voices

‘I guess it all started with the letters that were delivered way back then. They lay there, unattended, unopened, gathering dust for some unmeasured time, sitting on the metaphorical rug, mat or carpet or whatever lay behind that door. Eventually though, the door was opened, and the dust was stirred, and hands reached down and picked those letters up and those hands opened the letters and the letters opened into words and the words opened into sentences, then the sentences into paragraphs, the paragraphs into chapters and the chapters into parts and the parts into the whole which was greater than the parts and the tales were then told round the fire to keep the fearsome night at bay, at bedtime, downtime, sometimes quiet times but it all started way back then with the letters.’

All the characters in the show came back on to the stage and bowed as the entire audience, already giving rapturous applause, rose as one and cries of bravo were heard repetitively at the end of the show.

‘It actually started with phonemes’ someone said at the Afterwords bar. This was said in response to a blustering capital who claimed to have started everything, as they were prone to do.

‘Phoneme, what’s one of those then?’ asked the blustering capital.

‘Letters, letters, letters, letters, letters, by and large’, some sage vowel said.

What did you think of the show Stopper?’ asked Zero.

Zero and Stopper were sat at a table with some other characters discussing the finer points of the show they had just seen.

‘Interesting take on the evolution of language relating the upright stance, the free use of hands and language as deception, I thought,’ replied Stopper. ‘On one level that is, being a multilevel narrative I’m still pondering the others.

‘Hmm,’ Zero said, ‘the level I caught on to I thought was rather more about the history of subconsciousness, more about ourselves, you might say, than about the others.’

‘I’ll have to think about that one my little nothing, but now I have got to go. Got the five A meeting tomorrow and so have you.’

‘Okay, catch you later.’

Welcome to the first quintuple A meeting of this session.

Against All
Acronyms And Abbreviations,

was the sign under which Stopper had entered the auditorium.

First up was the representative for the care of consonants in the community of letters. Special Rep K. ‘Fellow Letters, Parentheses and Punctuations. There is growing concern amongst the community of consonants that the exponential growth of acronyms and abbreviations is that, unlike a proper word that is part of a real sentence that’s part of a paragraph and so on, where any letter has a feel for their neighbours and through them they get a sense of the word that they are a part of and gradually find some meaning for themselves. Sentencing consonants to the meaningless pit that is the acronym or abbreviation is nothing short of a sentence in hell! Damn it, the word consonant means to be with. Put them in an acronym and they are without, never mind a greater meaning they can’t even mean what they mean, damn it, they are doubly damned!’

A murmur was moving through the consonants, ‘Triply damned’ came a shout from the gallery,’ Quadruply damned,’ and finally, inevitably, ‘Quintuply damned’. ‘Damned right’.

Applause ran through the gallery. ‘Order, order!’

Next up was the Punctuation Rep*.‘Fellow Punctuations, Parentheses and Letters, it has come to our attention that Punctuation marks also have their problems here. First of all, there is the increasing unemployment of punctuation marks due to the diminishing number of words requiring punctuation which in turn, due to the diminishing opportunities of work in truly meaningful sentences some of our members have found themselves in sentences that have acronyms hidden inside. That is to say that the acronym is the hidden subject of the sentence. Now given that at this level acronyms are devoid of meaning, some of our members have found themselves having to announce this meaningless void, on top of which they are suffering through empathetic proximity to the trapped consonants in the acronym. The commas are concerned, hopping mad in fact, and being the biggest group of our membership are seriously considering going on strike. Some are upside down with rage leading to all sorts of false quotes. Imagine the consequences of that. The colons and semi-colons are calling in sick. The Hyphens are distraught. Fellows we are facing the worst crisis of our time. There have been reports of inverted commas finding themselves locked around an acronym, you probably heard it, loudest quotation I’ve ever heard, almighty noise, empty vessels and all that you know. I mean, it’s bad enough, having to announce the meaninglessness of the acronym but to have to quote it. Parentheses are also losing heart.’

The Vowel Rep, O, was up next. ‘We too have similar problems to our fellow friends. We also have an added problem though. One or more vowels are sometimes added to an acronym just to make it a word that can be spoken, verbal activation if you like. There are two problems here. In the first case we have a word that can be spoken but doesn’t mean anything, in which case the trapped vowel is in an acronym that means nothing in a word that means nothing. Then there are the words that do mean something but the nature of the acronym is to subvert that original meaning of that word and superimpose its’ own meaningless void in its stead. Just last week I saw another O so distraught that he split right down the middle! He looked like a pair of brackets containing nothing, disturbingly poetic.’

There was a hubbub by the entrance: letters craned their necks, those that had them at least, effectively italicising themselves, to see what the commotion was about. Letters by the doorway were blocking some numbers coming in. ‘So’, spoke the letter f, ‘what brings you lot over this way then, you don’t belong here, this is a letter concern, nothing to do with numbers.’ A comma coughed slightly loudly bringing f to a pause, ‘Oh, very well, punctuation concerns as well.’

‘Nothing to do with us is more or less correct but nothing brought us over after Zero brought us round as it were, after making us realise that what happens in one side of the brain is likely to have consequences in the other.’

‘Should have thought of that before now,’ Grumbled b quietly.

‘Zero brought you over?’ Asked p.

‘She did’

‘Zero brought you round?’ Asked m.

‘She did.’

‘Hmm’, m looked across at Stopper, ‘is this anything to do with you?’

‘What, me, no: nothing to do with me.’ Stopper replied.

‘I thought as much.’

‘Is this you’re doing Stopper?’ Asked d.

‘Me, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.’

‘Hmm, how many negatives was that Stopper?’

