Day 03

1771.1 Longwave

You've just been listening to Sell Shendrick and the Rubles with "What's My Name? (You Ate My Brain)". Classic slice of note-perfect nourishment for your ears. Well that seems to be all for tonight, folks. Thank you for tuning in, and for God's sake, get some sleep or some drugs. Here to play us out are The Carpettes with "Wrap Me In Paper". Stay slutty. It keeps the population rocketing.

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Andaw

Sometimes I become aware of death, much like Linus in Peanuts suddenly become aware of his tongue. The tongue swells up in his mouth, chokes him to a climax then lets him forget it exists. Death creeps up on me that way sometimes. It'll be in some corner, snoozing, when a sly gust will wake it up and put it into a vindictive mood. Dragging its mossy black shawl along in its wake, it will hug me from behind, only it's less an embrace and more a violent Heimlich; an attempt to hoik the life from me. I half expect to see it bulleting across the room like a half-chewed piece of pork.

You rarely become aware of life in the same way. It's just the negation of death, unless you're one of those terminally ill people on TV documentaries who yap on about how they are living each day as it comes, riding dolphins in foreign climes, learning to salsa, hopping marathons for charity with three limbs amputated. Look at them. So brave. Amazing spirit. Well most of us don't have the luxury of uninterrogated sick days, let alone years, and so on with the process of making enough money to survive. August slipped into Bonfire Night that way this year.

There must have been a point at which the road forked and I chose the path of grouchiness. Before then, I probably got down about things, but it wasn't my default setting.

Now I am condemned to wander the streets, rattling my bonds, moaning about how the wind never used to penetrate my coat so sharply before and the dismissiveness of everybody.

I'm toying. I know very well what day it was. It was the day I filled in the application form for the company hosting an advert which began

"Sick of the skivvy jobs? Want a fabulous income without the 9-5? You won't believe its true, but this is no scam. Your life could change in an instant. Take that chance."

Bad use of the apostrophe aside, I was intrigued. On that particular Tuesday morning I had just received a phone call from my boss at the station informing me he'd signed me on for regular extra shifts, as he 'knew how difficult things were' at that time. I had listened, nodded incredulously, waved goodbye to any semblance of a weekend and decided that I would rather stand in the high street in a sandwich board advertising stained sock ciabattas than return to work. So the advert caught me at a good time.

I'm not one to be easily conned. I take such flyers with a healthy side salad of scepticism most of the time, but circumstnces being what they were, I was prepared to give it a go. Which is how I found myself writing my name in block letters beneath a letterhead composed of two theatrical masks. Two weeks later, the print caps had been replaced by my pirouetting signature, and I began work as a Crossing Sweeper.

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(From the Coax Dictionary of Slang and Colloquialisms)

Crossing Sweeper (n)
1. In Victorian times, a person of working class, often a child, who would sweep the path of wealthy patrons, so as to save their shoes and clothing from dirt, in exchange for small sums of money.
2. An employee of an 'umbrella' company, such as Faceback or Grays Incorporated, responsible for assuming unwanted physical characteristics on behalf of specific clients. These can range from limps to scars, though by far the most popular treatment is for the effect of aging. More effective, immediate and risk-free than plastic surgery, the process is nevertheless a controversial one, with regard to the 'sweepers' themselves and their accelerated aging.

* * *

Pila

Excuse me. I didn't see you there.
No, it's quite alright. My bad.
I insist on buying you a drink to apologise for the jostling.
Not at all. Allow me.
You look beautiful today.

And repeat to fade in my imagination, as the woman with the sharp-cornered handbag stomps off wordlessly. I lick my finger and slide it over the jab marks. It feels good to grimace. While I'm about it, I press lightly on the yellow-edged bruises scalloped on my thigh. I want to keep them and wake up every morning with a soft cake of gentle pain.

A girl trots past, looking fiercely determined. Her pleats bob and her shoes clack on the escalator as she races the metal steps to the top. I wonder where her mother is.

My name is Pila. I haven't been able to get drunk for seven years (that's where you applaud) and I really wish at times that I could (that's where you stop dead and look concerned ' you know, prepare yourself for a mass encouragement to get me back on the wagon). Those days when you need to be shitfaced to walk, like on Fridays, when the world has more elbows than you, as you bare-knuckle fight to get home through the city. It's ridiculous. So excited about getting squashed onto tin cans that rattle through the streets like arthritic snails.

An old girlfriend once told me that buses contain more cold germs than hospitals. But then that same girlfriend once told me you can catch typhoid from buffing a water cooler, so take it with a pinch of salt.

Season everything, in fact.

Nobody would recognize me when I leave the house, anyway. I cover my head with a battered Hark hat and shuffle along, not so much like a cool music journalist as a hunchback. I don't look haggard ' far from it ' but I'm worried that people might scream, upon sight, that I look like a young ghost of a famous actor. Sounds gorgeous, non? Well it's complicated and I'm out when I can find my copy of the contract. I can't stop what has been happening to me for a while now, but it doesn't stop me wanting to.