The Toad Stalkers

We set off from the start, drove carefully through the village, took a left at a crossroads, took the next right, and then after we rounded a bend, I said, "Oh Ducks". In front of us, in the right hand bank, was the back of a white board. It should have been on the left hand bank, facing us, with black letters on it. We were going the wrong way. That was bad enough on it's own, but half a dozen other cars could come haring towards us out of the darkness, and there wasn't room to pass. I found a narrow drive just beyond the board, finished turning round just as one of the half-dozen cars appeared, and sped back down the lane past the board while my navigator decided guessing would be quicker than re-plotting the map.

Pushing hard to try and make up the lost time, I spotted fluorescent jackets in the headlights, and shouted "Control". I slowed to a stop between two figures standing either side of the road with torches, and said "Are you a Secret Check?"

"No," was the answer, "We're the Toad Patrol".

We get called mad for going out at night in cars with maps and clues and trying to see who can get all the right roads, all the right codeboards, all the right controls, with the least amount of time lost. But there are also people in this world who'll stand in a lane in the dark, armed with fluorescent jackets and torches, scanning the hedgerows for emerging toads and helping them safely across the road. Do they keep score and see who can carry the most toads over? Do they weigh them, and award the prize based on greatest toad metre-gram? Do they count the number of spots on their little backs and write them down in books? Do they use stop-watches to see who got the quickest toad-transit? Do they use little pastry brushes to sweep the road clean ahead of it like a curling event? Do unscrupulous competitors use devices like decoy toad-callers or bait the banks with flies?

I have to know, it kept me awake last night.

And what do the Toads think of all this, do they even want to cross the road? Just supposing the toads simply come along to see what all the furtive noises are, and then find themselves dazzled by bright lights, picked up, examined, babbled at in strange voices, and finally set back down on the earth miles away from where they started, (in toad-terms). It must be like an alien abduction experience for them. There must be little toad-cults who believe the experience is a transcendental one, and counter-groups who claim those handled by the glowing yellow monsters are tainted and should be burnt at the stake. The council of elder toads have stated that there are no toad-abductees, the whole experience is a chemical aberration brought on by eating hallucinogenic flies.

I was going to develop this theme into a best-selling book that would finally make my fortune, but I got stopped by a disturbing thought. Maybe the toad patrols have a more sinister side to them. Supposing we get judged at the end of our lives, presented with a list of things we had done that had violated the rights of others creatures, and forced to wander around with our offences on a placard around our necks for eternity. What would you think of someone who was accused of molesting Toads?

The last draw

We have been sent to shepherd a spotter plane across the lines and back again. It flies slightly below us, crewed by two men, one a pilot, the other a gunner and cameraman. This is a revenge move for the other side's success in keeping their balloon aloft. Somewhere over their side of the lines, while the spotter circled around and got their photographs, we scattered left and right, up and down, and mingled with a flight of gaudy-coloured attackers. It was one-on-one with side-bets and under-the-table conspiratorial manoeuvres to keep the pot boiling.

I have always moaned that I was unlucky at all the things that counted; cards, horses, lotteries, love. I have never won anything significant that I can crow about. Thirds, fourths, a rare second, often last, but despite my putting heart and soul into anything and everything, I've never been a winner. I call myself a steady loser.

Sometimes I turn that view around and take stock of how fortunate I appear to have been. I think back to my days at sea. The worst that ever happened to me were cracked ribs from a fall down the bridge ladder, and a blow to the head from a fall down the engine-room stairs. Others came home from their trips with crushed or broken limbs. A sister ship never came home at all. I have scrambled out of a wrecked car with a bruised foot and a blood-blister on my cheek, to the disbelief of the rescue crew who turned up prepared to cut off the roof, while others have died at half the speed I was doing. I have only been robbed once in my life. I am still alive and kicking. Why?

So I started my obsession with fate. Why is it that some people seem to be so lucky, and others seem to be so unlucky; why can some people smoke till they're seventy, and others fade away before they're half that age? Is it really just as random as cards drawn from a pack, or are we predestined to our experiences as a result of our past? The more I learn to look at the inputs and outcomes of fortune, the less I seem to understand. There is no justice being served out over the centuries, no karmic disposition to fame and fortune or debt and disaster. But there is still a mysterious sense of a pattern there, if only my eyes could learn to see the magic side of life.

