Every Home should have One

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

Why aren’t I allowing it to ‘facilitate my meal production’? -It’s crumpets and coffee!!! Do I need a doctor? Would some vitamin pills help? Would I like a dietary change, a cereal perhaps to ‘up’ my fibre intake…read more 

It’s 5.58am. I am awake before the alarm. The alarm knows this. Well the device that sets the alarm knows this. It helpfully tells me, ‘you can sleep for two more minutes.’ I swing my legs over the bed. There is no point in fighting against it really. I should lie down and shut my eyes and pretend to sleep. But it will know I am not sleeping. So why doesn’t it know that sleeping for two minutes is an impossibility? It’s one of those tiny glitches the programmers missed because –because they are all the same. They probably wake half an hour before the alarm, slam a vegan juice and do 15 minutes of yoga. I don’t do that.

The device is in every room now. My whole life programmed in. My very own ‘routine’. I admit I have a very basic model. It’s all I could afford. It has a lot of ads. I admit it does routine well. The problem is- I don’t. It’s not that I don’t keep to a morning schedule to get out the door on time, it’s just that I like a little flexibility. It doesn’t. The alarm will go off at 6am-only it won’t because it helpfully has figured out I am out of bed. It will tell me exactly how many hours, minutes and seconds sleep I got last night. If I have made it to the bathroom by then, the numbers will flash up on the mirror. I will try not to look but if I don’t say Ok, it will keep telling me until I acknowledge it.

It will add that to all the other sleep data it has on me, which is quite a lot. It will tell me my sleep deficit for the year so far, a number now so high that I can never make it up. It will remind me of the importance of sleep and suggest some ‘helpful’ natural remedy to fix my erratic sleeping – perhaps a short break or that healthy after work gym routine which will help me sleep soooo much better at night. I never had a sleep deficit until I had the device. I now know that I average just 6 hours and 30 minutes per night and that is not enough for my ‘Optimum Functional Capacity’. I am never going to achieve my ‘OFC’ on that. Then they will run some mattress ads because who knows it could be my mattress or it could just be this device and its f*****’ routine.

At 6.02 the shower will start automatically-that’s right I have two whole minutes to get between the bedroom and the shower- which is about 3 metres distance max. Why two minutes-because the device helpfully measured the time it usually takes. And the time it usually takes me to get from the bed into the shower- I average two minutes-what do I do in that time-nothing, at least not anymore. I have no idea what I did do to take all that time. Perhaps I enjoyed the view out the window, or stretched or something else equally as useless. I certainly did not use it for self improvement-I know-time wasted. All I do now is feel pressured to be ready under the shower a good 30 seconds before it starts.

In case you’re wondering, there is never an extra 5 minutes in bed. I can ask it for that but there is the gentle reminder that I will be late for work or worse, it has to recalibrate all the timings. And it generally takes 4 minutes off my coffee drinking time-which is only 7 minutes in total-the average time any person takes to drink a coffee apparently-where did they get that statistic!!! Because  that is not me. I cannot drink a coffee in 7 minutes and I don’t believe anyone else can either! Like I said, it’s a basic model.

Anyway at 6:01 I will be standing naked in the shower waiting for it to start. I need to get a sensor for the shower so it knows I am here and not this stupid timing thing. The shower will dispense the exact amount of shampoo twice because that’s what the stupid shampoo company wants. The Stupid Shampoo Company (not it’s real name) wants for me to wash my hair twice-only before when I had a bottle of shampoo and it was just instructions, the ‘twice’  was optional. Now when the shower is dispensing it, I must do it once, and I must do it again and there is no longer a choice.

Then there’s the conditioner-yes the conditioner is dispensed in exactly the right amount for my hair length. Fab, but then it needs to be in for three minutes. Back when I had a bottle, 30 seconds max, I guess I was a ‘token’ conditioner back then. My hair was never properly conditioned and I never noticed. Now I have proper conditioned hair and guess what-it has NOT,-N-O-T improved my life in any way.

Right at the start when I was programming-I use that term loosely because I was just talking at it, the device asked me did I want the water to run for the whole three minutes whilst the conditioner was in my hair.  I said yes, because I do. Then there were the water company ads. Was I sure? What a waste? Aren’t I a good citizen? So I changed it to ‘no’ and now I stand there for 3 minutes freezing my butt off with conditioner in my hair and no water. I’m not going to lie to you. It’s not what they promised- that whole-‘lets get connected- a device in every room’. Back then it was all music and fairy lights whenever you wanted. The reality is you freeze your arse off in a shower with no water for three minutes every morning and no amount of soft lighting and mood music can make it any better. I just want to be warm.

