Elevation
The lift doors take a final breath before closing and Jason's fingers slip from their edges, cracking the nail on his index finger in the process. Almost mockingly, the lift remains on the floor for a few more seconds, allowing Jason to look, to stare unashamedly through the metal-framed glass door through at Poppy before the lift bears her down towards the ground. Her eyes are looking up as the lift descends and he wonders what's going through her mind. Jason starts to walk back along the corridor until a thought, a voice, an insistence stops him.

Slowed down, Jason's thought process could bear scrutiny, as instincts of which he is scarcely aware stir and combine to move him into action. He runs across the walkway towards the main doors, fumbling for his security pass to get back into his office. Halfway across, he skids to a stop and leans over the balcony to look down for other lifts. All are on the ground floor, none moving, none rising to meet him and bring hope. He turns back and runs towards the main doors.

Security pass in hand, he swipes it past the electronic slate which beeps a denial. Gritting his teeth to prevent himself from swearing overloudly, Jason swipes the card again. This time the small light flickers from amber to green and he can hear the small thunk of magnets releasing. He grabs hold of the door, swings it open and heads towards a corner staircase. The staircases in the building, four of them, all need to be accessed with a swipe card and Jason is rejected by the building's electronic caretakers once more. Again presses the card to the pad, again he is accepted the second time.

The advertised opulence of the company reception is thrown into desperate relief by the spartan stairwell which Jason runs down, one hand on the speckled and cut handrail, the other hand flailing for balance as he navigates each predictable yet sudden corner. There are no signs to tell him which floor he has reached, or which half-floor, no way of assessing his progress as he bounds down the stairs, taking them two at a time, leaping the final three to the halfway landing and grabbing the wall partition for support, as a fulcrum, to twist himself round the next point, gaining momentum, striding longer, moving faster, urgent. Until he falls.

Poppy leaves the lift at the ground floor and walks towards the reception desk, remembering that she has to hand in her visitor pass. A two-hour meeting passed without event as usual, as her two hour meetings on Wednesdays in this building usually do. She considers whether to have a coffee despite the fact that she isn't sure whether she wants one. She looks around, as though someone is watching her, as though there are questions about her presence, her eligibility to be in this place at this time. She goes over to the cafe and orders, remembering that the servers are slow. There is a lingering impulse in her mind to remain.

Placed on the counter, the mere presence of coffee wakes her up. Poppy murmurs thanks to the girl behind the counter then moves over to a free table. To complete the pretence of belonging, she withdraws her notebook and begins to read the notes from the last meeting, countering the overriding compulsion to look back at the lifts. She flips the pages of her notebook back to the beginning, justifying this as an overview of the entire project, realising that it is an excuse to stay for longer, wondering whether she has invented something in her own mind that doesn't exist, outwardly calm and efficient.

A few minutes pass and she realises that she has been moving the pages, turn by turn, without reading any of them. Her gaze has been steady, at a midpoint between her notes and the edge of the table; waiting, hoping, anticipating. A glance at her watch confirms what Poppy already knows, that this is time borrowed and that she has to leave. She doesn't bother to drink any more from the coffee she has only sipped as she picks up the notebook and packs it into her briefcase, making slow motions. She hands in her security pass at reception and walks beyond the security gates. Leaving the building, turning to walk to the station, she allows herself a brief backwards glance.

While he hopes that the bruise will reduce and fade in time, Jason knows that he has no time to think about this. First impressions are past regrets and there is no place for them as he hopes that he has replaced everything from his pockets and bounds down the final steps to the ground floor. He barges into the doors with his shoulder, forgetting the necessity for his security pass, and is rewarded by falling back on the floor. For the first time today, his pass is accepted without query and he throws open the door into the broad, open space of the building's ground floor. He looks towards the entry/exit gates. He looks towards the lifts. He runs over to the reception area and looks out onto the street.

Jason runs out onto the street, already defeated when he leaves the final doors. He stops, pauses, gives up. Head hanging, he starts to turn when a hand restrains him. Looking up, he sees Poppy, concerned and vulnerable: porcelain. Looking up at her, he doesn't know what to say; looking at her as he stands up properly and ready, he doesn't know what he was doing other than the fact that it was right. Poppy stands there, wondering why she had the instinct to return, wondering how she had the nerve to reach over and touch him. She doesn't know what he's going to say and she's terrified, mortified, waiting for the inevitable rejection, the horror that could ensue after building up something so much in her head.

