The Wrong Setting

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

I don’t want ‘good morning’ at 6am. No morning that starts at 6am can ever be that good.  At 6am I just want coffee and I don’t want to have to say, ‘Make me coffee’. I just want to switch on the machine and smell the sweet aroma of coffee…read more

I know I have the settings wrong. With the flick of the switch I can make it positive. I probably don’t even need to do that, I can probably just say it out loud and the device will do it. It will tell me I look fabulous today if I do that, although it also reminds me I need to eat Kale for lunch to stay ‘looking this good’.

I liked it at first but now ‘it’ and ‘I’ have had a falling out. The last thing it said to me was that it was talking to my fridge and checking how much milk there was. I wanted to yell at it, ‘I can bloody do that and open the door as well’. As a matter of fact I can see and I mean ‘see’ with my eyes how much milk is left and I can walk to the shop and get some more. Although as it reminded me this morning I have no cash in my wallet. I should care but I just bloody don’t. It has driven me to this point. This cannot be my fault. I wished I had bought a cat and not another bloody device.

This device is living in my house. It is allegedly taking care of everything. And it talks- a lot. It ‘engages’ me in conversation. It lets me know the car needs to be recharged and the milk needs to be renewed. Milk is not renewed, you buy fresh milk you idiot machine. I want to yell this too but I don’t.

Earlier it sensed I was tense and played soothing music. It doesn’t know why I am tense. Which frankly makes it less clever than it thinks it is. Although technically it does not think, it utilises algorithms based on the speed of my walk, the tone of my voice and a full body scan to ascertain my mood. It’s why it is in the kitchen and I am at the other end of the house. I don’t want it to know how tense I am. I want my tension to be private. I want ‘private tension.’

I wonder when it ‘talks’ to the fridge if it uses the same tone that it does with me. Of course, it doesn’t talk like we talk, it sends some code or some signal or some other thing and the fridge just answers and doesn’t give a damn about the annoying voice or the constant attention it needs. I have it set for negativity. My own choice but it means it is terse and rude now.

I don’t even know why they invented a setting for terse and rude-why would you? It also begs the question why am I using that setting, it’s the one I usually save for my boyfriend’s mother. I don’t know why I set it to that. Actually I do know both those things. That setting is for people like me, and the answer to the other bit is just that all that bubbly niceness annoys me. Constant bloody bubbly niceness chills me to the bone. It’s like having the most popular girl in school in your kitchen. Frankly I always thought her and her pony tail were nauseating. I wore black for most of my teen years and I don’t regret it for a second. I earn more than her and until I got this device I had my life together. But it has driven me to this. Constant bubbly bloody niceness. I keep reminding myself it’s not human but a machine, as if you could think otherwise with its slightly metallic sounding voice. Why can’t they get the voice right, so it sounds human. Not that that would help because I do not need a constant bubbly human voice anymore than I need to know that my milk needs ‘renewing’. Have I said that already.

‘Would you like me to renew your milk for you?’ No. I’ve given up milk and gone vegan, can’t you tell by the fact that there is no meat in the fridge. Although I have not gone vegan and there is no meat in the fridge because when it asked about the grocery order, I said no, I don’t want my groceries ordered, I can do it myself. We are at something of a stand off on this point and I am starving which is making me grumpy. I was starving even when there was food because I hate going into the kitchen where that ‘thing’ is. Seriously cannot understand how people love these devices.

When I went into the kitchen last week, it said ‘you have not been in the kitchen for two days. Have you been eating properly? The answer to which was no. Because I had been getting take away- paying using my phone so it would know that was what I was doing. It was in positivity mode so it didn’t comment. Then it had the nerve to say, ‘I know you have been switching the lights on manually yourself, but you know I can do that for you?’ I wanted to scream at it. It is NO ONE’S business how I switch my lights on and there is no need for a prompt. It was at that point that I switched it to negativity. Now it is terse and rude and I can be justifiably rude back. I’m guessing that is another reason why it has that setting.

It has stopped telling me I look good. I don’t care whether something that has no eyes thinks I look good. For the record I suck my stomach in every time  I think I am being scanned-doesn’t everyone. I was beginning to feel like I could only go into the kitchen when I was looking really good. What happened to the Sunday morning slumming it in my pyjamas. That went with this stupid device that would be horrified if I came into the kitchen looking anything less than glamorous. I hate the thing.

It talks to me all the time, every time I walk into the kitchen. I think it’s not designed for shy people. It cheerily says good morning to me every morning, frankly its lucky to still be in one piece. I don’t want ‘good morning’ at 6am. No morning that starts at 6am can ever be that good.  At 6am I just want coffee and I don’t want to have to say, ‘Make me coffee’. I just want to switch on the machine and smell the sweet aroma of coffee. I don’t want it to say, ‘your coffee will be ready in 15 minutes time, after your shower. I am starting the water now.’ I am not a morning person and it’s at this point that I do want to scream at it-I can turn on my own fuckin shower.’ But it does it for me because it’s I pre programmed to switch on my shower at a particular time. A low point yesterday, I confess, I didn’t get in the shower until the programme had stopped it and then had a ‘manual shower’ which should not even be a bloody’ thing. I think it knows. I don’t care

The tension between us, between me and this device has been growing. I think it is time to switch it off. I think it has come down to a decision between it and me and I think it has to be me staying. I like the negativity setting more because I feel justified in swearing at it. There is no other justification for my behaviour. I have friends whose houses are ‘connected’ and they love it. Why can’t I? Because I don’t, because I can do stuff for myself, because I am capable of sorting out a carton of milk. Because my milk is not renewed, it is just fuckin bought from the supermarket, whatever the hell you want to call it.

It doesn’t know I am angry with it and I feel bad but there is no way of telling it. There are some phrases it simply doesn’t understand, ‘I hate you’, I can’t stand you’ I don’t like you’ ‘I am going to smash you with a hammer if you speak to me again’. These phrases it does not understand. An oversight by the developers. I can send it emojis from my phone when it has done something wrong. I think my phone loves it. It has done nothing wrong. Nothing at all. I just don’t like it. Its intrusive. It sounds too metallic, too contrived. I didn’t even like it when I changed the programming so it spoke a different language.

So the time has come. I am going to run from here to the kitchen and pull the plug. I feel bad. It is not the fault of the machine. I am simply not ready for total housel connectivity-is that what they call it. I don’t know how I am going to break the news to my phone, or the milk renewal service. I hope the fridge will forgive me and the car, I will sort some sort of manual calendar entry for recharging the car. And if the lights hate me, there are always candles. I steel myself. It has to be done. I focus and I run.

Geriatric-Just another cliché..

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

We are not now or ever going to purchase a mobility scooter. You know they come in a side car version now so that you can ‘take along a grandkid’ Like I’d let my daughter ride out with my mother.

I am sitting at my computer. So my mother and Maureen Bitman knew each other. I am looking at  some of Maureens arts and crafts videos, some of her more popular ‘crochet’ series ones. She is currently crocheting a ‘crop top’ – who wears a crochet crop top-it has holes! I want to scream at the screen but in Maureen’s world you wear a crop top over something so the holes don’t matter.

I looked at search history-foolishly-something you should never do when you’re married. What has my husband been looking at? What delights of the internet have tempted him? It has not been a good day. I know I have been focussed on my mother and her increasingly international career, I know her public profile causes all of us problems. But this was a new low. A blow beyond what even I expected. He has been googling arts and crafts porn-which is not even a  thing-because for one thing the women are not even naked. He is just watching fully clothed women knit or embroider in some sort of weird throwback to a golden age of femininity. They’re dressed for gods sake-it is not porn when they are fully clothed. I want to shriek at the machine. What is happening. Why is the machine letting this happen. I can’t do that. I can’t shriek at a machine. I am calm. I am not calm.

I don’t even think I can face him. I don’t know what to say. This is the last straw. My daughter is absorbed in cute puppies on Nicebook where her saccharine sweet 7-8 year old friends talk about the latest trends in pony tails and never disagree on anything. They love how those cup cakes are iced regardless of the fact that most of them look like a seagull flew overhead and let one go on top of it.

They are all sweet and encouraging when Freya cuts her finger on the page of the book she is reading for the readathon for who knows what charity. ‘Oh goodness Freya, you will get over it, you will recover. Remember when Jana cut her finger, she wore a plaster for a day but then she was fine.’ And then some enormous discussion about the best plasters, how it should be put on, oh and lets not forget, best plasters are the ones with puppies on them, or kittens. Nicebook, OMG Nicebook –it shouldn’t even be a thing. Whatever happened to the golden age of cyberbullying. Everytime she signs off the machine says, ‘Now play nicely together and we’ll see you tomorrow but only if your Mummy and Daddy say yes.’ It actually says that to her at the end. I want to grab the whole device and scream at it. ‘No my daughter is a child and children can be bad and stop brainwashing her to be good, good, good all the time.’

