Northern Gothic

This summer is keeping her own sweet time.

In-between homes and seasons, I cannot choose between an open window and closed. Equally afraid of drought and flood I keep one curtain open, the other closed; one window flung to the backyard fence, the second, tight-lipped in its plastic frame. I imagine this a fair compromise. The bedroom objects nightly, swinging like a schizophrenic. The evenings are socked and sleeved, the mornings drenched in a glasshouse sweat.

My teeth have taken on a strange, metallic taste. There are dangerous rooms in every door.

On the third night of the second week I fall asleep early with Flannery O’Connor, wide open, on my lap. It is a mistake, a sin perhaps, to fall asleep under Flannery O’Connor. Neither Southern nor Catholic, or even dead, my dreams are not quite old enough to keep pace.

Flannery O’Connor could not care less. She adjusts her reading glasses and bears down on me like a wall-mounted crucifix.

“How did you get in?” I ask.

“You left the window open,” she replies, “You want to be careful about leaving the window open. All sorts of folks get in through an open window.”

I find myself admitting fault. In the future I will keep my windows tightly closed, guarding against all manner of unwanted writers: Joyce, Poe, Steinbeck and the impossible horror of Heaney, humping all those mucky, potato dreams.

“Might I just have one small corner of the bed,” Flannery O’Connor asks, meek as Mary, legs crossed at the ankle, “The smallest of corners, just a tiny place to rest?”

I do not trust her. I can tell she is sizing up the wallpaper, already critiquing the showy swirls and coronets. She is writing me plain, blunt-faced, over-nosed for a Northern woman. She is casually undermining my intentions, both best and worst. I do not trust her. I am, however, jealous for her gall.

“I don’t trust you,” I say, “You almost always see the worst in people.”

“That may be true,” Flannery O’Connor replies, “But honey, don’t it make for a real, good read?”

And with that, Flannery O’Connor takes over the entire bed, occupant notwithstanding. Two miles shy of Dundonald, with a mobile telephone quietly keeping time on the dresser, I dream a dark, Southern dream; a guilty, Catholic, murmur of a dream, so well dreamt I doubt my own authorship.

The end of the world has fallen, not this time upon the Southern States, but rather upon a County Antrim cul-de-sac. The sun has quit her shining. The moon has ceased to be, and I, dressed for Sunday service, am waiting on a ride to some place else.

Though the end of the world has come and gone, I am righteously convinced there is a switch, an ordinary, electric switch, capable of turning the world back on. I stumble between bungalows, fingers fumbling for just such a switch. As I walk, hesitantly at first, and then with the growing confidence of a full-time drunk, my bare knees make contact with bricks and shrubs, small garden ornaments, the head of a silent, lawn sprinkler. I graze easily. I have always grazed easily. Having grown up grass-stained and sun burnt in provincial suburbs, I am well-accustomed to garden clutter and expect to encounter such obstacles, loitering in the pitch.

I am not expecting the creatures.

Save for the short life of a green-gilled budgie, a goldfish and a seething gaggle of schoolroom tadpoles, I am not accustomed to creatures. I am not a lover of creatures. I am not a dreamer of creatures.

I am not expecting the creatures; dozens and dozens of creatures, both homely and exotic, brushing fuzzily against my ankles, my shins, my elbows and, on one unsettling occasion, the outer rim of my left ear lobe. It is impossible to proceed through this sightless soup of fur and fang. I hunker down on the pavement and, too terrified to breath or refrain from breathing, await a slobbering end.

Flannery O’Connor drips across my lap, dragging downwards like a two ton rosary. “What d’you expect honey child?” she asks, “Nothing ever turns out nice in my stories.”

I hold my tongue. It seems pointless to protest. I imagine Flannery O’Connor infinitely eloquent when it comes to the last word.

In the dark nothing I find myself acknowledging God’s unquestionable justice, for the light and the darkness- original players on the primordial stage- have vanished first. The creatures, coming later, are granted an extra day. People, I suspect, will be last to leave. I take dry comfort in this thought. What strange world, I wonder, will we occupy on this very last day; lightless, groundless, airless and empty, will there be being at all in such a vast vacuum? Will sin persist without a captive audience?

“Course it will,” mutters Flannery O’Connor, “there’s always sin, girl,” and without warning or sound of retreat, strikes the lights in every window, so the whole street is suddenly blushing, naked blond. There are entirely ordinary people standing in each window. These people are frozen, illuminated, and framed by their velveteen curtains, posing confidently with a paper back book in hand, with a pipe, a dry martini, a finally sleeping baby, a smooth jazz record rotating on the turntable.

“Look at them folks,” says Flannery O’Connor, resorting to Southern-ease, “them folks ain’t no nice folks.”

“They look pretty nice to me.” I say, “They’re just ordinary folk standing in their living rooms doing ordinary things.”

“It’s just cos you far away. Step on closer, girl,” she says.

I step closer. I venture into flowerbeds and picture book lawns. I stand ankle deep in shrubbery. I cannot believe my own gall. Flannery O’Connor is right. The ordinary people are not nice. The ordinary people are animals; wild creatures and prehistoric beasts hiding inside ordinary people skins. A big, jagged zip runs from chin to stern, suckering the outside in.

I am shocked. I had not expected wild creatures. I step back, tumbling butt first over children’s toys and ornamental flower pots.

“What is the meaning of this?” I ask but Flannery O’Connor isn’t greatly given to meaning, preferring as she does, dialogue and death and elaborate, acidic endings. She stands upon an upturned bucket and adjusts her reading glasses, making good with her extra foot of judgment.

“Don’t ask me,” she chides. “I just write them.”

“Why don’t you write something nice for a change?” I say, “A happy ending can’t hurt every so often.”

“Folk’s don’t buy no happy endings. Folks likes a good tragedy. Tragedy reminds folks of home,” she quips, and turns me slowly by the earlobes, so I can take in the entire cul-de-sac.

With the lights up and the world no longer ending I can see there are wild creatures on every doorstep. Leopards fornicating on the front lawns. Lions pacing the gum-pucked pavements. Domesticated goats, Labrador dogs, sheep, cows, bandy deers and kangaroos congregating by the garage doors. One-armed sloths and prehistoric beasts are swinging from the telephone wires. A solitary crocodile winds its way towards the telephone box, green tail grooming the asphalt into loopy ribbons.

I am shocked. I step back and then, remembering the inside creatures, suddenly forwards and wobble there, hesitating in the flowerbed, caught between the lesser evils.

“Curious?” asks Flannery O’Connor, and despite the teeth I admit to a certain amount of morbid curiosity.

“Step on closer, girl,” she urges, placing a small, sweaty hand on the base of my spine, “take yourself a nosy look at them wild, wild creatures.”

