How to cure the housing crisis overnight!

Kudos to the excellent notfairbnb campaign

 

Throughout this immoral and appalling Irish housing scandal, nothing has enraged me more than words uttered by our rotated Taoiseach.

 

With his government facing a vote of No Confidence due to their lifting of the Eviction Ban, Maggie Varadkar thought the time was right to dabble in legal pedantics.

 

Ignorant of the obscenity of an Irish leader pontificating the definition of eviction, Varadkar spoke at an EU summit in Brussels.

 

“I think people often mix up termination with evictions.” he said.

 

As I absorbed those words a searing pain, burning and visceral, roared from my core to all parts abdomen.

 

Think what you like, Blueshirt Boy, but know this, you loathsome toe-rag: if you’re a tenant who’s paid their rent every month, done the landlord the service of caring for the property and tending to the garden, when you’re served notice you feel like you’re being evicted.

Because you are.

Even given the fact that Maggie V is a landlord, I was astonished at his absolute inability to empathise; his vile arrogance and shameful ignorance of real life.

He was saying we’re so stupid we don’t even understand which particular way we’re getting fucked out of our homes.

I know very bloody well how desperate and terrifying it feels to be told to leave your home, especially when you’re unable to find another.

 

A tenant since 1981, I’ve never missed a month’s rent. Yet in the last 5 years I’ve been served notice to terminate my fully-registered tenancies twice, and neither time was I in any way at fault.

Five years ago, three months after the collapse of my marriage, my landlady took advantage of the change in circumstances to serve notice on a six year tenancy.

Two years later, in a different county, my next landlord saw fit to serve me notice on the afternoon I found out I was to have half my left lung surgically removed.

After the break-up, the house move and 18 months of severe illness, I had no savings and was about to face a major operation.

Due to Ireland’s woeful lack of housing supply, there was nowhere to move to, and even if I did get lucky and found somewhere, how the hell was I going to pay rent?

Every single night for four months I searched the three major property websites for rentals around Killala, North Mayo, and found nothing. 

Two places were advertised but it proved impossible to get a viewing.

Then I looked at the Airbnb website and saw they had 871 properties available in the general Killala area.

Listen to me, Leo, you vacuous waste of space. Your smug semantics will never succeed in diminishing the dignity of good folk facing eviction.

The truth is as simple as it is tragic: losing your home is losing your home.

The fury I feel towards Varadkar becomes insignificant in comparison to the frustration I feel, as yet again I stare at the overnight solution to our nation’s housing crisis.

January 2023 figures from the Department of Housing show the number of homeless people in Ireland now stands at 11,754 - the highest number of homeless individuals since current records began.

That number translates into 3,431 children belonging to 1,609 homeless families.

Yet just a click of the mouse away, there are 25,515 AirBnB listings in Ireland, 60 per cent of which are entire homes or apartments.

That’s over 15,000 empty homes and apartments in excellent states of repair, ready to be lived in right now.

How can it be right to sacrifice the needs of those who live here to those of tourists?

Of course Ireland needs to profit from tourism, but infinitely more important, its people need somewhere to live.

The simple overnight solution to the Housing Crisis: forget about being slaves to the free market for a second, impose a five year moratorium on all online vacation housing websites, and give homes to the homeless.

If you want a self-catering pad in Ireland, get on the phone. Call up about your cottages, pods, yurts, tepees and penthouses. They’re only a phone call away.

Zero homeless. Completely achievable, if only a couple of rotating capitalists had the cojones to adapt the market in a tiny yet massively significant way.

Airbnb will still enjoy healthy profits without Ireland, and as soon as we’ve cured homelessness, they’ll come running back without a whimper.

Alongside the official homeless there are 290,000 people in Ireland like me, the hidden homeless, living at the grace and generosity of friends or family.

We are lucky in that we have roofs over our heads, but we have no security of tenure, no rights, no future in Ireland’s gleaming.

Until there is a viable supply of homes to rent, we have to stop sacrificing Irish freedoms to corporate forces, stop scaring people out of their homes, and offer hope through the simplest of solutions.


©CharlieAdley
31.03.2023

Kill Me Now!

 

Kitty and Molly looking for some loving

If the locals from the village could see you now, that English fella, yes him alone there in that big old house, they’d be sure you were off your tiny head.

But nobody can see you.

There’s not a human awake for miles around.

It’s three in the morning.

You cheer as you manage to get the head of the hoover attachment flat against the ceiling.