We come together again and count ourselves up. One missing, and far below us are two columns of black smoke, so neither side can claim a victory. Away to the west the spotter plane is making it's way back to safety. Three of us peel off to an early landing because of damage or wounds, while the rest scurry after the spotter plane and slip cockily into formation around it, rocking wings as we throttle back to the slower speed. Something is wrong, there is no answering waggle of wings, no hands raised. The gunner looks as if he is asleep, one arm casually resting on the leather padding of the cupola. The pilot is leaning back slightly in his seat gazing up into the peaceful blue of the heavens. Dirty brown streaks have spread along the fuselage from where his leather helmet and his collar meet.

We sit stunned around this macabre sight, none of us able to accept that the plane can be so undamaged and in control of itself while the crew lie dead or dying. The flight leader edges closer in and fires his guns, twice. There is no sign of stirring. The plane with it's dead cargo and oh-so-precious photographs is flying steadily on towards the coast, not losing height at all. We all know our fuel tanks are down to the last gallon, and we have now passed our landing field. For five more minutes we fly in silent tribute, then one by one peel off and start the long glide home. Behind us, the plane is unhurriedly making it's way out to sea, to the great unknown graveyard that will only give up it's secrets at the end of the world.

"Into the blue again,"
"Into the silent waters..."

Toccata and fugue for kite-string ensemble

I got woken up one night by the sound of an animal screaming. The cats had cornered another mouse and by the time I got to the kitchen it lay limply on the stone floor, still warm, but ragged and mangled. I picked it up and held it in my hands, wishing I could breathe the spark of life back into it. Usually I get to them before the cats have decided enough is enough, whisk them up out of the reach of furry little paws, and let them loose again outside the house, while inside, the cats are still crouched expectantly around the spot where the mouse last hid. This time, I had been too late.

On a whim, I superglued the ragged wounds up and tried blowing warm air over it while cupping it in my hands, much as I had seen it done in "The Green Mile", but I didn't have the magic spark to jumpstart a stalled nervous system. My whim grew wilder still, as I looked out of the window at the turbulent clouds and intermittent moonlight. Rummaging through the toy room, I found my old stunt kite, and back out in the corridor donned wellington boots. Hands fumbling and all a-tremble, I tore off strips of gaffer-tape and fastened the lifeless little body to the fabric of the kite, then pulled on rubber gloves and stepped outside into the darkened road.

The wind caught at my dressing gown as I trotted backwards down the tarmac. I briefly thought of going back inside and getting dressed, or at least putting some pants on, but the kite was soaring now, up above the roofline and jagged chimneystacks, and the wind gave a steady pull as the kite rose out of the ground-level eddies. I let the lines spool off the handles until my fingers sensed that only inches remained, and I braked the last few turns into the lock slots. The pull on the lines grew stronger still as I dragged back and lofted the kite towards the low-looming clouds; the singing of the wind in the strings rose higher to a wavering peak, and I waited, holding my breath, for the lightning flash. "Live!", I screamed, "Live, damn you!". Eerie blue light suddenly flashed all around me, bouncing off the roof slates and casting shimmering sparkles up the shiny nylon lines, and then a voice said "Would you mind telling us what you think you're up to, Sir?"

So, after I had finished explaining to the officers the fine distinction between whimsy and being out of one's head on classified substances, I wrapped the still-lifeless corpse in a shroud of silver gaffer-tape, and laid it to rest in the hedgerows. Beauty and cruelty dance together like reunited lovers at the end of the masked ball.

Unconditioned response

We have spent minutes in a futile circle, trying to force the course towards a bank of clouds without giving the other side a chance to see our tail. They're over there, opposite us, banking as we are, trying desperately to get a little more elevation to the nose, or a little more power into the propellor, anything at all to turn in a slightly tighter circle, because the one that turns the tightest will untimately creep up upon the other's tail. It looks at the moment as though we are winning, which is a pity. We have run out of bullets. Glancing again across the circle, we wonder if the other side would empathise with our plight. On an impulse, we wave.

I knew that my habit was controlling me, when I used to get out of bed at three in the morning to drive to an all-night garage and buy cigarettes. I would have been lying awake for hours, eyes tight shut, hoping that sleep would come against all the odds, before finally admitting that I could not sleep without one last cigarette. It was a perpetual paradox; if I bought an extra packet so that I didn't run out late at night, I would smoke all the more for it, and still run out. If I didn't buy enough cigarettes, I would smoke all the more furiously for worrying about running out. Either way, I always seemed to be shaking the cardboard box and mentally counting the soft little rattling noises. Only four left, well no need to worry just yet. The all night garage got used to me never buying petrol. My car ran on air, but I ran on cigarettes, I used to tell them. They put up with me because I was a customer to break the boredom of a long shift.