Ok I admit it, the other day I did grab it and scream at it and now she thinks I’m delusional.

So to sum up, my husband is watching fully dressed women knit in his spare time (it is not porn if they are not naked), my daughter is being brainwashed by her stupid social network into permanent niceness and my mother remains at large, with a warrant out for her arrest, ok several warrants. Murder, theft, drug dealing, imitating a crochet judge – the usual stuff.   If I were going to do Christmas cards this year I can’t even begin to think what I would put in them. Maybe I could just go with-‘work is going well’ –which it is because I remain committed to my career, focussed on what needs to be achieved and calm despite the crises surrounding me.

Of course the only friends I have left are the ones in the police force- the ones who haul me in once a month to find out if I have seen my mother. I wonder if I shouldn’t reach out to Maureen Bitmans daughter. I resolve tomorrow to write her a Christmas card even though Christmas has just gone. I should at least thank her for the information that she gave to me. The file. The one I haven’t looked at, haven’t opened-the one about the woman, the first woman who imitated a crochet judge. I wonder why she gave it to me. What am I supposed to get from it.  I don’t even know where I put it.

I shut down the machine. There is nothing more I can learn from this stupid machine today. The truth is Christmas has been hard without my mother. I know I never went to see her at that stupid home and true I never called her, not even at Christmas time but I read all those updates the home sent and she seemed happy. It makes no sense that I would miss her so much this Christmas. I tell myself that it is not what I think it is, those other Christmases didn’t matter because it was my choice.

This Christmas is her choice. She could send a card, write an email, arrange to meet in a motorway services, disrupt transmission for the Christmas specials and send me a message. She did none of those things. Christmas passed us by without her thinking of me. It passed with the usual hoo-haa on the news, a round up of this year and all of them plastered with her face-here are the highlights of the year, most of them relate to a bunch of octogenarians who have changed the world. Do you know the sales of mobility scooters have skyrocketed. I don’t want to say it but I even found a brochure for one of those in my husbands briefcase. Which is another reason I am sitting here alone on a computer. We are not now or ever going to purchase a mobility scooter. You know they come in a side car version now so that you can ‘take along a grandkid’ Like I’d let my daughter ride out with my mother.

That file, I think it is in the car. I go downstairs, the house seems full. She is on the device in one room, he is on another device in another room. I get in the car, rummage around, there is the file.

I might as well. I pull out of the drive, head out to the main road, then, and there is no avoiding it because the place is full of mobility scooters and you can’t just bump them out of the way. I am on the motorway. I pull into the usual services. I am distraught, overwhelmed.

I take the file, go in, sit at my usual table. I think the till operator recognised me. I nod politely and pay for the coffee. I must look pitiful. I think I am still wearing my pyjamas but I try to pretend I have some dignity. This is going to be another of those movie clichés, I am the woman sitting in the motorway services reading a file given to her by the woman whose mother’s death the first womans mother covered up whilst impersonating her to escape from being captured after she had murdered four people (or was it five, maybe three-does it matter) in a nursing home before going on the run with her friends-or something-who can follow it anymore. I am the woman who has discovered her husband watches arts and craft porn-I want to stand up and scream –if they are not naked it is not porn. I cannot scream that out in a motorway services. I must not scream that out in a motorway services. The woman whose daughter is so nice that it induces her to vomit. I am the woman in pyjamas in a motorway services who is on the verge of a breakdown-how many movies has that been in!!!!!

The Supplement

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

I tell the machine what I am thinking. I think for it. I am it. It is me. I don’t know who is in control. It’s all so fast and yet the shift seems to go on forever…read more

I look in the mirror. Mostly at my hair. My scalp.  At the bald patches. The ones that look red and slightly burned. If I was good enough, better,  I could move on.  They always promise you can move on, but who ever moved on. No one I knew, not ever. No one was ever better or good enough. I think they might be lying.  Most of them-us- move on, but only to the burns unit not anywhere else, or their minds suddenly fail. They get slack jaw. They start drooling. Their body stops responding to their commands. They get carried out.

I bounce on the balls of my feet. Tell my legs they must keep working. I look carefully in the mirror for signs that my mouth might be drooping. Does it look lopsided, more lopsided than yesterday. They keep saying it’s getting better, they are learning to manage the heat being generated, it is not as bad as it use to be. It’s not like before- when they had to make incisions into people’s skulls and put the electrodes on the actual brain. There were infections. It was unhygienic. People died at their desks back then. Infection spread from person to person. They don’t do that anymore. Now there are just burns and burn out.

They hook up the wires -electrodes-to our scalps. They have to have good skin contact, hence the bald patches. And they are truly bald patches. I have no hair follicle left there. It is all gone. It was not an entirely pain free procedure. I will look like this forever. If people move on how come I have never seen someone out there who has bald patches? Maybe they can replace it. After all look at everything else ‘they’ can do.

They tell us it is noble work, for the good of humanity. That humanity is being improved, the lives of human beings being improved by what we do. They are not specific though. How exactly does what I do, do that? There are never any clear answers

I am a supplement. That’s what they call it. The computer needs some of my neurons, my electrons. There are things it can do but there are also questions it can’t answer and to answer those questions the quickest and most efficient thing to do is to plug in a human brain. There are offices full of them – us-we-supplements- everywhere. You can always tell a supplement by the hair cut and the bits where they put the electrodes – the hair around it is often slightly singed. There’s also the slightly difficult position in which they-we-us-I- hold my head. For most of the day when I am ‘hooked up’ my head is held in a cradle so my neck muscles have slackened. It is not an attractive look, but there is still a fetish website. Some people like them-us-supplements- nearly completely gone, just before our minds actually give up.

The truth is, well you know what the truth is. It is not getting better. It is not going to get better. I don’t even know what the machine that I am being plugged into does. I can think through the questions it asks me, make human value judgements for it but I cannot, in the time frame that I have, understand what it does. The decisions have no context. Sometimes it is like it’s feeding off me. It is sucking all of the ‘me’ out of me. It works so much faster than I do. It calculates, pulls together data, calculates even more, and I answer the more difficult questions. Mostly I can’t even remember what they are. There is no camaraderie, no atmosphere, we are all afraid. We cannot talk to each other. We are like a hive of collective thinkers. We are like ants or bees or something. All our energy for the day goes into the machine, into the analysis for which we exist. I am sure though, bees and ants must chat, must like each other. We don’t even know each other.

I remember all the empty promises. In the future, you will be able to upgrade your mind, you will be able to function at a higher level. That is not what happened. I remember it is not meant to be this way, the machines are going to supplement the humans and not the other way around. It did not happen that way. The machines got better, but they reached a limit. And then with the flick of a switch we were supplementing them and not the other way around. Our neurons increasing their capacity and not vice versa. I was alive for it and I don’t even know how it happened.

What’s it really like, I will tell you. I get up and I put ice –if I can get ice- on the bald patches. The theory being that if I can cool them first they won’t get so hot. It is just a theory. It jolts me first thing. Wakes me up, gets my brain working. Then I have a caffeine fix, usually via an injection. I am entitled to caffeine although its monitored because they want my brain to be stimulated but only to a certain point. I have regular tests for caffeine and lots of other chemical levels whilst working. They want to keep my brain at maximum capacity for the 10 hour shift. They will top me up intravenously if they need to.

I work out because I will be sitting all day. All day. They care nothing for my physical health unless it affects my mental health. They can and sometimes do ‘inject’ me with a ‘workout’. It lets my brain get all the benefits of a workout without actually doing the workout. It’s another trick they have. I like to occasionally do the workout.

I go to work. In theory I am supposed to put the drip that will feed me into my arm. I am supposed to willingly put my head in the cradle. That is not quite how it works. No one is willing. It is all very ‘assisted.’ The electrodes that I plug into seem to have a mind of their own. I watch them every morning snake out from the console towards me. I want to stop them, to move my head, to turn and run. But the cradle that is holding my head- is actually holding my head. Someone roughly or gently depending on their mood will have hooked me up to the intravenous drip that will feed me. No one will toilet me or its unlikely they will and by the end of the day the smell will make me want to be ill. At least it did at first, now I am used to it and I simply go and shower at the end and wash all the shit and pee away.

I sit there for 10 hours and I answer the questions I am asked. I supplement the machine and all the time it is getting hotter and hotter. I can hear the fan whirring trying to keep everything cool but it doesn’t work. It never works. I can feel my skin starting to redden. My face is red. If I could see my arms they would be red. But my head is held in one position all day and I can only look at the dead screen ahead of me. There is nothing on that screen, all day, everyday. There is nothing there. I just stare. And something else uses my brain, fires questions at me. I have to answer them. Quickly. I never feel like I am in control. I don’t know if I am willingly answering the questions or being forced to use my brain to answer them. I am physically trapped but I don’t know if my brain belongs to me or not. It is no wonder our minds go.