“Now I’ll have you, ye little bastards!” you cry triumphantly.

Even though your bedroom is two doorways away, you won’t be able to sleep knowing that your hall ceiling is carpeted by a million midges.

The thought makes your shoulders hunch, your stomach churn. You scritch and scratch your forearms at the idea of it, and let rip a tremulous

“Phwwhhoooooorrr.”

Now you slide the hoover in straight lines, high above your head. The vacuumed strip reveals white paint under black, while each side of the clean swathe midges fly and tumble, all along your hallway.

After twenty minutes you’ve almost got all of them. The rest will fly off tomorrow morning, when the hall will be dark. You’ll open the front door and the midges will head out into daylight.

Ten hours earlier you’d been watching the TV news: horrific heaps of burning cows, as the government try to halt the spread of Foot and Mouth disease.

You turn off the TV and go to sit on your front step.

Ahhh.
That’s better. 

Lovely.

Above the trees that line the river, the early evening midsummer sun rides high, golden, huge.

The crows resume their daily conflict over the right to perch on the creamery roof.

The river splutters.

A tractor growls its way up a distant hill.

Calm.

Bliss.

You love living here. When you decided to look for a place in County Mayo, you wrote a list of wants, partly because it created a checklist to ease your head, but also because someone you admire once told you that if you put simple clear wishes out into the universe, they are more likely to come true.

Do you really believe that?
You did it anyway.

You wanted a place off the road, away from traffic. It had to have a bath and a spare room that could double as an office. 

It had to have a garden of some sort, and not be more than three miles from a village or town, with a pub and a shop. Ideally there would be nearby beaches to walk.

 

This place has all that and more.

Built by your landlord’s father, its thick stone walls are painted white with red trim.

In the past you’ve written in your bedrooms and you’ve written in your spare rooms, but now, for the first time in your life, you have a spare bedroom as well as a room that serves solely as a place to write.

The village - that’s what you call it, but the local farmers call it ‘town’ and it’s best not to offend them - has two shops, a garage and several pubs.

There’s a small but growing population of blow-ins like yourself, urban types with a yen for the country who, along with welcome friendship, bring city wit and irony to your rural life.

There are many beaches: empty expanses of pristine white sand.

You walk for hours, losing your mind to the beauty of it all; the pure glory.

Beyond your list and dreams, fifty yards from your front door, past the ruined mill, the Cloonaghmore river rushes out to sea.

You empathise with the wild salmon and sea trout who swim inland. You’ve also gone upriver.

Even though you know you’re the worst fisherman in the world, you have to have a go.

A few days ago you endure an excruciating experience, both physically and socially.

Your girlfriend wanders down to the river, to see if you’ve landed dinner, only to find you half naked, wrestling with a barbed sliver of metal the wrong side of your left breast button.

You managed to catch your own nipple.

When, finally, you ease the hook out, she gently mocks you.

Now you can chuckle about that.
Not then. You discovered a new echelon of soreness.

Your girlfriend works in Galway and comes up every other weekend, leaving you to go down to the shmoke for the craic every fortnight.

When you first move here the Irish Examiner send a photographer to do a shoot, for a cover shot and the double-page spread that launches your new column.

The photographer wants you to go up the pub, to take photos of you with the locals.

You take a look at his yard-long pop star paparazzi lens and decide that is the worst idea you ever heard. You’ll be socially dead in the village before you meet anyone.

Everyone will think you’re there just to write about them.

You do have to write about something, so instead you write about clouds, birds, empty beaches and your neighbours, who are both animals.

Kitty the donkey lives in the field outside your kitchen window, while Jack-The-Cat-Who-Thinks-He’s-A-Dog is a lithe tortoiseshell and white who lives in the barn.

Cats are meant to have pride. They’re not supposed to appear eager, but Jack thinks he’s a dog.

When you go out he waits by the turnoff to the main road, and when you return he races the car to the front gate. On cold mornings he sits on top of your kitchen radiator, warming his body right through.

You worry he’s grilling his kidneys, but he’s a smart lad.

Kitty and Jack and you become a pretty tight crew. When Kitty gives birth to her foal a flick of her head, and then she brings leggy Molly from the shed to meet you.

Clearly Kitty’s telling Molly that you’re family, you’re okay. 

You’ve an adult donkey mare behind you, while her tiny foal leans on your front.

You can feel their body heat.
Your nostrils fill with their heady sweaty scent.

