WINTER, ALL TOO SOON
Like a paid assassin in the night, winter came.
I wasn't ready when the seasons changed, and my ageing bones had not yet had their fill of vitamin D from the fleeting sun rays of balmy Summer days that seemed so few and far between. If memory served me right, there were moments of radiance when the bright sun put in a welcome appearance, and Ray and I tried so hard without success to rekindle what started in childhood as brotherly love, a bond of blood and flesh so strong that none could ever break it, nor stand between us, and yet which has ended up so pale a reflection of it's glorious past.
They say you can choose your friends but not your family, and how so true those words seem to me right now as the dark nights descend upon us and the mornings are filled with a layer of frost that falls as a blanket across the sleepy landscape. Didn't the seasons run like clockwork and the summers seem endless when I was an acne ridden adolescent? But then I also recall 'Wagon wheels' being the size as their wooden namesake, which says a lot about my memory and recollections I suppose.
Ray was the man back then. Big brother and role model. And nothing has been diluted from the core of his beliefs and being over the passing years. Stubborn like a mule, headstrong and resolute in believing that what he says is a given, his actions unquestionable, his words irreproachable, if I could just shake him to his senses, knock some common sense into that thick skull of his. And for three and a half short weeks I had just such an opportunity. Failure has been my middle name for so many years I guess. At least I can safely add consistency to my short list of virtues.
I am walking with lengthy strides, cold fingers clammering for warmth within the confines of my jacket pockets, breath like the contrails of a tristar jet way on up at thirty eight thousand feet as it sprints across the ocean blue sky to sumptuous destinations. He'll be home now, distant shores where the air is fresh and the lifestyle so less frenetic than London life. Five thousand miles between us can be crossed within a matter of hours, but the bitterness and acrimony of former brotherly love it seems can never be bridged.
I find an old wooden bench, still damp from the morning frost, peppered with a liberal dousing of pigeon crap and chestnut casings from which squirrels and tiny fingers have prised out the tiny brown jewels within, and plant my derrière for a momentary break. From within my inner jacket pocket I fumble with my right hand for a packet of Nicorette, placing one of the disgusting tasting 4mg gum pieces into my warm mouth. I guess it must be working if I find these little suckers so unpalatable now, though quitting the habit seems to have left my bodily defences naked and ill prepared for the many ailments and virulent bugs that comes as de rigeur with this miserable season.
Two and a half whole months cigarette free. That's seventy eight days, five hours and ten minutes though the euphoria of my limited success was shortlived after reading somewhere on the oracle that is the world wide web that these foul tasting over priced gum pieces are just as capable of giving you mouth cancer as the real thing. And I know which I prefer out of the two! Ray found my determination to quit oh so amusing, puffing on the fat Cuban Havanas he mused that were rolled on a virgin maiden's own thighs that had Laura constantly shepherding him out of the conservatory doors and into the garden. He would gloat from behind the glass, sucking in great lungfuls of carcinogenic before blowing them at me from the other side of the glass. He always was the childish one. Eighteen months older and always the instigator of our childish exploits, me the doting younger brother who looked up to him for guidance and support when the going got tough and the shit hit the proverbial.
And he loved me back then.
All the same, I could murder a real smoke right now and my will power, thus farso steadfast and resolute is being sorely put to the test with the stress I am under right now. I spit the gum piece out of my mouth like a bullet expelled from the barrel of a Glock, the taste reverberating around my mouth, murdering my taste buds, hammering them into submission. The bench is cold, the damp creeping through the material of my trousers and seeping into my rump as I stand and twist my neck round so that my eyes can focus as best they can on the inevitable green and brown stains daubed across the arse of my trousers. Laura's going to love that!
But she won't complain, she never does. Not even against my ill conceived plan hatched over a glass of Chardonnay and a ready meal one night when I thought it a great idea to try and heal the rift between long lost brothers and invite Ray and the family over for a reunion of sorts. Voices on the phone from separate sides of that great big pond, retracing memories, laughing at the times we had as boys, the exploits and camaraderie that forged the bond and defined us so.
We last saw him after mum passed away. The summer of two thousand and two when he and Gemma made the trip first class courtesy of British Airways. He always did everything in style, the entrepreneur of we two, the jet setting, go getter who loved money more than life itself. Still does. He was always mums favourite, and in her final years he played on that favouritism, honing in on her failing health and waning memory to leach money out of her for ventures and folly that existed merely as ideas in his furtive mind. But I never once complained, for I truly believed that what mum did with her money was her own business, and nobody else's.
Damn it!
I slump back onto the wet bench and reach inside my jacket pocket once more to the pack of Benson & Hedges smokes that is there to keep me sane, ripping off the cellophane like an eager child unwrapping his Christmas presents, and pulling back the silver foil cover to allow the aroma of the tobacco out and into the air like an escaping prisoner from maximum security. I bring both hands together and cup them around the cigarette as I strike a Swan Vesta and pull on the filter. How can something so bad for you, taste so damned good?