I drove into the place where my partner was working to collect her, her car was in for a service because it had started steaming up the insides of the windows when the heater was on. It was soon after the Raicin scares, and everywhere in the country was slightly edgy. The security guard who came to meet me looked far too young to be doing such a dreary task, so I thought I'd share a little joke with him, just to break the boredom of his long shift. When I wound down the window and he said "Good afternoon Sir, can you tell me the purpose of your visit?" I said "I'm gonna pick my bitch up, pick my bitch up, pick - my - bitch - up". So he said into his radio "Incident team to the main gate NOW", and they made me empty the car, turn out my pockets, and fill out every single box in their Incident Closure Report before they rang her up and said "Your lift is here, we've put him in the quarantine space, can you sign for him on the way out please".

Across the circle, the other side waves back. We pause, then, hesitantly, point to the dead machine guns in front of our face and give the thumbs down. Across the circle, there is a pause, then, a hand points to their guns, and gives a flat side-to-side wave. Jammed. After another full turn we have both come to the same conclusion: ramming each other would be an act of mutual futility. We each break off the dance and go our seperate ways. The balloon which they had been guarding still floats serenely in the sky, spying eyes screwed tight into the rubber cups of their binoculars. In the trenches below us, several Tommies have dropped their trousers and are mooning to the lenses.

Burning desires

We are sent out again in short order, almost before the new haircut has dried. The enemy, it seems, hasn't learned their lesson; the balloon is up again. But it seems the enemy have learnt their lesson, a flight of Albatros and DHV's saw us off in short order. Back at the field we report, whole but holed, that it is our general staff who haven't learned their lesson. They seem compelled to repeat the same old lines again and again, rather than break the habit and start thinking.

Compulsion is one of my pet obsessions. Also dependencies, habits, fetishes, addictions, symbiotic relationships. I have, after all, followed the weed for all those years. Talking to people who have been addicted to much stronger things, I find that the more intense and prolonged the pleasure, the harder it is to give it up. And all of us seem to keep the memories deep within us. I woke from a dream where I had smoked a pack of Marlborough, vividly recalling the crackle of the paper as it turned to sparkling white ash, the crinkling smell of the smoke that wafted back from the end into my nostrils, and find that someone else still feels in dreams the electric tingle and hissing in the ears as the needle finishes it's job.

People who claim that they have never in their lives been addicted to anything don't accept my argument of "Have you managed to do without oxygen for more than five minutes?" as valid. Oxygen is natural, so you cannot be addicted to it. Well, opium comes from poppies, not a chemist's laboratory. So, of course, does nicotine. It comes from a variety of the cabbage family. I hate cooked cabbage, as it happens, although I love it raw.

The difference between a compulsion and an addiction is simply one of freedom. Addiction comes from within, a demand for something to be swallowed, drunk, injected, smoked. If the demand is not complied with, something inside starts to cause pain and distress. Compulsion comes from without, a demand for something to be done. If the demand is not complied with, something outside starts to cause pain and distress. Is it more pleasant to be addicted to something than to be compelled to do something? Ask the spirit, it's a question of freedom.

On pain of death, we have been compelled to return yet again to roast the balloon. It seems the eyes in the basket can see what our troops are getting up to, and that makes the general staff uneasy. The fact that what our troops are getting up to is exactly what the other side is getting up so they know just from their own actions what we are doing is as specious an argument as is my claiming we are all addicted to hydrogen and oxygen. Air is good for life, therefore you cannot be addicted to it. Digging new trenches is good for the war effort, therefore the other side cannot be allowed to know that is what we are doing. The general feeling is that the enemy won't be expecting us back so soon after our last drubbing, and a quick dash and squirt might just pull it off.

Take cover

For a few seconds there is a second sunrise, a wave of warmth that tries to overtake and wrap us in a fiery clasp before we dive once more to hide behind the trees and scatter frost in streaks of slipstream. Weaving round the woods and banking over buildings, we come all in a rush upon a clutch of grey uniforms huddling round their breakfast fire. They scatter like starlings from their coffee and cigarettes, but we are gone in a rush of noise and blurry castor-oil smoke, to streak across the lines and mangled wire, then pull up into a lazy loop and let the world turn somersaults. Guns are thudding now, their side fired first at us, and our side fired back at them, and then they forgot us and fired back at those that fired at them, and from our lofty point we watch with quiet glee as each side goes to work, their purpose rekindled now the day's duty roster is well and truly nailed to the noticeboard.

