Category Archives: April 2021 – Room

Pat and Dan

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Pat and Dan had bought their house a few years before. They loved the quirky house even though it seemed lonely and unloved, spending their time renovating it a room at a time.

Their final job was decorating the landing area. Stripping the wallpaper and paintwork at the end of the passage, Dan found that there was a portion fitted with hardboard. Prying it off a door stood behind it. 

Cautiously they opened it shining a torch around. It was a nursery. Everything was dusty and faded, such a sad room. Walls were covered with murals of animals, there was a crib with pink lace, a nursing chair, and a sideboard on which sat a book. Picking it up Pat wiped the dust off. Opening it up, there were happy family photos and towards the end were news reports of a tragic accident. A mother and child had been killed. Pat’s eyes filled up. Looking at Dan, she could sense he felt it too. Now they knew why their house was so sad. Expecting their first child, Pat hugged her stomach, promising the child that they would make it a happy home again.

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Professor Frederick Noll: World famous scientist, a pioneer in Nanotechnology and Genetics research

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Dendrobaena worm

Although many will have heard of necrotising fasciitis, the dreadful disease caused by bacteria which devour living flesh, far fewer will have heard of dead flesh-eating maggots used by doctors to debride wounds. However today we are celebrating a new advance in animal technology: animals designed to eat unwanted manmade objects. Enter the worm, tiny  4 cm long worms with a single purpose, which have been genetically modified by Swansea University Genetics Department from Dendrobaena worms, small 30 gram ones normally used as live fish bait . These minute hermaphrodites spend their brief lives eating plastic. They were developed jointly by Swansea University Departments of  Nanotechnology, Biochemistry and Genetics.

Why worms? Basically worms are  very simple creatures with a simple genetic structure. Because they are hermaphrodites they can reproduce themselves very fast and retain the same simple genetic structure without variation. They are well suited for research in nanotechnology.

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No Room For A Seachange

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Squid

It was out! Marius had finally admitted his greatest fear, – being “cancelled” on social media. The finality of the word frightened him. Not so Errol his line-manager cum press officer whose antennae for company advancement,-and thereby his own,- were finely tuned. The press release on World Autism Day proclaimed Brigham Enviro-Solutions’ enlightened consultant apprenticeship programme whilst showcasing the solution to oceanic pollution by plastic single-use PPE, face masks and testing kits.

“We at Brigham’s value the spectrum of neurodiversity. You won’t find any room given to Time-Pass Occupational Therapy at BES. By developing and harnessing each apprentices’ detail-oriented abilities in analytics, mathematics, pattern recognition and information processing, our “special” employees can advance to full consultancy status within 3 years. They receive a competitive market rate based on successful outcomes. Everyone benefits, – apprentices, investors, clients.”

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Hell is an Octagonal Room

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My vision of hell is a high-ceilinged, octagonal room with eight doors. The room is exquisitely panelled in oak and all the doors are closed. Each door would open onto paths of opportunity, were it not firmly shut.

One feature of this beautiful room (in my imagining) is that one of the doors is always slightly ajar. There is the prospect of teasing it open to experience things to do, people to see, scents to smell, tastes to savour.

Quite why the room is eight-sided I really can’t say. Perhaps it adds to the grandeur and authority of hellishness. And quite why the hell-dweller so routinely returns to this world of diminished choices is also difficult to tell.

To explore these matters, I’ve started to try and represent elements of confinement. Not that I’m an artist or anything, but it sometimes helps to try and make models of things you can’t put into words.

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Bare

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‘Hey Mo! I got a table. Carried it all the way here.’

‘Where’d you get it?’

‘Other side of the city. Riots going on.’

‘You looted it?’

‘I had to fight another woman off. Like an octopus, all tentacles. She had a chair. She wasn’t getting the table.’

Mo studied the pine table. ‘Anybody else see you?’

‘Everybody was taking things.’

‘The police…?’

‘… were nowhere.’

‘You did good, Saf. The house’s pretty bare.’

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House of Cards

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She slides another item into the pile, packing it in like she’s stuffing a turkey. This time it’s a discounted multi-pack of kitchen roll. There is no kitchen to put it in anymore. Nor a lounge. Only storage space, filled to the brim, narrow corridors running through it like clogged arteries. There are already six-packs of kitchen roll squeezed into my bulging cavities.

But to her, these are not kitchen rolls. These are softened sheets of grief, flattened and neatly bound up. They cushion her in a comfort blanket of safety. Her heart empties itself of pain by filling me up.

I heave under the weight of it all. The monster inside me is growing, slowly suffocating us. No light can get in any more. Darkness smothers us, the air thick with dust and the smell of rotting food. Rats scuttle through the cracks, floorboards creaking, threatening to send everything crashing down.

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THE PLACE OF TERROR

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I was delivered there like a package, now I was expected to go in.  I was being watched carefully in case I tried to escape.

My hands felt clammy, and I was rigid with fear. 

“Do I have to come in there with you?”  I was asked.

I shook my head, this was something I had to do on my own.   I straightened my back and took one step forward before twisting the doorknob and entering the room.  My eyes darted about frantically, searching for a corner in which I could hide.  I squatted down in a chair and tried to make myself invisible.  My knuckles turned white as I gripped the ends of the armrests, but there was no controlling my trembling legs.  My feet danced across from side to side, much to the annoyance of the other people trapped in the same room.

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Killing time in his head room

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The trouble with British Summer Time, apart from it being a misnomer that is, is it takes Joel Bloom nearly a week to catch up with the lost hour. Mornings are difficult: a constant struggle with his body clock, which point-blank refused to accept the evidence of his eyes when looking at his bedside clock. 

“Can’t be eight already,” he would murmur in his fractured oddity of a voice. Since Becca said she was leaving, he formed the habit of talking to himself. Good company and intelligent conversation, he joked, but the reality is, he is lonely and affronted by her betrayal. The bloody postman, he thought, how much of a cliché is THAT?

“Maybe it’s time to look again,” said his head.

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