Cockeyed

I’m sat in the public restaurant that dominates the first floor of the hospital. With its commanding panoramic views of the whole ground floor and admissions. An unforgiving modern glass and metal sort of affair. Totally at variance with the rest of the hospital. Whose latest cosmetic lick of paint, indicates that it has bought lock, stock and barrel into gimmicky notions of colour therapy by swatch. Aquamarine to soothe the savage, wounded breast or some such bilge. A quack pyschologist certainly had his eye on the main chance, if he managed to peddle that tommyrot to every NHS hospital in the land. Anyway, since the restaurant is a privately run concern, it does not have to abide by the same guidelines as the rest of the building. That must be why it is spotlessly clean.

I ought not to be here of course, as I’m supposed to use the staff refectory. This is intended for outside clientele only, but the idea that people want a hearty meal bookending a visit to sick relatives, strikes me a trifle misconceived. Must be why there are so few diners in here. Apart from the hospital trust stuffed shirts, whose pie in the sky I deduce this to be. Fortunately, they wouldn’t know me from Eve, seeing as I’m one of their humble flock whom they are supposed to minister to. Nor do they seem to have twigged that me being in here every day since it opened, might suggest I was resident here as a worker in some capacity. Rather than someone with the interminable burden of having to visit a long-stay patient. Though in truth, their faces in here seem to change from week to week. As I follow their heads tracking all over the restaurant, patently I am not conspicuous enough to merit their letching scrutiny. Though perhaps I do them a disservice and they are merely surveying for missing punter revenue.

The restaurant staff more actively turn a blind eye to me being here. So long as I don’t go blabbing to my colleagues or am flagrant about it in other ways. Camouflage, another utility for my cardy, as it covers up my flouting of the dress coded regulations. The NHS caste system. You’d think they’d be grateful for the extra business. Though since they always knock a few pounds off their exorbitant prices for me, maybe they’d feel obliged to give the whole nursing profession similar discount and that obviously would eat into their margins.

This is a curious sort of oasis really. Undoubtedly the food is top notch, certainly better than the swill back in the refectory. But I despise everything else about the place. Everything it stands for. Still, I just need a break from the freneticism of the ward. Some quiet time to myself. It’s either here or the chapel, though that’s just a mite too secluded deep in the hospital’s bowels. No hide nor hair of a holy man down there, stoking his faith before emerging to come convincingly console on the wards. Far too busy bartering with the Rabbis and the Imans to shoulder some of their workload in the course of their own tour of parochial duty. Besides, I’m not really the religious type. Never really fathomed the point of that chapel, other than it being a relic of the era when the original hospital was built. When a patient had little more than a wing and a prayer of leaving upright. Stuck down in the windowless basement, denied either any bounteous plays of light through grand rosettes, or binding streaks through narrow casements. None of God’s miraculous powers (or angels’ for that matter), evidenced there. Handy for the mortuary further along the floor I suppose. Indeed, there is a far more convenient family room for those recently bereaved within our walls. Slap bang next to the police post, that semi-permanent incident room. See if I were a hospital administrator and halfway decent at my job, I would as a highest priority, commission a time and space study or whatever they call it, into a better use for that room.

So this lustreless stained glass carbuncle necessarily remains my asylum. A shrine to inappropriate appetites, among this temple of the incontinent. Now compromised more than just morally. For I knew who they are from their bearing. They weren’t sporting flowers, or grapes, or any other ill-considered hasty purchase from the hospital shop. By their garb, clearly they weren’t medical staff. Nor were they administrators, since they were not danced attendance on by clipboard wielding PAs. I deduced their identity, by the manner in which they burst through the swing doors. Like toffees shucked from their wrappers. Those oversized plastic gumshields normally faze every visitor. Seeming denser than they actually are, the supplicants are either cowed with trepidation, or expect them to crash back on them like tumescent pinball flippers. This purposefully striding pair, had merely been accelerated headlong by them. They’d been this way before.

Plain clothes for a Plain Jane. I could tell they were the police by their louche insouciance. Oh well, one thing’s for sure, they won’t locate me up here. None of my colleagues would have an inkling this is where I disappear off to. I imagine they presume I bring my own sandwiches and head for an alfresco bench. Or maybe I scuttle off for a lunchtime liaison. Hah, how little do they know me ! So, what’s my next move to be ? I could just make my exit now, across the concourse beneath me and out into the world never to return. Shouldn’t be hard for a non-entity like me to vanish into thin air. Maybe go abroad, change my name and identity. After all, I seem to be whatever and whoever people want to make me out to be. Perhaps I should consult with a smattering of my former invalids for some pointers. Speaking of which, I wonder which one of my ex-charges, girded his backbone and plucked up sufficient ill-willed courage to lay a charge against me ?