It starts to feel like my blood is boiling about half way through. I will be sweating. I will have wet myself. I will still be working despite the physical discomfort. I have not got the time to be thinking about the physical discomfort. I supplement the machine. It does not supplement me. I don’t know if I am doing it myself or it the thoughts are just being taken from me. I don’t know if I am in control. I am imprisoned physically but I don’t know who owns my mind in that time. I can’t think about it at the time. It is only afterwards that I know what has really happened. All the time, hour after hour. Neurons firing, electrodes prompting. I don’t know if I am in control. I don’t know whether it is controlling me or if I am being controlled. Hour after hour. I will become so hot. My skin will itch but I won’t notice it. The stench is probably overwhelming but still I take decisions. I tell the machine what I am thinking. I think for it. I am it. It is me. I don’t know who is in control. It’s all so fast and yet the shift seems to go on forever.

I will do this for hour on hour. I will smell my hair becoming singed. Sometimes you can hear someone groaning but mostly we are quiet and still. No one ever finishes a shift at the same time, that way we can never talk. At the end I will struggle to stand. My body will be in a kind of torpor from 10 hours of just sitting. I will have had all my nutritional needs met intravenously but I will still be hungry. My trousers will be filthy. I will wash them in the shower and dry them overnight and wear them tomorrow again. There is no point in doing anything else. I don’t know if my mind is mine. I can’t even be sure I am real.

They tell us that when we are good enough, fast enough, when we have helped the machines to understand the human mind, when that has happened, we can move on, all of us can move on. Sometimes my burned hair falls out of my head. Where are we moving on to? I examine my mouth, perhaps it is beginning to droop. Perhaps that is just the sadness. I know, I am plugged into the machine, that giant organical, mechanical hive, I know. I know. There is no moving on. I don’t know. I won’t ever know. That is probably the truth.

 

 

Legacy: Plastic Belly

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

Plastic belly -The old woman is in the advanced stages of the ‘belly’ now. There is no comfort to be had, her distended gut is heavy and lies on her lap pulling her downward. There is nothing that can remove the plastic from her system. ..read more

It was as if yesterday just didn’t happen. A woman, an old woman and the rain just falling beside her,  around her. I must have dreamed that. I have lain in bed for most of today. It has not been a good day.  I only got up to eat, to toilet, today. When I say eat-there’s not much to eat. The food is mostly rancid here. It will be a few weeks before it is even safe to cross the Med. I need to cross the Med.

To focus. I try not to remember the north-the hardened snow laced with plastic. No wonder there is nothing left there. Here there are the waves to remind me that all is not well with the world, as if the gnawing constant hunger in my stomach wasn’t enough.  When it was first recognised as a phenomenon,  they called them ‘glitter waves’ or ‘sparkle surf’ because in the azure blue you could see tiny flecks of plastic, they would sometimes glint in the sun – that was before we realised we were drinking it, eating it. Another world away.

The waves make an odd sound now when they crash into the shore. They are heavier too, if one of them lands on you it hurts. Sometimes it even cuts. Surfers, I remember pictures once from before. Surfers coming out of the ocean, their wetsuits shredded from the pieces of plastic that had pounded down on them. Surfing passed from this earth, like all sport. I never tried it but oddly I miss it.

I went to the beach the day before yesterday, walked along its plastic laden multi-coloured shore, lots of pink and blue-dear god we were obsessed with those colours, they made us male and female –what a shame we realised too late that those things weren’t different. Now we strive just to hope, just to survive. I am hungry but I don’t want to beg for food.

I lie down here without purpose, just to exist. Not to sleep. Untired. Not relaxed-tense.

I can hear the rain on the roof and the waves seem closer than ever. Probably because they are. The town is overwhelmed by water again. The waves lap gently at the door, before more often than not, sneaking under it to soak all that we have left down there. Everything I have here fits into a bag and it is tucked at my feet.  We are upstairs although it is more of a platform than a floor above. I can still look over the edge and see the room below. The water and the bits of plastic swilling around coating everything. I am glad none of it is actually mine. Perhaps there was food down there. They both look at me closely. I have no reason to lay in bed. Just what’s in my head.

This morning, when I woke, the water was nipping at my mouth. Perhaps I imagined it. In the night it rained and the tide was high and the combination of the two flooded the town again.  I sat up in my bed.  Her and her mother had gone upstairs and left me there. I understand, I am another mouth to feed. I promise to myself I will help them clean up this time. I looked at the swirling water beneath me. I can see it now still from up here.  I can hear its irregular sloshing against the bits of furniture downstairs. I want to put my hand in it, to feel water again. To feel it slip through my fingers, to sense its power, to push against it. Truthfully I will just end up covered in small pieces of plastic.

I used to swim, a long time ago. I don’t think you can swim in this, there is so much plastic. It is much worse here than the channel I crossed between what used to be England and France. There the water was clean in parts. Here it is filled with small particles of plastic. I don’t even understand how plastic can float. I watch it endlessly and wonder why it all doesn’t just sink. I remember once we were worried about micro plastics because you couldn’t seem them. I know the micro plastics are still there. We still can’t see them. But all these pieces are just in the process of breaking down, of becoming micro plastics. And we can see them. We fear them. Because we have seen everything else die and now they are killing us. These will become micro plastic but we can still see them. A constant reminder of our achievements, of our folly, of our imminent death. Tiny pieces everywhere, no wonder we all have the ‘belly’. I look at it and think dear god what chance do we have.

This morning I waded through the water and upstairs. But it wasn’t the same as running my hands through it. When I got up here, they both looked at me. I saw a moment of guilt, of sadness that I was still with them but I ignored it. These are the only friends I currently have.

I had plastic all around the bottom of my trousers. It needed to be dealt with. There is a box of not clean, but relatively clean sand in the corner and I scrubbed it off and scrubbed my hands with it. Sand is all we have to keep really clean. The plastic doesn’t seem to leach deep down into the sand so if you can find sand and dig, you can get clean, if you can bear the feeling of it. But that will end soon too. The sand comes from the ocean and well you see the problem.

The old woman is in the advanced stages of the ‘belly’ now. There is no comfort to be had, her distended gut is heavy and lies on her lap pulling her downward. There is nothing that can remove the plastic from her system. She groans quietly. I don’t even think we know how it kills. At some point there is no digesting food, there is a tipping point at which the plastic is just more than the body can dispose of. It just sits there and the agony of slow death follows, malnutrition, a heart attack from the shock. It’s painful, heavy to carry around, like a kind of pregnancy only terminal.

The thing is you have to carry it literally. Your belly is so heavy you have to haul it around. In the early days there were slings, belly slings. It makes me laugh now because somehow we thought we could survive it. Some people did at first. Surgeons opened people up and removed it, you could have a plastic drain procedure. There were so many people. And then of course, there were the charlatans and the home DIY kits and it rarely worked for too long. Once the plastic in your system got to a point there was nothing you could really do, can do. It will likely happen to us all and I guess there is a kind of justice in that. I can’t remember when it overwhelmed us, when it became the most common cause of death. I can’t even pinpoint when the high tides began, the floods, the things I remember, the timing, its all gone awry. I just lie here hoping that I will feel better tomorrow than I did today.

Legacy: An old woman in the rain

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

It is as if the rain is simply passing her by, as if she is so old rain has simply forgotten her and given up…read more

I have wandered a long way south. Back to here.  Here is a town, a settlement on the coast, the other side of the plastic mountains.  The rest of this tiny world hurries through the rain. I have taken respite in the coffee shop. It’s the middle of the day, but the world is grey and dreary.  I remember coffee shops when they were bright airy things with art and biscuits. This is not like that.

Here the coffee is served in tins, mine – an old baked bean can with the top bent over and smoothed so you don’t cut yourself. A fire burns in an old tin drum in the middle of the ‘room’. It exudes warmth but not very far. The roof is old bits of cardboard and probably asbestos, probably killing us as we sit here. You can hear the rain smattering on it. It reminds me of my childhood. Where I came from that kind of roof had been common. It wasn’t here.

This place has no walls. Just a small group of tables under a roof. With a counter and someone who keeps the coffee warm. I can’t remember their name because I don’t care. This place has just the essence of coffee. Sometimes it’s better than others. It’s mined from the dregs of old coffee pods and half used jars and tins, probably somewhere east, past the plastic mountains. It’s cut with something, probably dirt. The grit gets in your teeth. The coffee isn’t pure. There is no sugar.  No milk. No happy smiling barista by a machine. This is brewed in cold water, stirred with a spoon and heated afterwards in a fire. It is the semblance of coffee. The most it does is keeps my hands warm. Somewhere tucked away in my pocket, is the device, hidden. It has taken me a long time to get here. I have done two seasons in the north. I feel sure whatever my task has been it is long since forgotten by those who sent me.

