Nathan didn’t work. He felt he couldn’t work; the effort taken to arise at the same time each morning was beyond him. Nathan didn’t have a girlfriend. He felt he couldn’t have a girlfriend; he feared he had nothing to offer another human being. He often thought of buying a dog as a companion, but found the concept of walking around with shit in a bag overwhelmingly repellent.

So, he spent his days thinking of ways to end them.

This day he awoke around 11.00 am, set his alarm again for 12:30 am, pulled his duvet over his head to warm his nose, and drifted off into his favourite arena, the arena of dreams. He dreamt of a swimming pool, and of walking fully clothed into that pool. He started at the deep end. Used the steps to lower himself in, then just let go…He sunk slowly, and found himself resting at the bottom of a vast ocean. Fishes of all colours streamed by him, vibrant coral almost blinded him, and he sat Buddha-stanced, waiting…

The alarm re-surfaced him.

He woke up, alive.

He yawned, considered his half-hard-on, didn’t bother with it, thought briefly of the ocean floor, then scraped himself out of bed, plumped his pillows, straightened his duvet, headed for the kitchen and a strong cup of tea. Whilst the tea worked its rejuvenating magic, he decided on a visit the library. That was his mission for the day.

Nathan was fond of the library. He referred to it as his “local.” Containing as it did familiar faces with whom interaction was not a necessity and quiet corners to sit and be quiet were abound.

This day, approaching the library, he noticed an unfamiliar bulk. The library had an extensive front window, masses of glass, and from a lessening distance the bulk proved to be a man.

A man sat down, shrouded in thick anorak, his face barely visible with a quality street tin set in front of him.

On arrival Nathan stopped before the automatic doors, and before alerting the automation, looked at the man, then stared at him, for time was passing…A look can all too quickly turn to a stare, as it did.

“Hello” came a surprisingly smooth, almost feminine voice from beneath the anorak.

“Hello” replied Nathan.

The hood from the anorak was pulled back and down, to reveal a bald head, recently shaven, and a mass of beard, initially counteracting any face. A head and a beard.

A face eventually honed into view, unexpectedly young looking, amidst the potential desert and forest of old age. A short smooth forehead, leading to a prominent, regal nose, (a cold drip of snot quickly palmed away) bright eyes, colour indeterminate.

“I like you”, he said

“You don’t know me.” Nathan replied, somewhat startled at the announcement.

“I know you’ve taken the time from your loneliness to address me. Me, a vagabond, a vagrant, a deviant with possible criminal intentions, not many people do.”

“What makes you think I’m lonely?” Nathan said, again slightly annoyed at his insight.

“You’re talking to a homeless man outside a library on a freezing Wednesday afternoon, call me presumptuous…”

Nathan smiled at this remark, unbeknown to him, the first time he’d smiled in several days.

His intention of continuing the conversation, of perhaps taking it to a level where by he was committed, dawned on him, and he simply bid the man “so long” and disappeared through the doors.

The aroma of new carpet and freshly fingered pages were immediate. Unusual, but refreshing in a mall kind of way. The new carpet was maroon in colour. The gates to the children’s reading area were blue and the ceiling was yellow. The place was awash, the librarians less so, but the contrast suited Nathan – bright, dour and stinking just right.

When he was a child, his mother would take him to this very library and almost without fail his bowels would react. “I need a poo” he’d whisper and his mother would smile her knowing smile and say “Off you go then” and Nathan would enter a world of huge metal doors and low seated pooing facilities. He always held on to the red solid curved tubing arranged thoughtfully next to the toilet. It was there to stop him falling into the abyss below, he knew that, and only in his dreams would he ever let go, absorbed into yet another ocean beyond his reckoning.

Forever learning to swim.

I have a story to tell of sorts. It is roughly composed of: Exposition, conflict, rising action, climax, and denouement, but only roughly, for I realised that to facilitate each element of traditional plot structure in such a confined environment, is rather difficult! It concerns nothing in particular and no one of any real substance. It is fuzzy around the edges, blurred in the middle but it does finish at the end.

I remember well the day it didn’t really begin, for I had lost one half of my favourite pair of socks, hence I was irked. I hastily wrote a poem about it called:

Shall I compare thee to a sock?

Yes I shall.

Once of a pair,

you tumbled away,

lost yourself

purposely.

It came out

In the wash

you’re much

darker than

presumed,

a loner, a

mismatched

heretic of the

sole.

I then put on a less agreeable pair and consequentially walked the earth wretchedly for the rest of the day, much like Caine from Kung Fu, only less focused.

I walked down a road and listened to an old chip shop sign groan in the grey breeze and later on in a greener place I saw cows skipping like lambs, which unnerved me. I then sat down on a convenient bench and took out my sandwiches from my rucksack. They were normal sandwiches, and I consumed them with little enthusiasm. Then I struck up a smoke, like a cowboy.

I remember thinking: The mundanity of waking up and of going to sleep and of the minutiae in-between is what life is all about! Then I wept.

With weeping came an Ocular migraine (I presume this was entirely coincidental.) They start in the centre of one’s eye with a slight blurring of vision, and then continue to expand with what is known as “an aura” which involves flashing lights and blind spots, shapes of all inconsistencies, eventually rendering one half-blind.

Whilst consumed within my Ocular migraine attack, sat on the convenient bench, I could do nothing but try to focus on something central within the haze.

I saw beneath me an ant pushing a ball of nectar (at least 20 times his size) up a muddy incline.  Each time he reached the top, the incline was such that the angle tipped him back and he rolled back down to the bottom again with his nectar intact. He attempted this at least 10 times, and then on his final roll back into the abyss was crunched in half by a rabid stag beetle.

That little anvil-headed communist, that miniature Sisyphus; tried and failed, spectacularly. I had nothing but pure love in my heart for him, an admiration that almost overwhelmed me; attempting a task both laborious and ultimately futile.

I threw my remaining sandwiches into the gauze bush behind, hoping that the local badgers weren’t picky about piccalilli and thought:

I shall aim to fail spectacularly, and that’s the best I can do.