Long Haired Cat

THE CAT WAS sitting on the cold platform licking its long black and white hair. The man sat down on the bench. It was a strange bench designed in a way that things imposed now rarely are; to last the length of the age. It was divided into three wide seats by decorative iron arm rests which were colder than the ground – the black and white long hair cat began its ritual for sitting on his lap. First it travelled in front of him whilst looking into the middle distance, its head raised proud -- he was sitting, as usual, in the middle of the three seats, this was right and proper. After passing in front of him it took great care in jumping onto the seat furthest from where it started. He opened a button on his jacket with great ceremony and the cat stepped into his lap. It extended its claws and mussed and fluffed his shirt where the material rested upon his stomach, preparing. The man widely drew his jacket around the cat gently, and it burrowed its head in under his armpit. The wind blew across his chest and he shivered, the cat’s hair was cold, and under his chilled hands it felt brittle, dry and coarse. The pads of its paws felt like soft blebs of ice and the ground glittered like sandpaper.

He remembered patterns from his childhood, a brown flower-patterned towel, thin rainbow striped wallpaper – remembered the brightness and specialness of individual objects in the accumulated and important poverty of everything else around, like polished stones sitting in dust. The cat made him think of people who throw things away; old things because they are messy; or have a room within which messiness is allowed to take place. These people terrify him – there is something in themselves that asks “W h y do we have t h e s e things?” Now he answers, "we have them because they anchor us to the ground, to places. They mark our territory, they prohibit us from leaving at short notice, they mean that someone cannot easily take our place; they mean that small provocations must be worked through, they are a commitment to specific time and specific space – they are at the very least a promise to return and organise, perhaps."

The man had lived his life carelessly, and was grateful for all the things he had lost. He gave away or missed, he never disposed of. The cat was asleep, but a train was approaching. He shifted his weight with his hips and crossed his legs, the cat stirred. He raised himself in the seat and the cat slid to his knees and stepped onto the ground.

Brick Wall Sentiments Prevail

Another one from the St. Cuthbert's Burials archive. This one can also be found in Tell It To A Hound Dog, Pedro. It's pretty well a doublerehash. And to coin a phrase, it's probably good advice if you've got shit for brains;

Brick by brick and trickle of mortar, come who may, the progress is never slow, for imperceptible. It’s not that you’re connected, but the scratching with nails at dusty but solid joinings of wall shows that that at least is not disconnected. Railway dreams are sleepers, the rail is the real goal but is iron not mist. Liner? There’s a thought on board, that’s why it’s swift; no real weight. Say mass. Say a lot of things. Steam speeds you through but what matters is not the journey, but the destination. Drink rum. That’s a journey and a destination in the one happy passage. I may be right, I may be wrong, I’m scared to discover, so I proffer nothing but the odd pithy pith. Learn something from that, dusty child with wrinkles. There are means of protection. If you want to ride, just pretend you have, and wherever you wind up, well, that was your destination all along. Don’t fret about it. Spin a wheel. Roulette/Steering. It matters not, babe. Eat shit, eat chocolate. It fucks your teeth either way, and what do you remember? Delicious sweetness? Bitter filth? No. You remember that you have no viable teeth in their sockets in the skull. Spend everything on a cocaine bath, dissolved in a woman’s utterances and seep. Thrift through baked bean bonanza of your mind’s easiest dream, the ordinary sense of the survival instinct. What do you regret? You spent it all, fucked up? You didn’t take enough time for your pleasure and now it’s too late? No. What you regret is that you wasted your time. Never your money. Money rolls and flows. If you’ve got it, you don’t give a shit. If you don’t got it, you’re resigned to that come reckoning time. In the end, you regret the things you haven’t done. I was a platinum selling hip-hop phenomenon, but I never climbed K2. Fuck it. Like I say… Drink Rum, The Rest Will Come… and then drink rum. You may as well. Thanks.

Track 1: Genevieve

Genevieve is chewing gum, she’s just chewing gum.
She’s other things, but all in all.

And I like her all the more for it.

Genevieve she wears this coat, this trim waistcoat and sooted shades.
And they were both. It really gave her a buzz.
She could really buzz. Christ, Genevieve, could really buzz- it would make you sweat.

Chorus:
Time’s for service.
Keep this train
Oh keep this train from holdin’.