He looks around, as if further inspiration is needed, and stays silent. Her hand still rests on his forearm. He doesn't know what to say and neither does she. He takes the initiative and holds her hand. He clasps it for a moment before telling her that he'll see her at the next meeting, or words to that purpose. He relinquishes her hand and goes back through the glass doors into the building. Staring, unbelieving, Poppy remains. For a moment, for a heartbeat, she remains where she is, considering the past few minutes, considering the spectrum of emotions she has coloured, considering everything she might have felt or possibly still does.

As he reaches the security gates, the receptionist beckons him over. informing him that he needs to wait for a moment. He asks if there is a problem with his pass. She says no. He asks whether there is a problem with the gates, perhaps they are defective and aren't allowing people access to the building. She says no. He is about to ask another question when the girl behind the desk points behind him, through the glass, through those transparent doors and into the street. Poppy stands there, perhaps on the verge of tears, perhaps considering coming back into the building.

The girl at reception leans in towards Jason and details his attempts to get from the fourth floor to the ground. She provides the narrative of Poppy's timewasting on the ground floor. She advises him that she won't readmit him to the building until she sees that the girl outside is ready to leave, one way or another. Jason starts to walk out when he sees Poppy walking in back in. They meet between glass doors. Standing apart, they stare and hear the magnetic locks between the doors slowly close. Poppy admits that she waited for him. Jason admits that he ran down the stairwells to reach her. Poppy admits, Jason admits.

They talk for a few minutes or so before the receptionist unlocks the doors.

These walls
The clock stops and I am in a limbo of my own creation. It seems as though the very molecules which consistute the air around me have frozen in this moment and are awaiting a decision to proceed. I look blankly at the wall, really seeing for the first time since I entered this room three or so hours ago. I see the cracks in the paintwork, the way that the wall is uneven from ceiling to floor, how cracks and holes caused by picture hooks have been filled in and painted over carelessly, routinely. I pay more attention to the wall, at this interrupted time, than I do to the answer I have to give.

If I turn, which I dare not do, then I will see another person, sitting on the edge of a bed, awaiting a reply to an innocuous question. Or so it seems. As the advertisements for instant drinks have taught a generation of lazy Lotharios, an invitation for coffee may be far more than it appears on the surface. For someone so open to interpretation or at the least the interpretation of others, it is an innocent question which is far from guileless. So instead, I stare at the wall, unable to fashion an equally open response, an answer that will preserve a thin ribbon of dignity.

I know the patterns on the wall and ceiling so well now that I could describe this room perfectly with my eyes closed. I can see every part of it in my memory because I have stared at parts of it so long while waiting to think, while waiting for something to say. These are the moments of small despair, the private purgatories brought from a silence which doesn't know why it exists, a silence I brought into creation and which now roams between these walls, bouncing off each ill-decorated surface and rebounding towards me.

There is a light collision between two wine bottles at my feet and I notice for the first time that I am moving, breathing, muscles contracting and relaxing into themselves. The wine bottles teeter, then right themselves, a minor youthful testament to our evening, brought from restaurant to living room to bedroom and then paused, as if by remote control. There is no remoteness in my control, such that it exists, as I search for what to say, grappling with my own reticence.

You might ask what I think, or why I haven't spoken in a while and I can't give you that reply. There are answers available but I don't know which one to choose. I can't admit that there are parts of what you've said that I haven't heard and there are parts that I simply haven't listened to. There are parts where the answers I can select are inappropriate or unlike myself or cause me to barrel down towards a cul-de-sac of introspection that I can't be bothered to enter. And then I berate myself for such indulgence. While doing this, I remain silent and attempt to look thoughtful.

I lie to myself and attempt to construct a reply which makes sense, a sentence that can be taken at face value and has meaning. I focus as hard as I can, away from these walls and the green glass at my bare feet, away from the edge of the baby blue bedcover, away from your questioning, amused face. I'm trying to separate myself away from these reflexes in order to say something to you, something I don't yet know and probably won't know until I have heard the words myself. Just as I'm about to say this epigram, this ode that you have been waiting for, you interrupt decisively, definitively.