I step forwards. I take a long Northern look. The creatures are people, ordinary small and larger people, wearing contact lenses and false teeth and kindly smiles as they hide inside wild creature skins. A big, jagged zip runs from chin to stern, suckering the inside in.

I am shocked, I had not expected ordinary people.

I examine my neck, and sure enough I am also zippered. The metal teeth begin at my chin and disappear into my shirt collar some six inches below. I look at my feet and, encased in high top sneakers, they offer no further insight. I examine my hands curiously. The left is flesh, the right fur.

“Hey,” I whisper, addressing a small crowd of stationary creatures. “Am I one of you or one of them?”

None of the outside creatures answer though the crocodile looks capable of swallowing me whole.

“No point in talkin’, honey child” explains Flannery O’Connor, “Them folks can’t hear you. You be having a dream.”

Flannery O’Connor and I are finished. Tomorrow evening I will fall asleep under someone nicer, someone distinctly less Southern; Enid Blyton most likely.

Connswater (with Christmas in her fingers)

We are made of miracles, my family and I.

My Da says we are magic but I resent the association. Magic is mostly tricks and cleverness: a choreographed hand swipe, a well-concealed trap door, a Devil’s deal between head and eye. Magic is a weekend pursuit, an occasional evening during summer season.

We are much more permanent.

We are everyday with our wings, and our fire, our songs, our stories, and our odd, invisible ways. We are almost always about the others, bound by the desire to better and bless; to bind the duller things.

We are occasionally reluctant, often afraid. We are without the option of a weekend off.



My Uncle Nigel died of it. Driven insane by the itch he took a cheese knife to his wrists and worked himself free. I was seven at the time. It hadn’t started in me.

“Can you stop it from happening?” I asked my Da.

“Why would you want to stop it child?” He replied. “Do you want to be ordinary your whole life?”

“Aye.”

He clipped me round the ears with the television remote. It started when I was eleven.

It was a gradual thing, like the flu. For the first two weeks the thought of it went rumbling round my head; stop, start, rushing like the final fling of a washer cycle. It kept me up at nights. It was not pleasant. Neither was it awful.

It split me.

I saw it in the others and, though I did not realise at the time, began to hold it responsible. Because of it, my Mum was often absent. We had fewer and fewer proper dinners, resorting to Marks and Spencer’s pre-packs for every meal but Sunday lunch. My brother was odd and approachable now. He made lists and accomplished things and rarely lost his temper or smiled. My Da had grown thin on it, always asking for a larger dose.

It split me.

I was afraid. I was also drawn. I was a hospital; cancer and cure chasing tail round one slim space.



“Can you have it just a little bit?” I asked my Da. “Like, maybe just at weekends?”

“Course not, child. It’s all or nothing,” he replied. “Once it starts you’ll be wanting all you can get.”

“I don’t think so,” I whispered and took to praying nightly- praying to the Jesus God and the foreign God and the fancy God with very, many arms- asking for a small dose, a teaspoon rather than a bucket full; asking that I would still be me and not a strangling girl when it finally arrived.

My Da was right. Once it started, I was an avalanche.



I cornered my Mum over the Sunday dishes.

“Mum,” I asked, hands shoved deep into my pockets, “Were you ever scared of it?”

My Mum kept right on scrubbing at the roasting tin as she answered. “Everyone’s scared of new things, Sweetie. You just have to choose not to be scared. Your Da made that choice and I’ve made that choice and look how happy we are. Look how many people we’ve been able to help. Just accept it, Louise. I’ve never met anyone who regretted it.”

“What about Uncle Nigel?” I asked. My Mum ignored me and moved on to the gravy boat.



By the time I was fourteen it was part of me- an extra limb, a secondary tongue, a skinny glow; a remarkable life which only seemed odd in comparison to the every day people. And, while I was not my Da, and I was not my Mum, and I was almost entirely opposite to my brother, the same strange sap ran, like dental floss, through all our arms and legs.

Beyond the flat we were spectacle.

Other people paid good money for spectacle.

Other people were occasionally inclined to entertain the possible in a well-played spectacle.

Other people were split; spectacle was fine in moderation but could never replace the bread and butter religions which kept them ticking from one weary weekend to the next.



For years we performed in living rooms, in Leisure Centres and Orange Halls around the city. My Da breathed fire. My brother turned himself invisible and walked through walls, through doors, windows and, when the crowd were particularly insistent, through individual people. (This process, he claimed, kept him insomniac with heartburn for several days after).

My Mum flew, removing her waterproof anorak to reveal a pair of fully-fledged swan wings. She flew limited laps of the ceiling, clashing occasionally with the light fixtures and fire alarms. She bruised easily. The following morning her shoulders would begin to bloom; a drunken constellation of blue-hued rounds and rings bursting from her shoulder blades. Short on cash I bound her shoulders with Flora margarine and toilet paper.

My Mum smelled like a fresh-baked croissant. Undressed, for bed or bath, her back shone with a saintly sheen; one part heavenly anointing, one part unsaturated fat.



I touched things and they turned to Christmas.

This was not what I’d prayed for. In fact, having taken a terrible shine to the very, many armed God, I’d spent the last few years expecting glossy hair and extra limbs.

Instead, I touched things and they turned to Christmas: dark nights, fairy lights, tinsel, mulled-wine and stomach-churning good cheer, even in July.

I did not like to do this in public. I was a nervous child and acutely aware; a telegraph pole in an empty field. I had yet to grow into myself. My arms were pencils and, when fully unfurled, brushed the beginnings of my knees. I wore men’s trousers, two sizes larger than necessary, having convinced myself they gave the illusion of presence.

I did not know how to hold my mouth in front of strangers.

I had hoped that when it arrived it would be loud enough for both of us. I had hoped it would hold my arms easier and offer me extra words and phrases. I had hoped it would feel like the certain possibility of dancing, someday soon, while my legs were still young. Surrounded by the more spectacular arts, I struggled to see the point in Christmas.

For years and months after it arrived, I sat in the back row, knees pulled to chin, sweatered up like a polyester cocoon. I pickled slowly from the back seats, raging against my family as they flipped and fired and flew us further and further away from normal.

I raged against the ordinary people. I raged against their staring faces and their mobile photos, taken discretely under cover of chair backs and coat sleeves. I raged against the next day anecdotes and mockeries, and louder still against those who would press crumpled five pound notes into my hand; sweating testimonies of pity and intrigue.

Watching these ordinary people as they “oohed” and “aaahed” and clasped their hands over each small miracle, faces unfolding, momentarily forgetting the national disposition to gloom, I began to rage against my own selfishness.



On the eve of my fifteenth birthday I borrowed my Mum’s best dress, a powerfully-flowered Sarah Ashley number which barely covered my thighs, and took my place centre-stage with the rest of the family.

My Mum was delighted, my brother jealous and my Da, preoccupied by his own waning powers, barely aware of my presence.