A smoker's life is a wonderful rollercoaster of frantic activity punctuated by those few reflective minutes of distraction. I miss the variation in the pace of life more than I miss the aromatic tang of nicotine. Without a similar habit to let me vary speed I have to get used to trudging steadily along from one minute to it's successor. Paradoxically, I have less exercise now I no longer have to take a walk to reach the safety of the reservation that all companies mark out for the declining tribes that still cling to their old ways and habits. I took to taking walks anyway, just to stop my arse from getting chair-sores, but I no longer had the spur to reach the destination as quickly as before, and no longer had the warm buzz inside to get me back to the desk to tackle the problems with fresh insight and renewed vigour. Life slowed for me when I stopped, and I became ponderous and earth-bound.

The field has come in sight, we slip and slide to shed the speed we carried over from the frantic flight across the lines, brush our wheels against the twigs that lost their icy shimmer with the warming of the sun, and gently bounce along the grass to trundle in a lazy arc that trickles to a stop before the sheds. Mechanics come to stroke our wings and shed a tear or two about the tears we've carried with us from the front. And so we end the way to start the day and go, one to the care of ground staff, the other to the care of mess staff.

I took a morning trip to town today to get a haircut, and strolled back along the road towards the car park, glancing at my new reflection in the windows. As I passed the trolleys standing idly at the Supermarket a dog broke loose and rushed to wrap his paws around my leg. I tried vainly to shake him off, and his owner rushed to rescue me from what could have become a sticky moment.

"It's just affection, he can't help himself", she said, as she regained control, "he's mostly Border Collie".
"I have similar urges", I replied, "but my partner says I'm mostly Borderline Autistic".

I have this compulsive attraction to things that aren't always good for me, the aromatic tang of smoke, the subtle scent of perfume, the rush of air at speeds too fast for commonsense. One or more of them will get me somehow.

Take aim

We have a job to do, we are not here just to revel in the glory of creation. Beauty itself is not enough for the people who write the rules, each creature must perform a task that plays a part in one of several scripts competing for the prize of human destiny. Step forwards, creature of the light, and speak your lines.

I could die for a cigarette. Or, if I get a different job, I could warn other people that they could die for a cigarette. I could work in a white van taking pictures of people who drive too fast, or strut along the pavements looking for people who have driven to slowly for too long and stick smug little tickets in plastic bags to their windscreens. There are so many roles to choose from, and so many other players desperate to tread the boards. Competition is so fierce that even smokers now are having to take jobs in companies that "operate a no-smoking policy".

I am sometimes disturbed by the thought that the inmates in the concentration camps might not have been allowed to smoke. Not because it was bad for their health; the authorities would hardly want to improve the health of those they planned to do away with. Not because it was en expensive luxury either, for the tobacco industries of all sides made sure that there were enough packs for everybody's needs, even though food was being rationed. It was a simple piece of malice, almost an afterthought, that went along with the withdrawal of liberty and self-determination. "You are not permitted to choose how you live or die. We do that". The freedom to indulge in hazardous delights is one which is a pleasure to withdraw from those you deem no longer human.

And now we are over the enemy's countryside, turning cautiously round to head back towards the tiny strip of land, no thicker than a cigarette paper, that all the strife and turmoil is about. We fly confidently, purposefully, as though we had just taken off from one of their fields and are heading out over their lines to take a look at their enemy, and gently crab sideways towards a large round object floating playfully high above the trees. Then, as the first warning puffs of black smoke burst in the air ahead of us, we throw away the pretence and dive, full throttle, wires screaming in the rising wind, on a graceful arc towards a point midway between balloon and ground, wait until it seems too late to change our minds, and roll the arc upwards to let both guns hack and spit and cough a rattling message.

"Stay on the ground, Fat Boy, soaring can seriously damage your health".

Take off

We cough and crank and wheeze and splutter and suddenly spark into life, irregular at first before settling down to a steady rhythm of intake and exhaust. Startled birds leap into the air as if to dare us to chase them, then scatter as we do, racing across the field to brush the frosty dew from the tops of the hedge. We are up, we are alive, we are climbing towards the sun and the great unknown.

".. and you may find yourself in another part of the world,"
" and you may say to yourself"
" 'Well, how did I get here'?"
" Into the blue again..."

