Musical dares

This one's true, happened about a month ago. Names changed for no particular reason.
____________

Jamie and Margaret had gone on ahead, leaving me to chase up the rear, along dusty tracks of the remote valley towards the last of its four dispersed residences.  A short distance past our hosts considerably sized territory, complete with numerous outhouses, huts and barns, the mountain’s incline began and the African wildlife entirely reigned.  I arrived to find dinner still comfortably some time away, a Braee burning, steak cooking and beer being served.  

I greeted our hosts warmly, nodded to my brief companions, settled, then the  lumberingly youthful Jamie and I took a quick browse around the vegetable garden.  We dished out generous compliments to the wafer thin Angela about its healthy looking contents.  Starry-eyed, always beaming, the wrinkly but trim fifty-something German ate them up gladly. 

She then exhibited her own artwork to us: abstract, faintly Picasso like oil paintings of animals which adorned several walls of their small, purpose-built house. She led us through a tight kitchen and living area, both of which wore an array of miscellaneous hippy objects dangling from the ceiling, and into a back room study with more paintings and an unlikely grand piano.  How had they got that in here?  We admired and nodded as she explained that the paintings could be interpreted however we wanted.  

The meal was good and the conversation bland as we drank and became gradually better acquainted through tame jokes and token exchanges.  The couple’s dogs brushed all table sitters, lapping up the attention, but no food.  Their master and our host was a Lothar, a volatile looking German.  The long haired ex rocker betrayed occasionally appropriate glimpses of spontaneous wild eyed abandon during swift quaffing at a cheap boxed Chardonnay. 

Once dinner was done and clutter cleared, further drinks were drunk, cigarettes smoked by our hosts, and conversation turned to music.  Lothar repetitively baited Margaret to play the guitar, despite her constant rejection and counter that she would if others did.  They duly did.  Bongo drums were duly produced, the 1960s frozen Angela tapped away, as did Jamie.  I was encouraged and had a half arsed attempt, quickly finding that I still hadn’t miraculously developed any rhythm, then passed it back to Al.  The guitar was strummed, drums were tapped and a growing atmosphere of cyclical musical rhythm was developed in the full moonlit darkness.  Angela began nodding intensely with the sounds, eyes shut, lost in her reverie, occasionally tapping the large bongo wedged tightly between Jamie’s thighs.  She’d shown him how to hold the instrument.  I found it all slightly eerie, especially given my knowledge of their monastic chanting inclinations.  How far was this going?  Could it stop now please?  Let’s have a boring conversation about where we’re from or our family instead.  I was cold and musically inept, therefore peripheral.  As well as not quite “feeling” or appreciating the music.  And quite uncomfortable anyway. 

Lothar took the guitar and drooped his lank long hair  over it, spiderishly riffing with the bongos, making a show of being deeply in synch with the developing layer of beats and rhythms.  I sat looking at the full moon, feeling cold, mildly spooked, and wanting to go back to our basic house.  Our own fiftysomething music schoolteacher was Margaret, a ferret-like and relentlessly annoying woman, peculiarly reminiscent of a non specific Matt Lucas Little Britain character.  She took the guitar and played reasonably, but sang horrendously.  I squirmed and shivered when she massacred Let It Be, and had to go to the toilet. 

The fire provided brief warmth and comfort on my return, but I’d resolved to try and politely make my leave.  I grasped for my small backpack, inferring my imminent departure.  Margaret, still suffering with potential bronchitus and an undeniably terrible sounding cough, said she would come too.  Apparently ingrained and steadily supping alcohol, Jamie was uncaringly unmoved, apparently enjoying the instruments and the company of Angela and Lothar, who was now plying him with large whiskies.  When I eventually summoned the braveness to declare I was going at around nine thirty, Angela looked at me in disbelief.  “You’re not really going?” she said, like nobody had ever left them at such an early hour, or maybe ever.  Perhaps they buried their visitors here.  Or left them out for the Leopards to feed on.  I thanked them but yes, I wanted to go.  The increasingly animated Lothar made his power play.  He would not allow us to leave until he had played something else on the guitar.  We had to sit down.  First I stayed standing, hoping he’d just play while we stood, waiting.  Or say he was kidding, it was a joke, bye bye  Or hoping he’d become aware that I was tired and cold and not game for this at all.  Angela lightly tried pushing me towards a seat.  I didn’t move.  Lothar laughed at me wanting to go home and being cold in my “skinny body”.  It felt like one of those awkwardly tense Tarantino skits, where the next actions of either character are brilliantly paused: on edge, unknowable, potentially violent and dramatic.  Only I knew my own actions wouldn’t be any of those, because they were pricked with growing nervousness about his.  That madness which flashed through his eyes, his stocky bulk, the likely proximity of dangerous weapons. 