My body aches with the cold and the fire doesn’t seem to ever warm it no matter how close I hover. I have friends here that I stay with, but friends are only ever the price you can pay for them. I can’t pay much. I paid much more the first time I came here, looking for my daughter. One of my ‘friends’ works out on the plastic mountains all day, making enough to survive. The other is ill, the ‘belly’ I think-but I can’t say it to her.

So it’s raining hard and I have taken shelter here in the coffee ‘shop’. The muddy floor is the same inside and out. Just dirt with flecks of plastic in it. The plastic is everywhere. It is inescapable. I perch with my elbows on a high table and watch everyone hurry by. I am in no hurry, I am looking for passage across the Med, back to the African continent. It’s a bit early in the spring for it. The tides are still wild and high. Half this town it seems has been under water last week and probably will be again this week. No one has enough left to care about. They just get on with it. They could live the other side of the plastic mountains but that has its own dangers. They’d rather clear out the water each week and start again in an endless cycle in winter. In summer it is perpetually dry, endlessly dry and the heat captures the plastic mountains in the sunshine. All that beautiful plastic glimmering in the distance, ever present, slowly killing us and everything else with it.

This place is dull and grey now, like London was sometimes but without the muddy, rich hues of deepest winter that I love and remember. Everyone here is dirty. The water is for drinking and not cleaning. People smell and that is simply eternal. We all smell and after awhile none of us smell. It is an assault on the senses to a newcomer. The water carries disease but worse it carries minute particles of plastic. It needed to be filtered to be used. We all have filters. Wash in it and you could find yourself covered with a fine film of plastic that you can’t see. From there you risk it getting into your food. Wash too often and you have plastic belly- the ‘belly’ from ingesting it.

There is no way around it. Plastic belly is not a nice way to die and I pity all the species we have killed that way. A large protruding bulge where the plastic is accumulating and you can’t digest it or get rid of it, there is simply too much, it clogs everything and you pass slowly and painfully from this world. It is of our own making of course.

There are so many things that don’t exist in this world anymore. On a day like today I think of umbrellas, of how they were banned at some point, on account of the regularity with which they pitched up on sea shores, thousands of miles from where they began. Some, a few, have coats, but not water proof ones, those are long gone. Some kind of chemical on them, it leeched into the water. It wasn’t good so they stopped making them. I can’t remember when. We have gotten used to wetness, to the delights of rain. People cover their heads or are drenched. Mostly the latter because it is a chance to be cleaner, without thinking of the consequences. Water from the sky has less plastic than any other kind of water. There are two kinds of water here now, plastic and non-plastic.

I watch as the world races past in the rain. I am absorbed in the nothingness that seems to occupy my brain these days. A total lack of direction, of motivation. And then I see her. She stands out. She has a coat. It is- her coat is bright blue. She is old. Even from here I can see she is old. Old is rare here, no one lives very long anymore. Her hair is short and neat. But what strikes me, what calls me to my senses, is –she isn’t wet. She is walking along and it isn’t raining on her. It rains around her as if she holds an umbrella none of us can see. I look around to see if anyone else has noticed her. No one seems to. They are all in a hurry, bedraggled but with more purpose than me.

She walks quietly. Softly, unobtrusively she moves from one side of my field of vision to the other. Relentlessly dry. Her grey hair sits untouched on her neck. Her shoes are bright and clean as if the mud is afraid to stick to them. It is as if the rain is simply passing her by, as if she is so old rain has simply forgotten her and given up. As if she is invisible to the rain.

I slug down my coffee and go out after her. I follow her. I watch as she walks on and on. Still she doesn’t get wet. Her coat is dry. Mine is drenched. I am walking behind her now, almost on her heels. She doesn’t notice. I can see her really closely. She IS dry. It is not raining on her. It’s like she is the past walking in front of me. I grab her elbow. The kind of thing that if it had been me I’d have turned around and plunged a knife in. She doesn’t. She turns towards me. Effortlessly. Artlessly- as if she’s come really here from a different age. Her eyes meet mine. The ghostly grey of hers meet the brightness, the confusion of mine. She smiles and there are a thousand wrinkles, a thousand lifetimes in that.

I speak, ‘You aren’t wet. Its raining and you aren’t wet?’

She smiles more widely. She reaches down to move my hand from her arm. I look around. I am not even certain anyone else can see her.

She simply answers, ‘You are alive, but not living.’ She brushes me away and is gone. I try to follow but she loses me in the crowd. I stand there, drenched, alert.

I look around me at everyone hurrying past. It was as if the past had stood in front of me. But I look around me and I am still here. The plastic mountains off in the distance, the murky grey monoliths to humanities vanity. My clothes are not tailored, my hair unkempt. My shoes lodged in the mud. The past is not here. I say it out loud. ‘The past is not here’. I look up and away. A man brushes past me. I am not sure, maybe he was trying to steal something. I focus. I must get passage across the Med, I must finish this so I can go on. I am alive but not living

Another – Another motorway services cliché

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

Its such a cliché, I am sitting in a motorway services, drinking coffee and trying to remember how my mother took over the internet, how she murdered, stole, lied, faked being an international crochet judge. I am the person in the movie staring into their coffee wondering why they never knitted for their daughter….read more

They said it was voluntary, which I took to mean, voluntary or else we will make you.

It’s the same two officers as before, only they look more tired. I note one is still wearing some kind of crochet number-seriously the police should think about banning crochet items.

She starts, ‘Maureen Bitman, did your mother ever mention her?’

‘No’ I say. I shuffle in my seat. I am sitting down but I am not going to take it that way.

I can ask questions too.

I go on the offensive. This is voluntary.

 ‘I think we talked about this before?’ They change tack.

‘In the 5 years in which you NEVER’ (and she emphasises that word-but frankly not visiting my mother is no longer a source of guilt for me-I think she realises it and starts again).

‘In the 5 years in which you never visited your mother, did she ever write to you, email you.’

I shake my head, ‘I got regular report cards from the nursing home like everyone else, nothing out of the ordinary, your Mum enjoys the Friday shows, she knits and sews.’ I know those are untrue now but at the time I thought she’d found a new hobby. I don’t say that. I am giving nothing away.

The one who’d been talking, nods at me.

The other one passes a leaflet across the table and waits to see my reaction. On it is a face I now recognise, Maureen Bitman. It’s a flyer for a tour she is doing for arts and craft, a motivational speaking tour to every nursing home in the south east. I have nothing to say so I go with, ‘So.’ It sounds confrontational. It’s not the tone I wanted. I was aiming for careless indifference.

‘Look at the venues.’ one of them says. I am too busy thinking about my own words to pick up on which one spoke.

Of course it went to my mothers nursing home about a month after she moved in.

‘Your mother and Maureen Bitman, we think they met.’ It’s the one in the crochet jacket again.

I nod but say nothing. I don’t want to say ‘So’ again.

She goes on,  ‘We think they knew each other well.’

I go on the offensive again. I really can’t help them here. ‘I wouldn’t know, I didn’t see her during that time.’ I am polite but firm, whatever the hell that means.

‘They didn’t like each other,’ the two of them look at each other as if they are playing out their own little drama with this interview, ‘well at first they did, but after about a year, your mother refers to her as ‘Bitters’, then ‘Bitso’, then finally just ‘Bit’.’ She spits out the last word and avoids eye contact with her partner. If I didn’t know better I’d say they’d moved slightly apart in that exchange. It makes me wonder even more if this is about my mother or them.  

None of that stuff about my mother really resonates, I wonder what they are trying to get at.

‘We’d like you to look through their email correspondence, see what you think? See if you can spot a reason why they fell out.’

‘I don’t want to.’

She says, ‘It’s voluntary of course’, only it sounds menacing, well as menacing as someone wearing a crochet jacket can be. I take it to mean I have to or else.

I start to read, this is my mother’s personal correspondence, not ever meant for me to see. They start by talking about grand children. Maureen has one tucked away somewhere as well. I keep reading, they move on to philosophy, then arts and crafts, where they heavily diverge. Maureen is convinced the future of the internet is an arts and crafts collective, my mother is convinced it should be for use by over 70’s only. My eyes prick with tears and this must be what they want. There is no mention of me. Nothing, it’s like I didn’t exist. Lots on my daughter, even my husband is mentioned, but not me, never me.

I collect myself. I focus. In my head, I’ve got this -no matter how perturbed I am,  ‘I guess they disagreed about the future of the internet.’ I sound casual. Unflustered. Focussed.

‘Guess they did?’ She sounds matter of fact. I am not sure if I am affirming what she said or if it’s a new idea. She tries a different tack as if I am withholding information.

‘Been on Wikipedia lately?’