Anyway I will hear the crumpets clicking into the toaster just as the water comes back and I have a minute-a whole minute to get rid of the conditioner and wash the rest of me. It’s based on averages again apparently. An extra minute in the shower is a no-no, my goodness those water companies-that is called premium water if you want it. And apparently they can measure that when you start to use it.

The crumpets are preloaded in the toaster by me the night before so all the device has to do is tell the toaster to drop and cook. When I get out of the shower they will be ready along with the coffee. The whole thing is set up the night before with a helpful 9.02pm reminder to put the crumpets in the toaster and a 9.03pm reminder on the coffee. It’s so that as soon as I’ve sat down after one I can be reminded to get up and do the other. It’s because you can’t have two reminders for the same minute-you can see why I swear a lot. Of course sensibly I do them together but that doesn’t stop the reminders and me needing to confirm it is done –verbally, out loud by 9.04- lest I radically decide to get up tomorrow and make my own breakfast. I can’t do that. It knows. It will ask me what is wrong. Why aren’t I allowing it to ‘facilitate my meal production’? -It’s crumpets and coffee!!! Do I need a doctor? Would some vitamin pills help? Would I like a dietary change, a cereal perhaps to ‘up’ my fibre intake. Don’t even ask what else it monitors in the bathroom. Its not your business. It shouldn’t be anyone’s business. I should get a better model-upgrade. This one only does half the stuff it should. There aren’t enough sensors in my house. Some of my stuff is incompatible because it has a different logo. Or no logo, or worse a supermarket logo.

I am out the door at 6.41. The device will have told the car I am on schedule. Actually for all I know the shower might do that. I slide into the back. It glides away but not before asking me if I am willing to share. I am never willing to share. I am not a morning person. No one is. Why does it even ask. Why can’t it learn that- I have said no every time, and yet it still asks. I think that is a government regulation, you can’t shut off the share question.

The car will drive me to the station. There is only one right turn the whole way there. But it is a nightmare. Cars are all about operating systems. Basically I need a car with the same operating system going both ways to allow me to turn out, that way my car can talk to their cars and tell them to stop. It should all be pre arranged but generally it’s a disaster because no one wants their car talking to another car until they are in it. Worst of all, sometimes one car will stop because one street away another car with the right operating system is coming. That person and everyone behind it will sit and wait until the other car gets there. You know how many car makers there are, well that’s how many operating systems there are, imaging having to wait at an intersection until there is a Ford going both ways-it’s like that. Actually it’s worse than that-because its not just operating systems, it’s the version you have, so a Ford Fiesta can’t talk to a Ford Focus or similar.

You can see people getting visibly annoyed as they wait. You can no longer ‘egress’ -yep that is the term they use from a car whilst it is in use, you are locked in-it’s a safety measure, not for you, for everybody else who is sitting waiting for you to turn out of the road. It is stressful. The car will be booking my seat on the train or not- depending on my BMI. If I am a little too fat this morning, it will sense it and I get to stand. Apparently standing on a train is good for your core, not so sure about the feet.

ItThe return journey is much the same. The car will be there to pick me up eventually. The worst of it –have I mentioned it gets worse-is my relaxation time. At 8pm each evening, having sorted out the perfect recipe for the ingredients in the fridge and walked me through how to cook it, it will tell me to sit down and relax for an hour. The thing is- I can’t. I am so tense. I just sit there. I have this hour to relax and I am so tense. I know the reminders are coming at 9pm. I know I will be in bed by 9.15. I know the alarm will go off at 6am. I know the routine tomorrow will not vary one iota from today. I know that when I sit on the sofa at 8pm, it is part of the routine. An hour for me just to relax.  I just can’t relax. I can’t do it. Its enforced relaxation, enforced sleep. I cooked what it wanted me to cook. I ate in the time it told me it would take. I relaxed to music that it will suggest but none of it, none of it is mine. None of it is me. If it is me, its just a machine reflecting me back at me. I can’t handle it. I can’t give up ‘me’ to the machine. I can’t sleep but I can’t deviate. Its here all around me. This stupid device! Telling me that I could be better, my life could be better. Self improvement, self fulfilment, busy every second except for this one allotted hour. Only all life is gone from here. There are only algorithms and no space for just an extra minute on that coffee. It is the apocalypse, not the devastating cataclysmic, life ending one but the soft shattering, soul destroying end to choosing how each minute is spent. A decision made once, resonating forever, repeated over and over every day in that stupid device.