My Mum flew. My brother turned invisible and my Da flamed a little before fizzling out in the damp, over-conditioned air.

I touched things and they turned to Christmas.

I began with foldable chairs, proceeding quickly to salad sandwiches and, after a large trestle table had proven my worth, moved on to actual, ordinary people.

I asked for volunteers. (It was best, my Mum assured me to begin with volunteers. “Half the battle’s getting them to admit the possibility,” she said.)

“Could I get a volunteer?” I asked, “Someone who hasn’t felt much like Christmas for years now.”

No one moved.

“Make it more specific,” my brother whispered, leaning into my ear, “They won’t come up unless they think you’re talking specifically to them.”

“Someone…” I continued, “Who’s wearing brown shoes AND hasn’t felt much like Christmas in years.”

A sound like the rushing of paper plates descended upon the room as dozens and dozens of elderly individuals hoisted trouser legs and raincoats to examine their feet. A hand raised at the back of the room, a second hand, gingerly on the very front row. I went with the front row. It was closer.

“Can I ask the lady on the front row to come on down?” I said, shoving my shoulders back to summon up some sense of swagger. I could feel the vomit ascending in my throat. I’d lost all faith in my own fingers.

Rising on a pair of sticks, the lady shuffled to the front and lowered herself into the foldable chair we kept for just such occasions.

“Right,” I said, “What’s your name?”

“Sandra,” she replied, already fishing in her sweater sleeve for a balled up Kleenex, “I wasn’t going to come up. Sure when you get to my age and your man’s long gone and you’re all crippled up with arthritis, well you can’t be expecting to feel like Christmas any more, can you? I wasn’t going to come up, but then you said about the shoes and I knew it was me you were after. Go on love. Do me. I’m ready for it.”

She held out her hands then, Kleenex resting wearily in the left, and prepared to receive what was coming to her.

Ordinary people, I suddenly realized, were much more complicated than sandwiches or trestle tables. I wasn’t sure what to do next. I looked at my Mum. She smiled encouragingly. I looked at my brother but he had turned himself invisible and my Da was nowhere to be found, having stomped off in an unfiery rage after failing to light so much as a birthday candle.

“Umm,” I continued, “Can you close your eyes Sandra?”

Sandra closed her eyes obediently. If it hadn’t been for the forty odd folks watching I would have taken the opportunity to slip out the fire exit and high tail it home.

“Umm, I’m going to put my hand on your shoulder.”

I put my hand on her shoulder. Nothing spectacular happened. I put my other hand on her head. Nothing spectacular happened. I waited thirty seconds.

“Ummm, sorry, Sandra,” I mumbled, “I might need to practice on a few more sandwiches before I try people again.”

Sandra opened her eyes and smiled like a string of fairy lights. She stood up triumphantly and then, casting her walking sticks to the far side of the stage, clambered on to the foldable chair and launched into an impressive performance of the Macarena.

Pausing briefly to beam down on the audience, with all the undiluted effervescence of the Bethlehem star, she cried, “Oh it’s wonderful! You need to try this folks. I haven’t felt this Christmas since I was six years old. “

And with that, the entire room shuffled forwards, arms aloft, demanding a touch of festive cheer. That night I quit my hesitating and made forty seven pounds in crumpled fivers and pocket shrapnel. The money was one thing; the shimmery joy settling over strangers’ faces, another thing entirely.



I became incredibly good at Christmas.

I became more popular than my Mum and my Brother, (my Da, disappointed and increasingly bitter, had long since quit the miracle scene and passed his days at home, watching box sets of CSI and lighting cigarettes off his smoldering fingertips). I was making a fortune in small change.

In the Orange Halls and Leisure Centres I did Christmas without reservation. I touched people and, though I could see the war in the way their mouths set suddenly, they had no choice but to turn to Christmas, right there in front of everyone and their ordinary friends.

My confidence grew. I stood straight, no longer embarrassed by my six, lank feet.

Sometimes I was cruel, taking my old reservations out on the strongest skeptics. I enjoyed nothing better than forcing my miracle upon the gloomiest shoulders: the teenage boys, the curious spinsters and middle-aged men who were there under marital duress.

“Is it wrong,” I asked my Mum, in the car on the way to school, ”to pick folks you don’t like? You know, to do Christmas on them, just cos you know they don’t want it.”

“Well, Louise,” she replied, “That’s something you’ve got to decide for yourself. You’ve a duty to be responsible with what you’re giving away.”

“Aye, but it’s a really good thing. You’d be daft not to want it.”

“Not everyone thinks likes us, Louise. We’re not the same as the ordinary people.”



My Mum didn’t need to remind me of our oddness. I led a double life; miraculous by night, dripping ordinary by day. Between nine and three thirty I kept my hands shoved deep into my blazer pockets, purposefully avoiding eye contact with all seven hundred and fifty three girls who shared my school corridors.

In the early days it was controllable. Christmas only seemed to come out when I wanted it too. By my last year of school I was leaking everywhere, Christmas slipping free every time I touched a hockey stick or calculator. I took to wearing gloves indoors, claiming stress-related psoriasis each time a teacher complained. I was careful to keep my fingers to myself.

It’s amazing how reserved a girl can be when committed to keeping queer and isolated. I was a well-fenced field, a single bed, a museum for my own quiet thoughts. Even the teachers, aided as they were by registers and rotas and detailed attendance records, struggled to place me in a crowd. I left school at sixteen with three and a half GCSE’s. Save for the weekend miracles, I had not made contact with a single person in almost eighteen months.



Two weeks after I left school my Mum sent me out to work.

“It’s like this, Louise,” she said, waking me early to avoid a confrontation, “your Dad’s not well.”

“Is he going to die?” I asked.

(This was an appealing thought.

My Da had assumed squatters’ rights on the flat’s only couch. The living room curtains had quickly pulled rank, sealing in the sour stench of middle-aged sweat and Old Spice aftershave. A small mountain of toenail clippings and flaked dandruff had descended, like dessicated coconut, across the soft furnishings fending off all but the bravest television viewers. It had been almost two months since I’d last seen Hollyoaks.

My Da was clearly wading through another long night of the soul.

It had been over a fortnight since he’d last set anything on fire.

The previous week my Mum had purchased a cigarette lighter in the weekly shopping. Deeply humiliated by his own failure my Da had been unable to voice the need for a lighter. Instead he’d handwritten the word on a short shopping list, placing it directly below shower gel, soap and scouring pads, and above dental floss.

The toiletries were a decoy; a necessary buffer to cushion the bite of his own shame.

Though he’d only asked for one, my Mum bought a three pack of cigarette lighters, buying herself three times the grace period before the conversation arose again.)

I was rather hoping my Da would die. We had little need of him around the flat.

“Of course your Dad’s not going to die!” My Mum maintained, “There’s nothing wrong with him. It’s all in his head. He’s been huffing ever since he stopped being able to do his miracle.”