"Come to bed."

You make it happen
You aren't rewriting the birth of the planet, you're not recomposing scientific laws, you're not reaching other worlds, but what you inspire is very simple and very affecting. The ability that some people have to rejuvenate the mood of a room or be the force that brings the beginnings of a torrid party through into an always-remembered event, that's what you have. You make things happen and you can make things change. Like me.

I'm standing by the kitchen sink, looking at the washing up as though an intent stare will make the dishes clean and you have tiptoed up behind me and thrown your arms around me, pulling me backwards and hugging me tightly to you. As your arms entwine across my chest, your hair falls forward over my shoulder and I can smell your conditioner. It's a smell I associate with you when you're not there to be seen or to amaze me in person. It's one of the things I have for you, an item on a long list of memories filed away under your name in my instinctive memory, a recall that occurs before I can think about it, and then suddenly a smell or a song will bring you to the forefront of my mind.

If it's unusual to want you near always and, when alone, to say the things I say to you in the hope that somehow in a cosmic accident you might hear them wherever you are, then I suppose that's what I am. I'm not sure I want to lose that. I don't want to lose anything about you, I even dream about you though you sleep next to me. When I wake in the middle of the night, your level, peaceful breathing is soothing and reassuring, a sign that all is well in the world and that I'm safe. A sign that no-one will harm us tonight, together. It tells me that whatever the next day will bring is something that can met with a strength I'm not sure I ever had before.

You bring me into a place of wonder, a state of contentment that seems to expand the very meanings of the word. Vocabulary fails when we're together and it's a grubby pursuit to scrabble around for superlatives, heaping them one on top of the other until they reach the sky when we're already above them. It's a poor Babel tower of compliments and is doubly unnecessary because the words that form this tower's foundations are the words you helped me leave behind.

I could try to write something poetic about the incidental things, the way you crinkle your nose slightly in a moue of distaste when you're reading, the way that your legs fold under one another when you sit on the couch to struggle with the crossword, the tilt of your head when you concentrate, the little shrug you make before you decide that something isn't worth the benefit of your wisdom, the sneaked side glances you give me when we watch a film, to check that we're laughing at the same things or that we've noticed the same plot point.

I could try to write about these in soaring terms that armies of violins would strain to reach, but I wouldn't do you justice, I couldn't even get close. And I don't care. It's something to accept that day by day you continue to defy my attempts to reduce you to a page, to a paragraph or sentence; there's no way to imprison you within adjectives and analogies. So I should just put down this pen that I pick up every day to bring some of you into an alphabet, I should just put down my pen and get away from a life that's typed and back into a life you make happen every moment.

Touchpaper
I'm sorry, you're sorry. It's where we end up, each time, each late conversation where we start with a word and build it into a world, then break it all down with apologies and forced tenderness. It can spark from anything and nothing, the way that a jacket is laid down on a chair or how differently a tone of voice is perceived from the way it was intended. It jumps out at us like a third person in the room, surprising and violent in the abruptness but too granite to ignore.

Where we go these times is anyone's guess, but it pulls focus to a kaleidoscope of arguments and emotions, rotating slowly through a spectrum of opinions where we can forget what we've said within moments of protecting it. 'I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.' Voltaire never said such words and we take the spirit of the unattributed too far and spread them too thinly to mean anything that's even close to proving our case.

We spar verbally, ducking through a subordinate clause and jabbing for a mot juste. Perhaps I try too hard to be clever-clever and feign a forensic view; perhaps you invest too much passion in your words, an intensity that's overly earnest for our lateness and tiredness, for our barely stifled yawns and untouched glasses of wine. We only notice outside ourselves when the sound of cars on the street becomes an event rather than a backdrop, when the stillness of heel taps on pavements becomes louder than the noise it replaces.

You are a challenge that doesn't diminish, despite the way we repeat our position statements, a necessary prelude to this courtroom before us, that present invisible where we appeal for sustainments and overruling. For all the closeness we have and cherish, there is a ruthlessness in you that amazes me still, catching me unaware and deceiving me. It's matched by my recall of the words I've said, the persuasion I've borrowed, the cheap ferocity of a conviction unearned.