Legacy: the plastic avalanche

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

Someone hands me soup. Even in the darkness I can see the plastic shiny on the surface of it. I sip it anyway. This place is going to kill me. The belly will get me the way it gets all of them. I have to leave…read more 

I am standing here on the shore, looking out over the ocean. I don’t know why this is taking me so long. I am here. I need to be there. The timing is right. I have stayed because she has needed it. I have done nothing. I used to sit with the old woman for the day but she is gone.

She works the plastic mountain, looking for useful rubbish. Rubbish that can be sold to travellers. Boats have been coming in, people are crossing, further east than I want to go but crossing nonetheless. Now is when the winter of working the mountain pays off. Only it doesn’t because money is useless and the boats don’t ever bring food. I think mostly it is just something to do. A way of feeling useful, of having an occupation. Maybe its hope. Maybe that is all it is.

I look out across the sea- why the reluctance to take to the water? This is Europe, was Europe, was home, isn’t home. It’s all so very complicated. Maybe when I touch that continent, I will be on the same continent as her. Surely I will know that as soon as I land. I will sense it someone deep inside of me. That is all useless superstition. I don’t think I sense anything anymore. It is all rational thought. I would not recognise her, she would not know me. It has simply been too long.

I hear a rumble in the distance. I think nothing of it. Then someone. Someone I don’t know comes rushing up and calls me. Not my name, just ‘hey, you have to come.’ To the mountain. There has been an avalanche. The piles of plastic are notoriously unstable. She is there buried underneath it. Apparently. They think. It could be her. It could be someone else. They have sent for me as I am the only relative she has. I am not a relative. No one needs to know. They know I am a passer-by. Just one who stayed, one who went and came back and then did it again. They must know the chance of a passer-by being a relative is slim.

I run towards it. Following them More slowly than I should. I am thinking. This might not be good, not just for her. Is that mean? Selfish? How do you think I got this far?  I lose sight of the person in front of me. I am half way there before I turn back. I must focus. I run to the shack where we live. I look around me, there is nothing of use for me, except the shovel. I pick up my pack, grab my sleeping bag, the shovel and head for the plastic mountain. I am packed, I am always packed.

When I get there, I keep hold of my bag but leave the sleeping bag. I have another somewhere if I need it. That is greedy. Two. When I know they are short of everything here.

People are digging with their hands but they are wasting their time. The plastic underneath this layer is all broken into tiny pieces. It’s like sand has slid down a mountain, anybody underneath will be drowned, suffocated, whatever you call it. I dig with the shovel but I know it is useless. There is screaming and wailing behind me, though not from within the pile. The pile of plastic fragments is colourful, beautiful, but silent.  I work hard. I move plastic aside. But it is pointless. They are gone. With every shovel I move out of the way another pile of plastic slides into its place. The whole thing is unstable and it towers above us. The scale of the thing. Where did it all come from? It came from us. I know it came from us. But this is only part of it. The oceans are still full of it. It litters the ground and still there are mountains of it here. How many mountains, I have never counted. They are here all in a row. They are like a wall between the coast and inland. There are roads between them but the stretch on in a line. Why? What was the point of piling it all here. It is a mining operation I guess. A huge pile of plastic rubbish to be sorted through for fragments that can be used or sold. For fragments of food that might be edible. With other debris amongst it, that is what makes it worth mining. It goes who knows how deep underground. There is no chance of getting anyone out really and it could collapse further and take us all at any moment.

 I work until it is dark. My shoulders ache. I am hungry.It’s really dark now. We are still digging. I am not working anywhere near as hard. I have achieved nothing for the effort. I have wasted energy. I should have just left straight away.

In the darkness I can hear soft whimpering, perhaps under there was someone’s husband or brother or wife or child under there. It’s nice that death still means something somewhere. I sneak off into the darkness. I leave them. I am leaving. I can see the fires of the settlement in the distance. I head towards it. I find the little shack. I don’t know why? That’s not rational. One last look around. They have been quick. All the food is gone. I feel I should wait. Someone will retrieve the body. But then what? They will want to keep it. It’s like I said before, best not to eat the meat from around here. Maybe tomorrow or the day after I will no longer be in Europe.