Yet I am rather loath to pass up on my customarily scrumptious coq au vin. Moreover, I’m not really one for foreign climes. I’m certain my scars would rear up lividly in the heat. Will they hang around and wait for me at the ward station, cluttering it up and hindering my colleagues as they go about their work ? (They won’t thank me for that). Otherwise, they’ll just have to come back another day and arrest me. Had always imagined, that if things ever came to a head, I’d be facing the music in front of my peers. At a tribunal or medical hearing of some sort. Having the temerity to rule me unprofessional. When all I’m endeavouring to do, is establish some minimal standards of decency, which my profession ought to command as of right. I suppose what I’ve done could be deemed as GBH, or ABH. Laughable really, given what happens on a routine basis on the floor just below my feet. The stomping ground to top all stomping grounds. No, thinking about it, far better to have my day in Court. I’ll be able to put my case, without any smart aleck lawyers to blow smoke at the jury. I don’t want any of that diminished responsibility eyewash. I absolutely take full responsibility for my course of action. Remedial, a prescribed dose for a sick society. And in turn I’ll take my medicine. I’ll happily quaff the hemlock offered me in their chalice. The fodder in one institution is as much like it is in any other.

The waiter sets down my bone china plate in front of me, as if it was gliding smoothly in on a current of air. Not a ripple disturbed the serviette draped over his wrist. Still somewhat of a novelty for me to be served by someone else. For food to arrive not piled ten high on a trolley under dented pewter. Or having to be harvested from behind a little plastic door of arrayed counter-top incubators. Please note however, for all his attentive service upon me, I am not struck by any compunction to fondle or lick the man. Even though he stands poised with an assailing inrush of my senses.

I pick up my cutlery. Filagree whorls on the handles. I didn’t much care for their sensation against the pads of my fingers. (I have popped a missive in their suggestion box, but to date have received no courtesy of a reply). I grip them where the relief work sinks back down into the metal. This makes for more awkward wielding, but by now you must appreciate that I am possessed of no little acumen with all things asperous. I brace the body of the knife at the dorsal part of the meat and gingerly dab it to a more propitious slant on the plate. The sauce lubricates the slide, like it is bearing the chicken aloft on a sedan. Such is its sublime lightness, it bore no lasting evidence of any disturbance in its stilled current. My compliments to the Chef. A real professional. Fully au fait with his materials. The fork’s four tines are tightly packed, always making for a more compressed incision and the possibility of spatter. Forty-five degree angle, with a consistent, firm motion. Neither plunge nor stab. To a depth of about half an inch. Perfect, the skin is punctured, but no trickle of succulence absconds. A champagne cork eased off without the detonation. I bring the knife to bear on the flesh. Thirty degree inclination, I begin the abscission. The juice wells up, seemingly reluctant to forfeit its amniotic embrace. Until it can resist the piquant tension no more and cascades into the sauce. Whereupon the two joyously entwine in the manner of a long-fated reunion. A yin-yang interweave. I am so grateful to the chef for unfailingly recreating this experience afresh each day.

Entirely captivated in the moment, I didn’t sense the men advancing on me. It was only when one of them filled my entire vision above the level of the fork poised at my lips, that I became aware of their presence. One of them leaned down right into my chest, the sheer bloody effrontery ! Then I realised he was trying to peer at my laminated pass, half shrouded behind my cardy. I relaxed the grip on my fork and replaced it on the plate.

“Can I help you gentlemen ?”

What I love about the internet is ... its desultory predictability

"Scores to settle. Paying back for any wrongs done to me. Debits and credits. Double entry, the Damon approved method of account keeping. I am extended a whole heap of head butts for lavishing my asperity upon. George. Lawrence. The Fuzz. Whichever spotty herberts passed on their STDs. Another unknown, whose credit card I pilfered, which itself turned out to have been hooky. Oh yes, plenteous and condign, but can any disperse my rage ? A rage against myself. For I dwell without any hope of ever leaving this archipelago. I endure the prospect of forever having no love. Forced to subsist without lust even. So to fill in the yawning time on Death Row here, I have to wrest some modicum of control back for myself. Seemingly, that only comes from revenge, so enervated am I. My body is scarcely alive to me, until it is profaned. So is it any surprise I oblige my one carnal passion, that of vengeance ? The one that still sparks my sentience, the one that antiphons any endocrinal despatches. The goal that gets me out of a strange bed in the morning. Reprisal is next to reprise in the dictionary.

You know what I love about the internet ? No, indulge me a little. It’s worth staying with this one I promise. Good. Well, would you not agree that it’s a free-for-all tabula rasa that wraps itself around the circumference of the earth ? Anyone can create and contribute and etch their initials on to it. But not like some sad old patchwork quilt of remembrance. This has all the vigour of grafitti artists spooring their signature. Ooh, get you, their ‘tags’ ! Though for self-preservation purposes, I can’t leave any obvious brume of self, still it’s finally possible for me to flame on undimmed. I am alive and kicking. Although at several removes, so that I do not invite disclosure and death. The Net amplifies me sufficiently, to cast off the shackles from my mind, even if my body remains earthbound. It respires me some breath. I can partake once again of civilisation. In the great debate.