You’re completely moved by this experience, until you look up to find the lad from the fish farm, staring at this scene with a wildly mocking eye.

“Sure that’s your name, Charlie. That’s your feckin’ Indian name from now on! ‘Shtands With Donkeys.’ That’s your name!”

You take photos of Molly, write a feature about her and send it off to the Irish Examiner.

They publish it.

You sit on the back step and watch the clouds change direction, and then go and write about it, send it off and they publish it.

Each morning you wake as Kitty greets the farmer with a raucous bray.

After stretches, crunches and press-ups you walk the beach, then go to the village to buy your paper.

“Ah Charlie, you’ve been walking Ross again!” cries the shopkeeper.

“I have. It was glorious up there this morning, Patsy! But how do you know?”

“How do I know? There’s sand all over my clean floor. That’s how I know!”


Her smile betrays the way she’s happy for you.

You eat breakfast, then go and write in your room that’s just for writing.

After a few hours you walk past the old mill to the lush avenue of trees beside the river.

You sit on a rock alone, surrounded by tall yellow flag iris, beside fast flowing water.

The perfect lunch hour.

When the farmer goes Christmas shopping in Dublin, the only day each year he’s away from his livestock, he asks you to give the cows some hay and feed the sheep.

You're a suburban Jewish boy from northwest London. Now you stand ankle deep in muck, lobbing hay over to cows with a pitchfork.

You breathe in the pong of cow dung. You’ve always loved that smell. 

It reminds you of the farm in Somerset where you holidayed as a child. That’s where your country soul first revealed itself to you.

You feel proud.
The farmer trusts you.

He says you keep ‘a tidy patch.’
Praise indeed.

Ireland’s Celtic Tiger boom has somehow found you, here in your stone farmhouse.

You’ve your regular column in the regional paper, and your new column in the national broadsheet. All the features you send out are published.

The features editor of the national broadsheet calls you often to offer more work: a situation unprecedented and never repeated.

You only write exactly what you want to. You are fulfilling your own dream and make sure to appreciate the wonder of the moment.

You’ve been sitting here on your front step for hours now, taking in the scenery and sunshine.

Your arse is numb.

You stand up, stretch your arms high to the sky and decide to hitch to the pub.

A few weeks ago one of the brothers who own the local garage waved his arms around in frustration at your wimpy ways.

“You need to drive that car like a man, Charlie. Give it some ooomph and clean out its engine."

You decide this probably isn’t the best time to explain to him that it’s not ‘that car.’

Your Mazda’s name is Betsy.

Somewhat foolishly you trust his expert opinion, and drive for six hours at full speed, to visit friends far away in The Kingdom.

Turns out Betsy the Blue Bubble is, as you suspected, an old woman, who likes to be treated with respect.

Ten miles outside Dingle her oil warning light comes on, and for the last few months your car has been hundreds of miles away, languishing in a mechanic’s field in County Kerry.

Being carless through these Summer months has proved wonderful.

You’ve hitched, cycled and walked everywhere, and now you stretch your legs up to the main road, stick your thumb out by the old stone bridge, and within minutes you’re in the pub.

Unburdened by the need to remain sober enough to drive, you can now drink as much as you want, so you do.

Later, after hitching home, you lie on the sofa.

You’ve opened the window so that you can hear the sun set. You can't see that horizon, but the thousands of birds nested in the riverside trees can.

Be it 5 o’clock on a December afternoon, or 11 on a midsummer’s night like tonight, the very second the sun goes past the edge of the Earth, they simultaneously explode into song.

It’s more of a cacophonous screech, but regular as clockwork.

If you were a God, this would be your alarm clock.

You don’t hear the avian explosion that night, because you’re fast asleep, under the influence of Guinness and whiskey.

At three in the morning your bladder knocks on your brainbox. You wake to a mouth of emery board.

You’ve been snoring and - oh my good god.

Oh fuck fuck fuck.

Due to a cocktail of late daylight and too much booze, you didn’t realise you’d turned the hall light on, when you came home from the pub.

With the living room window wide open, the midges had swarmed inside, and your hall’s white ceiling is now black.

No exaggeration.

Forty five gazillion midges carpet your hall ceiling, and you have a simple choice to make.

Either you go to bed or you hoover them up.

The relief of emptying your bladder gives you a rush of happiness, so off you go to get the hoover, singing in crazed jubilation.