“Uncle Nigel died,” I added hopefully, “It was all in his head too.”

My Mum ignored me. She flicked an imaginary bug from the sleeve of her bathrobe and continued, “As I was saying, Louise, your Dad’s not able to work and I have to stay home to coordinate the bookings for shows. Your brother’s already earning. Now you’re sixteen you’re going to have to start contributing.”

“You want me to get a job?” I asked. My voice grew teeth and slid down the back of the headboard, becoming almost indiscernible in retreat.

“I’m not asking you to donate a kidney, Louise. I am simply asking you to get a part time job. Most sixteen year olds have part time jobs. It’s not too much to ask.”

“I have a job,” I stated bluntly, “I do miracles.”

“That’s not a job. That’s a service we do for the ordinary people. That’s not for making money.”

I pulled the duvet over my head, caving the hot, red heat blustering across my cheekbones. My Mum knew nothing of the small fortune, accumulating in shards and coppers at the bottom of my underwear drawer. My Mum was not the kind of lady who approved of accepting money from the elderly.

“Miracles are NOT for making money,” she repeated, “You need to get a real job- something normal in a shop or a hairdresser- bring a little bit of money in. It’s not forever, Louise. You can start college or do whatever you like once your Dad’s back on his feet. But for now you need to get a job.”

“I can’t,” I said and sat up regally to show just how serious I could be.

“You can AND you will, young lady. You’ve two weeks to find yourself something or I’ll get you a job in the old folks home at the end of the road, wiping bums and spoon feeding custard.”

“I can’t get a job, Mum.” I found myself howling. “I’m not normal. Everything I touch turns to Christmas. I won’t even last a week.”

“Wear gloves,” my Mum fired back and left me hyperventilating quietly into a flowery pillow.



Three days later I started on the checkouts at Tesco, Connswater. I wore a red polo shirt, a name badge and a pair of last year’s winter gloves, elastic banded at the wrist for extra protection.

Things were difficult. I did not fit in. Connswater was not ready for miracles, and I was leaking them all over cash register.



Ordinary gloves were not strong enough. There were accidents. I was afraid of my own fingers. I did my best to avoid the public, taking fifteen minute toilet breaks and twenty minutes for every cigarette. Forced strange by fear I developed the ability to breathe smoke back into each cigarette stretching the paper to saturation point.

On the checkout I kept my eyes down, ignoring my customers in favour of the smooth black fan belt as it ushered item after item into eye line. I learnt the marks and dips in the belt, anticipating with each fresh rotation, the egg shaped stain, the scotch tape permanently puckering and the perforated mark where the belt was bound together.

I did not speak. I was rarely spoken to. I did my best to appear foreign. No one spoke to foreigners in Connswater.

I was terrified of being touched; accidentally, purposefully, curiously, with careful intent. Every part of me, I suspected, was equally charged now, my earlobes and elbows just as capable as my fingers.

Miracles would not rest easily in Connswater Tesco. I kept my head down and my elbows in. I prayed nightly to the Jesus God, to the baby God, the grown up God and the God with very many arms.

“God make me ordinary,” I prayed, adding, as an afterthought, a penitent, “please.”

I continued to be miraculous, openly, in public, without consent or hope of respite.





Ordinary gloves were not strong enough to hold the Christmas in. Precautions became a necessity. I took my Mum’s advice and began wearing a pair of mismatched oven gloves; the right, baby blue gingham, the left, virginal white with a pink bow at the wrist.

The oven gloves made things awkward. Certain items were entirely manageable: potatoes, carrots, bananas, cardboard boxes containing cereal and icing sugar and washing powder. Anything large or lumpy could be manhandled, indelicately, from one end of the checkout to the other. I prided myself on managing.

Smaller items mocked me: individual packets of crisps, garlic bulbs, batteries, ball-point pens, Kinder eggs. Slippery items simply slid through my hands, landing with solid judgment on the conveyor built or, on the worst occasions, shattering at my feet. Despite my Mum’s best efforts with bleach, the laces of my work shoes were tinted a permanent burgundy, pink; bearing bloody witness to the half dozen ketchup bottles, Bolognese jars and Tesco-brand Merlots which had slipped from my grasp.

I operated the register with my elbows, occasionally resorting to tongue when my supervisor wasn’t looking. While my condition officially qualified as a disability- a term taking in physical limitations and the kind of headly madness afflicting our family- and thus allowed me “up to thirty extra seconds processing time per customer,” and the reassurance that I might, “utilize all means necessary in the efficient fulfillment of my job description;” use of tongue was actively discouraged by management.



On the second day, alarmed by my ability to process frozen food from point A to point B using only my tongue and well-sheathed, left elbow, my supervisor took me aside for a quiet word.

“Is there something wrong with your hands, Louise?” he asked, all the while nodding, nodding, nodding, and smiling with the clownish bravado of a children’s doctor.

I lied. I had, over the last few years, grown increasingly adapt in the art of glove-themed lies.

“Ummm, yes,” I said, “I had a double hand transplant last month.”

Untruth came easy to me. The lie grew momentum, suckling smaller kid lies until it threatened to engulf the entire supermarket.

“Yeah,” I continued, chin bobbing in time with my supervisor’s own empathetic nods, “I got hand cancer. It’s hereditary in our family. My Uncle Nigel died of it and my Da lost both hands cos he couldn’t beat it. They took mine off before it got to the elbow and, as luck would have it, they found a pair of donor hands to replace mine.”

“So, you’ve got a dead person’s hands?”

“Well, it doesn’t sound very nice when you say it like that, Mr. Greene, but yes, I suppose you’re right.”

“And the gloves?”

“I have to keep things sterile for at least six months.”

A short silence ensued during which the fire alarm began to bleat in the shop unit next door. My supervisor seemed to be weighing up the odds, deciding whether to believe the lie, question the lie or simply keep the status quo by carrying on regardless.

“It’s not that we don’t sympathise with your, ummmm….situation, Louise,” he eventually concluded, blushing as he tried to both look and not look at the place where the oven gloves met my wrists, “It’s just that the customers might not understand. It’s a little unsightly….and unhygienic. It’s for your own benefit really. Management don’t want you picking anything up off the till. Best to use your elbows where you can. Keep the teeth and tongue for when you’re at home.”



Sometimes teeth were necessary. The carrier bags refused to peel. The till receipts un-torn, began to snake towards the shop floor like a trail of unraveled toilet paper. I struggled to work the credit card machine.

On my fourth shift I arrived to find the till now bore a hand-made cardboard sign; “cash sales only.” I took the liberty of adding, “correct change, welcome.” Coins, particularly the pennies and five pence pieces, had begun to pose a problem.



The older customers were sympathetic.