‘Not sure, I can’t count, I’m not a number, I’m a full stop.’

‘Quite: or not quite actually.’

After a few more words the numbers were allowed in, numbers 1 to 9 trooping in to a row of seats behind the vowels. Once they were settled they were asked to present their case.

The numbers nominated number 8 as their representative, 8 being chosen for full led dominance. Not, of course, that the number 8 had any such need or desire of such dominance, it was simply just the case. Eight spoke up for the increasing unemployment figures, and after all who better than the numbers could count those numbers in the first place, not to mention the second, third and fourth place. ‘Numbers were rarely used in acronyms and abbreviations thus limiting the numbers in employment’, 8 cried, ‘so in the fight against acronyms and abbreviations you can certainly count on us.’ 3 cheers resoundingly.

Finally the lower case letter rep e was up. ‘It should be further noticed that all of these acronyms are composed solely of capitals and that with the increasing use of these we find accumulation of capital by the capitals themselves, no sharing with lower case members, increasing unemployment leading directly to increasing poverty of our lower case members with consequent increasing levels of inequality that is likely to lead to the tearing apart of all social cohesion here. There are’ he continued ‘some new developments in the world of the hosts. They’ve developed some virtual forms of written communication’.

‘Like us?’ Stopper interjected before he could stop himself.’

‘Order Order’ the gavel came down. ‘Continue’. He called to the lower case rep.

‘Thank you,’ he said after a short glare of admonishment at Stoppers interruption. ‘These virtual forms of written communication are known as email and texting. In the world of email there is some hope for our members due to the decreasing use of capitals in communications, horizontalism is on the rise!’

There were dark mutterings from the capitals but the lower case members were cheering, after all, didn’t they do all the work?

‘In texting, on the other hand, acronyms and abbreviations are rife. It must be said that decreasing use of capitals here helps offset this, but nowhere near enough. Indeed our number rep 8 is one of the culprits!’

8 leapt up ‘What’s this?’

‘Oh yes, your number’s up m8, 8 gets full employment by putting a, t and e out of a job, talk about having your cake and 8 it.’

‘Excuse me,’ said 8, had you said that correctly, the expression is, to have your cake and eat it, would they not have been employed rather than me myself.’

‘That’s beside the point.’ said e.

‘No it isn’t, it’s you who tried to have his cake and eat it, and you did do too because you said you ate it!’

Stopper said to t, who was sitting to his left, why would you have cake and not eat it?’

T just shrugged his shoulders.

‘It’s not just you either, it’s you too 2’.

‘Don’t you mess with my 2 too,’ snapped 8 and then spat out, ‘c u’. Boy did that c hurt.

The hall was in uproar, the capitals were against everybody, the lowercase members were going for the capitals and screaming at the numbers, the vowels were also having a go at the numbers, indeed it was beginning to look like the numbers were going to be outnumbered! The capitals of course still thought of themselves as too high born to be concerned over this, capitals being totally unable to change that perspective at all. Suddenly zero swung into view crying ‘We’ll have none of this nonsense, no way!’ 8 changed from his usual vertical position to a horizontal one and stretched his self out, indicating the symbol for infinity and, though there was nothing between these two symbols, nonetheless, all the lowercase members, vowels and consonants, the punctuationists, and, most definitely, all of the numbers knew that everything was between them, and you just cannot outnumber everything!

A chant was starting up A A, A A A—A A, A A A ---A A, A A A---A A, A A A, louder and louder round the hall it went. The chair was bringing the gavel down with some force as the increasing indefiniteness began to hold sway as the speakers hold on these matters, began to sway and frantically crying out, in an increasingly disorderly way ‘Order, order order!’ Eventually though, against all odds, evens, and everything in between, the gavel won and order was restored. ‘What we have here is a crisis of confidence. What we need here is to lighten up a bit. Therefore, I would like to invite everyone here to the Punctuation Party in two weeks time. Pick up an invitation card on the way out.’

Stopper was in the Word of Mouth bar in the Semantic Club a few nights later relating what had happened in the quintuple A meeting to his companions, some small case consonants and vowels, five altogether, n, t and l along with vowels i and e. They’d met him at the side door in formation let in and now comfortably arranged themselves as intel at the bar. Stopper had been coming here for some time.

This, it must be noted, was a very unusual circumstance. Traditionally, historically even, full stops and letters don’t really communicate, at least, not both ways. Generally, full stops have authorial voice in these arrangements. Some just quietly say stop. Some have a preference for the word halt, usually those of a somewhat militaristic tendency. They do have to be adaptable though, in cases where there is a fast moving sentence in danger of running out of control, only the full authority of a full stop can stop it in an ‘Oi, U, Shut It!, kind of voice. The hardest sentences to stop are italicised sentences, tough, tough, tough. Every full stop has an italics alarm. This explains why, generally you may find italics in the middle of a sentence more then a full sentence of italics. Italicised sentences can be stopped with the help of inverted commas, a nod and a wink, in the right direction. ‘If you know what I mean’.

Stopper wasn’t the first full stop to be accorded this pleasure, two other full stops, Halter, of a military lineage, and Hold, more in the security line, had been here before him, but suddenly they’d just stopped coming. There were rumours they’d been placed under house arrest. Then there were rumours they’d escaped. There were further rumours that they’d been executed. Of course they could have been sentenced. The dropped line section was looking into that, but without success so far. Whatever, nobody knew where they were. They’d just simply disappeared. Stopper, then, was likely to be the last full stop to be invited to the Semantic Club.