“Hi ho! Hi ho!
It’s hoov’ring ceilings I go.
At three ayyy em.
’Tis mad I am!.
Hi ho! Hi ho hi ho hi hoooooooo!”

The next morning, drinking tea at the kitchen table, you think about your life: this house, the beaches, the girlfriend, the pubs; the river and new found friends, both human and beast, the calm, the peace, the way editors are eager for your work.

 

Bad times in life beat you around the head, but good times can pass by without being appreciated. 

Has your life ever been better?

You write in your journal:

‘Kill me now.’



© 04.03.2023

From my new collection: Kill Me Now
charlieadley1@gmail.com

Interesting Feeling.

Staring death in the eye with a blade pricking my jugular - another true story from my new collection Kill Me Now.

 

Interesting Feeling.

The city streets are black and wet. Your friend’s living room glows amber from the light of lamps.

You feel safe; warm; relaxed.
You’re 23 and life is good.

Later this evening life will feel fantastic.
You will appreciate every single breath.

None of you want to go out. 

Saturday night is for amateurs: time to stay away from pubs, clubs and restaurants. Trouble is, everyone wants something to smoke, and nobody else knows how to get some.

You head off with your mate to Brixton, to score a little gear for the crew.

Fifty pairs of eyes turn to look as you walk into the pub. The centre of the bar is empty.

Everyone is hanging out by the walls, or the bar. Everyone is watching everyone else in a surreptitious way, that gives the impression they are in fact minding their own business.

Grabbing a pair of barstools, your mate orders pints, while you look around for your guy.

You’ve been shopping here a dozen times. You know your guy and he knows you. With deals like these it helps to know your guy. You know neither his name nor his marital status.

You know nothing about him, save for the fact that he has done you right in the past.

He’s your man.

After all your previous visits everyone else knows he’s your man too, so they leave you alone.

That saves a load of stress and hassle.

There he is, sitting over by the jukebox as usual. You catch his eye, exchange glances and head for the Gents.

It’s glaring bright white in there, heady with a cocktail of bleach and urine.

Nobody else about.
Excellent.

He’s a big guy, over six foot and chunky sideways too, wearing faded blue jeans, a black T-shirt under his brown leather jacket.

You speak first.

“Arright mate?”

“Yeh, harsit goin’?”

“Good y’know.”

“Watcha wan’? Black ‘ash?”

“Nah. I want some draw, if you got some.”

“Yeh I got some. How much?”

“Five?”

“Nah man, gonna cost you ten for draw. S’good bush, y’kna, s’Sensi, y’kna. Me personals.”

“Oh come on, you wouldn’t be selling ya personals to me.”

“S’good, y’kna, right?”

Suddenly three more guys come in. They’ve seen you walk in and they’re after your business.

You’re not interested in them.

One of them pushes forward.

“Hey man, watcha wan’? Ya don’ wan’ ‘is gear man, iss no good. Look, I got good ‘ash, see. Red Seal, see.”

“I don’t want no Red Seal.”

That was your mistake. You should have completely ignored the other hustlers.

Your man thinks he’s about to lose his deal, and while it probably isn’t worth that much to him, there’s ethics.

Yes, even in pub toilets on cold Brixton nights there’s ethics, and these other guys are out of order.

“Hey, wass yaaar problem? See, I deal with the man, see! He come to me befah, ya kna?”

“So what you say now, fool? You say I can’ no sell ‘ash in me own backyar’?”

A third guy takes hold of your hand, opens out your fingers, swiftly squashes something into your palm and then closes your fingers around it.

It’s an old trick. You got it, so now pay for it.

No way you’d ever buy like that, not without seeing and smelling the gear first.

Otherwise you’re going to end up with liquorice or oregano.

Things are getting a little messy, but you’re not sweating it. You’ve failed to learn that bad madness can happen any time.

Your man sees you holding the other guy’s gear and reckons you’ve done the dirty on him.

In the past he’s always been gentle of foot and vocal chord, but now he completely loses control, shouting and screaming.

“What ya doooin’, boy? You don’t do a deal with me? You can’t swap over, like, whenever you want, ya fool, bumbaclot.”

You step back in shock.

Stepping towards you

in one swift movement
he grabs you with one hand
by your neck,

the other by the rear waistband of your jeans.

He lifts you off your feet
 

into the air and
fast and strong
 

slams your back up
against the wall
above the urinal trench.

The others lads are laughing, but when he pulls the blade they start to jump up and down, yelling and screaming at him.