“Is it a religious thing, love?” asked an elderly gentleman in a Glasgow Rangers tracksuit.

“Sort of,” I said and smiled with forced gratitude as he compared me to the “foreign family what has moved into the end of our Mikey’s street and keep their women folk all wrapped up.”

Others asked if it was an illness, some sort of skin condition, and I found myself once again nodding while a series of vociferous East Belfast ladies lingered over their groceries imparting advice on the treatment of shingles and psoriasis and eczema and trench foot.

The comedians asked if I was cold. “Gloves in the middle of July? Times are tight, eh?” they joked, beaming over their six packs of weekend beer, “are they trying to save on the heating?”

I smiled and said nothing. The girl at the next till had been fired for complaining in front of a customer. I could not afford to lose this job.




I lasted two weeks and three days. This seemed as much a miracle as anything emanating from my fingertips.

On the third day of the second week I arrived to find the next cash register over occupied by a middle-aged lady in a Doreen badge.

“Hello love, “ yelled Doreen, exploiting a brief break in the grocery parade to introduce herself, “What’s your name? I’m Doreen.”

I could not bring myself to answer. Hollering across the empty space between registers seemed like a surefire way to draw unwanted attention. Instead I raised both shoulders simultaneously affecting a shrug.

“Doreen,” yelled Doreen, smiling loudly like a geriatric nurse. “Who are you?”

I said nothing. I elbowed a watermelon from one end of the checkout to the other, using the tip of my nose to operate the buttons on the electronic scales.

Doreen stared. I could feel her stare, climbing into the back of my head.

“Ugh, I’m sorry, love,” she mouthed, a little quieter on account of the customers approaching her till, “I didn’t realize you were handicapped. That was very insensitive of me. Do you need some help?”

I felt my neck muscles contract, beginning the process of nodding out a definite “no” and then stopped myself, suddenly realizing I’d been feigning ignorance. I said nothing and continued pointedly nudging canteloupes and sweet potatoes across the grocery scales.

Doreen, unperturbed by my silence, turned to the lady on the next register, nodded in my direction and, with an East Belfast accent thick as thunder, asked, “Is that wee girl all there?”

“Aye,” replied Margaret from the next till over, “She’s canny as you or me. She’s just up herself. Wouldn’t bother with the likes of you or me.”

“I dunno, love. She’s the look of being a bit special needs. Sure, she’s wearing a pair of oven gloves to work.”

“Just ignore her. You’ve enough to be getting on with and your man from the office doesn’t like us to be bothering with Louise.”

“It’s my Christian duty to make sure the wee girl’s alright. Sure what sort of a woman would I be if I just left her there doing the register with her chin and everybody laughing at her behind her back.”

I heard the entire conversation from behind a mammoth box of washing powder, praying silently to all the Gods I could think of. Asking for Doreen to be struck dumb or dead. Either option would count as a miracle in my book.

“I’m just going to check on her,” shouted Doreen, “Would you take my customers for a wee minute?”

The next sentences were lost in a scurry of panicked squeaks and scratches as I abandoned the washing powder, the customer and all hopes of holding on to my job, and attempted to tunnel my way under the cash register.

After a few seconds I peeked up. Doreen moonish face, huge and haloed in the strip lighting, was peering over the credit card machine.

“Hello sweetie,” she said slowly, her entire mouth caving over each syllable, “Nothing to be scared of. Nothing I haven’t seen before. Sure, hasn’t my youngest got a wee touch of autism; goes pure hyper on the Smarties, so he does.”

She smiled. I glared darkly upwards. The wheels of my chair were beginning to bite into my ankle.

“Come on out now. Be a good girl. We’ll go into the staff room and put the kettle on. It’ll all be grand after a wee cup of tea.”

She smiled again. I folded into myself, massively unsure how to hold my mouth.

“There’s a silly girl, trying to use the till with a pair of oven gloves on. Sure, you won’t be able to use the buttons.”

Before I could brace myself to bite, to kick and stab and defend Doreen against the coming miracles, she reached behind the register and whipped my gloves off; right first, and then left.

Christmas came out, all of a sudden, like a vomiting bug. I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t help her. I stood up, six feet tall with the sensation of simultaneous loss and gain leaking from my fingertips. Everyone quit packing and passing and shuffling groceries to stare in my direction. I could feel their stares poking me like toothpicks pressing through my polo shirt.

Doreen did not stare. Otherwise preoccupied, her mouth fell open like an old-fashioned drawbridge. I could clearly make out the fillings in her bottom teeth. A strange noise came rushing out of her, something similar to the sound created by an oxygen tank.

People quit staring at me and stared at Doreen. It was pleasant to be periphery for a change.

Doreen sat down and then lay down, forming a stranded snow angel on the linoleum floor. Her hair- grey, gold, speckled- came loose around her head, flaming upwards in the direction of the trolley store. Her hands were starfish, swimming easy at the end of each arm. She looked drowned and lovely. It was on her like sunburn. I could not be sorry when the Christmas was this thick.

“Oh,” said Doreen and her smile went funny, all up and down at the sides, all into her eyes and cheeks, “oh, it was so lovely. Can you do it again?”

“Yes,” I said, “I suppose so,” and I did Christmas, liberally, outrageously, without reservation up and down the aisles of Connswater, Tesco until even the frozen food section melted out of sheer, rosy, good cheer.



When the management began to notice strange things blooming on their radios and CCTV monitors they came rushing down to the shop floor and fired me in full view of tinned vegetables.

“Don’t you know where you are?” they screamed, “This is Connswater, Tesco; no place for miracles!”

And they gave me extra money- an entire month’s wages- to leave immediately, to say nothing of this to the local press, to promise I would shop at Sainsbury’s from now on. And they were careful in their calmness- fearing litigation and the local press- to state that I was not a bad person, that Christmas was a good thing, far too good for Connswater, Tesco, better perhaps for an upmarket place: Marks and Spencer’s perhaps, or House of Frazer. “You give these folks a good thing free,” my supervisor explained personally, “and they’ll always be wanting more.”

Then they escorted me from the premises, officially under the watchful eyes of three security guards, carefully prodding me with a broom handle lest the littlest part of them make contact.

Though they could not bear me in the public places, they were waiting in the car park, loitering by the bins, awkward and hungry, hands wide open, asking for a touch, just a small touch, the littlest slice of Christmas.

“The chance,” they explained uncovincingly, “might never come again.”

They would not meet one another’s eye.

And they would not raise their heads when I touched them. They would not say my name. The next day they would deny all, the following day feign ignorance. Only in the moment, when the Christmas came rushing over them, like hoops and drums and tinsel crowns, did they smile and allow themselves the enormous pleasure of possibility.

For Izzy on Your First Birthday

Dear little bug,

On the eve of your first birthday- before the next year blesses you with a loudly tongue, and teeth, and any number of gracious words- It seems timely to level with your silence.

