Ovary Leonard presents

THE ROTARY BOREHOLE INVESTIGATIONS

Part 1:   FULL OF IT

It was the time when young able adults impersonate a pensioner's gait, when the ice on the pave is hidden and slows stuff down and makes it bright and wittles away at torpor. I had done the room. Or it had done me. Old yellow pages, old benefit bills, old corks from wines that never dreamt of being vintage (happy to be here, no frills as I am), old love letters in a Boston box advertising mustard. All these, all old, all had gone their way; when ,in time, there was no more junk to spare, no more to sally,  none more I could have. And when it was all done & thrown away, I wondered where the new days would lead me.

The phone rang. I let it do its stuff, away at the races, fractured & running out of juice, by itself. On the message there was a hairdryer when I heard it back, it blacked out all the words, they were low and monotone emotion, the daughters of charisma lived nowhere near or if they did it was a giro drop no more no less.

Suddenly a need for cheese came upon me, some great thunderclap of hankering, like a magician leaving his rabbit. I sat down, I took it slowly, piece by piece, the chives and then the cheese. It was blue stilton, cheap stuff; natural amphetamine so they say, I can't see it, you humour me my old Madogan, there & afar, sending postcards, thinking it's like it was in your day, in wartime, when it wasn't so violent.

Outside there were words, the bloke on crutches & 8 cans of Strongbow with his son, the ice on the brick not yet begin to melt, on the tops of hedges the same. I stood up & thought about Madogan. I thought about playing the message back but it was too broken and there wasn't time. It wasn't the weekend, I didn't need to lark about, I had no need to be strummy. It was about time to find people. What they wanted to do was up to them.

Somehow it all felt false, all this needing to be bored so quickly & for what. I rang Motson & he concurred. I should meet him, it's a good day this, take advantage (taste advantage, I thought he said). I packed up & went out. At large, it felt lazy, all the lunchtime shoppers gone strong on the ale & able to take the time scraping the snow off the tops of a hedge on the way home. Would they do that if they had to take their gloves off ?

We met by the cathedral. I got there early & rang my wife. The message I left had the peal of the bells playing. She had played it back to hear them again but now she had wiped it off. Strange, it is the bells & not the words you want to keep, those things that have been there before us by thousands of years. 

 Motson always wore a cromby of some kind and in summer I could spot him there among the crowds on the steps. But here, now, with ice on those steps and no cameras all the people that passed seemed to wear them.

Some twelve days later

Motson's cromby looked old. I knew it was from last week but I said nothing. It was clear that more people were coming. Motson said nothing but I sensed it. There were stipulations on his room too but it wasn't that. I didnt care but in the town I felt buried by all this clear air & cold. The conversation paddled about a bit but to no intent. Motson's concise style deliberately turned on its head to lose our pursuers ?  Something else ?  I bit my teeth together & drew the curtain back. In the courtyard the dog made whining tracks in the air and you thought that with its paws it must have done the same like this for scot free years, must have padded about like this for joy alone before it was tethered apparently for a reason. There was a bakery nearby. I could hear the dog's pacings even out & calm when the smells of baked bread wafted through at 4. 

Why did you get involved, Cuzzie ?

For me it's a routine of honour, a badge, to say sweet Fanny, even to those like Motson that I trusted. They can wait at their turnstile for night-games in a slow queue if that is to be their way.  

The noise from the Roebuck  was ridiculous. I pulled on the lead from a radio in the room to drown it out. It was like liquorice. It did its best but that was not enough.