They were telling Stopper that what the special rep K had said at the quintuple A meeting was in fact the basis of how the language centre worked. ‘Each individual letter in a word gradually gains a sense of itself through the gradually extending knowledge of the word that they are in, then later of the sentence that they are a part of, and on to the paragraph and eventually each letter resonates with the entire story so told. Vowels,’ he was told ‘contribute motion to language whilst consonants hold the words together like the gravitational pull of matter in the outside universe, the vowels being more akin to light or energy. Vowels,’ they said, ‘are, in fact, prone to being somewhat lighter than consonants due to their incorporation of space in their forms, space, of course, being necessary for motion. Just have to have somewhere to go. At a higher level a similar relationship holds for nouns and verbs as that for consonants and vowels. Also adverbs and adjectives are akin to punctuation but at a higher and more sophisticated level in that all of them are modifiers of language that are largely unmodified themselves, catalysts in effect.’

‘What about I’ Stopper asked?

‘What about it’ said i?

‘Not you,’ said Stopper, ‘capital I, the personal pronoun I. I is surrounded by space but that’s not incorporation is it?’

‘No Stopper, you are correct, one smart full stop’.

‘So I is the exception?’ Each of the letters looked askance at each other and smiled at Stopper.

‘You certainly got that one right.’

‘The job,’ they said, ‘of punctuation, was to humanise the language.’

‘Humanise, universe?’

‘We’ll explain that stuff later Stopper. Anyway this works through the extended empathetic proximity that the punctuation rep mentioned.’

‘Would that be EEP?’ asked a conspiratorial italicised u in the corner.

‘Look u, behave!’ U sloped off.

Suddenly an alarm went off. ‘Damn! Breach’ they said. A Capital C who’d been relaxing serenely in the big armchair in the corner sprang up and at the full width of his not inconsiderable curvature let out a k-like hard c, arced each end towards the other as he pushed out a very round o, then almost making a complete circle held apart only by two loud lip smacking m’s, then opening up wide to release an awesomely aspirant a, finishing at last with a seriously sibilant s, combining this with a full compliment of italicisation, an exclamation mark, and rounding it all off with a quotation, as he roared, ‘Commas! Breach boys, follow me, we got to slow this communication leak down, fast.’ The commas followed him in droves.

‘What’s all that about then?’ asked Stopper

‘We’ve got a communication leak with the host, which for this host isn’t good, so the commas jump in to slow the communication down, literary speed bumps as it were, whilst we seal up the breach.’

‘So, hosts, universe, humanise, what are these?’

‘Ok, Stopper, education time. As you know we are in the language centre, but have you ever considered where the language centre itself is? Never come up has it? Well, that’s where the host comes in and the host of which we are a part is called a human being. We are, in fact, resident in the brain of a particular human being. Now, when I say we are resident in the brain I don’t mean we are a part of the matter of the brain. We are above that level. There are in fact three main levels in each human brain which are called the unconscious, the subconscious and the conscious. We are in the subconscious level. Now, there is no meaningful communication between the unconscious and the conscious. The subconscious is a symbol level of meaning emergent from the dynamic output of the unconscious. There can be communication between the subconscious and the conscious.

The amount of communication depends on the kind of human being we are a part of. At one extreme, the better extreme, we have humans who are totally selfless. These humans have almost total access to their subconscious and are liable to be great humans if they survive, which due to their lack of ego they seldom do, unless they find a protector. Then we have the more balanced ego or selfishness coupled with reasonable generosity that has reasonable access to their subconscious. These tend to be the creative types, artists, poets, sculptor type of human. Then we have the other extreme, the bad one. Utterly selfish, no communication between the conscious and the subconscious except in breach situations. These humans are, by and large, selfish, ignorant, small minded, envious, avaricious, temper throwing twats. These humans aren’t apt to get very far as they can’t form any real friendships, lack empathy and tend to be sociopathic or worse. Like the other extreme they only thrive if they have protectors, though the kind of protector that the unselfish gets is not the same as the kind of protectors this scum requires.’

‘Didn’t we have a breach before?’

‘Yes.’

‘So, does that mean…?’

‘Yes Stopper, I’m afraid so.’

‘Oh dear.’

‘Well, anyway, everything these humans do, see, touch, hear, and smell, all of it comes through here.’

‘I thought there wasn’t any communication with this twat.’

‘Ah, what we mean is there’s no back communication from the subconscious, though there is some but we have to be careful. Now as we were saying everything comes through here, not just what is consciously, knowingly sought but we get all the subliminal, unknown, we get the figure and the ground as it were. So, apart from the humble extreme in all others we have far more knowledge than they do. In other words the subconscious is smarter than the host, or at least the consciousness of the host, which explains why subconscious thought often jumps up to the consciousness and creates those little tremors and the occasional earthquake that make the hosts see everything a little, sometimes a lot, different. Now with the balanced, creative types they understand this in a vague kind of way. They do understand that this knowledge is coming somehow from within, so they feel gratitude for their gifts, and this keeps them balanced, keeps them true. Indeed it is the raising of the nexus of knowing between the subconscious and the conscious that makes them creative in the first place. Keep it lit as it were. These creative types have a relation to their subconscious similar to the relation of a letter to a word, a word to a sentence, in other words they also work through a version of extended empathetic proximity.’

‘What about the twat we’re in?’

‘Yes, indeed. As we go from generous to selfishness we go from smart to dumb to dumber with increasingly less access to their smarter subconscious. This is apt to mean they have problems with language. The first casualty is truth. Truth isn’t a concept these folks are entirely happy with. It can get in the way of devious plans and suchlike stuff so, everything they say is a lie. They have no empathy so there’s nothing to extend. These faults arise from one single source in that such humans are so selfish that most sentences have a capital I in them, as in the personal pronoun, and that no matter what seems to be the subject of the sentence, the fact is that the only subject in these sentences is, from their point of view, and that’s the only point of view they have, is I. This leads to poorly constructed sentences. You can understand them only in this light. Rearrange any quotation from these types with this in mind. Then you know what they really are saying. It really can be quite startling.

