Morning Sickness

For the last 15 minutes, Gavin had been warming to his sales pitch and finally after building in quiet references to the investment in quality, unrivalled reliability and the 10 year guarantee, he said "This year's model is priced at £1300 but if we can settle today I am able to give you a £150 discount and the Kirby can be yours for as little as £1150.” Sam paused, saying nothing. Looking directly at him, Gavin asked "Well Sam, you don't mind if I call you Sam, do you, are you interested owning this exceptional appliance?". Taking his time, carefully choosing his words Sam replied “Gavin... I'm impressed, really impressed but... I can't imagine having a vacuum cleaner that is worth more than my car”.

Kate entered the room, avoiding eye contact with him but smiling politely towards the salesman. He knew that she had been listening on the landing and from the tension between them he guessed she was close to laughing.

“Sorry”, she said, "I'm not feeling very well... you know... morning sickness".

The Kirby

Here's the next bit of the story:

Guilt, like a misplaced loyalty is an emotion where we just can't help ourselves. The shiny suited Gavin had been there for more than an hour and Sam’s initial amusement was wearing thin. Anyone who has lived in rented accommodation knows the attraction of a free carpet cleaning and he had signed up in the confidence that his practised assertiveness would soften the inevitable hard sell. In fact, Gavin had turned out to be better value than expected, as instead pushing simple carpet cleaning, he unveiled, The Kirby, a cast aluminium art deco classic vacuum cleaner, refined from an original 1930s design. It was a thing of beauty but even this was nothing when compared to the entertainment of Gavin’s demonstration, which are involved sucking up dirt into little squares of black felt, carefully placed in a special filter. He demanded demonstrations on the carpet, the furniture and even their mattress and when the results where impressively disturbing, he took care to suggest that this was not as a result of slovenly household cleaning but of the unique and exceptional effectiveness of his product.

Stories

Browsing through blogland, there seem to be a fair number of us who would aspire to write. So here is a start to story:

Guilt, like a misplaced loyalty, is an emotion where we just can't help ourselves.

For the time being my ambition is simply to get to an ending. I don't have much expectation for my own talent but I think I have a story somewhere in me and just want a place to practice telling it.

Hey - I just noticed I got my first and from a blogger of note too. I wasn't expecting any comments so wasn't really looking. Moments of perfect clarity, thank you for the encouragement.

Byers Road

I am an city person living in a small town. Small towns are easy, comfortable, everything is no more than a 15 minute drive and I can walk into town or to work in 20 minutes, a relaxed stroll through an old church yard, by the river and through a park. From anywhere you can sense the end of the town; encircled by green fields and hills, the buildings are subdued by the sky. This is a comforting scale to some people but to me feels enclosed, constrained and visible.

Every now and then I have to run away to a city to get a fix of population and the anonymity that comes with the potential for getting lost, to spend some time sitting in a cafe with no chance of meeting anyone I know.

And then there are second-hand record shops.

A couple of months ago, I got hold of an old turntable and began the therapeutic activity of building a collection. The urge to collect to took me by surprise, I have never collected, never organised or categorised or aspired to own a complete set of anything. My inability to maintain any habit, from the time I get into work to where I leave my keys, is something that leads my wife to suggest that a little touch of obsessive compulsive disorder might be no bad thing.

All sorts of hi fi audiophile types will maintain that it is the analogue connection between the music and the grooves that is responsible for the trend of returning to a vinyl, as it provides a wider and more spacious sound than the compressed flatness of digital recording. They may be right, but for me the attractions are more human:

1. In a charity shop, for the price of a cappuccino you stand a chance of finding something that will give you almost endless pleasure, something that you can't buy on Amazon, Or despite checking the surface for damage, you may end up with something that you bin disappointedly because it crackles and distorts. It's a gamble, there is no way of knowing for sure until the needle drops.

2. If you do find something classic, perfect and undamaged, you know that someone took care of it and its weight and sound has been passed on in a way that CDs and MP3s are unable to possess,

For 3.95 I found this and it plays....

Not One Thing or the Other

Things are rarely one thing or the other. I have my joys and my frustrations and these mix and twist from day-to-day or sometimes from hour to hour. I know who I am, where I have come from, the things that make me fortunate: my wife and daughter, who are the majority of the good, happy, silly and light; who make me smile and laugh to myself, most days, in the shower and before I go to sleep and in other moments when I'm by myself. Even with that, I'm sometimes lost, shocked and compromised, my life is not my own and I don't know how the hell I got to be a here, now, doing this. Most of that is work and the time it takes away from living, its impossibility and the lack of beauty, a bureaucratic analogy to seasonal affective disorder, where I'm waiting for sunshine to roll around again. I suspect I will write more about the negative...because it will be funnier but remember that's never the whole story.