I should like to say you are much better than I’d expected. You are nobody’s second. You are a furious thing; a five act play, even at one. You are all fists and flyaway hair and laughing, laughter grins. I would think you wonderful even if you were not ours.

I should like to suggest that baby is much too small a word to contain you. For you are lightning moods and whirlwind beauty and a pair of tiny, concrete heels, already capable of holding ground. You are a dolmen girl, dancing on your chubby thighs, defying all the powers of gravity, of good sense and childly sorrows. I am occasionally jealous of your ease. People- friends, family, complete strangers at the corner shop- smile when you smile. You are kindly infectious. You are a wall against which your brother bounces and builds and grows, daily blessed by your unswerving regard. You are everything I asked for him, and more.

I should like to admit my prayers are sometimes selfish. Father God, keep her small and holdable and chiefly ours. Bless her with books at an early age, if only to hold up the other side of conversation. Pickle her smile so it will not shrink with the advent of years, so it will grow and glow, like Christmas blooming in the dimmest places. Give her a homely heart, and permanent feet; the kind inclined to root down mere miles from the front door step. (Secretly I suspect you may be strong enough to circle the entire world, stringing one grand story to the next.)

I should like to say I love you in a handful of hurried details.

The songs you sing, one part Papa dirge, one part kitten purr, as you kick up your heels, driving the swing set dangerously high. They say, at your age, I hummed like a halfwit when I ate. It is good to raise hymns to our tiny pleasures.

Your arms, thick wristed and grabbling, which stick like strawberry jam around my neck. Your little legs digging, climbing me like a cat pole, making a break for the ceiling, the roof tiles, the flight path thereafter. Your pillowy butt bunching until you form a wriggling mountain on my left shoulder. I could wear you like this for years; warm and clutching and shampoo smelt, the ultimate accessory.

Your forehead which puckers in exactly the same manner as mine, forming corregations of sincere concern just below the hairline.

The way you laugh like a shipyard worker. The way you gulder like a Free Presbyterian minister, single finger driving home the punch line. I find your confidence remarkable in quiet places and coffee shops.


Your hair, which defies clips, bands, hats and all sensible attempts to contain its wild, molten halo, and swirls about your forehead like a flock of wily swifts circling for a good place to nest.

The way your father calls you Izzy, “destroyer of the universe,” and you willingly oblige. You are a wrecking ball when it comes to Duplo, dinners, train sets and make believe shops, selling all manner of make believe goods.

Your name, which has graciously accepted each fresh adaptation like a hook, like a button or a well-placed stitch, altering intonation to better fit your shoulders. Your name, which is mostly Izzy and sometimes Isabelle, occasionally Iz, or in comic moments, Izzle and, in one instance only, Belle. Your name, which is always, only underwritten by the purest promise of God himself.

Driven domestic by your oatmeal curls, those summer dresses and the cut of your ankles in dolly shoes, I am currently stitching you something simple and sweet: Isabelle perhaps, a Bible verse, a wonky heart or ladybug. I have commenced this project with love and good intention, with thumbly fingers and no such plans. I feel you will agree this is the best way to begin anything monumental. I am progressing slowly. After a week’s efforts, one side of the letter B has emerged. I am confident of completion though it may take very many months to sew you down. I am aiming for your eighteenth birthday now, or your wedding day, whichever comes first. I am finding you terribly hard to summarize in one small frame. You are half an inch more marvelous every day.

Paul Erdos* Almost Speaks

Inspired by Jan McNeill's artwork and a Radio 4 Documentary about the prolific, Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdos*


“Mathematics,” she explained, “is permanent. I prefer words. Words are negotiable. Words are flighty; finely-feathered creatures, perfectly capable of adapting to order.”

(The man who loved only numbers said nothing. There were fractions for the kind of thing she was doing to him.)

“Supposing,” she said, “We have a conversation.”

(The man who loved only numbers thought this highly unlikely. The likelihood of conversation he calculated at 0.003456 %. )

“And,” she continued, “I hold my own. But you take your end of the conversation and run with it, out the door and down the street, never stopping to drop the thread of thought. Do you think your words will hold form fifteen years from now, stretched thin, over three continents or more?”

(The man who loved only numbers plotted his response on graph paper. Indifference crept slowly along the horizontal axis. Sheer boredom clawed its way upwards on the vertical. The man who loved only numbers fell somewhere in the North Eastern quadrant of the page).

The man who loved only numbers was far from permanent.

He did not marry.

He produced no children with which to monument his achievements.

He kept no possessions besides a small carry-on suitcase, in which, logic supposed, he kept a change of underwear, a toothbrush and a selection of Roman numerals in both upper and, easy-to-use, lower case.

Whilst he maintained the physically deceased had simply, “left,” individuals who had stopped doing math had, in the opinion of the man who loved only numbers, “died.”

For sixty two years the man who loved only numbers moved from one house to the next, begging sofas, spare bedrooms and fold-out beds for the simple purpose of temporarily shouldering his enormous mind.

Very occasionally the man who loved only numbers would find himself hesitating in the thirty second grace between one calculation and the next, a space as slight and godless as the silence sandwiching detonation and explosion. On these occasions the man who loved only numbers would turn to those who happened to be in the room- academics, journalists, retired academics and the belligerent wives of academics- and, with exceptional eloquence comment on the friskiness, the sheer, magnetic appeal of a well-turned out number.

The man who loved only numbers could not commit to one continent for fear there were numbers- eights and nines and unfulfilled sevens- waiting to be discovered in foreign cities.

The man who loved only numbers could manage no more than one month of permanence. Even then, his mind galloped forth, across oceans and mountain ranges, multiplying illicitly with perfectly innocent numbers on the other side of the world.

“Ah,” she said finally, having found the man who loved only numbers, waiting on the doorstep of this, her seventh home of the season, “I apologize, Sir, I jumped to conclusions. I see now, numbers are just as fleeting as words.”

(The man who loved only numbers formed a quick quadratic equation on the doorstep; numbers over words. Top-heavy, the equation ran to some sixteen thousand configurations, all the time refusing to resolve. The man who loved only numbers could not find the words to express his dissatisfaction but the number 9.37 seemed adequately morose to do the job).

“I’m the same with words,” she continued, “I can’t seem to stand still for following the story.”

(The man who loved only numbers counted 59 individual letters in her sentence. He could not be held accountable for punctuation having always believed it to be somewhat excessive, a snide flourish with no mathematical equivalent).

“It’s strange,” she concluded, holding up a single carrier bag containing one crimson heel, two blue biros, an ancient toothbrush and a well-thumbed copy of Wuthering Heights, “So many words. I had expected an answer by now. Yet I seem all the more inclined to questions.”

(The man who loved only words clutched his own suitcase firmly and pushed his way over the doorstep. After all these years he was more than capable of spotting a case of long division).