Stupid question, why would I be on Wikipedia, ‘No,’ I say, shaking my head. I know what’s coming next. This is the bit where I should tip back my chair casually and give them a look of defiance, but I will likely tip my chair over so I settle for a sip of water. I drink defiantly though and set it down closer to me, not even bothered by the ring of water it’s left behind. I am in the groove now. I know why they’re asking about Wikipedia. I even know the theory behind it. The idea is that my mother was trying to get more elderly women on to Wikipedia whilst in her nursing home and they kept rejecting her and now she is taking vengeance on them. Is it true? How would I know? I don’t even care anymore. I look at them, meet their gaze. Seriously I can see the marks other glasses of water have made on this table. A proper police station would have coasters. I am in control now.

‘You know your mother has restricted it to entries for people over the age of 75, its more like an octogenarian dating site than a fount of all knowledge now.’

They mean Wikipedia. I nod. I know.

‘Plus’ she goes on ‘there’s the whole mobility scooter thing, what are they called, Muberscoot, that company moving in on mini cab territory. We think she’s behind that too.’

Then the other one chimes in-‘we think in her spare time in that nursing home she wrote some Wikipedia profiles and they were all rejected. Coincidental?’

I say nothing. Everyone thinks that. Its hardly a secret. Even I’ve heard it. Sounds like my mother, its probably true. They won’t get me this way. I am made of ice and steel. I hold their gaze. I want to say something like, get some coasters or crochet looks rubbish on a cop but I hold it in. I am ice today.

‘Your mother- she has a mean streak’ I want to roll my eyes at this one, the body count kind of indicates that. So tempted to say it but I don’t. I just stare.

‘Seems like if you make an enemy of her, you pay for it in the end.’ They look at each other for the first time. They think I am about to crack.

‘Our question to you is-who’s next?’ She leans across the table and looks at me. I can see the hook and eye on the crochet jacket really closely now. It’s a botch job, even I know that. Focus. These people seem to think I have some insight into my mothers activity. I don’t. I find her as mystifying as everyone else, I just don’t worship her the way they do.

‘Oh god as if I would know.’ It sounds tough, determined. Like my mother then I just –I don’t want to be my mother and I lose it for a second. I am flippant, its momentary, I shouldn’t have said it but I say. ‘Maybe you?’ I say out loud, stupidly, without any feeling behind it. It sounds desperate. I am not ice or steel. More like jelly.

They are on it straight away-‘is that a threat?’

‘No’ I backtrack, shake my head, ‘No’, now I sound really desperate, ‘I’ve no idea who my mother hates most of all.’  I sound pathetic and childish and I can hear my voice cracking. I keep thinking of some of those mothers at the school gates who my mother loathed and who should be shaking in their shoes right now.  

‘No’ I say emphatically, ‘Is that it?’ I ask, I think I might be shaking.

They nod. Clearly dissatisfied. I broke but not when they thought I would. A small victory. I get up and leave.

My daughter is home when I get there. I ask her how school was. Look she says and shows me the card she has made for mother’s day.

The card reads ‘Happy Grandma Day’.

‘But it’s mother day,’ I say.

‘No, nanna has changed it, its only for grandparents now, fathers day too.-just for grandpas.’

I look at her, stunned.

‘Its on the internet thing Mum,’

Then she says, ‘You’ve never knitted me anything.’ in a determined kind of way.

‘Nor has daddy and nor has grandma’ I say with too much sarcasm for a 7 year old.

‘Grandma doesn’t think you’re doing a very good job.’ She says that very determinedly.

I don’t feel I’m doing a very good job, I hold my tongue. Grandma on the other hand is doing a grand job on all of us.  

A device beeps in the background, she runs to it.

‘Whats that?’ I say.

‘Nicebook’ she says.

‘Nicebook?’

‘Gran made it, its social media for kids, there’s words you can’t use and its moderated by grandparents and everyone gets likes, everyone.’

I am suddenly more horrified. ‘Does it have a newsfeed?’

‘Only kittens and puppies’

Its like a wave just washes over me. She is completely insane. I don’t say it out loud but I am thinking it. She is utterly mental. Psychotic. Narcissistic. Every word I can think of-she is. Now I am shaking. SHE doesn’t think I am doing a very good job. What sort of role model is ‘she’

‘Mummy needs to go out, tell the bot to get you dinner.’ I grab the keys, my coat and run out the door.

I get in the car and drive at snails pace behind the mobility scooters. In the general milieu its impossible to change lanes without bumping a dozen mobility scooters into the hedge. I end up on the motorway and then at the motor way services.

I pull up and go in. I want coffee.

Its such a cliché, I am sitting in a motorway services, drinking coffee and trying to remember how my mother took over the internet, how she murdered, stole, lied, faked being an international crochet judge. I am the person in the movie staring into their coffee wondering why they never knitted for their daughter, having just made it through a police interview about their mother, the serial killer fraudster, fake crochet judge. I sit there and try and remember how Uma Therman played that role and  I can’t.  I just can’t.

Rome: A Manual holiday

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

Bedsores and pixelated fish, I did not enjoy the virtual Maldives…read more 

In my defence, I did look online and it did say in the small print-they do manual holidays.

It’s weird how technology changes things. It’s so inconsistent. It’s hard to know what drives it. Why do some things become completely different and some don’t. Only one thing stays the same, somehow the masses always get the off cuts.

I am sitting in a travel agency – looking across a desk at someone who may or may not be human-I can’t tell. Certainly there will be a human supervisor in here somewhere and it could be her.

She smiles. I smile-it’s a holiday shop-she’s happy, I’m going to be happy, it’s how it works.

I always preferred holiday shop to travel agent and now it’s more accurate.

She starts, ‘Where would you like to go?’

‘Rome,’ I say, sounding more nervous than I should.

‘Ooh, its really popular, which century?’, she says enthusiastically. I am wearing my best clothes so I look respectable and believable.

‘Real time,’ and I pause because here is where it gets difficult. Then I just think- no don’t be intimidated- keep going! The words just come out,  ‘I want to physically go to Rome.’

She looks at me oddly.

‘Of course.’ she says but I can tell she doesn’t understand me.

I say it again, ‘Actually physically go to Rome.’

This time she gets it. She leans back in her chair and looks at me.

‘You mean actually go to Rome! Physically, in person, as in- taking your body to Rome?’

I nod. She’s a robot, I can tell because it occurs to her that her body and the rest of her aren’t one cohesive unit. She can be re-programmed, or re-souled as they now call it. I always think the obvious-we’ve been able to do that with shoes for a long time, lets not overhype the fact that we can do it with a robot. I should point out that I am in a minority on this point.  

‘Rome-Is that even possible?’ She realises she probably shouldn’t have said that-customer service and all.

‘Yes.’ I say. She looks flustered, in what I now see is a slightly mechanical way, an inhuman twist of the mouth I only just manage to catch.

‘I’ll see if it’s still actually there.’ She is back on track now, ‘some of these European cities, they’re just in virtual reality now. They don’t really exist.’ She is talking to me like I am five years old but she gets the idea.

‘Its ok,’ I say, ‘I checked and it is still there.’ I nod my head again.

‘Right,’ she says looking more flustered, ‘so a bus then?’  She looks down at the screen.

‘I think I’d need a plane- there’s some water in the way.’

She leans back in her chair and looks at me again.

‘A plane as in- a plane-like a flying thing type plane.’ There is just a hint of panic in this statement now.

I nod.

‘I don’t think we have them anymore. I mean-can you fly one?’

‘No ideally there’d be a pilot.’

She looks at me even more oddly. ‘How about Bath?’ I am beginning to worry about her programming, whether I am undermining it a bit. I’m sure there’s an offence about that, vexatious confusion of a near sentient being or something. I’ve no desire to be fined for something unintentional.

I keep at it, ‘No really my heart is set on Rome, in real time, actually going there.’

‘You mean manual travel, as in taking your actual body to Rome?’ Clearly I have not quite got through to her yet.

‘Yes.’

At this point I am worried her chair is going to tip over, she is leaning so far back.

‘We had someone take a bus to Bath last year.’ she says

‘Not Bath, Rome-plane, not bus.’

‘You know that you can go virtually to Rome, any time period at all?’

I sit back now, ‘I know but I physically want to go there. In person, me.’

Now she is sitting back and I am sitting back. An impasse

The woman in the chair next to me is booking her virtual holiday and the agent is asking her all the usual questions, How do you want to appear to other people on holiday? Do you want to appear taller on holiday, do you want to be thinner, do you want to be tanned, have a day of sunburn, eat etc etc. Do you want us to handle your social media in virtual reality or do you have a provider? Because virtual holidays are not like you think. Its not some waltz through a different reality, it’s more of a half way house. You get a chair and a headset and an avatar-well an avatar that everyone else can see on your holiday. Its controlled by some kind of high tech link to your brain and a lot of twitching, but basically you are sitting still and it is moving around and you have the sensation of moving but actually you are largely still. Its not quite how virtual reality was promised to us because that is hugely expensive, this way is cheap and efficient and much better for the environment.