It became clear that he really wanted us to sit down and wouldn’t play on until we did.  We couldn’t turn our backs and leave by being rude, for Angela’s sake at least. Lothar made a theatrical show of lighting a cigarette, taking his time while cradling the guitar, methodically preparing to play.  He paused numerous times, fingers grazing strings.  About to start, then stopping.  About to start, then stopping.  About to.. 

Eventually, he looked up from his strings and through his dangling fringe, troubled.  He brushed his hair from his eyes, flicked a cigarette butt to one side and said that he had made a mistake, sorry, and that we could go.  I didn’t know if the joke was on me at that point.  If we, or I had been made a fool of, or if he would have objectively and internationally appeared a nutcase.  Thanks, I said, still confused by my compassionate release from their warping musical captivity.  I affected a strongly controlled politeness, all the whie thinking: you are both totally fucking mental, yet remaining aware that this lunatic could still easily just explode and suddenly kill all of us.  Bring his chainsaw out from somewhere, a rifle, some hippy nunchucks. 

I shook his hand, and forgivingly slapped his shoulder with my other, just in case his apology was genuine.  Then I hugged Angela once more and said a cheery goodbye to everyone, hoping to appear like this was all fine. 

Margaret and I left, our feet crunching quickly into the moonlit sandy tracks, hers struggling to keep pace with mine.

Twitter micro stories

Some folk are doing competitions for under 140 character length stories, through the Twitter hashtags,  #bandt,with the theme of blood and thunder, and #tctc.

I've boldly entered these .

~~ Watching lightning from the office kitchen window I overhear another person asking another person how their weekend was. I stab them  

~~ A toddler toddles unseen from a busy shop across a busy street towards a busy road. Someone else see! Someone else sees. I walk on

~~ He flung himself full length through the rain, committed to the header. Lightning and his head cracked the goalpost at once

S T E W A R D

Stuart signed and printed his name on the list where all the stewards registered themselves, hoping administrator lady wouldn’t snigger at his name’s near match of the column heading.  She didn’t.  He’d been told to come wearing a white shirt and black trousers, which he had.  Now the lady gave him a clip-on tie and a reversible puffer jacket - blue one side, florescent green the other, ‘SAFETY STYLE’ tapered across the back.  STYLE? Stuart smiled at the new irony.   
 
He stepped down from the makeshift office and joined a throng of idly waiting others.   A few were older than you might imagine, a couple decidedly out of shape and some were women.  Some even looked vaguely feminine.  Of course you had your typical ones too: hard looking blokes who stood together in a corner grunting at each other, disappointed at the low prospect of fighting at this event.  This cluster were distinctly clone-like: white, just under six foot, shaved heads, mean eyes, goatie beards and muscles.  Lots of them.  

Their attention was gathered by the wiry character who had given Stuart his application form (no space for education but a full page in which to detail previous convictions).  Magic, as the man had introduced himself to Stuart -  stood in his different coloured T-Shirt (purple, for proper authority), then led his team out onto the field to be divided up.  Stuart was pointed in the direction of a corner near the entrance, where he was supposed to look menacing.  He stood there trying to push his eyebrows out as far as they could go: this would surely make him look hard and protect his eyes from a dipping but still powerful sun. 
 
