'Thomas Father' and 'Finn'

a household is about to be repossessed

We had been married for only a few years, our only child was called Finn and my wife, Peggy, the best woman I could imagine, died during the birth. So I raised him on my own, I clothed him, I taught him how to walk, I noted down how his face fleshed out into a distinct likeness of my own. I put words into his mouth, his first words, he said, Father and I was proud. I educated him, gave him improving books to read, stitched him up when he was injured, helped create for him a place in the world. And he loved me for it and The End

will come, you have given me a life and you have made for me a place but Father I will never be grateful that you murdered for me, did you murder for me, said Finn, did you create her from nowt and murder her dead just to leave me with a potent life?

You'll know you place or have no tea, son.

Did you spill her blood-red blood across fresh white for the sake of a story? Are you accusing me of chauvinistic imposition, I retort.

I am calling you a callous bastard, dear Thomas Father. In a word you create a masturbation siren for yourself and in a word you take the life of an innocent. You have no right to accuse me, it was your birth, you are born of sin – Hypocrite – born in sin – pure shit I was born of you, half-baked, half-real. I lost her first. You had no care once I was weaned, you sent her away. What the fuck do you know about it, you're just a foul little fuck emanation of sex-starvation fantasy – what eloquence! – I'll rub you out again and so – what creativity! – We had been married for only a few years, our only child was called Finn – stop, father you're confused because: Thomas Father was a bitter man, the death of my mother was a test too far I felt he never loved me. Never loved as I needed loved. "Stop this," he said, "stop this it isn't fair, not how things go, I did not know," said Thomas Father but I watched how you played with her, how you teased her – I was in your mind from the start – I saw your perverted activities fashioning her tits, her cunt, her hair, but her hands were smooth no nails, and I seen you, dancing in your room with a half-skinned corpse with a stolen name and I have named you, and I can see you and you'll die in a ditch Thomas Father with a cleft in your skull Thomas Father died in a ditch with a cleft in his skull The End.

It is not.

Playing With Dinosaurs

Dinosaurs were never a great passion of mine; I never quite fit that archetype. I didn’t, don’t and never will dislike them by any means, far from it, I’ve always had a real fondness for the things. There was the red tyrannosaurus rex that wouldn’t fill with water because his throat was sealed. The dinosaurs at the museum were skeletons, which was great. The tyrannosaurus made for an imposing figure, all teeth and tail and what have you; you had to respect the tyrannosaurus, you’d be a fool not to. This was before I knew he was a scavenger; I can empathise far more readily now. He was never my favourite, though. The stegosaurus is to this day a role-model of sorts, and the pterodactyl is a far out lizard-bird. Excellent skeletons too; the pterodactyl was suspended from the ceiling. I’ll always love skeletons. I liked the diplodocus’s neck, still do sometimes, but dinosaurs were never a great passion of mine. I always preferred to play in the woods. They were much bigger in those days, and darker.

Of course, it wasn’t playing; it was, dare I say it, adventure. Disbelief wasn’t a concept I was familiar with, and I’m not a great fan of it now. There was never much doubt that we’d find gold eventually, or the ghost train in the old abandoned tunnel. Our camps were bona fide settlements; there was some serious improvised engineering a little later on, and I’d be proud of it now. Prouder, maybe, and less capable. I was secretly rather excited at the thought of the gypsy girl who lured little boys off to an unspecified fate out there in the woods. Never did encounter her, though, more’s the pity.

Is it true that all such things, the dinosaurs, the woods, are part of what makes an adult, that’s to say, a fully grown human, to whatever degree of development, and that that’s their principal purpose? That the inquisitiveness, the naked wonder and the joy of children are functions of the formative years? I think someone told me something like that somewhere, sometime. I’m thinking about that red tyrannosaurus now (I called him The Tyrannosaurus). I don’t want my throat to be sealed.