Like a lit match burning down towards the fingers, your words are sudden and searing and teach me a lesson. We could argue all night, both of us realise this, and although we might push forward the boundaries on our unwritten map, our territorial game, neither of us would ever budge too far from our core. There are some debates that can never be won, and there are some debates that were never debates at all: call them tests, call them amusements, call them the unworthy pursuit of the lazy and overcritical mind, call them what you want, but what we do at the end of the long night into morning is not debate. What we pursue in these dark and petty moments is a relentless race to a conclusion neither of us hope to reach.

Then peace breaks out. A switch in mood or a glance at a wristwatch, a weariness of confrontation, an acknowledgement of difference, a sudden and overwhelming fatigue. We don't know why but suddenly all is peace, all is reparation. I adopt a conciliatory tone and agree with your viewpoint, you acknowledge my meaning and dismiss other criticisms. Becalmed and pacified, we realise that neither of us remember what started this argument and why our pulses are racing, why we search for the killer move, the bout-winning punch, the ultimate checkmate. We've forgotten the turn of phrase which turned us for battle and instead we sit closer now and shower each other with sorrys.

With one small light, one small flame, fireworks rise and in crescendo explode. When in full expression they change from incendiary to illumination, and as they fall and fade there remains the memory of what they once were, matched by an anticipation of what is yet to come.

Motion
Slow-motion blur across the vision path, I can't make you out. If cerise was something I could put straight next to blue or yellow or the ones I've heard of, then I might call you that right now, but I don't know what it is and although I might have seen it I wouldn't recognise it at all. You use the long words for things I know by different names. I know you've moved and even my eyelids jumping like a heartbeat monitor like a kid on his first trampoline like a paper boat in a mudwashed puddle can tell that you've moved and you're moving, but I don't know why it's in slow motion and I wonder if I've seen too many films.

You asked me once whether I remembered everything I saw and I answered you that I didn't know and you thought that was funny and I made you explain why. The reason was long and your hands danced across imaginary arcs in the air as though there was a pattern which would bring order to your answer and I watched your hands rather than listen to your words so I still don't know why you found it funny and I suppose that you won't tell me now that you don't want to see me any more.

I know that you moved and that I'm not moving at all. You told me last night or yesterday or the day before that you can't see me and that you won't, you won't tell me why even though it's better for both of us and that you felt so guilty for the thing that you won't tell me whether you've done or not done, if there is anything to tell at all, shush. I don't know whether you're making things up or if you made them up before but now you're convinced that it's true and you're smart and clever so I believe you because that's what I do when you tell me things.

I tell you things too. I saw a ping-pong ball bounce thirty-seven times on a table before it stopped bouncing and rolled off the side onto the floor. Each time it bounced I counted and when I got to thirty-seven was when it didn't bounce any more. I told you that too and you said I had a numbers mind. I didn't really care about the big small number, I liked the way that the ball jumped up into the air each time like my eyelashes now like how I do when I get into a really hot bath because although it starts to scald me, I get used to it. I can spend only one second in it the first time, but the next time I spend longer, and then it's longer and longer in the cooler, cooler water.

You speed up into regular time and your hand is by the door and there's water coming down your face and you look around as though you've forgotten something even though you packed last night or yesterday or the day before because I helped you because you were going away. When my brother goes away he sends me postcards with rude pictures on the front of ladies in their swimming costumes or the card is all dark and it says that it's a picture of that place at night because he knows that I'll laugh even though he's not there because he's away. I would ask you to send me a postcard too but you said we won't see each other again. I guess that means you won't know if I laugh at your card too.

You close the door real softly like the way you touch me when I wake up and I wonder if I'll ever wake up again without you next to me right there to touch me awake when there's the buzzing of the clock and I don't want to go into the cold room. I didn't understand much of what you said when you said it though I understood the bit where you said I was good and that you hoped you hadn't hurt me. I guess you felt better when we went to bed last night because you didn't cry the way you cried before and you hugged me a lot and I hugged you back and it felt nice.

Slow motion no motion now you've gone and I sit up in bed looking at the closed door thinking you might really have forgotten something and you might come back any minute. If I wait for a bit then you'll open up the door or knock on the door because your key is on the table I just notice, but you might knock and I'll get up and there won't be crying and we can go out and have breakfast or maybe just sit in the seat by the big window and look out at people. I'll wait for a bit, I think.