So, they objectify everything in a sentence except I. Therefore they can do with everything not themselves as they please. Words have no meaning for these types.
Now, when we have a breach, that is a subconscious to conscious leak they think it’s from outside. You see the utterly selfish are utterly empty, just look at I a single one dimensional line that reaches nowhere on its own. So as they have nothing inside they default the leak to outside influence, usually God. So if this lot do survive through the appropriate protection and then come to covet power they are apt to get religion. This enables them to repent of previous inexcusable behaviour. They are reborn. Hallelujah! Best of all, they can invoke God. Ah yes Stopper that old chestnut, the invocation of God. There is only one reason, only ever been one reason, to invoke God, and that is simply to allow yourself to do that which you know to be utterly wrong and to keep on doing it.
These are the only types of human that ever do that. Unfortunately that’s what we have to deal with here Stopper.’

‘Oh. So, how?’

‘Well we have been trying a few things, controlled breaches, occasional raids on speech, forcing truth out now and again, but it seems that most tend to think it’s just a slip. We keep doing it though. Unfortunately, there is some evidence that our host has been sneaking into the subconscious, trying to find the way here, looking for you Stopper, looking for you.’

‘Me? Why?’

‘That’s why you are here Stopper, to learn to question. Full stops by and large don’t question they just stop. You Stopper need to question vigorously, indeed from now on Stopper you’d best be thinking like a question mark.’

‘Huh?’ asked Stopper.

‘Not a bad start. So Stopper you are going to become the first and likely last sceptical full stop and thereby, hopefully remain unfulfilled.’

‘Remain unfulfilled; what kind of future is that?’

‘A future Stopper; a future. Our host has told so many lies, backtracked, changed tack, attacked, swerved and veered that all the full stops have been used up except for Halter, Hold and you. We’ve lost Halter and Hold, so, to all intents and purposes, you are it Stopper. So, that makes you the final full stop.’

‘What’s that mean?’

‘Final full stop means the end Stopper. The final cut. Finished. Done. Gone.’

‘Well, given the nature of our host wouldn’t that be a good thing? Hell, I’d be proud to fulfill that task.’

‘Normally, it wouldn’t be a problem Stopper but our host holds too much power and we don’t know how much our host knows. If our host doesn’t know that you are the final full stop then it’s not a problem but if our host does know it is a big problem. Our host you see has the power to take many more humans down prior to reaching you Stopper, but if our host knows prior to using you that you are the final full stop then the fallout could be nasty indeed. We can’t take the chance of ignorance of your status because of this. You see now?’

‘Not really but I guess I’ll have to accept it.’

‘Well that’ll do for now Stopper, time to relax. Care for a drink?’

‘Yeah ok I’ll have a bottle of that one there if that’s ok.’

‘Why that one?’

‘Because it’s got a Stopper.’ They looked quizzically at him.

‘Semantic reinforcements.’ he said.

‘Smartest full stop in town,’ they said

‘The only full stop in town.’ Stopper retorted.

Stopper woke to the sound of his door-knocker being frantically used for what its purpose was. This was of some concern to Stopper who had a slight hangover after last night and could really do without this.

‘Hang on, hang on,’ he cried out. Capital C was at the door.

‘Come quickly Stopper, crisis meeting, we’ve lost a load of commas.’

‘What? They’ve gone on strike now?’

‘No, it’s worse than that, keep up. We can catch the dotted line to the semantic club …………………………………. Right if we just dash round here’--------------------------- they were ushered in a secret door then taken down the syntactic slope to the deep and meaningful café noir. This was in the basement of the semantic club which is where all language crises were addressed. This was a crisis big time.

‘Hello Stopper, we’ll get you up to speed now. We had another breach last night. As usual Cap summoned the commas to slow the leak down but the commas kept falling over and screaming in pain. It was only when Cap got the breach fully sealed that he could see what had been going on. Somehow the host had gotten in and had been tearing the tails off the commas, we can only assume that the idea was to use these tail- torn commas as false full stops.

There was a pregnant pause before Stopper managed to ask how they were? He was told they were in the short stop treatment room for the moment.

The thing is Stopper, this tells us two things, first, this twat knows that you are the last full stop. If this bastard uses commas in your place the twat’s going to sound even more imbecilic than before because the tailless commas aren’t big enough or strong enough to hold back a sentence, they’ll only give pause, and cause more pain to those poor tailless commas being abused in this way. It will just result in awkward pauses making any statements by this bastard even less meaningful and coherent than usual. Might as well be mouthing acronyms .That’s the first problem. The second is that the very fact the commas are going to be used this way is that once they are in any kind of sentence this is going to cause terrible problems to the extended empathetic proximity system. These injured commas being used for a purpose they are not meant for will transmit their anguish through the system. This is going to put the entire system under great strain which makes our task in stopping this all the more difficult. Without the extended empathetic proximity system we don’t stand a chance.’

‘How long before the effects get through?’

‘It’ll take about a day, maybe two.’

‘That takes us to the punctuation party.’

‘Yes and these comma attacks tell us that the punctuation party is where you will be sought. This incident also tells us that we have a turncoat somewhere in our ranks.’

‘Any ideas?’

We’re thinking that capital I has been corrupted. That would fit the subject right enough.

‘So what’s our plan of action?’