Genevieve she drives this train. You see, she wails and drives this train.
It’s service and I serve her too.
A reasoned choice for servitude.

And rolling when she’s burning heat, like Genevieve could shovel heat.
Coz rolling embers’ rolling blues
Gratify this iron.

Give her those spirituals.

Chorus:
Time’s for service.
Keep this train
Oh keep this train from holdin’

And, oh, each drip of sweat fell down, drowned out by the embers chorusline:
“Don’t tarry here, this line goes on/ serve her till the night’s all gone”

Backing vocals: ‘Is this what you want?’ (repeated till finish)

But Genevieve won’t tarry here, she’d never wait nor tarry here.
She’ll wail and wail
And scale this locomotive frame.
And she’ll join the embers, saying:
“Don’t tarry here, this line goes on/ serve her till the night’s all gone”

Chorus:
Time’s for service.
Keep this train
Oh keep this train from holdin’
Time’s for service.
Keep this train
Oh keep this train from holdin’
Time’s for service.
Serve this train
Oh keep this train from grindin’

'Modern' Trains

I feel a touch or two sick. Dizzy, and just ever-so-slightly wrong. Modernity at first glance - as ever - is the cause.

Perhaps three or four years ago, a new high speed train entered service in the UK. Initially, it was a Virgin West Coast phenomenon, since extended to that company's Cross Country routes, but this particular specimen was a Midland Mainline beast [that is to say, train]. They look sleek; they look shiny; more than anything, they look modern. Their predecessors were solid looking, but worn. Features that were cumbersome on the old trains are now given over to the gadget. Automatic doors; light-responsive taps; thin, curved handrests with headphone sockets; coffee machines rather than hot water and satchets. That sort of thing.

Now, aesthetically, they're not my bag. I'll make no secret of my occasionally luddite tendencies. Skeptic of myself that I can be, I grudgingly accepted them and thought little more of it. After all, they were a bit faster, and when stuck in the old vestibule, I did often fear that the by-necessity opening windows would tempt me into decapitation by curiosity. Then I started to notice that my head - though very much in situ - would be swirling come the end of a journey. I'd never quite be able to read the book I'd taken with me. I'd finish the journeys a touch nauseous, and with my eyes stinging. The lighting of the carriages, you see, is unnaturally garish, even if, given the aesthetic it's pursuing, its encasement and positioning cannot be faulted.

But here's the thing: it's not an isolated irritation, not a one-off case of overexuberance on the designers' part. Scratch the surface, and the whole veneer starts to give way. The new seats look modern, but they're slimmer than the ones they replaced - in spite of occupying the same proportion of the track - less comfortable, and don't recline. There's a modern, digital screen for recording reservations, but you can no longer see at a glance whether a carriage is fully reserved, and the aisles are continually congested with people straining to read lurid green pixels. The bathrooms have modern all-in-one soap dispensers, hand driers and taps, all controlled by light-sensitive LED. But the floors still run with piss, and the LEDs are arranged such that only fingers shrivelled by anorexia and the masochistic employment of a nail-file could operate any one function in isolation. The hot drinks machines are shiny, with a picture button for every kind of drink, but the coffee is an acrid parody, and the hot chocolate is surely tepid Nesquik. And all this encased in a coated plastic edifice that luminates under those hypernatural lights.

The coffee should have been a clue. We've seen all this before. For something to be modern in Britain, it must above all focus on adornment, and through its form a hyperactive rebuttal of all that is 'old' British design. Shiny buttons, flashing lights, electric machines, as little as possible done by the hand of a human. All encased in plastic, of course.

The contrast may be with continental Europe - a German train with barely concealed metal grating but natural lighting, comfortable seating, a cheap and serviceable restaurant car; a French espresso machine made of plain metal and which needs refilling for every fresh shot - but the parallel is more illuminating. America's fun, and the fact it's all so pretend and plastic and stylelessly consumeristic has a great deal to do with that. But really, it's all branding in lieu of substance. Tesco Finest or Sainsbury's Taste the Difference aren't good food; they're moderate food using stylish packaging and the right words to create a superficial approximation of quality.

It may be luddite, but give me decent and brutish rather than stylishly shit. There was always something nagging me that little bit extra about those trains, and now I think I understand why. And even the most cursory extension of the thought troubles me, because I fear the phenomenon pervades rather more than just trains, coffee and groceries.