You want learned knowledge on arcana, you can, albeit unreliably and often unattributed, study it on the Web. It’s a bit hit or miss, but hey as I discovered back in college, further reinforced by Corfu’s infuriatingly patchwork library, that’s how modern epistemology shakes out. Though to be honest with you, I still favour the solidity of the bound tome for the purposes of culling knowledge. There is no such thing as an achingly beautiful website. Just the arterial red and blue of venous hypertext. But really I’m well beyond being forged in a crucible of knowledge. I only now require to be informed, rather than instructed. Intelligence not as a faculty, but as data. I seek after a full quiver of missiles. So to that end, I relish the delights of blogs and message boards. Where I can eavesdrop undetected, on what taxes the mind of my countryfolk and keep in touch with my hearth. The Net as my home from home if you will. Yet what is even more familiar and reassuring to me, are people’s personal homepages. It feels like visiting neighbours and friends, only without the burden of reciprocation. I often feel like I’m Santa plopping down through their chimneys, helping myself to the milk and digestives left out for me, without compunction to leave them any gifts in return. All of this should facilitate me remission. Of being with the grown ups for the brief, glorious interim of my sojourn. Yet lamentably, I discern the increasing infantilizing of all my race back home. These charter ticketed kids are apt emissaries for their elders. With full undiplomatic immunity from consequence.

Forgive me, all that might betoken an antagonism on my part towards the virtual beast. Far from it, what I most cherish is that this autonomous space for our minds to be writ large, this great collective consciousness, has evidenced a return to form. A reversion to type. A newly conquered universe now awash with our detritus and refuse. To wit, for all our contortions of higher aspirations, we soon corkscrew and gravitate around the twin pillars of commerce and sex. These remain our obsession. The largest ever, ongoing worldwide poll demonstrates it to be so. A secondary control test poll, that of the camera phone backs this up. So stick two fleshy digits up to the Classical Greeks and their paeans to the higher human spirit.

In regard of sex, all our experiences and feelings, such as they persist, are as if mediated for us by a silicon membrane anyway. We are all wraiths wondering spectrally through some sort of ectoplasmic dreamscape. Copulation, despite it supposedly being the most involved, physically-centred activity, is now vaporous and insensate. Nothing is present in actuality, on which to hang one’s emotions on to. Relationship is a mere bump, a pedestrian road rage not even meriting the term ‘impact’. More just a diffusing wake. If we danced, if we oscillated, so as to light up our beings with excited sparks or vapour trails, I might settle for that. But we don’t. We are inert. This is how we approach each other. This is what we have reduced ourselves to. This is why the internet is so right. The unsustainable economy of sex in real life, now pays off in spades in the virtual. A realigned love triune, of camera, fingered keyboard and fibre optics. We are each sat alone in front of our mousepads, but at least my isolation is elevated by having the sun beating down on me, quaffing cocktails poolside. How is your dreary fantasy backgrounded ?

Same thing commerce too. Convenience shopping from the convenience of your own home. Hunting down rapacious desires like big game, serves to indulge the predatory in people. And getting involved in on-line auctions renders them combatants in a virtual joust. Or a poker game of who blinks first. For we are all traffickers, recycling our superfluous lives on e-Bay. Piqued by absurd jealousy if they are outbid by an anonymous stranger. See, that’s what I also love about the internet. It tilts the market balance. Right off its unhinged axis ! Now any buyer can just search online for exactly what it is they’re after. No matter how intricate or particular their tastes. My husband and his ilk always supplied anything and everything you could want, in that they knew where to lay their big, hot hands on it. But their customers were limited, cos their purlieu was beyond most people’s taste radar. But now everyone has satellite navigation at their fingertips. Every wanton attachment, which has always been procurable, if not exactly on tap, can be tracked down for ready purchase by the consumer. No more is there such a thing as an illict pleasure. Only one that may not yet have an online community, dedicated to discussing its zesty delights. Plus the chances are, it’s not even being touted by a professional criminal, but by some devotee in his attic or bedroom. My husband’s losing market share. Caveat vendor. Emptorially empty-handed. Not only are people locating merchandise themselves, but they’re also becoming producers too. Again circumventing my husband’s wares. Observe the kids out here with their camera phones and videos. Downloading and sending back their own material online. Don’t tell me they’re charging their mates for their shared kicks ? Home-made pornography. On location out here. Coarsened violence on ‘YouTube’. Happy slap rather than slapstick. Thus the depravity has become so mundanely accessible, it loses its risk factor that makes it cost inelastic. The behemoth has reared up and swished its long, spiky tail across the knuckles of Damon’s talons and swiped the whip hand from him. Though uncentred, this particular exchange maven also knows which end to hold a crop by.

As for me, I celebrate the fact that I can partake of a little of my own revenge online. Not ordered off the peg. Rather one I can fashion for myself. I’m finally back in the Forum. Shopping around in order to manufacture and distribute my own brand of retribution. I may have previously vouched for revenge being up close and personal, in best order to dish it up cold. But the marvel of modern connectivity has caused me to revise my opinion. It no longer requires my thumbprint. What could be colder than not even appending your name, your colophon to the deed ? This way I can run amok on the whole tiny-minded world ! Like everything else, it’s acquisitive and venal and therefore fundamentally a numbers game. For once in my life I have full access. Now I am imbued in my own right, with the meddling powers of the immortals. All thanks to t’internet (as one of my Northern conquests insisted on calling it)."