“Fuck’s sake man, get that blade off’ve ‘im! ‘Ees gonna kill that stupid fucka!”

“Bladclaart man, you wanna get the blade you get the blade. ‘Fee wanna kill the man ees gonna kill the man and nuttin’ we can do ‘bout it.”

He’s holding you a foot off the ground, choking your neck.

The power of his grasp presses your back against the wall.

You know the guy. He’d always seemed cool.

Tonight though he’s gone full whackadoodle on you.

You smell his breath. Curry goat patty.

Now he presses his shoulder hard into your chest, releasing the hand around your neck.

For a second you breathe in free rasps as he adjusts his grip, the hand now holding you up scrunched on the lapel of your leather jacket.

His other hand arrives at your freshly exposed neck, pressing his blade into your jugular.

There’s a fair bit of flesh on your bones.

It takes the strength of a mad man to hold you above the ground with one hand.

As long as he stays this mad you’ll be okay.

If he gets sane all of a sudden, and loses the strength to hold you up, you’ll slide down the wall,

onto the blade,
which will slide into your neck.

If he gets any crazier he’s going to stick it in anyway.

You can feel the cold metal tip pricking your skin.

The others aren’t pleased with all this. They’ve got businesses to run from the premises, and Babylon swarming all over asking questions they can do without.

They’re leaping up and down, shouting at him to let you go, but they can’t pull him away ‘cos then you drop.

If they try to get the blade off him he’ll do it anyway.

You know it’s nothing to him.

He can kill you, or he can let you live.

A dead white male on the toilet floor of a Brixton pub on a Saturday night: The Boys are not going to be overwhelmed by witnesses.

You’re aware that his mates are trying to get him off you.

You’re also aware that your wallet is being passed around out there somewhere, but that doesn’t worry you in the least.

The real game is between you and him,

up close

face to face.

He's using all of his strength to hold you up there.

You breathe hard on each other
his spittle hits your cheeks.

His eyes glare at yours
yours stare close up into his.

His sweat and heat on your sweat and heat.

You know it’s nothing to him.
He can kill you

or he can let you live.


You’re adrenalin calm.

 

Interesting feeling.

 

©Charlie Adley

24.02.2023

Music Monitor

  

A tale of Deep Purple, bruised buttocks and my first act of rebellion. From my new collection of autobiographical short stories: Kill Me Now

Enquiries: cadley1@icloud.com
 

Music Monitor

You sit terrified behind the curtain at the edge of the school stage.

The only other person up here is the Headmaster.

A lanky skinny man, he is compassionate, yet unpredictable in everything except his wardrobe and his rollups.

He sports green leather patches on the elbows of his omnipresent tweed jacket, nicotine yellow fingertips and moustache.

He also wears the rich scent of Old Holborn tobacco.

There are worse smells.

You peek out, around the edge of the curtain.

His fingertips rest regally on the arms of his wooden throne.

Below, the entire school fidgets excitedly on polished wooden benches. Each boy’s head twists to look up at you: excited if they don’t like you; nervous if you’re their friend.

You start to sweat.

Your heartbeat crashes around your eardrums.

For the first time you taste your own bile, along with a pre-pubescent whiff of damp armpit.

You wonder why the hell you’ve decided to do this.

At the age of 12, your life is as good as it will ever get. You’re Patrol Leader, a School Prefect and a Dormitory Prefect. You scored straight ‘A’s on all your exams and you’ve loads of friends.

A few weeks ago the Headmaster approached you to ask if you’d like to be Morning Music Monitor. Every function at English Preparatory School has to have a title.

Now you have the honour of choosing a piece of music each morning, which you then play while Assembly dissembles.

The corresponding record sleeve has to be displayed in front of the Headmaster’s lectern on stage, enabling everyone in front of it to know what music they can look forward to.

Behind the lectern, the Headmaster has no idea which composer you’ve picked, but he’s very familiar with the entire school collection.

At least, he thinks he is.

All he’s done today is come into Morning Assembly, as he always does.

He hasn’t seen what the rest of the school has seen.

Next year you’ll start Public School and because they think you’re smart enough to be an Oxbridge candidate, you’ll be thrown into a class a year ahead, and pushed to take three ‘O’ levels in a single year.

You’ll go from top of the form and popular to being the class dumbo and a social pariah.

A boiling bag of hormones, paranoia and primal urges, you’ll react by putting on 45 pounds of weight, and decide that you’ve no desire whatsoever to go to university.