* nb. Erdos should be spelt with two dots over the o but I can't work out how to do this on my lap top

Fine Cutlery

Cuts were coming. The cutlery drawer was no longer capable of housing them all.

The specialists were safe: the grater and garlic press and hand-operated can-opener. Each occupied a niche market, inconceivable to the average utensil. The commons grumbled over a solution.

“What about the ice box?” asked the spoons who were, by nature, negotiable, idealistic and prone to accommodate anything short of a microwave oven. “Couldn’t we move to the ice box, settle in with the frozen peas and fish fingers? We’re flexible. We could slide down the sides unnoticed.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” answered the knives, blunt as always, “Who ever heard of frozen cutlery?”

“Besides,” whispered the forks, (fence sitters each and everyone; on salad days and pastas, siding with the spoons; in sterner matters: steak, pie and politely eaten pizza, with the knives), “It’s not just us, everyone’s getting it tight these days. I heard things were particularly frosty in the ice box.”

“Best to stay put,” suggested the potato peeler, safe in the knowledge that no one, not even a well-intentioned cheese knife could steal his spot.

“Decide among yourself, otherwise they’ll just get rid of you all,” advised the corkscrew and held his twisted tongue on the theme of sporks and splades and all the other futuristic kitchen solutions suggested by the early eighties.

“We’re staying,” argued the knives, “You can’t cut shit without us. And, as an aside, we could even spike in an emergency, though only softish foods, ideally cheese.”

Though loathe to lord it over their neighbours, the forks turned, demonstrating with silver quick stealth their ability to cut all but the most stubborn meat products. “And,” whispered the smallest of all forks, a dainty desert number, polka dot patterned on the handle, “You can ALWAYS spike with us.”

“Spike my arse,” yelled the spoons, abandoning all notion of compromise, “We’d like to see you spike soup, or ice cream for that matter.”

“Or yogurt,” added the knives, and fell suddenly silent as their own limitations crept slowly, like cataracts, across their aluminum blades. Fearing a coup they turned upon the spoons, metal teeth flashing, “and what, pray tell, would you do with a roast chicken; scoop it into submission?”

“Of course not,” the spoons retorted, “but we’d like to see you serve the mashed potatoes without us.”

“We’re screwed,” cried the teaspoons who were, by their own admission, the least necessary of all and as such, too small and shrill to dilute their mounting panic.

“You’re only solution,” suggested the corkscrew, who could spot the quiet life, approaching, “is retreat.”

“Retreat,” echoed, the potato peeler, the soup ladle and all three measuring cups, “jump before you’re pushed. You’re far too multi-functioned for your own good.”

And thus thirty six pieces of cutlery came to cast themselves headfirst down the back of the drawer, settling with tinny determination into the dusty bowels of the kitchen cabinet where they rusted gently for weeks and years, safe and smug and justified in the knowledge that mere hands and fingers could never replace them.

Jan Carson's 115th Dream

Last night I dreamt that Bob Dylan was my godfather.

It was the singular best dream of my thirty one years.

(Previously this slot had been occupied by the dream where Phil Mawhinney and I were invited to join Band of Horses on an underwater stage, fashioned entirely from newly-sewn grass. I am no longer as fond as I once was of Band of Horses.)

Last night’s dream took place in the living room of a close childhood friend. The décor was exactly as it had been in 1986 but the television set was showing a recent episode of Desperate Housewives; sound set to mute.

Bob Dylan entered stage right. He appeared in the guise of Love and Theft era Bob, casino mustache, bolero et al. (This instantly struck me as odd, having spent the last three months fixating on the baby-faced ‘60s era Bob.)

I was sitting on the sofa watching Desperate Housewives with the sound turned off. I remained sitting in the presence of Dylan, and due to a nervous inability to control my hands in awkward situations, reached for a copy of the Woman’s Realm sitting on the coffee table in front of my knees. I flicked absentmindedly from back to front- a dream note no doubt reflecting the colossal amount of time I’ve spent in the Belfast Synagogue of late.

Bob Dylan did not speak for ninety seconds or more. He turned his back to me and moved along the mantelpiece, examining the Royal Doulton figurines, the framed family photographs and the carriage clock belonging to my late grandfather; a retirement gift from the good folks at Harland and Wolff.

After almost two minutes of silence Bob Dylan turned and removed his hat, (did I mention the hat; a single-striped affair, better-suited to a fictional detective?) and addressed the coffee table.

Bob Dylan: “I am your godfather.”

Me: “Really?”

Bob Dylan: “Yeah, I just remembered after thirty one years. Sorry, it took so long.”

Me: “It’s cool, Bob. Really this is perfect timing. I’m writing a dissertation about you. Maybe you could help me out.”

Bob Dylan: “I’m not really into that sort of stuff.”

Me, (even in a dream like state coming to the humbling realization that I’m not that interested in having Bob Dylan for a Godfather if it doesn’t lead to acquiring cool stuff, at the very least a few interesting anecdotes,): “Oh….well, could I come on tour with you? In the last good dream I had, Band of Horses let me be in their band and they weren’t even related to me. You’re my godfather. The least you could do is let me on to the tourbus.”

Bob Dylan: “Ummmm probably not….I could get you some free tickets to a Wallflowers show.”

Me: Stony silence.

Bob Dylan: “And a copy of my greatest hits.”

Me: Stony silence during which I regret jumping ship from Bruce to Bob.

Bob Dylan: “It’s signed…I’ll just leave it here on the coffee table beside the magazines.”

Me: Stony silence during which I formulate my epitaph.

Bob Dylan: Awkward retreat backwards through the living room door, replacing hat as he exits.

Me, hollering after Dylan’s retreating forehead: “Hey Bob! I’ll let you be in my dream, if you’ll let me be in yours.”

The disappointment wakes me up. It is the size and shape of an entire continent, Australia most likely, and lodged in the space between my throat and ribcage. I remember that Bob Dylan is not my real godfather. As a third generation Presbyterian born and raised, I have never had a single godfather, not even a thoroughly disaffected one.

The disappointment dissolves in the shower. I watch it swirling round the plughole, mingling with the post-lather shampoo. I listen to “All Along the Watchtower” nineteen times on repeat. I cannot hold my grudge against Mr. Dylan. He won’t stand still for long enough.

The Trouble with River Cities

The celebrated architect, Charles Lanyon, finding himself far too busy to bother with death, will be 199 years old on his next birthday. He is the world’s oldest living architect and, having never grown tired of drawing or building or undrawing or rebuilding, is personally responsible for approximately forty thousand free standing structures within the greater Belfast area.

(This number is a conservative estimate of course, and precludes Lanyon’s forthcoming “virtual Village,” project plus several dozen post-modern parking facilities designed by the anonymous, guerilla architect LCD, a moniker widely believed to be one of Lanyon’s many pseudonyms.)