Et in terra pax
The parish church where I attended Mass when I was a child was a strange place. For a start, it no longer exists. There is a new church there now, though it has retained the same name, which is designed in the modern style that some people believe to be more friendly to other people: light colours, spacious, less of a delineation between 'representative of the divine on Earth' and 'plebs', as well as a general downgrading of that whole God thing. It is especially curious that of all the places where I could get seriously injured (possibly fatally), it should be in the replacement for the parish church of my youth.

Church was, and in some guilty way still is, a forbidding place. That's how they wanted it, so that's what they ordered when the architecture buffet trolley came round. 'They' in this particular instance, is God and Jesus representing themselves through the Bishop of Rome, his bishops, monsignors, assistant bishops, priests, trainee priests and so on and so forth. Essentially, in the parlance of the day, God has people to do His frontin' for him, and when they want an edifice to be imposing and potentially terrifying (cf. Wrath of God, etc, etc), then by Him, they had better get it.

The church where I attended Mass and Sunday School as a boy – whose name I will cunningly disguise by calling it St. Someone's – was big. It took me forty-seven ten-year-old paces to get from the door to the place where I could genuflect before the altar and receive a blessing. That's a lot of paces for a kid, especially when there is organ music playing and you are somehow worried that you have booked yourself a place in Hell simply because you forgot to remove the chewing gum from your mouth before you entered, and you are now desperately trying to swallow it before you receive the Body of Christ.

Incarnation was an interesting topic in Sunday School primarily because it was so easily confused with chille con carne. Once this mental, and ancient language, link was made, there were more than a few disturbed faces when we debated whether transubstantiation (a word none of us could pronounce correctly, never mind spell) was a Good Thing. The correct answer to this question according to the hierarchy and canon of doctrine was Yes. We accepted this and moved on, though never to the question of whether it was acceptable for the baby Jesus to become incarnate with one of us directly after a strawberry Hubba Bubba. Would the two combine? Would the process of becoming more like the Lord our God necessarily involve flavourings? These were, despite divinity scholars' best efforts, questions which remain unanswered.

The select few of us who satisfied very exacting criteria were permitted to become altar boys. Or altar persons, in the church's drive to become more woman-friendly. Apparently, someone had noticed that the last important woman in church dogma was only significant as the person who asked the infant incarnation of God whether he had brushed his teeth and how on earth he had gotten his robe so muddy when he had only been playing football with his friends for half an hour. In the drive to bring the faith into the twentieth century, girls were allowed to be altar boys.

The very demanding criteria which was set for any prospective altar boy/girl was, in order of importance: (a) that you should not be a klutz, (b) that you have the ability to turn up ten minutes before Mass sober and clean, (c) that you don't tremble when you hold a candle, (d) that you have no contagious diseases, (e) that you fit into existing vestments and therefore do not require them to be tailor-made/altered, (f) that you look damn cool in white, (g) that you believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, the maker of yadda yadda. It was a constant and hilarious surprise how many of my fellow Sunday School alumni failed spectacularly to meet these criteria. It was less hilarious, though equally constant, when I managed to fail to meet these criteria also.

When our Sunday School days were over – after having passed the theory test that is first Holy Communion and the practical test that is Confirmation, as well as renouncing Satan an awful lot – we were at the age of eligibility for one of three paths: firstly, we could be trusted to sit in the church away from our parents. This was an awesome responsibility and privilege, indicating the trust which not only they placed in us, but also the trust and love which we received from the church worldwide. A missionary in a place we had never heard of (or could pronounce correctly, never mind spell) had by proxy placed a trust in us that we could sit with people our own age without becoming unruly, without making a mockery of the proceedings and without palming the collection money we had been given, in order that we could augment our pocket money for the week.

The second path we could follow was to join the band. As a measure of ecumenical freedom, not all our hymns and chants were accompanied by the organist, high in the rafters with only the prayer book and a little nip of Bushmills every quarter of an hour to keep her company. Some of the sung responses were accompanied by the 'band'. Needless to say: the Rolling Stones, they were not. Of all the cruel words that can be used about religions, one of the worst must surely be "acoustic". Our acoustic guitar player... correction: our lead acoustic guitar player. Well, he was generally described as being on the liberal wing of the church.