As well as not looking at all intimidating, Stuart had never been in a fight in his life and was moderately concerned at the possibility of any trouble.  If the worst came to the worst, he had young legs and could run a bit.

The gates opened. 
 
Holding his hands round his back and practicing stern eyebrows, Stuart noticed a man working the field who he’d worked with the previous summer at a call centre.  Bob was working for the merchandising people.  It was his job to hold glossy over-priced programmes above his head shouting - PROGRAMMES! - To which people would ask how much, Bob would tell them, and he’d be laughed at and walked past.  At least he was used to being maltreated by the general public.

The sun blazed down and the well behaved people squirmed in.

Rod Stewart arrived onstage: the crowd rose, clapped, whooped then politely sat back down.  The mild, good-feeling buzz passed through Stuart which he tried to dismiss.  The last few people spurted through the gate. 
 
Stuart’s team leader, a slightly older clone - the close shaved head wasn’t so much chosen as forced - approached him, looking hard.  Once the clone saw that Stuart had noticed him, he beckoned him with an aggressive come-here finger.  Stuart followed the clone between the blocks of condensed people.  The clone stopped suddenly, put his hands firmly on Stuart’s shoulders and turned him so he was facing away from the stage, looking into a sea of faces. 
 
“You stay there and make sure they don’t stand in the aisles, right?”
 
Stuart was standing at a Y-shaped junction between blocks.  He was relieved he wasn’t on the front line, in the pit between the stage and first block.  Several middle-aged women in the row directly in front of him smirked in his direction as the clone disappeared.  Stuart ignored them, listened to the pleasantly inoffensive pop music and watched a full moon rise over the heads of several thousand people. 

His attention was soon jerked back by a colleague pointing at something in Stuart’s zone.
 
People dancing in the aisles.  He approached two ladies, early thirties, without seats but crammed into the sides of the aisles.
 
“Can you dance by your seats please?”
“We can’t find them and we’re not moving.  So no,” said the blonde, big nostrilled one.
“Please, look, you can dance over there?  They look like they’re having a good time,” he said pointing to a flank of the field where dancing was unrestricted.
“We’re not moving.”  Her gawky looking brunette friend said nothing.
“Look, I get in trouble if you don’t.”
“I don’t care.”
“Can you just... I-”
“-Look, maybe we should...”  The brunette interjected.
“No!  We’re not moving.”
“Just stay to the side of the aisle then, yeah?”  The blonde looked dreamily at Rod Stewart, ignoring Stuart entirely; the brunette smiled meekly. 

Stuart scuttled back to his standing  place and congratulated himself for being crap.  The moon still looked pretty. 
 
An attractive girl asked Stuart where the toilet was; he told her and stared a little to obviously at her bum as she walked away.  Two housewife sorts at the front of block twenty two, all glammed up for the evening, smiled knowingly at Stuart.  He met their glance then quickly looked over their heads into the knitted expanse.
 
A song later a squat, drunken man in a cowboy hat started to dance next to one of the women at the front of block twenty two.  His seat was over the aisle in the next block, twenty three, and Stuart was slow on the scene again.  The man was grinding himself against the older looking lady.  It was painful to watch.  A small boy in the seat next to the one vacated by the drunken cowboy studied the floor.  Stuart’s felt a sharp surge of pity, then got a grip of himself.
 
“Sir, can you dance where you’re sitting please?!”  Stuart yelled into the cowboy’s ear, battling over a rockier Stewart song.
“Yeah, go on, go back.”  The arse-grinding victim told the cowboy; he said nothing, grinned at nobody in particular and went on grinding.
 
“Sir,”  Stuart said with a firm hand on his shoulder and what he hoped was a gruffer tone, “get back to your own seat now!”
“Yeah, c’mon now, off you go.”  Probably more under the advice of his victim, the cowboy tottered off across the aisle and into his row next to the boy, a matter of yards away.  The victim’s slightly younger friend smiled at Stuart, “Never mind.  What’s your name?”
He had hoped nobody would ask that, then pounce on the obvious Stuart-Steward hilarity.
“Erm, Stuart.”  Stuart hastily retreated back to his spot.  She hadn’t laughed.
 