I start each day as an adventure, coughing myself awake as I shuffle round the room to get out the ash and get in the fuel. I might not have given up smoking early enough. It would hardly be fair if I could smoke sixty a day for two-thirds of my life, then stop and get away with it while more moderate smokers on their ten or fifteen should have to suffer the agonies of self-inflicted illness. I have been marked as guilty, even though I claim to be an innocent.

A strong-willed person in my position might decide to stick their two soon-to-be-yellow fingers up at fate and renew their habit, but I am too weak-willed to give up giving up. That hacking early morning cough could just be residual damp air that has settled in my lungs overnight, or traces of the fine grey ash from the boiler that clings to all the cobwebs until it gets too heavy for their delicate support and floats gently down to earth again. When I become rich and get oil or gas central heating installed, I might never cough and choke again.

My partner has never smoked in her life, and now dare not even if she wished, for she became asthmatic after working somewhere along the Tyneside in the messy smog of industry. She cannot understand the strange attraction of the weed, but in her own way she can empathise with the secret fascination with death. Her wheezing fits can bring her to the edge of consciousness. I feel sorry for her though, not because of her illness and suffering, but because she has not had the previous pleasure of the smoke that makes the eventual punishment so perversely appropriate.

High up in the bright untainted sky the sun has cleared the clouds and spreads for us a brilliant blanket. There are no other specks within our field of vision, only we are here to take the gift of warmth and stop it going to waste. Far below the circling birds are waiting for their chance to share the day, and further still the tousled ground is still sprawled comatose in sleep. By some strange code of honour they don't like killing in the dark.

First Light

Dawn lights up the field in fits and starts, as though the sun were juddering in it's path. White frost sparkles on the hedgerow twigs and crackles on the grass, white smoke swirls with every outward breath; white, light, the bitter end of night.

I used to light up straight from sleep, before consciousness had even finished turning round from looking in to looking out. My first inward breath each day followed closely on a rasping click and soft sputter. After thirteen years of giving up, I've still not given up remembering. The feel. The smell. The need to fondle and caress each slender tube. The need to have the company of other smokers. We knew the risks and shared them with each other. I shall not forget.

And now I have instead the sputtering noise of coffee in the pot to brush away night's last faint whispers. Who was that you spoke with in a dim forbidding place, who you knew to be your brother even though he had another face? What was it that you both flew from in a terror on the stairs, wings weakly struggling in a slimy syrup as you strained towards the light? Slip away silently, with the steam from the coffee and the smoke from the toast.

I bake my own bread, in a small machine. It produces beautiful crumbly dry-textured wholemeal loaves that will not slice to less than a little finger's thickness, and toast each slice beneath a gas grill until the dark brown patches almost turn to black. The night still tries to cling to life. Spread them with olive margerine, smear them with Marmite, crunch them noisily and savour the mingling of the tastes.

I no longer travel the world as much as I would like. Instead, I have to make it come to me, buying Canadian organic flour from Waitrose and American rye from Somerfields, and Malted brown from closer to home. I used to be similarly adventurous with my cigarettes, one week Camels, one week Gauloise, and most often those long liqourice-paper covered More. Well, if you know you are going to die, why not do it with some taste and style?

And if you have the choice, would you die silently in the comforting darkness of the night, or noisily in the turbulent colours of the day?

First flight

I hate being woken early, unless it's by my live-in partner stroking the backs of my calves with her toenails. I don't mind that, or what follows. But what can you say to a postman who knocks on your door to show you someone else's letters and ask if you know where they live?

"You could resign", I said, and sent him to the house down the road with the angry dogs.

There is white frost in the air when I breathe out. We have central heating, or so it's laughably called; a few cast-iron radiators coupled to an old solid fuel boiler. The cats are huddled against the front of it and need persuasion before letting me open the door and shovel in more coal.

It takes time to get the house warm by coal, so I've lit the wood fire and stand flapping my dressing gown at it. There is something pleasurably perverse in exposing myself to the naked flames. I think momentarily of slipping back into warm sheets and my partner, but she has smelt the crisp wood smoke and emptied the bed. She and three cats soon edge me away from the hearth and into the kitchen.

We are getting low on logs again, and my chainsaw developed a fault last week. I was cutting down some conifers for my youngest brother at his new project, and after an hour the saw started refusing to work as soon as I touched it to the wood. I am worried that I have worn it out and will have to start buying wood from someone else. I told the hire centre over the road that it wouldn't rev properly when I tried cutting, and had I worn the rings out? "No, it'll be something simple", they said, "just shit in the fuel". I've tried that, but if anything it's made things worse.