As I got older and managed to read the runes, ahem, I mean decode the adults' talk about such things, I learned that this meant he was to all intents and purposes a Buddhist. However, he was kept on in the church because he didn't evangelise about his practices (Heaven forbid) and he was a damn good riff-man. Otherwise, there were the usual out-of-key backing singers (imagine The Supremes but white, poorly-dressed, without talent and with no Diana Ross to bitch about), a keyboard guy, a flautist who was good enough that people wondered why she was there, and the obligatory drum/percussion/hit anything that moves person.

The final option, after we had face the rites of initiation into our Mother Church, was to become a reader. A lector at the lectern. Prerequisites for this prestigious role included a facility with the English language (both written and spoken), an understanding of liturgical terminology, a willingness to prepare on Saturday afternoons even though it was when the football results were being announced and, most importantly, the ability to bow convincingly towards the altar with sufficient gravitas. It was emphasised to us readers/we readers/them readers that we could never underestimate the vital importance of a good bow. We were role models for piety as we approached the altar, bowed, walked up the steps into the lectern and then proceeded to mangle syntax while reading from St Matthew's gospel about who begat whom.

All of these are memories I have of the church which preceded the one where I am currently bleeding. I have only been in this church once or twice since I moved away from home, and I don't recognise any of the laboriously-stitched cushions or the hand-drawn Stations of the Cross. I can look up and see the figure of the risen Lord in suffering, his hands nailed to the crucifix and blood pouring from him. I can look down and see the shirt I bought from Next slowly darkening as the blood trickles from me. Although the left lens in my glasses is broken, I can still see the dark-suited men coming towards me with their arms outstretched, and I curse the decision that made me return to this place. I only attend church at Christmas and as it's September, I think I can be excused for not knowing every single part of the new church dogma.

John Paul II relinquished his Popehood early last year, and upon Pope Clement XV's accession to the throne of St Peter he decided to adopt a zero tolerance policy towards those who seek to undermine the church, whether that consists of undermining its beliefs, practices, representatives or raison d'être. In keeping with the name he adopted as Supreme Pontiff, it was the controversial Papal Bull entitled 'Deus et Machinegun' which permitted priests of over ten years standing and who were in charge of a parish to be armed and ready when defending the tenets of the universal church. Returning from college and idly questioning the necessity of genuflection every single time we left the pew was, apparently, enough for the priests to pump me full of what they described as the "Lead of Christ".

Unquiet
On a quiet day in a quiet place, there is the noise of faint music echoing from somewhere I can't quite place. Looking around me, up at the windows and over at the streets around the square, the source of the sound is elusive and annoying, an aural splinter in my conscious mind. I can't identify the song because I can't hear it properly, but I can't ignore it because it's just loud enough to make an impact in this quiet place, on this quiet day.

I'm here because you told me to be here. I arrived early, as is my habit, and you will arrive late, because that is yours. I turned up early because I like to know my surroundings, I like to find somewhere comfortable to sit, such as a park bench or a part of the grass which isn't too muddy. I can read my newspaper, laugh at the inanity of the horoscopes or the 'funny' stories. If I have remembered to bring my book, I could read that instead. When I don't have anything to keep my mind busy, I'll look at the people around me, the buildings or the fresh paint on the railings which I'm sure they repainted only a few weeks ago.

Distracting me from my observance is this tinny beat-beat-beat of music in the background, someone's headphones not tight enough to prevent the rhythmic leakage that begins to overshadow the rest of the surroundings. I look at the way the cobbles are arranged in the path through this park and all I can think about is identifying the music. Likewise for the removals van driving around the square, evidently lost. Likewise for you. You. You're here.

You're talking and I'm talking, but I'm not listening. I catch myself in a few of these moments and manage to summon the correct response – or at least an acceptable response – which excuses me from explaining why I haven't been listening properly. While trying to identify the sounds, you continue to talk, telling me about your day. I catch every other word, every third word, and I feel sure that I've missed a sentence or two. I ask you some questions but I don't really pay attention to the answers. I do want to know, but I can't seem to focus properly on you, the park, the slow crawl of the warden's lawnmower, anything.