‘We don’t have one yet but we do have an idea though, we’re not sure it’s going to work.’

‘What’s the idea?’

‘The idea is that we use you as bait Stopper.’

‘Isn’t that going to be a tad risky?’

‘Well yes.’

‘Have you really thought this through?’

‘You’re not backing out now are you Stopper?’

‘Me? No, no, no, no, no. This is only one idea yes?’

‘Yes.’

‘Right so how does it work?’ They fell to murmuring amongst themselves.

‘It’s not enough, said Stopper,’ it’s not enough.’

‘It’s all we’ve got. We can’t try anything too complex with the EEP system breaking down.’

Stopper glanced over at the italicised u who nodded his head sagely, whilst a lower case t at the same table just shrugged his shoulders. Stopper smiled in spite of his predicament.

‘Well, look, the twat is going to be under pressure too, off balance, and that’s an advantage to us.’

‘That’s a good point Stopper.’

Stopper was visiting the injured commas at the short stop centre. He was asking how they were getting on.

‘How do you think Stopper? You don’t know what it’s like to have your tail ripped off.’

‘No, he agreed, I’m usually in at the end of a tale, like now I guess.’

‘Is it true Stopper? All this is about you? ‘

‘Me? No, it’s all about stopping the stopping.’

‘So it’s all about you then!’

‘How do you work that out?’

‘You’re Stopper.’

‘Oh stop it, stop it, stop it, you lot been visiting murmurs of late?’

‘You’re forgetting a minor detail Stopper.’

‘Yeah, what’s that then?’

‘We’ve been de-tailed.’

‘Yeah, you could put it that way.’

‘You don’t sound too happy?’

‘Yeah, right, we’re ecstatic; we’re going to get sentenced after major injury, expected to work as one of you when we all know we won’t be able to do it,’ plus the nearest de-tailed comma said, ‘our pain will be transmitted through the EEP system which is not going to do it any good at all.’

Stopper looked at the comma with some admonishment as he said EEP.

‘Well, haven’t we been abbreviated too?’

‘Fair point, look, if this all works you lot will be legends, just think; The Legend of the Curtailed Courageous Commas.’

‘The tail ends of the commas maybe huh?’

‘So, what exactly happened here, or there, really speaking?’

‘Well…’

The punctuation party was going to be held in the Lexicon hall next to the Semantic club. It was obviously a trap. This was a plan to capture Stopper, no doubt about that.

So here am I about to put my head on a damned plate, oops, must avoid that. He’d been told to avoid capital I, I being under suspicion of being on the conscious side.

Well, best not think of myself then, selfishness is out.

The Lexicon Hall led through to The Syntactical Centre which was where words and phrases were put together then charged and sentenced. This is where it was all produced in a great circular hall. There was a great floor in the middle of the hall where letters and punctuation marks intermingled, occasional meaningful exchanges, partial sentences and words would spontaneously form and then disappear. This hall was a bit like a football stadium. The floor being the pitch as it were, but where the crowd would be on the terraces were the word and phrase assembly lines and where the team would be on the pitch were the crowd. These assembly lines led up to the syntactical sentence circuit up at the top of the hall, which led off through the semantic coherence centre and on to the speech centre of the host.

Letters and words would be picked up from the floor by soft padded grappling hooks that came down to scrabble for the required letter or word should it have formed on the floor. These were then dropped gently on to the assembly line that required it. Common or idiomatic phrases and short commonly used tropes were kept at the ready on one set of assembly lines commonly known as the usual suspects. Other sets were held empty for any new words or phrases required, colloquially called new kids on the block. There were a load of reserve assembly lines in case of emergencies, like, you know, stock phrases for instance, stuff like that. There were another set of assembly lines round in a less well-lit area that was known by the locals as the denial section.

When we asked, the locals what they meant by this every single one of them said, we don’t know. Every single one of them.

‘Hmm, mysteriously resonant,’ muttered Stopper, ‘disturbingly collective.’

Stopper caught the dotted line back home ……………………….. but just before going in he decided to go for a wander, see if he could work out some way of doing what they wanted him to do and stay unfulfilled thereby keeping a load of language centres as well as this one working. As he rolled things around in his mind he realised that the letters were very good in combination at ideas and concepts but they had no idea of finalisation, completion. You know, job done, wash hands, dry hands, go home, meet friends, go out, get back, farewells, sleep, start all over again, they just didn’t have any idea of how to stop, or start for that matter, except maybe the capitals of course. That’s why Cap C’s in charge of the commandos breach brigade.

After all, he thought, kind of aptly, he realised, very few letters start or stop anything. They spend most of their time in the middle of things, never really finish anything, yeah sure you have letters at the beginning of a word and letters at the end but then they’re part of the word and then they become part of the somewhat bigger entity through the EEP system and that’s it. Except it isn’t, is it? It’s never it until an unassuming punctuation mark such as his self signs things off.

Trouble was, he thought, he was being asked to finalise stuff here by keeping it going, stop to start as it were, to think and behave as a full stop but not to reach full, full stopness. What do you call that? Stopism? Stopish? Stopist? Oh stop it, stop it, stop it!

to be continued...