Charles Lanyon and I are enjoying a leisurely cup of coffee in the Botanic Avenue premises of a local coffee house chain. Charles Lanyon is having a latte. I am saving the magazine twenty five pence by opting for the house drip. The back of Lanyon’s head is reflected in the mirror, also my front. My posture is terrible. I am glad I rarely see myself in a seated position.

“Well,” says Charles Lanyon, opening negotiations, “Is there anything you’d like to ask me?”

I am nervous. I do not know how to hold my mouth. It feels like an undone shoelace. I can feel the customary hotness begin to spread across my breastbone. Charles Lanyon is a notoriously awkward interviewee.

(“It’s not like you’re interviewing him,” my colleague in Arts and Culture, has warned me, “It’s more like he’s interrogating you.”

“Bring some tissues,” added the assistant editor, “I heard he had the lady from the Tatler in tears.”

“Psshhh,” I replied, making a sound like a pair of disgruntled curtains, “It’s architecture. How difficult can it be?”

Thereupon the assistant ed gave the colleague from Arts and Culture a loaded look, suggesting, with one semi-raised eyebrow, a tactical retreat. They scurried off into the tea room with every intention of out moaning each other over the ginger snaps.

“I,” the assistant ed, no doubt began, “once interviewed Van Morrisson on an empty stomach.”

“ ’s nothing,” the colleague from Arts and Culture would hiss, “I covered the Balmoral show three years running…in heels.”

And on and on and on until the electric kettle emitted a climatic yelp, heralding a temporary tea cup sized truce.

At the magazine horrendous assignments past, present and future are commemorated on a weekly basis; rolled out for display like a series of second hand medals on Remembrance Sunday. )

Charles Lanyon is a 198 year old architect. I am an accomplished journalist with various certificates and an expensive notebook to prove it. I select a pen from my extensive arsenal of stolen stationary, pop it into a point and take the opportunity to formulate an opening question. Slickly bypassing the usual drivel- the ‘where did you grow up?’ and ‘what do you do for a living?’ and ‘isn’t this a great wee run of weather we’re having?’ sort of questions, which form the backbone of provincial journalism- I settle for something simple and wedge-shaped, a casual slide into the meatier material. Then, with tremendous professionalism, I draw my unlaced mouth into something roughly resembling a spade and begin digging.

“Best thing that’s happened to Belfast in the last hundred and ninety years?” I ask, casually offering him two thirds of a cellophane wrapped pack of bourbons. He declines with a slight inclination of his left palm.

“Easyjet,” he says and pauses for a mouthful of coffee, “It’s a lot easier to get out now…cheaper too.”

“Well, to be honest Mr. Lanyon…or is it Sir Lanyon now?”

(It seems inconceivable that, after 198 years and a mid-sized town’s worth of Victorian facades, Lanyon would still be sitting here, a mere Mister whilst the likes of Elton John found himself decorated for orchestrating the Lion King soundtrack.)

He doesn’t answer. He’s doodling all across the coffee table: floating skyscrapers, ten mile tunnels, underground fountains and what appears to be an underwater escalator.

I plough on regardless, “Mr. Lanyon, I think our readers were looking for something a little more architectural…a bridge perhaps, Stormont, the City Hall, even a leisure centre would do at a pinch.”

He plucks half a dozen sugar sachets from the bowl and balances them on the table top, forming a tiny, fairly-traded, Stonehenge approximately half way between our respective coffee cups.

“It doesn’t have to be one of your own,” I prompt. Any building would be fine. Even a road.”

“The Westlink,” he says.

I start to write this down.

“That was a joke,” he says.

I put a thin biro line through the Westlink. I take a long, slow sip of coffee. It’s already turning lukewarm in the cup. “Next time,” I tell myself, “I will take the Ideal Homes Exhibition. Anything’s better than covering the never dead.”

Lanyon interrupts my thoughts.

“I’ll tell you what really troubles me,” he says suddenly.

I pop the point on my pen to imply interest, “yes, Mr. Lanyon, what exactly really troubles you?”

“The electric doors at Connswater Tesco, they trouble me greatly. I think they’re on back to front or something. They only open from the inside. It’s no good…no good at all. When it’s raining you get soaked waiting for someone to come out and then you have to run through before the doors close. It’s not a dignified way to get your groceries…It really troubles me. Write that down, lady, maybe somebody will do something about it.”

I pretend to write this down. In reality I write my own name, slowly with loops. Our readers do not shop in Connswater Tesco.

“Great,” I say, struggling to keep the sarcasm in check, “Any other changes you might like to suggest Mr. Lanyon…apart from the doors at Connswater Tesco, of course?”

He stirs his coffee, three complete revolutions of the cup with a wooden stir stick.

“The parking spaces outside Marks and Spencers on the Newtownards Road are ridiculously tight. It’s a wonder people don’t get jammed in. And the Donegall Road has started to smell funny…not bad, just funny, like the inside of a hamster cage. The floor tiles in Castlecourt are far too slippery when it rains. And there are a disproportionately high number of murals featuring George Best. What about a nice one of Liam Neeson, maybe from when he was in Star Wars?”

I reach for my coat. I will venture on to Wikipedia when I return to the office and write a nice, retrospective piece, highlighting the monumental highs and lows of Lanyon’s career.

“It was nice to meet you, Mr. Lanyon,” I say, “Good to hear you’re still interested in Belfast, even after all these years.”

Charles Lanyon looks across the breadth of the coffee shop’s interior. He appears to be scrutinizing his reflection in the mirrored wall opposite. He sticks a finger in his mouth and, using his own saliva, sleeks first his right, then his left sideburn into submission. He checks the mirror again and smiles, satisfied with the results.

“The trouble with river cities,” he says, even though I haven’t asked, or even thought to ask, “Let me tell you about the trouble with river cities.”

“Right,” I say. I haven’t the slightest idea what Charles Lanyon means by this. I pause to consider the best way to escape quickly, fearing a further forty five minutes of elderly rambling. “What exactly is the trouble with river cities?”

“Well, young lady, there’s one unenviable constant flowing like a broken tap through every one of these unfortunate cities, Belfast included.”

I’m scribbling all this down, emphatically, in short hand: his posture, his timing, the thing with the sideburns, his slightly archaic turn of phrase. Our readers enjoy the work of local poets. This is exactly the kind of flowery shit they go for.

“Do continue,” I say, and some long-buried memory of my grandmother causes me to sweep my hand regally across the tabletop. Half way through the movement, somewhere approximately twelve inches above Stonehenge, I feel idiotic and snap my arm back into my side.

“What is the trouble with river cities?” I snap.

“Eventually everything sinks,” the celebrated architect Charles Lanyon replies, “Or flows far out to see and forgets. The trouble, my dear, is in telling the difference.”