Right now though you’re bricking it.

So far you’ve been the model of a modern music monitor, done exactly what you’re meant to do, choosing safe crowd-pleasing favourites such as Grieg’s In The Hall of the Mountain King or Sibelius’ Karelia Suite.

Each morning you lift the needle and set it down so very carefully onto the LP, in an effort to avoid deafening everyone with the ear-splitting crunch of a stylus sliding through loudspeakers.

Today the boys hold their breath, their eyes transfixed by the cover of the LP on display.

Your first act of rebellion.

Punishment awaits.

After the hymns and prayers, the Headmaster stands to make his daily announcements, sits down, turns to you and nods his head.

Your signal to play the music.

Nobody will stand up from their seats until the music starts, and then they will file out, age by age, class by class, except for the Prefects who wait until all others are gone, and then file out in order of their own seniority, followed by the Deputy Head Boy, then the Head Boy.

This obsession with hierarchy drives you crazy.

This is why you feel the need to break rank, and it’s too late now.

Everyone apart from the Headmaster has seen the album cover.

If you don’t do it you’ll be chicken.

If you do it, you’ll be a hero and in serious trouble.

Slowly, gently, the needle is lowered.

You sit back and wait for the opening chords of Deep Purple’s Smoke On The Water.

A gasp is audible from below, but still, row by row, the boys stand up and file out, each staring with a smile as they walk by.

Some whisper

“Nice one, Adley!”

Others drag their fingers across their necks, in simulation of the slaughter to come.

After the boys have all left the hall, the teachers file out in their correct order, by seniority of age and department, followed by the Deputy Headmaster, and finally the Headmaster.

This morning he’s not gone anywhere though.

He sits in his chair and looks over. Just the two of you in the empty hall. He looks down at his knees.

He places the palms of his hands over his cheeks, hiding his weary kind eyes. Now he inspects the frayed hems of his ancient gabardine trousers.

You sit and say nothing.

That’s a simple fact of life in private schools in England: speak only when spoken to, and even then, only when expected to reply.

This long silence drowns you in dread.

You imagine the Headmaster is contemplating which particular line of punishment to choose.

Finally he turns to you, and speaks softly across the stage.

“Hmm.     Well, Adley    that was               that was         hmm.     What was that?”

“That was Smoke On The Water by Deep Purple, Sir.”

“Hmm.       Heard worse things.          They appear able to play their instruments and create a melody.        Hmm.         I suggest that from now on, you stick to the wonderful world of Classical music from Monday to Thursday.       Hmmm.         On Fridays, I will trust you to be sanguine about your choices, but if it has a tune,       some kind of musical merit   and is     ermmm     popular with the boys,       I see no reason to avoid the contemporary canon completely. Are you capable of choosing such pieces?”

“Er, yes. Yes Sir!”

“And that doesn’t include Chuck Berry and his ding a ling, nor Benny Hill and the likes of Ernie.”

“No sir. Hate that anyway, Sir.”

“Very well, Adley.”

He stands up and leaves.

You sit there in shock, wondering what the hell ‘sanguine’ means, aware that you’ve got away with a whopper.

You stand up, and discover something that will affect each subsequent performance throughout your life.

While you have the nerve to speak in public, to make a marketing presentation, to open an exhibition or launch a book, afterwards your legs become feeble wobbly sticks, completely failing you, and you will fall over.

Alone in the school hall, you slowly topple backwards.

Your arse slams hard

against the wooden boards

with an echoing eye-jarring thump.

You have escaped the cane.

You have neither been reprimanded nor beaten, but contrived somehow to smack your own behind and end up in pain.

It was worth it though.

©Charlie Adley

19.02.2023

International Dateline

 

Map: Caitlin Dempsey  

This weekend - from my new collection Kill Me Now - obsessive love and madness unleashed in:

International Dateline

 

For months you clamp yourself to her life, until eventually she relents and lets you be her boyfriend.

For years you tell her how important it is to travel.

She goes travelling.

Now she’s on a beach in Los Angeles, and you're in a piss-stinking public phone box in Bradford, West Yorkshire.

You ask the woman on the end of the phone three times: is she sure there were no letters waiting for your girlfriend when she arrived.

Three times she answers with increasing impatience.

“There were no letters for her, and right now she’s down at the beach.”

None of the many long letters you wrote arrived. She doesn’t know what you wrote.