Everyone stood for the next track.  Stuart saw the girl with the bottom who’d asked where the toilet was being swayed in her boyfriend’s arms.  The bloke was thoroughly enjoying himself, singing and smiling, unaware that his beautiful girlfriend looked so bored.  Stuart caught the girl’s eye and looked away again. 
 
It’s impossible not to catch eyes when you’re stood facing a few thousand pairs, he reasoned, before dreaming up a scenario whereby he prised the girl from her boyfriend’s grasp, whisked her away...  -Stuart’s reverie was broken when he was hit on the back of the head by a football and six sweaty, hairy drunken men piled on top of him.
 
Clones were quickly there and ordered the men back to their seats; one of them, the proud new owner of a football signed by Rod Stewart and his band.  Stuart emerged shocked but unharmed, which was fortunate as he wasn’t asked if he was okay and certainly wasn’t given the option to take a break.  His row of friends were still laughing as he resumed his standing position. 
 
Stuart didn’t feel like he was commanding respect very well.

A hippy looking middle-aged woman approached down the middle aisle - which Stuart had long since tried to keep clear.  She wore a thick cap and mischievous grin, and stopped short of the two person barrier Stuart had become half of.  He could see what was coming but couldn’t do anything.  She put her cap on Stuart’s head.  He immediately took it off and offered it back to her.
 
“You look like one of them people who stand outside Buckingham Palace.” 
She didn’t accept it back.
“Oh,” he raised his eyebrows, held her cap, looked over her head and tried not to feel stupid.
“Smile!  Does it urt?” 
“Yeah.  I’m a miserable bastard.”  She smiled and took her cap back.
“No offence like, but d’you feel like a birruva twat?”   She’d said it softly, without malice, it deserved an honest answer. 

Stuart took longer to answer than normal and thought properly about it, reassessing everything he’d done since he’d clocked in: denying that warm buzz of humanity, being a general nuisance to people by obstructing their views and not allowing people to dance in certain places; wearing a ridiculous flourescent green puffer jacket and clip-on tie, obeying the clones, having a boss called Magic.

“Completely,” he said.    
 
Rod Stewart’s final track.  A popular song, The Popular Song.  The crowd rose, hands in the air, “We are sailing… WE ARE SAILING!!” some screeching like they’d never need their voices again.  Rippling, intense swells of good feeling like none before.  Thousands of people united.  Stuart remained apparently untouchable. 

Rod Stewart said his goodbyes and left the stage.  The lighting on the stage changed and a recorded song by a different artist started playing at lower volume.  Disappointed groans joined the applause, which slowly faded into the hubbub of chatter.

Author Idol (1)

As far as we knew, it was only ever advertised on lamp-posts in and around town.  No proper advertisements or even trailers on the radio station which it was due to be broadcast on.  The notices went something like:

KNOW YOU HAVE WHAT IT TAKES TO BECOME A WRITER?DON'T WANT TO SACRIFICE THE PRIDE, DIGNITY AND EFFORT TO GET A CONTRACT? 

CALL THIS NUMBER...

That number had a pre-recorded message with no option to leave one of your own.  A stern female voice ordered you to take a short example of your best work to an office (which turned out to be a portakabin in the park and ride car park) the following Thursday evening.
 
I arrived to see a queue of about a dozen people filtering out the door.  Arty types with unnecessary scarves, frumpy dresses, floppy hair and sniffs.  I joined onto the end, a cursory nod to a young chap in front of me, smoking violently.  There was a small notice on the door saying the project was part of a new local reality radio show: Author-Idol.  I assumed the best, or worst, or both would be subjected to some airplay.  The small print said the format was similar to other reality talent show.  Small talk kept to a minimum, paper plonked on desk, an extract read and a verdict given.  Ten minutes passed and nobody had joined the queue behind me.  There probably wouldn't be too many rounds.