I laugh at myself, thinking what I must look like to passing eyes that view this little old man, hunched on a wet bench in December, smoking and talking to himself like a vagrant washed up on the rocks of life, a mind warped by too much paint thinners as he lives oblivious in his own little world. Does the pain of losing those close to me find me a wreck of my former self? Am I so lonely that I now view my past life through rose tinted spectacles?
I lift my left arm towards the wisp of sunlight that creeps through the branches of the trees beside me, noting the time on my wristwatch. Eight hours difference to Canada and a new day dawning there right now on that beautiful coastline where Ray has his Condo. It always seemed to me that if ever there was a man who could emerge smelling of roses from a barrel of shit, it was Ray. The Midas touch, whether justly deserved or cunningly won, a lavish lifestyle now forged from the inheritance money he duped from our mother.
It mattered little to me at the time, never the one to argue or take issue, I needed my brother to help me through the loss and grief, I hoped that it would bring us together once more, us against the big bad world. But money changes some folk for the worse I guess, and those five thousand miles, though bridged by awkward silence upon the staggered phone line, and tempered by those three brief weeks together, have never seemed so vast as they do right now.
I rise and flick the dying embers of my cigarette onto the floor, stubbing out the flickering red and yellow light with the toe of my boot, before pulling my jacket collar up around my neck, placing both hands into the pockets and heading off down the pathway once more to where my car is parked. Some things in life will never change I guess, and in many ways I am so lucky a man to have the things I have right now. But I ache within for the past when my big brother watched over me, the days when I looked up to him with love and affection that was reciprocated willingly, rather than penned by female hands once a year come Christmas time. I
I remember the summer when for a brief moment, we two were children again, brothers without the barriers of time and distance between us once more. We laughed again back then, didn't we?
The winter has come, all too soon it seems.
.
Written on December 9th 2011
Photograph taken at 09:34am on December 6th 2011 off New Road and Woolwich Road A206 in Lesnes Abbey Woods, Bexleyheath, Kent, England.
Nikon D7000 48mm 1/13s f/5.6 iso200
Nikkor AF-S 18-105mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR. UV filter. Manfrotto 055XPro carbon fibre tripod & Manfrotto 327 magnesium pistol grip ball head. Nikon MC-DC2 remote shutter release. Nikon GP-1 GPS.
LATITUDE: N 51d 29m 7.76s
LONGITUDE: E 0d 7m 45.74s
ALTITUDE: 0.0m
WINTER, ALL TOO SOON
Like a paid assassin in the night, winter came.
I wasn't ready when the seasons changed, and my ageing bones had not yet had their fill of vitamin D from the fleeting sun rays of balmy Summer days that seemed so few and far between. If memory served me right, there were moments of radiance when the bright sun put in a welcome appearance, and Ray and I tried so hard without success to rekindle what started in childhood as brotherly love, a bond of blood and flesh so strong that none could ever break it, nor stand between us, and yet which has ended up so pale a reflection of it's glorious past.
They say you can choose your friends but not your family, and how so true those words seem to me right now as the dark nights descend upon us and the mornings are filled with a layer of frost that falls as a blanket across the sleepy landscape. Didn't the seasons run like clockwork and the summers seem endless when I was an acne ridden adolescent? But then I also recall 'Wagon wheels' being the size as their wooden namesake, which says a lot about my memory and recollections I suppose.
Ray was the man back then. Big brother and role model. And nothing has been diluted from the core of his beliefs and being over the passing years. Stubborn like a mule, headstrong and resolute in believing that what he says is a given, his actions unquestionable, his words irreproachable, if I could just shake him to his senses, knock some common sense into that thick skull of his. And for three and a half short weeks I had just such an opportunity. Failure has been my middle name for so many years I guess. At least I can safely add consistency to my short list of virtues.
I am walking with lengthy strides, cold fingers clammering for warmth within the confines of my jacket pockets, breath like the contrails of a tristar jet way on up at thirty eight thousand feet as it sprints across the ocean blue sky to sumptuous destinations. He'll be home now, distant shores where the air is fresh and the lifestyle so less frenetic than London life. Five thousand miles between us can be crossed within a matter of hours, but the bitterness and acrimony of former brotherly love it seems can never be bridged.
I find an old wooden bench, still damp from the morning frost, peppered with a liberal dousing of pigeon crap and chestnut casings from which squirrels and tiny fingers have prised out the tiny brown jewels within, and plant my derrière for a momentary break. From within my inner jacket pocket I fumble with my right hand for a packet of Nicorette, placing one of the disgusting tasting 4mg gum pieces into my warm mouth. I guess it must be working if I find these little suckers so unpalatable now, though quitting the habit seems to have left my bodily defences naked and ill prepared for the many ailments and virulent bugs that comes as de rigeur with this miserable season.
