Spaghetti Night

I was watching a pan of spaghetti boil one evening pondering Haruki Murakami's liking for these pale golden strands of durum wheat when there was an almighty thump on the ceiling. Those bloody kids! I grumbled, why can't their parents get them to play quietly? Is it too much to ask? No consideration! The same goes for those who run their washing machines late at night, bang windows and doors, or naturally have heavy footfalls. The joys of communal living. Twenty-first century flat dwelling.
My complaints were something of a monologue that mirthless evening. A speech I made where I was the speaker and the audience. Reclusive people do like to talk to themselves. Reason and rant, hold debates with themselves and fictional interviewers, or bite back at live TV and radio presenters. They have a burning need to rationalise their opinions even if the words they speak will only be heard by their own ears.
Believe me, it can be quite exhausting. A distraction to pass dark winter or long summer evenings. One thought leads to another, which can either be like an invigorating morning hike or a gentle promenade after dinner.
As the cooking water frothed, my thoughts belly-flopped to wondering when my threshold for background noise had become so low. Too sensitive to sensory information that's your trouble, I told myself, as really these flats are well insulated. You rarely hear other people's televisions or stereos. Hmm, but that's just luck, I ventured back to my opponent.
That's how it goes, this game of tennis. One voice mutters a view and the other volleys back a reply. Sometimes I refuse to start play altogether. Play is rained off , the court covered over until I feel like reasoning or ranting aloud.
I much prefer playing tennis to chess. Squash is too violent! And ten pin bowling is only for when you want to smash fanciful, largely impractical ideas; give yourself a good talking to and bring yourself down from a sea of clouds. Sometimes dreams are just dreams, a pearl you'll never see emerge from an oyster. Not all dreams are meant to materialise, the pearl is not the prize, it's the anticipation. Actually living the dream is rarely the same as it is in your imagination.
Tennis is all bravado and banter. Ten pin bowling is grounding. Chess is intellectually agonising. Deceitfully strategic. A game drags on forever and no side is ever completely satisfied with the outcome. It's militant: new thoughts ambush you after a lengthy pause and so the internal debate simmers, then rages. It doesn't care if it takes you prisoner and subjects you to inhospitable conditions. A whirlpool mind, a churning stomach, insomnia.
All these mind games have a way of filling in, killing time. Immersing you in a place when time carries no weight, no meaning.
And somehow play always commences on a spaghetti night. I forget to pay attention, leaving the spaghetti to its own devices. A habit-formed meditation. My mind drifts, but my eyes observe the straw-like strands soften and slither into the pan. The water bubbles furiously... Until I suddenly realise that I haven't once stirred to prevent sticking. I grab a fork and swish the rubbery spaghetti in the steamy water. Nowhere near al dente and I just caught some clumping. A lucky save! Don't you just hate eating lumps of gluey pasta? Four minutes more and it will transform into pale, soft strings to be sucked up with a satisfying slurp or looped round the prongs of a fork. Add a little oil, lemon and black pepper, and some jazz, and there you have it, your own Murakami dining experience.
How far can you go in bringing an author's art to your real life?
Because you see, I fully expect to receive a mysterious telephone call from a woman with very neat ears to ruin my spaghetti night.

Treasure

“Long ago, there was a fearsome pirate,” the tape's narrator began. “He was an ordinary Bristol man until he became known throughout the lands as Blackbeard,” his gravelly tones continued.
I hit the PAUSE as I wasn't sure I wanted to listen to this, his voice was spooking me, especially as I was alone in my grandparents' attic. The house below was empty. Those who had lived in or visited it had either departed this life to go on to the next or had flown to make their own feathered nests on their own or with partners, then children. It had become a holiday haven or when both grandparents were alive somewhere to plant the kids for the summer.
Children grow up, people die, times change. The house had to be sold, so I, on a nostalgic whim, had offered to use my leave to make a start sorting stuff out. A lifetime of hoarding. Make do and mend. Odds and ends. Newspaper clippings, reusable wrapping paper, old pairs of nude nylon tights to sieve the bits out of home-made jam. Two sets of cutlery, the 'best' china, chipped mugs and delicate patterned tea cups with faded flowers. Milk jugs, sugar bowls, salt and pepper shakers. Pre-recorded cartoons and musicals: Tom and Jerry, Pinocchio, Oliver, The Pirate, and operatic records : Maria Callas, Pavarotti, Domingo. A children's playroom with Lego, board games and falling apart adventure books: The Famous Five, Mallory Towers, My Friend Flicka. The living room furniture dusty, the beige carpet thin and wine-stained.
Upstairs, it was more of the same. The beds were lumpy and the floorboards groaned and creaked. Even walking on careful tiptoe made them squeak. Chest of drawers and wardrobes were jammed with bits and pieces: head scarves, slim belts, neck ties, and trouser braces. Navy pullovers and light grey suits, soft dresses and black stilettos. Surfaces cluttered with old lipsticks, scent, and accessories. Old watches, still keeping time, on beside tables.
The icy attic was full of boxes containing old papers and worn out memories. Photograph albums of the young now dead or old. Children's school scribbles, adult keepsakes. Cassette tapes of bedtime stories. Samuel would not go to sleep without hearing Peter Pan. The accompanying music and the sound of the sea. The lost boys' glee as they ran free with their leader. The danger of Captain Hook and the ticking crocodile. This is what I assumed I would hear when I pressed PLAY and the cassette player whirred, not the story of a notorious pirate. One whose image was said to be enough to crush his antagonists and whose legend, to this day, inspires treasure hunters. One who was beheaded in battle and it is said still searches for his severed head.
It was creepy.
It was stupid of me to volunteer for I've never been good in arthritic houses. I'm far too jumpy. I dislike the mustiness of shut-up rooms, the damp swelled walls. The potential of spindly or fat, furry spiders. What was I thinking?
A trip down memory lane. A last goodbye to happy, sun-filled and rainy days. To wander its shrine-like rooms for one last time. A final parting. I wanted to be the one to dismantle it. To prove it had gone and to prove this was okay. To consign it to memory, capture it in a trinket box, and release ghosts from their relics.