I leant against the railings and listened to my personal stereo, clutching loose pages of what I hoped might be passable attempts at fiction.  My intense looking companions stopped amusing me and I became bored, looking at the bleak car park, a smattering of ordinary cars and the busy A-road just off it.  It was only when the chap in front of me shuffled forward that I realised they'd started taking people in.  Me and the chain-smoking chap were left when my battery died and he finished his seventh cigarette.  "NEXT!" A haughty voice, similar to that of the answer phone message beckoned.  We exchanged raised eyebrows, he entered and I stuffed tangled leads into my inside pocket. 
 
Then I became aware that I hadn't seen any of the previous people come back past us.  Were they hoarding them in a room in there?  Were they showing them out the back?  Was there a back?  Were they brutally maiming and killing these poor, hapless people for their futile shows of ambition?  Should I cut my losses and run?  Should I just take a quick peep round the back?  The portakabin wasn't that big - we'd had bigger temporary classrooms in school.
 
"NEXT!"  Wow, I thought, he must have been really good or really shit.  He didn't walk back past me.  I stepped over the threshold and obeyed a handwritten sign pointing right down a short, narrow corridor.  Five paces led me to a door, ajar, with the word PANEL taped on it.  I knocked.  "COME!"  It creaked as I pushed it and I felt my pupils dilate or contract or whichever it is when you're hit by sudden bright light.  I narrowed my eyes anyway.  Through them I made out a PANEL of three figures sat at one table at the end of a bare, but surprisingly large room.  There was a door marked OUT.  Phew, relief.  Or maybe a dungeon?  I looked at the central figure, a teacherly like lady, not unattractive but of the sort that looked like she'd probably eaten men.

"Hello,"  I said.  They all smiled weakly.  The other two members of the PANEL: an old man smoking a pipe - in the opposite fashion to the young chap in the queue - he looked like he could smoke it when dead: it just looked effortless and right.  He wore a cardigan too of course.  The other man flanking the lady was a younger man of around forty: big jumpered, sharp eyed, but not floppy haired.  Both of the men looked tired and worn, as if there'd been a queue of hundreds.  Not about ten.  She, however, was upright, professional, moody,
 
"Work!" - and apparently not into pleasantries.

I curled my bottom lip and widened my eyes in a -wooh! scary, sort of way, before extracting my work from the back pocked of my jeans, folded once lengthways.  I shunted the stapled paper into the air and it floated onto the table between us.  The woman sniffed disapprovingly at the delivery, then eyed me like I was a turd to be stepped around.  Then she looked down.  The old man adjusted his specs and leaned in, as did the other man.  The woman had that irritating habit of half whispering every word she read with her mouth with the resulting spspspspspspspspspsp sound.  It made me sniff that outward sniff I get when I'm shocked to find something amusing but it’s not worthy of a full laugh.  She ignored me.  The spspspspspspsp became intermittent - which I didn't know whether to read as a good sign or not.  It's normally one of the most paranoia inducing things, having people read your work in front of you and, you in turn, trying to read their reactions.  Are they trying not to sneer?  Are they just going to be polite and uncommitted?  Was that smile genuine or were they laughing AT me? 

After a minute they leaned apart and straightened up.  The old man fingered his pipe with more tobacco, nodded gently in no particular direction.  They glanced at each other but didn't speak, eyes widened and narrowed.  I felt something shimmer up my back before she looked at me.  She gave me a card with a phone number on it, followed by a pin number. 
"Thank you Mr. Milner," she said.
"You’re welcome," I said.  She pointed at the OUT door. 
"I, I, er, I left my car out the front," I said, lying, and walked back out the way I'd come. 
But you can't...!" the younger man trailed off.  But I did, glad I'd distinguished myself in some way, if only by not falling into some strangely devised trap. 

I walked home fast, annoyed that the battery in my stereo had died.

The next day I shaved across my face with the card she'd given me the next day at work.  It was blunt, being cardboard and everything.  The time was just gone half four and the half senile geriatric I shared my office with had gone home.  Should I carry on with this whole charade?  Could it be dangerous?  What if they were all lunatics?  As far as I knew none of us - assuming that the other contenders were all alive and well - had any proof that they were who they said they were, or at all affiliated with that radio station.  Pondering all this, I looked out of the office window and over the train platform.  A couple of depressed looking commuters in raincoats curled into themselves. 

