The Sober Life

  I am sitting on top of my next-door neighbour. He is trying to squirm away on the cold concrete floor outside my front door.  My arm draws back ready to release a punch. Holding me back is his adult son. He is about twenty-five and pretty strong. He is trying to put a stranglehold on my arms from behind. Off to the side my wife is on all fours searching for her glasses in the wet grass. This isn’t the wild west, this is a semi-detached house in Stockport, it's dark, I’m shoeless and wearing yoga pants.  Six months of sober self analysis, introspection and learning and I am about to get violent. What was all this for if this is the result?  It is a torrid and sad tale of a boundary war that has been on a back burner for over six years . We inherited the setup of our house and gardens and have done nothing really to change it since moving in. We have only continued to maintain what was previously there. Next door has never really spoken to us and they try to avoid ey...

“Fuck off you fucking bitch... You fucking pushed in, you fucking cow” This was uttered by an eight year old at the tills in the camping shop I pretend to w ork in. It was a notch up on the usual Stockportian charm school absentees. His tubby bodyguard that masqueraded as his father was already on the phone to the police. They had accused two couples of jumping the queue. It turns out after checking the security camera this was incorrect, but instead of maybe tutting or saying excuse me this kid went supernova. He went from zero to Roy Chubby Brown in naught seconds flat. His obscene verbiage was actually pretty impressive. One of the women stayed behind to give back as good as she got.  She had no mask nor did the other three in her group. They were the usual group of loud mouthed anti-maskers who when you question them all have the same difficulties breathing. However this woman did not seem to have any problems shouting back at the kid and his father. She said she was going to “...

I am a spider trapped in the bath The sides designed by non-spiders To generate cheap laughs I miss my family and some of my friends This loneliness can send a spider around the bend I wish I was a fly, a wasp or bee  I wish I was anything but a spider like me Outside this place I did not see a spider like me Just thousands of spiders I didn't want to be So I went on a search and found myself here A lost and lonely eight legged sightseer So I sit and I think, but I can’t do the math It seems like forever I’ve been in this bath Spiders before me have struggled to get out Most don't live past the big shout   Shall I create a Great Spider God  And praise him for saving me from the bog? Maybe if I repent and give him amends  He will send for help and my other spider friends Or shall I clean and polish up my soul So it glides with grace through the distant plug hole? Outside, the webs I have spun will soon dissolve in the noonday sun I’m out of ideas and too tired to run ...

  The noise of the self isolation sirens are dying away. The seriousness that greeted us at the start of the original lockdown has been replaced by a numb mundanity as we await the start of the endgame. We will disembark the Corona-coaster dazed and confused, the shutters will go up again on the high street, but what will the world be like and more importantly what will we be like? We have been through war style shortages and the good old blitz spirit on our doorsteps. We had false restarts, double standards, corruption, errors and good old human nature which is now bringing us back around nicely to get ready for… for a new age?....a new enlightenment?...a new awareness of the fragility of life?...Or just the pubs to reopen again so we can get slaughtered with our mates and pretend like this was all a bad dream? The government has given us a road map out of lockdown, a road map that reopens everything back to normal three days before Boris Johnson's birthday. As with all road maps...