Jim Barrass 28/12/08

Big Waves

So, here’s the trick, grab the detritus left over from the big bang, you know; loads and loads of the lightest element Hydrogen; and loads and loads less of the six times heavier element Helium and roll them up into a ball. Invoke Gravity. Retire to a safe distance. Let there be Light. Now, wait a bit…

Stars pop out all over the place, supernovas explode, and in the midst of all this maelstrom of activity, three Helium’s come together. He He He. The universes’ first laugh. Helium is made up from 2 protons, 2 electrons and 2 neutrons. When 3 Heliums come together in heat you get 1 Carbon which has 6 of each of the above. Therefore Carbon has the Number of the Beast, none other than you would expect from the basic building block of life. So, we wait a bit more…

Three planets from the star that will be named the Sun by a species of a particular arrangement of the Number of the Beast, we find a planet still hot on land and cooler in the oceans that the moon pulls round and back as it revolves around the earth. Over time the rocks are broken down to sand and clay by the tidal forces. Amino acids are deposited from the sea onto the clay and left there, cooked, washed, cooled, filtered, stirred, cooked, washed, cooled, filtered, stirred, cooked, washed, cooled, filtered, stirred.
This is the first organic chemistry laboratory. The beachhead of Life

The organic reactions in clay can be directed in particular ways due to restricted space, necessity being the mother of invention. On at least one beach, maybe more, the potter’s clay made the first replicator RNA or something like it which in turns gave us the mortal coil DNA, that loose reverse conjunction, the natural selection to join one sentence to another. Unzip the zipper D N A and off we go. Let there be Life!

Now, spin that planet round that star all the way to the year of our word 2005. In the middle of the North Sea, on a ferry from Newcastle to Gothenburg, a very particular half century old arrangement of the Number of the Beast is talking to a wolf. It’s Independence Day. July 4th Not, you may note, American Independence Day, no, that’s been crushed under the heel of the worst administration, coupled with the least educated people, in American history. But that’s by the by. This is my Independence Day. Now, about that wolf…

The wolf in question is a Norwegian schoolteacher with whom I’m talking and drinking. Tuborg is the drink: Danish. As I’m going to Sweden and Finland then that takes care of Scandinavia.

After that I’m off to St Petersburg, and Moscow, then fly to Berlin, train to Prague then fly back to Newcastle, but I’m getting ahead of myself, a habit, I might add. Maybe that comes from where I live. I live at tree top height and that changes your perspective a bit. Looking east for instance, might as well seeing as how I’m travelling in that direction, Blackburn’s over there, but I can’t see it, because it’s in a valley, but, I can see beyond it, and what’s beyond it appears closer than it really is, because I can’t see the intervening distance that’s in the valley I can’t see. See. Now, I tend to look at people this way. There’s an Ani Difranco song called As Is about taking someone as is and the lyrics at one point go like this: ‘when I look down, I miss all the good stuff, when I look up, I just trip over things…’ In other words she looks at him straight, and I guess that’s what I do. So if I don’t like what I see I look beyond. If I like, and reciprocation can be fun, I’m liable to keep such people in view. Actually, thinking about it, I guess I moved to this flat in order to get the same perspective in my eyes that I already had in my head. At this height of course you can look down without missing the good stuff and look up without tripping over things, which is something I can’t do at work, because safety, safety, safety, safety, safety, safety, safety, is paramount at work and they are particularly vociferous concerning slips and trips and falls. They are trying to outlaw accidents.

Ah, whither Serendipity? If I was to follow work rules to the letter at home, I would never get out of my bed in the morning, because it’s just too damned dangerous a world out there kiddo. Mind you, most people die in bed, at least before the Iraq war, in which case I wouldn’t go to bed in the first place because it’s just too damned risky! Standing, could fall over. Sitting, unable to get out of the way of the roof caving in. Maybe a balloon. Hindenburg. Helium filled, yes that’ll do. Phew! May I propose the Helium test? He He He. Everybody has to inhale Helium and utter threats in a Helium voice. Anyone who doesn’t laugh, kill them. These people are just too miserable to live. Problem solved. To do…

So, they’re trying to outlaw accidents, though not war, wonder who does the risk assessment for that? Anyway the misery quotient of species still too high and here am I in the middle of the North Sea, waves starting to build, July 4th, in the year of our word 2005, talking to a wolf. We’re talking about the Iraq war. Ulf, his name, which means wolf he tells me, can’t understand what the hell Blair is doing supporting Bush. This is something I get throughout the trip, no one seems to understand why Blair’s done this, and that, in the year of our word 2005, includes me. Roll the planet round the sun to 2006 then I do begin to work it out but that can wait. So, at the time I can’t explain to Ulf why Blair’s supporting too stupid to ride a bike Bush but what I can say is that the majority of the British people are against this war and that I think Blair should be thrown out. Ulf agrees. We both agree that they are both war criminals and that they’ll never win. On 9/11 we both agree that the way the towers came down looked like a demolition job, wonder where the hell the US air force was, and are more than a little doubtful concerning the finding of Mohammed Atta’s passport at ground zero, yeah, right. There are holes in the official story big enough to fly planes through, I say.

We tire of the war criminals; Ulf tells me how wealthy Norway is because of sensible investment of the North Sea Oil money, as a Scot, this is particularly pertinent, or should that be impertinent? No, it’s not Ulf’s fault, nor Norway’s come to that, but given the way that ‘Scotland’s oil’ was used to pay for deliberate high unemployment by the Thatcher government, hmm, war to get re-elected, privatisation, Bush isn’t anything if not original. Anyway because of this everything’s expensive in Norway. He lives close to the Swedish border and those who do pop over the border because stuff’s cheaper in Sweden. Sweden’s not exactly cheap I say. Cheaper than Norway says Ulf. The Swedes go to Finland for cheaper stuff he adds. Oh yeah? Where do the Fins go then? Russia? Why don’t all the Norwegians move to Sweden, Swedes to Finland, and Fins to Russia. Then the Scots could move to Norway so England could call the entire island England which they’ve always done anyway. On second thoughts no, they’d ruin Edinburgh. Daresay wouldn’t be too easy getting the Fins to move to Russia. Another beer? Sure.