You hate quiet. Some Sundays, I have tried to take you out to the botanical gardens so we can read the newspapers or scribble some thoughts or just sit and be. I bring sandwiches and picnic food and a bottle of wine in case we get thirsty and because we wake up so late that it's hardly too early for a small glass of wine with a makeshift lunch. After our lunch chatter is over and I try to turn to a solitary activity, a reading or a writing which I want to do alone, with you near. It's your presence I want, or perhaps your absence that I miss.

You, however, find it hard to stay quiet or focus on something unchatty for very long. Your ideas and great schemes tumble through your brain and through your mouth without filter or pause. None of your monologues remain interior for very long. It's a part of you I adore – and envy such enthusiasm for all of life – and as an adored quality, I want it to be precious and rare, inconstant. I know that when I try to focus on what I am doing, a small love and a small plea for quiet, you mock me. It's part of the play-act and we read our lines with verve. You're talking to me now about whether we should get a bus or the tube and I wonder if I'm supposed to answer.

When you ask me if I have remembered to bring your walkman from home, I open my bag to retrieve it and the irritating, thought-consuming noise increases, swimming and swarming around me now. I hand it to you sheepishly, with the throwaway warning that the batteries might be low.

Meme Aid
In true Troubled-Diva style (mwah-mwah), Mike is compiling the übertracklist for the Bloggers' Disco for Comic Relief and has invited people to post their single song for inclusion in the megamix-de-la-crème. Apparently, we have to select a "phat" tune to be "dropped". Unfamiliar with such street slang – duly acknowledging the good Mr T-D to be far more down with the kids than I – here's my song:

Track: Bliss
Artist: Muse
Album: Origin of Symmetry (2001)

I think that my enjoyment of Muse's music is already well documented here, but this is probably my favourite track of theirs, worth listening to for the insistent, shouted "Give me the peace and joy in your mind" lyric alone. Demanding someone's peace and joy with menaces is one of the more sophisticated forms of mugging, and I love the idea. The song has piano at the beginning and end which can only be described as "tingly" before launching via synth into lovely, crunchy guitars. What's not to like?

One of the finest aspects of the song is, without doubt, the video. Available to view online through their site, it's worth wondering exactly how the director pitched the concept to the band.

"Right, what we're going to do is drop Matt Bellamy down a future-tech mineshaft. Chris? Dominic?"
"Great."
"Fantastic."
"Matt, what do you think?"
"Drop me from a what?"
"Futuristic mineshaft."
"Just me?"
"Yup."
"What about the others?"
"Oh, they'll be watching."
"Watching me plummet?"
"Yup."
"That doesn't seem all that fair."
"That's a very selfish attitude, Matt. Don't you want the MTV airplay?"
"Well, of course."
"So we'll drop you down the mineshaft."
"Is it absolutely necessary?"
"Afraid so."
"And it has to be me?"
"What do you want, someone Falling Away With You?"
"No, but I've just had a great idea for the next album.

At least, it might have gone like that. So, DJ T-D, there's another track for the master tape.

Edmund's umbrella
The umbrella had been passed down from Luke's grandfather who had used it to protect himself from the torrential rains that regularly swept across the small Northern town in which he had grown up. By now it was battered and grazed, decades of carelessness and fingernail scratches criss-crossing the wooden, curved handle. The veneer and grain of the wood would once have been smooth, Luke thought, as he imagined his grandfather walking into the shop and buying it.

His paternal grandfather, Edmund, had passed away some months ago and it was his wish that Luke should inherit a modest amount of money held in trust, the collection of old jazz records he had hoarded in his retirement and various chattels including the umbrella. Over the months, Luke had established a ritual for himself. He would get home from work – a minor office job, both beneath his ability and his interest – and play one record each night. No matter the artist or the genre, he would play one record from start to end and would sit down and listen to every note of every song until all was finished. He would carefully place the record back in its sleeve and then begin to make dinner for himself, satisfied that his nightly memorial service had been conducted properly.

Although Luke had not spoken to his mother in years, he was still on speaking terms with his father, George, who worried that Edmund's death had affected Luke in ways which he couldn't fully comprehend. George, who had lived in the south all his life, tried to bring up bereavement in conversation casually, but Luke was neither receptive to his faltering, sudden changes of conversation nor was he prepared to speak about his grandfather at all. He did his job, poorly at times, he went home and listened to a single jazz record, then went about his life. It didn't occur to him that his silence, both with his father and before the masters of clarinet, saxophone or trumpet, was as unhealthy as a shouting match or smashing up a room. He believed he was fine, in control, observing an appropriate period of mourning.