You can’t even remember what you wrote, because ever since she left, you’ve been out of your tiny fragile mind.

Without her there to obsess over, your madness has no outlet.

You tuck your chin into your coat, push open the door of the phone box, and step into the freezing cold rain exploding over the Pennines.

You walk against the wind, and stumble back to your little terraced house, where you sit on the sofa in your soaking wet coat.

You drink scotch. Famous Grouse.
You smoke some hash.
Then drink more scotch.

Eight hours later Malcolm comes home from work at the Student Union bars and finds you still in your damp coat.

Full length tweed, with a large collar that you keep flipped up around your neck, exposing only your face to the outside world.

Since she left you wear this coat everywhere, even during university lectures.

It’s being talked about, but you know it’s better this way. You are safely cocooned, and they are protected from you.

Mind you it stinks a bit, when it’s soaked through and body-warmed from the inside.

Malcolm is not an effusive man. Long silences and few words are his way, yet tonight he sits next to you and puts his arm around you.

“This can’t go on, Charlie.”

“My letters didn’t arrive."

 

Long silence.

 

“If it can’t go on, what do I do?”

“Go and pack Blue Bag.”

“Okay.”

You head upstairs, somewhat surprised to find Malcolm following you. Evidently he’s reached a level of concern that requires you to be supervised.

“What am I packing for? How long?

“As long as it takes.”

“And am I going somewhere hot or cold?”

“Pack as if you’re never coming back."

This is a man you trust. Your inability to act rationally makes taking instruction easy; pleasurable.

Somebody else has taken control.

Thank fuck for that.

Packing Blue Bag is simple when you’re going forever.

One set of clothes for hot.
One set for cold.
One set to stay dry when it’s wet.
Washbag.
Boots on the foot and trainers in the bag.

Everything stuffed into a plastic orange survival bag, which keeps it all dry, and if you’re ever stuck, you sleep in that bag. Orange bag rolled into a sausage, slid into Blue Bag and zip.

“Done.”

“Well done Charlie. Now, am I right in thinking you’ve still got an American Express card? I seem to remember you saying you’d kept it from your marketing days.”

“Yep. Paid the bloody membership fee each year for some reason, but never use it. It’s a charge card, not a credit card. You have to pay the full bill each month. Who does that?”

“Perfect. Put it in your wallet.”

You follow Malcolm out of the house and walk through the silent darkness of sleeping Bradford.

Malcolm unlocks the door of the bar he closed only an hour earlier.

You sit together in the pale light of beer pump heads.

Absorbing Malcolm’s calm and the stillness of a closed bar, you drink whisky through the night.

Malcolm looks at his watch.

“First train leaves for London in 20 minutes. Time to get to the Interchange.”

“Am I going to London?”

“No Charlie. You’re going after her.”

“Am I? Oooerr. Not sure she’ll like me muscling in on her trip.”

“You don’t have to muscle in on anything. Just see her, say what you need to and take it from there.”

“Okay.” 

Malcolm walks you through Bradford’s ashen dawn, down to the station, and sees you onto the train.

You’re heading south at sunrise.
Blue Bag is by your side.

Blue Bag by caricatures-ireland.com

Relief and a sense of purpose flood your frayed worn out systems.

From London’s Kings Cross you jump onto the Northern Line, and head straight to Kentish Town, to wake up Chris.

You tell him that you need him by your side for the day.

“Okay Chas, but I’m going nowhere without a coffee and a rolly. What’s going on this time?”

“Right mate, here’s the story. Got to be on a plane to LA by sundown, or else I might start to think."

Chris takes you to the USIT travel agency in the West End, where you show a young brunette your student card.

You explain to her that you have to be on a flight to LA by nightfall.

Her fingers whirl over her keyboard.

“Okay, there’s a flight with BA to JFK, leaving Heathrow at 5pm today, and then a connecting flight to LA six hours later, but … if you wait until morning, there’s a much cheaper fare on a direct flight, without that long layover.”

“No. I need to go now.”

“Okay. How long would you like to spend in LA?”

“24 hours. And the following day I need a flight on to New Zealand.”

She looks up at you for a second and returns to her keyboard.

“Hmm, yes, I can do that. Air New Zealand have two daily fights. Any preference for times?”

“No.”

Chris bounces nervously from one foot to the other.

“And onward from New Zealand?”

Shit. You haven’t got that far yet.

“I’ll sort that when I’m there.”