Two and a half whole months cigarette free. That's seventy eight days, five hours and ten minutes though the euphoria of my limited success was shortlived after reading somewhere on the oracle that is the world wide web that these foul tasting over priced gum pieces are just as capable of giving you mouth cancer as the real thing. And I know which I prefer out of the two! Ray found my determination to quit oh so amusing, puffing on the fat Cuban Havanas he mused that were rolled on a virgin maiden's own thighs that had Laura constantly shepherding him out of the conservatory doors and into the garden. He would gloat from behind the glass, sucking in great lungfuls of carcinogenic before blowing them at me from the other side of the glass. He always was the childish one. Eighteen months older and always the instigator of our childish exploits, me the doting younger brother who looked up to him for guidance and support when the going got tough and the shit hit the proverbial.
And he loved me back then.
All the same, I could murder a real smoke right now and my will power, thus farso steadfast and resolute is being sorely put to the test with the stress I am under right now. I spit the gum piece out of my mouth like a bullet expelled from the barrel of a Glock, the taste reverberating around my mouth, murdering my taste buds, hammering them into submission. The bench is cold, the damp creeping through the material of my trousers and seeping into my rump as I stand and twist my neck round so that my eyes can focus as best they can on the inevitable green and brown stains daubed across the arse of my trousers. Laura's going to love that!
But she won't complain, she never does. Not even against my ill conceived plan hatched over a glass of Chardonnay and a ready meal one night when I thought it a great idea to try and heal the rift between long lost brothers and invite Ray and the family over for a reunion of sorts. Voices on the phone from separate sides of that great big pond, retracing memories, laughing at the times we had as boys, the exploits and camaraderie that forged the bond and defined us so.
We last saw him after mum passed away. The summer of two thousand and two when he and Gemma made the trip first class courtesy of British Airways. He always did everything in style, the entrepreneur of we two, the jet setting, go getter who loved money more than life itself. Still does. He was always mums favourite, and in her final years he played on that favouritism, honing in on her failing health and waning memory to leach money out of her for ventures and folly that existed merely as ideas in his furtive mind. But I never once complained, for I truly believed that what mum did with her money was her own business, and nobody else's.
Damn it!
I slump back onto the wet bench and reach inside my jacket pocket once more to the pack of Benson & Hedges smokes that is there to keep me sane, ripping off the cellophane like an eager child unwrapping his Christmas presents, and pulling back the silver foil cover to allow the aroma of the tobacco out and into the air like an escaping prisoner from maximum security. I bring both hands together and cup them around the cigarette as I strike a Swan Vesta and pull on the filter. How can something so bad for you, taste so damned good?
I laugh at myself, thinking what I must look like to passing eyes that view this little old man, hunched on a wet bench in December, smoking and talking to himself like a vagrant washed up on the rocks of life, a mind warped by too much paint thinners as he lives oblivious in his own little world. Does the pain of losing those close to me find me a wreck of my former self? Am I so lonely that I now view my past life through rose tinted spectacles?
I lift my left arm towards the wisp of sunlight that creeps through the branches of the trees beside me, noting the time on my wristwatch. Eight hours difference to Canada and a new day dawning there right now on that beautiful coastline where Ray has his Condo. It always seemed to me that if ever there was a man who could emerge smelling of roses from a barrel of shit, it was Ray. The Midas touch, whether justly deserved or cunningly won, a lavish lifestyle now forged from the inheritance money he duped from our mother.
It mattered little to me at the time, never the one to argue or take issue, I needed my brother to help me through the loss and grief, I hoped that it would bring us together once more, us against the big bad world. But money changes some folk for the worse I guess, and those five thousand miles, though bridged by awkward silence upon the staggered phone line, and tempered by those three brief weeks together, have never seemed so vast as they do right now.
I rise and flick the dying embers of my cigarette onto the floor, stubbing out the flickering red and yellow light with the toe of my boot, before pulling my jacket collar up around my neck, placing both hands into the pockets and heading off down the pathway once more to where my car is parked. Some things in life will never change I guess, and in many ways I am so lucky a man to have the things I have right now. But I ache within for the past when my big brother watched over me, the days when I looked up to him with love and affection that was reciprocated willingly, rather than penned by female hands once a year come Christmas time. I
I remember the summer when for a brief moment, we two were children again, brothers without the barriers of time and distance between us once more. We laughed again back then, didn't we?
The winter has come, all too soon it seems.
.
Written on December 9th 2011
Photograph taken at 09:34am on December 6th 2011 off New Road and Woolwich Road A206 in Lesnes Abbey Woods, Bexleyheath, Kent, England.
Nikon D7000 48mm 1/13s f/5.6 iso200
Nikkor AF-S 18-105mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR. UV filter. Manfrotto 055XPro carbon fibre tripod & Manfrotto 327 magnesium pistol grip ball head. Nikon MC-DC2 remote shutter release. Nikon GP-1 GPS.
LATITUDE: N 51d 29m 7.76s
LONGITUDE: E 0d 7m 45.74s
ALTITUDE: 0.0m