The funeral itself was awkward, not least in that it necessitated several telephone calls between himself and Sadie, his mother, about the logistics of trains and accommodation. He conducted these calls as an automaton, providing times, costs and plans efficiently and without any passion or consideration for her feelings, not that he recognised she had any feelings at all. For him, the funeral procession could consist of one mourner only: himself. He was too overcome to notice the glances between his mother and father throughout the three days he spent away from his one-bedroomed flat and with them. They spoke on the first night when he had gone to his hotel room, booked despite the protestations that Edmund's house was easily big enough for them all, and fretted that his neat, cheap suit and dull eyes were hiding something that would eventually consume him. They both knew that however controlled and commanding he might appear, he was their child, inheriting from them passions and emotions which burned like a never-dying fire.

Luke had not been able to sleep completely through the night for some weeks before the news of Edmund's death and this event propelled him into an insomnia which could only be described as full-blown. He didn't understand the cause of his sleeplessness and was, by nature, averse to discussing the problem with anyone, least of all a relative or medical practitioner. He would not have even considered any form of therapy or counselling. Those things were for other people. Upon returning from the funeral, he formed his plan of remembrance and continued his life, meeting his father for lunch every other Saturday as usual.

Over the past months, even these lunches came to have their own agenda and routine. George would ask about health, work, the commute, the weather, the flat. Luke would answer with varying degrees of thoroughness or disdain. George would attempt to bring up the topic of a girlfriend or boyfriend. Luke would deflect. George would bluster, fuss about asking the waiter for some more water or an extra napkin, trying to move the conversation into the subject of Edmund. Luke would not answer. Simply, without fuss, he would refuse to answer. George would hastily move onto something he had read in the newspaper or would ask if Luke needed any money or whether he had considered buying his own flat or if he had read about the rising crime rate in the neighbouring borough. They would continue to talk. The lunch would end with coffee and a plea for Luke to telephone his mother. They would split the bill and, after a handshake, would leave each other.

After the most recent lunch, while listening to a Slam Stewart album later that evening, Luke saw the umbrella in the corner of the room, propped against the fading wallpaper where the damp came down from the flat above. For the first time in his vigil, he rose while the music was still playing, and walked over to examine it further. He saw that the brass-covered tip had been worn down by cobbles and paving stones, he saw that the metal tips on each prong were tarnished and loose. He saw that there was a chip in the wood just at the base of the handle. He saw something which had been made with care, attention and love, and he saw that age had taken no sudden revenge but a gradual murdering on the parts which had once gleamed and shone in early sunlit mornings and in streetlights on late night walks home.

For a reason that he could not understand, a reason that he possessed no capacity to rationalise or explain away, he felt the tug of tears on his eyes. Closing his eyes tightly, he shook his head to be rid of the growing impulse to cry. It seemed to be a growing compulsion, his body moving into a hunched, self-pitying posture, ready to become a child again, to be comforted against a pervading, soul-possessing sorrow for which there was no end. The tears came gradually, stilting against his resistance. As his knees buckled and he pitched towards the floor, grasping at the umbrella in a forlorn attempt to gain support and remain standing, the full force of everything denied hit him.

George, having forgotten to give Luke the letters that were still being delivered to the family home, entered the small, dark flat to see his son crouching in the corner of the room, arms clutched around the old umbrella as though it was a childhood toy, cheeks blanched by now-dried tears. As Luke looked up, he saw his father sagging against the doorframe, suddenly showing an unbearable fatigue and looking defeated, agonisingly old, and he regained enough possession to stand. He moved over to the doorway, trying to find something to say when George's head dropped and a muffled, hardly-audible noise escaped his lips. Luke, summoning a strength and devotion he had never experienced, held his father's shoulders, then enveloped him in a hug, his own tears beginning anew. As George's arms moved up onto his own shoulders and he heard the rocking sounds of his father's chest heaving and exhaling, he closed his eyes and felt and thought and wondered and understood things that he had never done before.