The options for a virtual holiday are endless. You can appear as someone else, you can even be someone famous. You can have a great time or alternatively you can be robbed at knife point, you can be sun burned or tanned, you can eat what you want and never put on an ounce because you are actually fed intravenously the whole time. All of it, almost event can be pre planned, everything -except you can opt for a surprise box-which is a random event that will occur in your holiday, most people don’t. You can change options midway through, you simply find a virtual kiosk and change your plans. Depending on what that change is, it will either be free or cost more.

I did a virtual holiday to the Maldives last year. It was a group tour. I was the only one who didn’t choose the taller and thinner option. I also thought the whole virtual reality thing looked a bit cartoonish around the edges. I went snorkelling and some of the fish were pixelated. Plus there were issues around water temperature. I should have asked for a refund

It was only 5 days but 5 days too long. Plus after sitting in a chair for 5 days despite the best efforts of being fed intravenously and the physio-bots (and you need that because you don’t really move at all), I had bedsores. I should have sued. Bedsores and pixelated fish, I did not enjoy the virtual Maldives.

It’s hard to explain what these ‘package’ virtual tours are like, aside from telling you they are not like holidays at all. Basically at some point airports and planes got fitted with row upon row of chairs each with a ‘virtual reality headset’, its like economy class on a long haul flight only worse. You sit there on your package holiday and it happens to you and they feed you and massage your muscles so you can stand up at the end. It’s meant to be amazing but its horrendous. The smell of the place when you first walk in, oh  did I forget to mention the irrigation required to remove the waste-lets not forget that. Use your imagination.

Anyway some people love it because you can go anywhere and look like anything. Mostly holidays are populated with very thin, very tall, very annoying people who can’t afford their own platform to actually move about in a proper virtual reality.

I can see the travel agent still staring at me. She gets up and goes over to another woman. They are looking at me and conferring-I wonder if they are going to call the police-they might think I really am some kind of nuisance time waster type person on some kind of vexatious programming mission. I try not to panic. I just want to go to Rome.

The other woman comes over to me. ‘Hi I’m Jenna.’ she says, very slowly,  ‘And you are?’

I try and figure out whether to give a fake name, I don’t, ‘Tuesday I say-after the day of the week.’

‘Well Tuesday’ and now she is talking at me like I’m a five year old, even slower than before,  ‘We specialise in virtual tours, we don’t do man-u-al holidays.’ She spells out each syllable.

‘But your website,’ I start.

‘Wrong’ she says loudly and crisply and looks down at me.

They both just stand there, staring at me. I start to redden. I feel uncomfortable. I reach down and grab my bag, push the chair back, pick up my coat. I stumble out a ‘Thank you’, followed by a mumbled ‘Sorry’ and leave.  

I wonder what would happen if I just started walking, kept walking, found the water, a boat, kept going, just went to Rome. Can you even do that anymore. Maybe not. I’ve no idea. I can see them looking out of the window to make sure I have gone. They don’t want me back. I will go home, find a virtual tour. Was it so bad- after a few weeks the bed sores healed and really the only fish left in this world are pixelated and I should count myself lucky that I even know what a real one looks  like.

The dentist

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

 Imagine terminator in a dental chair and tell me that isn’t your worst nightmare….read more

I look at the door. I have no idea why I’ve come here. It doesn’t look promising. This is where you end up if you don’t use proper dental equipment. If I’d thought about it I would have cancelled, it can be difficult but there’s always a way. I could have uploaded data from someone else’s toothbrush and said mine was temporarily not working or something.

Here -is the dentist, only not how I remember it. Not one of those cheap dental x-ray booths in the shopping mall either. I don’t think they work anyway, they are backed by private dentists I’m sure. This place, this is an NHS dentist.

It’s been 6 years now since dentistry was made free on the NHS, only the NHS has robodents-that’s what they call them-stupid name and not clever. If you fail to brush properly and they are watching, well not watching but collecting data from your toothbrush, you have to attend a centre like this one-a robodent-like I said stupid name.

This place looks very low key, squeezed between a charity shop and the high street bookies-how is  it when even my tooth brushing is checked, the bookies is still here.  I struggled to even find the entrance, there was a vaguely human looking model on the front door with white teeth but the name of the place had long since been removed and the number half scratched away. It looks deserted, probably everyone else brushes their teeth. I brush mine but – I went manual awhile ago. My toothbrush can’t even connect to any device. I found it in an online antique store-slightly used but still usable.

When I push open the door, there’s a pile of dust at the bottom step that someone hasn’t moved. It otherwise looks clean and clinical. I guess no one pays much attention to the place, there’s no need, my device will tell me the way and also when I’ve arrived, except-well I often switch off location-something for which I can be fined-for a moments privacy I live with the odd fine.

I go up the stairs. The place feels empty. There are still human dentists but you have to pay for them. They are expensive. I can’t afford it-probably too many ‘You have switched off your location, you will now be fined’  fines. This place is eerie.

I approach the reception desk. The receptionist doesn’t notice me. She is not human, noticeably not human. I think it’s the skin, well the silicon or whatever it is. You can see it has the wrong lustre even from a distance. She is dressed in her neat clinical uniform. I clear my throat to draw attention to myself but I know it won’t work. She has eyes, glass ones that can’t see. I can see that one of her eyes has fallen out and is resting on her cheek. I can see the wires and it makes my stomach churn. I hate the sight of failing tech. She will only sense my device and not me.

She needs some maintenance. I can see now there is a stain on her uniform and the hem of it is down. The place smells a bit, like its been cleaned of germs but somehow the stains of dirt have remained. That’s often the case when a machine cleans somewhere. All the germs are dead but the dirt remains. This is not a good sign, perhaps it’s awhile since anyone has been here. I take out my phone and switch on location and wait a minute. The machine in front of me-the one with only one eye, picks up my location, who I am, where I am. She turns and smiles. She does have perfect teeth. I try to avoid looking at the eye perched on her cheek out of politeness, not that she would notice.  

‘Hello’ she says in what is meant to be a calm soothing voice, but is actually just slightly too mechanical. ‘The dentist will see you now.’

I wasn’t expecting it to be quite so prompt but I guess because of how it works, it is just very efficient. I smile back but she does not react. The eyes don’t see anything. It is quite spooky.

She points at a door, ‘Through there’ she says and this time rather than smile, I send an emoji and I can see she gets it and she understands.

I walk to the door, take a breath and go in. I hear the door lock behind me, an electronic lock. I cannot escape until it is finished.

A voice says, ‘Please put your bag on the floor and hang your coat on the hook.’ It waits for me to do that but I have no coat. I put my bag on the floor and ping the hook as if my coat is on it.

‘Oops’ it says sensing something but not the weight of my coat,’ I think you’re coat fell on the floor’ There is no way around this, I once had to hang my trousers on a hook. I am better at it now. I know how these sensory coat hooks work, I grab it again and pull it down and hold it for a few seconds. It senses the weight of me and thinks it’s my coat and is satisfied it is hanging.

The whole room smells slightly odd again.

The voice continues. ‘Can you see the chair in front of you?’

‘Yes’ I say.

‘Take a seat’.

I slide onto it gingerly. Its not that I don’t like the idea of a robotic dentist, its just that I feel more comfortable with humans. I’m the same with my hair, I have it cut by a human when I can. Being honest robotic hairdressers aren’t that good which you’d know if you could see my current cut.

‘Lean back’ it says.

I do.

 ‘Don’t be nervous’ it says.

How can you avoid being nervous. There isn’t a single human in the place. If something goes wrong, there is only me against a bunch of machines. Imagine terminator in a dental chair and tell me that isn’t your worst nightmare.

It’s just so eerie. There must have been human dentists here once. In fact as I look around there is a lot of dust on surfaces that are no longer used and there is even a disused old coffee cup on the floor in the corner. Probably left by the last person who did maintenance here-this was a human dentists room once. Some woman plied her trade with wide mouthed individuals. They talked, they laughed-maybe not that-but the conversation was pleasant, ordinary. This is clinical, mechanical, terrifying. I want a soothing voice but it sounds like a machine. I am alone here. No dentist, no nurse, just me and the chair and a machine.

‘Open you mouth’-it’s a command not a request. It could as easily be talking to a dog.

I open my mouth. I don’t even know how it knows I have opened my mouth. I wished I knew that, how does it know my mouth is open because frankly that is critical to what happens next.

Suddenly the light is on above me and its blinding. I want to ask them to make it less bright but I can’t because I can’t possibly close my mouth, plus there is no one to ask.

I can hear something moving towards me but I can’t see it. I clutch the edge of the chair and look away from the light. It knows! How does it know. I wished I’d research this.

‘You have to stay still now, shall we try again’. Is it me or is that a more menacing voice, slightly threatening.

Before we try again, strange padded pad things come up the side of my face holding it in place. They are not pushing against me but they are firm. I feel like an animal, trapped. I can see the light but nothing else. I can’t move my head. My mouth is still open. My mouth is trapped open. How does it know  exactly where my mouth is. What it if takes out my eye, I read that somewhere, I am sure I read that somewhere. I should have paid for a human dentist. I should have shoved a thousand deadening pills into myself before I came.