Big Toe Locket

Trevor did up the clasp and admired his girlfriend's beautiful white throat before he asked her, still with her eyes closed, to turn and face him. The silver necklace sat attractively across her clavicle, the tear-drop pendant nestling in the dip between her small pushed-up breasts. Perfect. Exactly the effect he had hoped for.
“Open your eyes,” he commanded her.
She did so, fluttering her eyelids flirtatiously, to see her pulsing throat reflected in a hand-held mirror. “Oh babe, it's gorgeous. Your best yet,” she said breathlessly as she lightly caressed her pearly skin and the delicate chain.
Trevor knew Lou was vain and materialistic; she delighted in anything sparkly and wanted all that his money, inherited or made, could give her. His latest gift would certainly sweeten the deal. The marriage deal. His third, her first. Lou had to be bought and wasn't ashamed of it. If anything she played on it, realising early on that he liked raining elaborate and expensive gifts on the very people he wanted to influence. And she wasn't adverse to playing that game or in the end being possessed, not if she could squeeze anything she liked out of it.
So here they were, two and a half years on, with Trevor finally feeling like he'd managed it. She wouldn't refuse him this time. He could tell by the dazzling smile she was wearing. This little piece had certainly trumped the Michelin starred restaurants, classic sports cars and luxury holidays, and confirmed his status as a Sugar Daddy, a rapidly greying-haired and bearded one at that.
“Teddy Bear,” Lou called in her little girl voice from upstairs where she was now admiring herself in a full-length mirror. Trevor took the stairs two at a time and found her in their bedroom holding the pendant out in front of her scrutinising it, “What exactly is it? It looks a bit like a solid tear-drop, but it's not is it? And I can't open it.”
“No dear, it's a big toe for good luck like a rabbit foot. I had it specially designed and what's inside is for me to know.”
Lou's face was a picture, one of distaste for her latest gift mixed with fresh contempt for her much older lover, “A toe! What a novel thing to do! Did you give one to your ex-wives too? I'm sorry babe, it's just unusual that's all – it's still beautiful,” she said trying to mask her ungrateful blunder.
“Yes, if you must know I did design similar lockets – a lung and a kidney – for Joanna and Rachel, both of which are stored in the family's vault. You don't think I'd give you something they'd previously worn? It's a unique one-off piece just for you,” he said planting a kiss on her furrowed brow. “Darling, do hurry up, we have a long drive to the castle.”
Nicely done, he thought going back downstairs to load the car and start the engine. A tiny hiccup, but it was coming off as he planned. A conservative man, his wooing of Lou had been arduous as she failed to so easily yield to convention. She was a modern gold-digger unlike the meek girlfriends and wives that preceded her, but he almost had her. His forever girl.
The drive to Wales was uneventful. Lou slept most of the way, her doll-like head lolling on her shoulder, as he revelled in foul looks from other drivers. It was only natural they should be jealous of his faster car and younger companion.
They arrived at the holiday-let castle in Roch just as the light was dimming. Trevor had made out he'd rented it for a long weekend when really it was his property. Lou tore through, exploring rooms, while Trevor ensured the housekeeper had kept to his exacting requirements: a chilled ice bucket for the champagne and a light candlelit fish supper. He drew out a key, the same size as you used to find on a tin of spam, and a magnifying glass from an inner coat pocket. He couldn't wait to open Lou's big toe locket and share details of his life's ambition: the assembly of his perfect wife.