I picked up my receiver and dialled the number, hesitating slightly before the final digit.  One and a half rings, then the message cut in.  The woman's recorded voice:

"You should have a pin, dial it." 
I dialled it.
"Congratulations Mr. Milner, you have been selected, along with four others to proceed to the next round.  Be at our offices again tonight at Seven o clock."  Bollocks, why should I?  I thought.  Signing away work to some group I know absolutely nothing about.  I mean, why?

I never managed to answer that question but dawdled towards the 'offices' at the designated time.  A small group of about half a dozen stood in the car park looking at their feet, most smoking, looking troubled.  Two women; one young studenty, another friendly looking, cuddly, housewifey.  Smiled meekly at them, the housewifey lady mirrored the expression, a couple looked up, raised eyebrows, sniffed, exhaled smoke, looked down.  I arrived around five minutes late.  The last one.  The door of the portakabin opened and the severe looking lady appeared.  We all looked up at her.

Barry Island

Jeremy felt an overwhelming surge of apathy and walked past his office block.  His programming usually just allowed the cruise-control function to take hold, then after an hour's  mundane blur of routine he'd feel himself plummet down into his office chair.  Today though, there was some kind of system malfunction.  The strong apathy surge must have dislodged something.  He kept his head down and hoped not to be stopped by any of his colleagues walking in his direction.

Cruise-control must have been contaminated, infected or tampered with in some way, because just as his feet and hands usually did the things that led him to his office swivel chair, today they led him to the train station.   Still his mind hadn't seemed to contribute to the decisions his body was making, he just followed where his feet led. 

Barry Island, the departures monitor said, two rows down.  Five minutes.  Never been there before.  Why not? he thought.  Swathes of office workers were filtering through and out of the station: some zombified, some possessed by a freakish will that made it look like they weren't dreading the day.  But most zombified. 

Jeremy moved against the tide, expecting to be caught by someone, shouted at.  Nervous and excited (excited!  Barry Island, what’s wrong with me?  Lots, an answer came), he almost expected interrogation from the man on the other side of the counter.  - Young Persons day return to Barry Island please, he’d said.  How dangerous, how exotic!  Surely he'd be caught?    - One pound forty five.  Very reasonable, Jeremy thought.

The only person in his carriage, Jeremy trundled slowly out of the city and through suburbs and small, pleasant commuter belts he never knew existed.  The cruise-control systems must have to be even stronger for people from here, who worked in Cardiff.  Especially for those who drove.  A stoned-looking old conductor punched Jeremy's ticket without a flicker of acknowledgement of the person it was attached to, then tottered on down the carriage.  He thought his apparent incongruence might have caused a glance here or there - wearing a good suit, posh shoes, collar and tie, on a Monday morning just after nine o clock, on his own, on a carriage destined for Barry Island (there couldn't be a lot of offices there) - but even on alighting and stepping onto the beach, dogs didn't so much as sniff. 

Why were people who walked with dogs called dog-walkers? Jeremy mused, walking down the beach.  It was a pet muse when he walked aimlessly and dog-less.  It wasn't like dogs couldn't actually walk without humans.  Why the inequality?  Why weren't the pairs ever referred to as human-walkers?  Why weren't people who jogged with their dogs called dog-joggers or dog-runners?  Why are the dogs or humans in the equation at all?  They're all just walkers, surely?  Unless they run, or jog, or do that walking fast thing that looks ridiculous - what was that called?
 
His shiny black formal shoes sank into the wet sand, clinging to the soles and making walking an effort.  Sucking and splatting sounds as they plunged in and out.  Specs and splodges of wet sand flicked up the back of Jeremy's trouser legs. A terrier scampered past, chasing a ball.  Its owner - a sprightly looking middle-aged lady - strode past (dog-strider?) without looking at the suspiciously suited man she was sharing the beach with.
 