I can hear the machine-whatever it is –it’s coming closer. The light is still blinding. I want to scream but if it doesn’t examine my teeth now what will the next step be. How menacing does it get?

It’s in my mouth now, I know that. It’s louder than I thought, moving from tooth to tooth. I can hear it buzzing and still the light is so bright. I want to be ill but who knows what chaos that would cause. Then I know that is what the faint smell was when I walked in, human vomit, cleaned up by a machine. I bet if I examined the floor, the germs would be gone but the residue would remain. I hate this. I am terrified. There is nothing I can do but lay there with my mouth open, eyes wide with terror. Be still.

It taps each tooth, it’s taking an x-ray as it goes.

It is slow and a little more brutal than I’d like. When it goes to the back of my mouth it stretches the side of my lips and there is no way to say it hurts or to tell it to stop. All the time it is saying nothing but silently whirring. Recording information. I hate this. I try and focus. I will get through this.

I sit there paralysed in terror. Maybe for 10 minutes whilst it examines every tooth. At one point the whirring stuttered and I wonder if I will end up stuck here, unable to extract myself from this chair with the machine broken and inserted in my mouth. I wonder if every other dental surgery in this place is full of patients that got stuck here when the machinery broke. I wonder how often a real human ever turns up to check that everything is working. I wonder if this is a second rate machine because that’s all the NHS can afford. I wonder whether all those location fines are worth this.

I can hear its endless whirring as it moves slowly in my mouth. It says nothing.

Not relax your tongue or anything. It is clinical, mechanical and terrifying.

It is up to me to keep my tongue in check. I sit still. I focus. I will get through this. I swear after this I will save money and keep the location on my phone on. I will never let a machine do this again.

It is taking a long time.

I wonder what happens if the power shuts down and I am just stuck here. I wished I’d put a supply of food in my pocket- I will be trapped, or at least my head is trapped in this chair. I even wished I brought a coat to keep warm. These doors never unlock in a power failure. I could be here for days, weeks, I could die in here with this stupid thing in my mouth all for some sentimental idea about how I’d like to clean my teeth the way I used to, without the state checking I am doing it properly.

Finally the light goes off and I can see the instrument on the mechanical arm that has been in my mouth, being retracted back into wherever it came from. Over on the desk, which is just some kind of overhang because no human ever sits there anymore, something else starts to whirr away.

The pads that were holding my head begin to retract as well, the chair comes back to the upright position. I sit up. I have made it. I wait for what seems like a long time. Too long but I know I can’t leave until it says.

‘Your teeth are healthy but you have some gum trauma.’

If there was a real dentist here, I would ask what that was.

‘You have been over-brushing, over-brushing leads to gum trauma.’

Thanks I say out loud to a room that doesn’t hear me.

‘To prevent gum trauma’ The voice stops momentarily. I wait. It starts again.

‘we have rewritten the program for your’ the next word takes awhile as well.

‘toothbrush’.

‘We have sent the program to your device’

I go to my bag and there is my device with an emoji with huge teeth on it.

‘Just click on the emoji when you get home,’ and again there is a wait.

‘and the program will be transmitted to your toothbrush.’

‘Thank you’ I say, but no one hears.

The door unlocks behind me and that is it.

I put my back over my shoulder and ping the coat hook as if I have removed my coat.

I go out past reception without acknowledging the receptionist who can’t see me anyway.

This is how it is now. I had to go to the dentist because my records show I haven’t used my toothbrush in a year. But the truth is I have a manual one, a real one, an unconnected one. I brush my teeth myself without any data download. I just hide in the bathroom and brush my teeth, but I have done that for the last time. I do not want to come here again.

I know I will click on the emoji when I get home. I know from now on I will need to use the electric toothbrush or risk a fine. They will know by now that I have wasted resources on a dental visit when in fact I have brushed my teeth just not with a state sanctioned electric brush. They are probably tracing the purchase as I leave. Another fine. I need to accept, I need to change. I have used a manual toothbrush. I have knowingly used a manual toothbrush. I have drained the state of resources which were not mine to use. I feel guilty even as I leave. That is how they do it though isn’t it. There will be an email when I get home, maybe even a shaming on social media. I don’t think about it. I think about how nice it felt to hold my own toothbrush in my hand, to brush my teeth myself, to control it. I won’t do it again.

 

Geriatric-another motorway services cliche

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

this is such a cliché-two women having coffee in a motorway services where the mother of one has covered up the death of the other’s mother and the one who’s mother is guilty is saying how much she loves her mother…read more

 

The woman sitting across from me is suited and booted. Neat, tidy and glossy. I wished I’d thought to wear something other than jeans. At the very least I should have worn jeans that fit. I have no jeans that fit. I am already making a bad impression and I haven’t even spoken yet. We are here because of my mother. I am not sure why but this crime, this impersonation of an international crochet judge always feels like the worst of her offences. I think it’s because no one has ever been charged with it before. Other people have done hacking, murder, theft, but this one just feels like-well it’s the one that sets her apart. It’s the one that garners the headlines. It’s the one that smacks of desperation, of dereliction, of total deviancy. And a whole raft of other ‘d’ words I can’t remember.

I didn’t even want to open her email when I saw it. She wants to see me. Her-the woman whose mother my mother impersonated after her mother was dead, Maureen Bitman’s daughter.

Here I am again, at another motorway services, trying to pretend I know what to do. Trying to think of what to say to this woman. I didn’t look her up on social media. I just couldn’t bring myself to do that. I know she was all over the news when it happened. I know my mother was responsible. I know my mother hacked her social media, what could looking her up possibly tell me.

I should have looked her up, that would be respectful. Would it? I suppose I would at least have recognised her when she came towards me. I had a vision of what she should look like. She isn’t like that of course. In my head, she had long grey hair and a wrinkled face and she was wearing quilted trousers and a vague coloured undershirt with a crochet knit jacket over the top. She was the epitome of arts and crafts. My ill-fitting jeans look positively glamorous in comparison, they would put her at ease.

Her mother was the worlds no 1 crochet judge so I know just how she should look. Its just that she doesn’t look like that and I still look like this. I guess she has just inherited a multi million pound empire off the back of her mothers work so she is- corporate. Suited and booted. And I am all baggy jeans and a shirt even my mother wouldn’t wear. Although I am not sure what my mother is wearing these days. There are rumours of a calendar, I hope they aren’t true.

I have no doubt this woman is here to discuss how my mother somehow covered up her mother’s death. I don’t think my mother actually killed her mother, at least not directly. She might have got a machine to do it. But there’s no getting past that my mother posed as her mother after her mother had died.

I stare into my coffee. I can’t  meet this woman’s gaze. I think I’m blushing with shame at something I didn’t do. I think it makes my clothes even more unacceptable in comparison. I look like I haven’t taken it seriously.

She speaks first, ‘You’re not what I expected?’

Might as well start with an apology, ‘Sorry’.

I am mumbling. I am never what anyone ‘expected’. Everyone expects my mother, but younger. Everyone who meets me now is disappointed. I am not my mother. I am not the one committing crimes, I am the one trying to hold on to a world that my mother is ripping away from me.

She tries again, ‘You’re not at all like your mother.’

That gets my attention. Alarm bells go off in my head.

I look at her and the slow dawning hits me. The words stumble out of my mouth, ‘You’ve met my mother?’

She nods.

I close my eyes, ‘Recently?’

She looks at me, as if she can see everything I am thinking.

‘Yes.’ she says loudly and clearly.

I freeze. I am not here to apologise, because my mother has clearly probably –has she apologised?

It occurs to me then how little I know my mother. How I am just not ‘her’ in a way other daughters sometimes are. I haven’t become her as I got older. I am so insignificant in comparison. All the excitement in my life comes from being her daughter and not from being me.

I have nothing to say.

She keeps looking at me. A slow steady gaze as if she is seeing my unease and is trying to reassure me. I must be reading the signals wrong.

‘I love my mother.’ Its all I can think of to say.

It such a cliché, this whole thing- I want to scream out that sentence-this is such a cliché-two women having coffee in a motorway services where the mother of one has covered up the death of the other’s mother and the one who’s mother is guilty is saying how much she loves her mother. How many movies has that scene appeared in? I’ve seen it so many times on screen but its not like it is on the screen.

Fuck even the clichés in my life belong to my mother. Where is my resolve. I suck in my tummy and try to look thinner, more chic, as if my shirt isn’t light purple with flowers on the sleeves. I try and look like I might be my mother’s daughter.

The woman notices and gives a wry smile. ‘Late bloomers, your family.’

It’s a statement, not a question. I clench my hands, ‘Why did you want to see me?’

‘Why do you think?’ She passes a brown envelope across the table to me.