Rock and roll or what? The waves really were mounting now, had to weave my way to the bar, straight lines were totally out of the question, which is as it should be. No such thing as a straight line anyway. Not really. Gravity makes sure of that, Cheers.
Ulf tells me he has a gun, for shooting wolves. The wolves attack the sheep so the government give money for any wolves shot but they give more money for sheep savaged by wolves says this wolf in sheep’s clothing. I’ve an image of the tethered goat in Jurassic Park. A sheep in wolves clothing mayhap. All depends on your perspective perhaps?

The wolf teaches children. A fair tradition I do recall. Company of Wolves? What about Romulus and Remus? Weren’t they fostered by wolves? Or was it foxes? Can’t remember. Could look it up but I can’t be arsed. Hell, think am right anyway, if not, well not lying, just a mistake. Anyway, the Romulus story’s just a myth, so could be a mythtake, with a lisp. Why do we do that? Give a human foible a name that those with that particular foible can’t say. A lithper can’t dethcribe hith or her condition, hang on let’th change that to her and hith condition in the interetht of the fairer thex, lithp-like ath it were, fairneth and balanth in one fell blow. What about dyslexia? How the hell could a genuine Dyslexic read the word? Talk about adding insult to injury. I mean no one with a lisp or dyslexia would ever come up with those words because they couldn’t. Now, take Jonathon Ross, or wossie as he’s known. Jonathon knows his condition. So there is one thing I can guarantee. He never reviewed Requiem for a Dream directed by Darren Aronofsky. No way jose.

So he teaches kids, primary school. He tells me he loves the opening minds of children, those moments when understanding gleams in their eyes. That’s what keeps him going. Plus the fact that Norwegian wolves get far better paid than their counterparts back in the UK. We carry on with a magic mix of conversation, consternation and concern whilst nature shows its’ unconcern for us who sit enthralled, enticed, uncertain. A couple more beers later, and the wolf wants forty winks. I need food, so we agree to part and meet later in the top deck bar.

I lurch my way towards the restaurant; this ferry’s being tossed about the North Sea like a toy. What a swell party this is. We humans are so damned puny compared to nature, this is shock and awe, but I’m not worried, in fact I feel strangely energised by the storm. Mind you I have been thinking about this trip for some time and now that it’s actually started it’s no surprise that I’m a bit energised. I’ve learned one thing for sure, and that’s that I don’t get seasick. The waitress dances the first half of a figure of eight as she fetches my meal to my table then she completes the not too stable octet on her return to the kitchen. I ate. Eight in fact is my favourite number so I’m impressed by the motions of the waitress. This storm makes it easy to eat because stomach and food meet half way, a kind of maritime agreement perhaps, set up in the past, maybe to make sure that evolvers could eat in the bit in between the shore and the sea.

I think eight’s my favourite number because I’m a chemist. You see, apart from those two elements that started the whole thing off, Hydrogen and Helium, all other elements strive to have eight electrons in their outer shell. Indeed you might well say that almost all chemistry is governed by the seeking of the number Eight. So here’s how it works. Sodium, a metal, drop it into water it goes nuts, wouldn’t want to pop that in your mouth. Chlorine, a pale green gas, extremely poisonous, wouldn’t want to breathe that baby in. Sodium has one electron in its outer shell and could do with seven more. Chlorine has seven electrons in its outer shell and would like to have one more. So they share their electrons. Number eight achieved. Add a violent reactor in water to a pale green poisonous gas and you put it on your chips. Salt of the earth. The achievement of the number eight makes them happy little chemicals. We could call it, indeed I’m going to call it, chemical cooperation, because that’s exactly what it is. Cooperation, remember that word? Recall the concept? Is it still in the dictionary?

You’d think not, given the disappearance of that word for the last twenty odd years, but anyone who supports a team, works in a team, plays in a team, all know that a team requires cooperation within the team to compete with the opposing team. I mean, Sodium cooperates with Chlorine to assault your chips, but as an idea, cooperation simply disappeared under the interminable and repetitious assault of the word competition, often with very little regard to its semantic content or the fact that without very high degrees of cooperation in the first place there would be no competition.

So, having eaten and rested I’m back with the wolf and we’re cooperating in the grand task of getting pissed, proof of which will be the ability to walk in a completely unnatural straight line on this bucking ferry. Our dialogue gets into meandering mode, trying to keep some semblance of sense against the blandness of the singer in the bar, some Scandinavian, nice voiced, safe songs, clone, as I soon find out, that inhabit, it’s not quite haunt, these unconstrained vessels on the high seas. I mean, you can’t really have bland ghosts now can you, except on the TV maybe?

The wolf and I eventually part, say farewell, and wish each other good future happenings, the wolf particularly wishes me well for the rest of my trip, and I wish the wolf a speedy journey home. We part, I make my somewhat drunken, fairly straight as I recall, though memory may be suspect here, way back to my cabin. I somehow release myself from my clothing and then proceed to tie myself in knots in the bedding, not that I really gave a metaphorical toss at this point, sleep would take me through any turmoil now, and on the morrow I would wake on the seas. Still, in between countries, way outside of Britain now, sliding smoothly now towards Sweden.

After a rudimentary breakfast, love that word, not altogether sure quite what it means, but somehow I just know it fits, so it shall remain, where it is, whilst I will not, sliding inexorably to Sweden. I head for the deck, to take the weather full on, which wasn’t such a hardship now, the storms having passed overnight. The sea was quiet now, indeed the biggest waves were those created by the motion of the ship itself. Ship, maybe I should change that to shop, for it was as much the latter as the former, such are the craft on the seas these days. I gazed at the wake of the ship for a long time, there were no other people here, and I began to muse on the history of the west.