“So it’s a one way from here to Aukland with a stopover in LA."

“You could say that.”

She looks at you and smiles.

“Do this a lot, do you? Get me to the other side of the world right now type of thing?”

You smile and ask if they accept American Express.

“That’ll do nicely!” she says.

You both turn your heads as Chris chuckles at the absurdity of it all, and then all three of you laugh together.

“Oh and I need a hotel room in LA. What time do I get in?”

“Erm, 1:20 am local time.”

“Shit. Okay, I definitely need a room. Nice place, please.”

“I’ve a room at the Wilshere for $250.”

“That’ll do. Book that too.”

You hug Chris and climb onto the bus to Heathrow.

You’re on the plane to JFK.
You wind your watch back 5 hours.

Sleep is out of the question. You’re buzzed to fuck on adrenaline and off your tits on sleep deprivation.

Six hours layover in JFK, immobile with a thousand yard stare,

Now you’re on the plane to LA.

You wind your watch back three hours.

This is the longest fucking day the universe has ever seen.

It started three days ago.

You asked Chris to call her, to tell her Charlie is on his way.

Chris didn’t thank you for that. What a bastard call to make for your mate.

She’ll be there.

Will she be safe at the airport?

Get a grip. She volunteered to help the victims of the Loma Prieta earthquake.

She’ll be able to handle a fucking airport.

Will she be furious?

You encourage her to travel and then, soon as she does, you implode, go bananas and chase after her.

Pathetic.

You hate yourself but you love her.

Staring into the night outside the airplane window you see her dark blonde hair, those rounded cheekbones, her clear English Rose blue eyes and that perfect petite nose.

Through the veil of your madness this middle class woman from the Midlands appears to have a soul that’s pure, a heart that’s open, an admirably powerful sense of social justice and a mind-blowing body.

You’re not muscling in on her trip.
You’ll be gone the day after you arrive.

You just need to hold her.

She needs to know how much you love her, and then you can let her go.

Hang on! She’s heading to New Zealand in December.

Before she left, while you were still sane, she suggested you might fly out and meet her there for Christmas.

She actually said that, months ago, and you laughed and said

“No, this is your time my love. The last thing you need is me. This is about you.”

Now, maybe, this one night in LA might be followed by Christmas together in New Zealand.

How long is it since Bradford?

How long is it since sleep, since food or anything but winding back your watch?

Off the plane in LAX, you race to Arrivals, and

there
there she is
waiting for you.

She tries to look angry.

Your eyes pump excitement as you stride towards her, yet she refuses to smile.

You go for a hug but she stands back.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

“Came to see you, didn’t I?”

She can’t resist the power of your crazed enthusiasm, and now you hug her and she lingers just long enough to let you know.

She smells so good.

You grab a cab to the hotel and you both sit on the floor in your room, swigging a bottle of vodka from the neck.

She feeds off your madness, the excitement of it, and then you make love, frantic wonderful sex on rough hotel carpet, and then you pass out on the bed.

Two hours later the Californian sun drills into your head through your eyes.

When you try to check out of the hotel, the guy on reception says if you don’t mind, please wait a moment. He has to call American Express.

Apparently there’s been a recent flurry of activity on this card, and he simply needs to reassure them you presented full ID, and the card has not been stolen.

Outside the hotel you stretch out your arm, flick on your lighter and set fire to your American Express card.

The melting plastic drips onto the sidewalk.

“What the bloody hell are you doing?”

“It was getting too hot, so I made it hotter. I’d never be able to use it again anyway.”

You hug her and armed with her scent in your nostrils, you finally summon up the courage to ask

“New Zealand for Christmas? I can rent us a beach hut near Abel Tasman?”

She looks you in the eye, shakes her head and sighs.

“I’ll be there.”

You turn and walk into downtown LA, find a local bus that creeps slowly towards LAX, via some extremely dodgy neighbourhoods, board your flight to New Zealand and wind your watch back …

… how long?

Hang on, you’ll cross the International Dateline, so isn’t it tomorrow there already?

You have no idea what time

                        or even what day it is.

You’ve completely lost your own dateline

                        your brain bouncing around a timeless lifeline.

24 hours later you walk up Queen Street in Auckland.

You have no money.

You have no place to stay.

You have no ticket out.

You might never go back.

You might live here forever. 

 

You might not.
 

 

She’s coming for Christmas. 

 

 

 

 

©Charlie Adley

11.02.2023