop of Bioluminescent Algae 

“I couldn’t possibly,” I reply, “I’m a vegetarian.” I’m flooded with an image of myself on my high horse, meadow flowers braided into my hair, looking down at the smiling woodland creatures through my iridescent glow.  

I wonder if the guys I’m talking to get the same effect.  

Nevertheless, I help collect driftwood for the fire and give up my pocket knife for the good of the group. We’re already a bottle of rum in, it took longer than we thought for the tide to go out.  

As night falls, we pick up our flip flops and head over to the reef, dragging our feet through the phosphorescent algae in the shoreline. We keep looking back to see our foot prints written in starlight. Those of us on acid find this quite overwhelming.  

 We only have a few torches between us, so we stick together, drunkenly belting out a rousing rendition of ‘I Drove All Night’ by Roy Orbison. We reach the rocks and begin to scramble over, those of us with knives clamping them between our teeth. Then, we gather into a group and assign pairs. I nominate myself the official torch-holder.  

The hunt begins.  

He goes only for the big ones, stabbing them neatly in the middle of the shell and flicking them into the saucepan I’m holding. I replace the top each time to stop them crawling out. I found the first few quite upsetting. Poor little buggers. 

But as it goes on, I get more and more into it. The thrill of the chase has awoken previously repressed primal instincts. I can smell their fear. After about fifteen minutes, I turn into the ultimate hunter, scaling rocky outcrops and seaweed covered rock pools to find the biggest. 

“Here’s a massive one!” I scream, “Hurry up! Stab it! Fucking stab it!”, as the doomed crustacean tries to jam itself into a too-small hole, its spindly little legs paddling uselessly at the wet sand. Take that, you crabby bastard.  

It wasn’t until we made our way back to the fire, with our saucepans full of our pelagic bounty, did I feel any kind of remorse. As I watched them sizzle on the grate, lined up claw to claw next to their fallen comrades, I was overcome by shame. We had orchestrated and carried out a mass slaughter. They had never even seen us coming.  

I never knew I had such bloodlust in me.

Lightly dust brim of glass with some Fraudulently Obtained Pseudoephedrine. Serve on ice.