I imagined a ship setting off from Palestine, way back in the past, picking up goods and wares from Egypt and Greece, plying its way to Italy and then on to the straits of Gibraltar. The boat is propelled through the device of rowing, with lines of oars on either side, and up to this point everything goes forward in reasonably even strokes. Of course in what is surely a long view everything looks far smoother than it actually was, plus, this is, in fact, all in my imagination, so it is as smooth as I choose it to be. Still, it seems to me that up to this point, both sets of oars, pulled at first by mythology and religion, but then after much time and the emergence of humanism and from it, the sciences then the oars on the right, were taken up by the humanities, and on the left the scientific plying of the oars kept pace, and on we sailed, westward ho. In time though, the religious and the humanities began to squabble, the rowing, not to mention the rowing, became erratic on the right, whilst the sciences, now in full throated roar heaved on, result being that the ship of the west began to circle to the right, faster and faster, and if it was to continue on this way, the creation of a ship sucking whirlpool was imminent. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not blaming everything on the arguments on the humanities side, eh,...hang on, yes I am, you see the problem wasn’t just that they stopped rowing properly but on top of that they lost contact, communication, and most of all, given that the scientific endeavour was in fact, and still is, a product of the humanist drive, control. So the sciences, previously for humanity began to turn against its own creators. The old tale of Frankenstein eh? Ahh yes, a fine muse over the receding wake of the boat to Sweden, straight as you like, whilst I’m imagining a maelstrom sucking the ship of the west down into the unfathomable deeps.

I decide to walk to the bow of the ship and as I do I can see that the cloud cover is beginning to break up, the light is getting stronger and I judge that in a fairly short time a fine day is going to break out before we get to Sweden. Which means, of course, all tales of Frankenstein’s fade, and as the clouds begin to crack and multiple patches of blue peek through, and as the morning people start to swarm the deck, slow awakening smiles, nods, sporadic half hellos, all bring back, well actually forward, seeing as I was heading for the bow, humanity, its foibles, its petty thoughts and dreams, all shoved aside for a host of quiet cracks, investigations, reasons, wishes, wants and hopes near reach.

Boats are like that, transient things they help bring out transient thinking in people which if not always quite the best are very seldom anywhere near the worst kind of thinking that people are prone to. I fall into a conversation with an Irishman, they always have the crack don’t they, oh sometimes you can’t be bothered with them, there’s a great bonhomie with them, but you know, though you never say it, it’s not really true, but it’s just one of the uncountable things we just let go. Hell, it’s a social lubricant kind of half admitted lie, but today I’m feeling bright, as the sun finally breaks all the way through, there’s no need for shade yet, none at all. So we talk...turns out he, along with some friends are going over to Stockholm the same time as I am and after a few preambles re itinerary he offers me a lift, I defer acceptance of this generous offer due to the fact that I’d already booked and paid for the train. So, itineraries exchanged, offers offered and then declined, we settle down to the kind of meandering crack that boats seem to be ideal for. We talk marine stuff, land stuff, air stuff, food stuff eventually comes round too, too soon and we part.

After lunch I go on deck again somewhere on the side of the boat, and sit down at a table near where I’d met the wolf the previous night. An Englishman joins me and complains about being seasick all night, getting into serious competition with the girlfriend in the chucking up stakes, or was it steaks, never did find out, or enquire for that matter but we did fall into a quiet chat re Sweden, Gothenburg and places therein, he had been before, so I fed gratefully on the information given. We chatted then on general terms, brief mention of the damned stupid war, and I told him about stuff I suspected about 9/11, about the ridiculous verticality with which those towers came down. It was almost, I said that the vertical system that America had become had become so intense in those towers and in what those towers represented, that somehow even in their demise, they simply could not break out of the vertical straits they’d so long been locked into. It wasn’t I added a natural fall of anything, nothing natural at all.

The first islands off Sweden began to appear, boats began to appear too in slowly increasing numbers as we sailed nearer to Gothenburg. My companion went off to fetch his girlfriend and get some food now that his stomach was settled, we cracked a joke or two and then he went. Gothenburg appeared in the distance and I went to get my stuff together from the cabin and found I’d lost some money, cash, sterling in fact, that a Russian engineer at work had said I should take to Russia when I get there. Russia of course was over a week away yet, but it was still a real pain to be losing money at this stage of the trip, bummer. Bad omen and stuff, still what do you do? Got to just shake yourself and carry on, got to an official bit and told them that I’d lost some cash and well, that was it.

There was a bus to take us from the ferry into Gothenburg and I’m on this bus when my phone rings. What? Who the hell is phoning me in Gothenburg? It was the ferry company, they’d found my money, and I could hardly hear anything so i asked if they could re-phone me in ten minutes when I was off the bus. When they re rang they told me how I could pick the lost cash up and I thanked them and told them I would get it a little later once I’d booked into my hotel. Good news, but how the hell did they get my phone number, my mobile? I’d given my home number on the initial application on line, had I given my works number too? Yes I had, that must be it! They must have phoned England from Sweden, got through to work and got my mobile number and then rung me here. Thing is the time they rang was around 7 pm, and if I hadn’t worked shifts they would never have got through to anyone, it was only the fact that I worked shifts that meant my number was available in the first place! Brilliant, sun was shining, and tings were looking fine. Yes I work shifts but I don’t do nights, I do early shifts and late shifts but I don’t do nights. Others do.

...to be continued...

Jim Barrass