Jeremy reached some rocks where the beach ended and began clambering across them.  His footwear wasn't well suited and he looked in fear at the gruesomely draped seaweed, beckoning broken ankles or serious injury of some kind.  He precariously wobbled his way around it, not the most elegant of climbers.  In ensuring utmost care, he clumsily slumped onto his behind to drop onto the next layer of rocks, when a simple bold step was all that was required.  He found a large, smooth rock, only pimpled by the odd limpet, and lay down resting his briefcase under his head.  The wind blew with constant steady strength, (inspiring an odd kind of respect, Jeremy thought), the sea lapped, seagulls cried and the now far off terrier barked. 

He identified a large vehicle reversing inland by its insistently blaring siren.  The cruise-control demons were banished.  Jeremy pictured his empty desk, monitor off, chair neatly tucked in, and he smiled.  Sunshine pierced a cloud and kissed his face.  Barry Island wasn't entirely unpleasant, as long as you didn't look inland or mind brown sea.  He closed his eyes.

Something jolted him - he was bleeping.  Had he finally found the controlling bug inside them all?  Was it drawing attention to itself so the malfunction could be corrected?  Would he imminently be set upon by a team of government agents who'd pop a needle in his arm?  Or, was... no.  The briefcase shrilled under Jeremy's head.  He opened his eyes and squinted at the bright sunshine.  Sitting forward he un-flapped the case and plucked out his phone.  OFFICE - Calling...  it told him.  Jeremy impulsively threw his phone seawards.  It bounced once off a rock and bleeped so abnormally highly that Jeremy actually felt a momentary twinge of regret - like he’d just kicked a dog - then it sank satisfyingly into a rock-pool, which was probably against some toxic waste littering law.  Phones and all the stuff inside them were particularly bad for the environment, Jeremy remembered hearing once.            

He clambered his way over the remaining rocks to the next beach.  A bored looking, grey-haired lady sat on a rock, dreaming out to sea.  Jeremy was half-tempted to start chatting to her as he passed - unlock the secrets and skeletons of her long and dramatic life.  Or say good morning, at least.  But he didn't.  And she showed no sign of seeing him.  Nor did a young couple who he passed walking across the next beach, enveloped in each other.  His feet sank more on this sand, and his shoes clearly showed smears of sand and one deep long scratch from a rock, or perhaps a limpet.

Another thing Jeremy considered, watching a young child run past him chasing a ball, was that he was dead.  He could go for days, even in the week when he was at work, without speaking to anybody.  At times, he thought it might come as more of a shock to learn he was alive.  Even in some minor way.  A smile from a stranger, a thank-you to a held open door, an acknowledgement from a polite motorist.  Either he was dead; people (or at least all the people he ever came into contact with, without any exception) were generally not very perceptive, caring or humane; or he just might be entirely uninteresting: to look at, listen to, share oxygen with.  Now there was a thought, Jeremy thought. 

He wound his way back around, over the headland in the direction of the station.  Marvelling at the constancy of the sounds, he sat on a bench and looked out at the brown sea.  The expanse of beach he'd walked on a few minutes ago looked huge.  He must have looked like a speck from up here, as those people down there did then.  But he was still a speck up there, to them down on the beach.  Always a speck.  New terriers buzzed round like radio-controlled cars, the lucky fools.       
 
Leaving his briefcase on the bench, he walked to the edge of the cliff at the tip of the headland. Feeling the three pounds fifty five pence change in one pocket, and his keys and wallet in the other, Jeremy idly rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet, toes over the edge.  The apathy surged once more and combined with an urgently strong gust of wind, forced his balance further forward.  Why not? Jeremy thought, without trying to think of a reply, encouraged by the elements.   ‘Timber,’ he casually announced to himself.  Just before impact, mid-air, feeling the coins in his pocketed left hand, he realised he'd been short-changed.  Bastard, Jeremy thought, finally.  

Dogs barked, the wind blew gusty, the sea lapped, seagulls cried and Jeremy's head exploded against limpets and rock with a hollow thud.