I look blankly at the envelope. Is it for me? Is it money? I am lost in the situation.

‘I don’t know.’ I blurt out. That at least is honest. She pushes the envelope even closer. It’s A4 size so probably not money.

‘My mother was a top international crochet judge’, she says coolly.

The only answer that comes to mind is to say, “well my mother is a top international criminal,” but I can’t say that aloud to this woman. I cringe inside and the only other words that form don’t come out right at all.

‘Tell me something I don’t know’ I say childishly.

And she does.

‘People loved her but she was cold and selfish and all she cared about was wool and needles. I could have died from cold in some of the clothes that woman dressed me in. Crochet garments are full of holes, full-of- holes! Do you know what its like to live in the north and be dressed by a mad woman who makes clothes full of holes. I didn’t much care for what your mother did but it didn’t bother me.’

She pauses and a moment of pain washes over the manicured smoothness of her face. It’s suddenly there and then gone as if she might have cared but only momentarily.

‘And then I met her- in person- your mother. Funny isn’t it. She’s lovely. Warm. Caring. Attentive. Everything you could want in a mother.’

My ears are literally bleeding at this point, I feel compelled to point out, ‘She has killed several people.’

The woman is soft, wistful now. ‘I know, but those things can be forgiven. ‘

What planet is she living on, although I grant you the internet does seem to have forgiven my mother or my mother controls it-hard to say which.

This woman though-is truly deranged. ‘Really.’ I say. Thinking I might dress badly but I do live in reality.

The envelope sits between us. I am feeling the pressure. Another someone my mother has won over with her doddery old grandma, don’t you love me act. Granted, it may not be an act but you know what I mean.

She smiles, ‘You are so lucky, Your mother loves you.’

At this point it all becomes too much. I confess I lose it.  The tension just gets me. This woman has seen my mother. Has not turned her in. I have seen my mother, not turned her in. None of it makes any sense.  I stand up. It’s as if I am not in my body. I see the middle aged saggy jeaned, lilac shirted woman standing there and she is shouting but it’s not me shouting, but it is me shouting. I can hear myself-  ‘Are you deranged? My mother is a serial killer, a thief, a hack, a faker of international crochet judge status.’

Now everyone in the motorway services is looking at me.

The unthinkable happens.

The woman across from us on the left stands up and says ‘ Are you, are you her daughter. OMG can I have a selfie.’

I freeze but the selfie is done and then it is just an endless stream of motorway services selfies, that social media category that has started a thousand careers. I am trapped and the suited and booted, neat and glossy woman slips away. The envelope sits on the table.

I am all over social media, my picture everywhere. There is no escape. The police will see it. I will need to explain.

I sit in the car 40 minutes and 4000 selfies later. I have the envelope in my hand. Inside pinned to a pile of papers is a note in the neatest hand writing I have ever seen.

‘They lied to you. Before your mother, there was another one. The one for whom the law was made. Don’t bother searching for her on-line, they don’t give women like that Wikipedia pages (although your mother might soon). Then crosses which are kisses and her name-Helena.’

Attached are a whole bunch of old documents. I read the note again-don’t bother searching for her-for who my mother, this other woman, Helena. I don’t get the context from the hand written note, why didn’t she email or text, context is so difficult without emoji’s.

Then I look at the documents. They are really old-20th century. The law, that law-faking international crochet judge-there was another, the first one-why is she telling me this. This woman has been dead for 100 years and there is no Wikipedia page-surely she must be nobody.

I am clutching the wheel. My head is reeling. My mother is not the first to fake being an international crochet judge.

I am not my mother’s daughter. These are the only words coming out of my mouth as I slip the car into gear and slink away in first. I want to do the whole journey home in first gear as if going slow on the motorway will ensure that no one notices me. The problem is that since my mother went rogue every mobility scooter in the country is on the motorway and everyone else has had to cope-by driving in first gear. I will just be one of many.

I want to yell and scream at her. She has ruined my life. Turned the world on its head and she doesn’t care.

Legacy: The Bramble Patch

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

How long did I lay in that water. I feel invigorated or I have hypothermia-not sure which. I stand dripping in the darkness trying to get my eyes to adjust, to see more but they are sore-itchy from the salt. I feel stupid. I smell better.

I pull the boat higher up. I can hear it scrunch on the pebbles and I can feel that there was a line of plastic of all kinds at the shore line. The beach is probably littered with it. I still can’t see where the beach ends and the land starts. It could be 10 feet, it could be a mile. I smell the air. Lavender on the wind. Lavender is good-you can eat that. Not much of it but you can eat it.

I am desperate for sleep. My whole body hurts and all that is keeping me focussed is the cold. I listen. I squint into the darkness. The boat is noisy on the sand, the plastic parting as I pull it, noisy as well. This was not how I planned it. The beach ahead seems darker somehow, as if there was something there. I walk into a bramble. Ouch. I think it but I don’t say it. I listen, still again as if something could hear my pain and not just the mild exhalation that followed it

It hurts but here is the line of the land. A bramble. In the darkness then I can see them, skirting the line of the beach. A stroke of luck. In the darkness I bend down and run my hand through the sand. I thought maybe there’d be dirt but the roots of the brambles must be well back. The sand feels- I don’t know, maybe damp, maybe cold. In any event brambles are a stroke of luck.

I take all my belongings out of the boat and stick them on the sand above the water line. I get out my gloves and roll down my sleeves. I stick a scarf around my face and I bend down and push the boat into the brambles. I push as hard as I can, forcing it prow first to make a passage. I can hear the noise of the brambles moving, breaking but I don’t care. I keep shoving it in and then when I can only just see the end of it, I shove the oars in underneath it. It would make a great sleeping spot, to sleep protected underneath, but it would also be the most obvious.

I get my pack and my bag and wrap myself in the duvet. I walk along another 10 metres or so from the boat. I can see the brambles in the darkness now. I don’t want this really but it makes sense. I lay down and put my bag at the head of me. I push it into the brambles and then crawled in wrapped in the duvet after it. I push some more, and then some more until I am well inside the bramble patch. The duvet gives me some protection from the prickles and its true I could be seen if anyone looked but I hoped I look like rubbish, an old duvet trapped in the bushes. I hope the brambles at the front on the shore line will fall to cover me. I lie there in the brambles in the duvet in the darkness and sleep and sleep and sleep.

I wake without knowing if it was night or day. It’s simply dark in the bramble patch and I think I am awake because of the heaviness. Somewhere above me something is on top of the brambles. It’s hard to know what, think what. They shudder above me occasionally. I think maybe it’s an animal but it isn’t regular or noisy and there is no smell wafting down to me. It is more like something has been laid across the top of them.

I have two choices, to go on through the bramble patch or to turn around and go back out the way I came in. It is tempting to go on but who knows how far this bramble patch extends. And the boat is behind me. I don’t know how useful it will be or if I could even carry it any distance but I immediately regret not taking the time to hide it better.

I take a moment to eat the last of my bread. I am going to have to tunnel to the end of the brambles or go back. To go back I have to turn around. There’s a wind, I can feel the wind and whatever is above me is unsettled by it. Perhaps it is waiting for me. I am going back the way I came. Who knows how far the brambles go. I try shuffling backwards with the duvet wrapped around me but my ankles get exposed and scratched. I need to protect my head. I think this was a stupid idea as I try and turn the other way so I am facing forward to get out. All the time every movement I do is letting whatever is above me know I am here. I roll onto my side and curl into a ball trying to turn in the very small space I have. I need to take my bag with me as well. The duvet seems hopelessly caught on the brambles and my turning has made it worse. I give up on it. It has served me will but it isn’t coming with me.

I am facing out now and I can see I haven’t tunnelled as far in as I thought. I am not as safe as I thought and perhaps whatever is weighing above me is simply waiting. I push forward and now it is only my clothes protecting me. Thorns are raking down my back but there is nothing I can do. I look back and in the darkness the dull white of the duvet hangs there-shredded. There is nothing I can do. I have a blanket somewhere and that will have to suffice.

I can smell my own blood which means anything else can as well. I need to come out of the space at the end ready to fight. Only the barbs grip my skins.

I roll painfully onto the beach expecting something to pounce. Then I laugh, snow. It has snowed and the snow lays heavy on the brambles. There is nothing and no one here. I can see the boat and the vast sea and the myriad pieces of plastic on the beach . I can see bright plastic pearls lapping in the waves. I stand up and look around. There is no one here.

There is just a huge pile of brambles to cross, my bleeding back and a lot of snow.

I don’t waste anytime. I remember now. I begin to dismantle the boat, boats are so precious when your planet is flooded. But this will give me firewood as I head south. I am not sure if it is winter or if it is just that I am further north than I thought. I set about dismantling the boat as quickly as I can, keeping all the screws and rivets and all the bits. I will drag them like on a sleigh. I might even use it to build something to cross the brambles, with the snow and the brambles and the boards I might even cross them by nightfall.