I had been inclined to leave the shovel but they have taken my food so I take it with me. It is petty I know. I have a long walk ahead in the darkness. I don’t really fancy it but I am out of choices. Someone will want the shack and I don’t want trouble. I make the tree line near dawn. The trees are relatively young and there isn’t much cover. There is plastic rubbish even here. They chopped the old trees down, of course they did. They are growing these ones for firewood but people get lazy and greedy and I would be astonished if they are here when I return. If I return. Maybe there is no return. I am close to where the boat is hidden and some of my belongings including the clock, the watch, whatever it was called. I don’t worry too much about being followed. The place was in chaos the night before and I am confident I can win a fight no matter how hungry.

I use the shovel to dig up my buried belongings. It is a handy thing to have. I drag out the boat from its hiding place. I feel the smoothness of its boards. I take a moment. I love that smoothness. I am a days walk from the coast. I eat whatever I can find. I will need supplies. I set myself two days to walk and gather food as I go. Again that is longer than I need. More delay. I want to leave the coastline, get in my boat and go away at some distant point. It must be away from the settlement and somewhere before the next one. I am going back, not home, just back. Home is out there somewhere. Home is dust. I walk and try not to think. I should have retrieved her body, she was kind to me. I should have left the shovel. I should think more clearly. I should have left days ago.  If I had left days ago I would not have these feelings

Tech -tills: The Supermarket

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

Only I wasn’t really sure this was where the shop was either. I hit the wrong button and the car started to self clean at the traffic lights. That’s always embarrassing and I think you can be fined for it. ..read more. 

I can’t believe I’m here. It’s a supermarket of all places. I am the only human here. I didn’t even know this was still possible. I have walked around the place and collected my own groceries. Mostly I have just felt in the way. This trolley has a duff wheel-astonishing. With all this tech, no one has figured out how to make supermarket trolleys with wheels that work.

This trolley has a little digital display on it. Every time I put something into the trolley it tells me how much I have spent. In theory I should be able to just walk through the checkout at the end and the transaction will be done, but that part of the store isn’t working. I saw it on the paper sign as I came in. Who the hell puts up paper signs-where did they even get the paper? It was over the digital display which was also broken.

I suspect that so few people do their transactions this way anymore that it broke at some point and wasn’t worth fixing. This place is like a museum. You can trace the different ways supermarket technology has changed by the left over tech. Its telling me I have spent £10,000  now. It is clearly faulty. There are only a handful of things in my trolley. I need more but everything in this shop is either moving so fast I can only just dodge it, so slow I lose patience or is now perfectly still.

I am in the way. Some of these machines were clearly not designed for human interaction. Every so often I have to leap to one side out of the way of an overzealous bot looking for the vegan sugar-I thought all sugar was vegan but maybe not. The baked bean tins I want are blocked by a broken down robot and whilst a machine is able to find a means of getting around it, I couldn’t. My human arms just weren’t flexible enough. I will be going without baked beans this week.

I am only here because the connection between my house and the supermarket has somehow been lost. That is not even supposed to be possible. It was a total shock to me and to my devices. I have no idea how or why but in the meantime, the machine told me, I would need to do a manual shop. It told the car, but the car got the shop location wrong so I had to override it on the way here. Only I wasn’t really sure this was where the shop was either. I hit the wrong button and the car started to self clean at the traffic lights. That’s always embarrassing and I think you can be fined for it. I arrived here with the car nice and clean and a trail of water and detergent behind us. Needless to say I had a choice of car parking spaces. I am surprised they have not built on them but maybe no one wants to live near a supermarket. Maybe they have just forgotten the space is here.

There was a robot to guide us to a parking space but I think that was overkill. It wanted me to park quite a distance from the entrance, apparently you are still not allowed in the parent child spots even though yours is the only car there. My car refused to over ride the robots order so my car is a mere speck in the distance from inside the shop.

The whole place hums with the low level buss of a machine. It feels as if you are walking into a computer. The inside is quite dark. Not all the lights are working and they don’t bother to fix them. The tech doesn’t need light the way humans do. As a matter of fact I think the lighting only flicked on as I came in. it detected a ‘human entry’ as I am known. The whole thing is a little confusing and out of control. I am here anyway. I wasn’t even sure if I could get in. But the doors opened when I approached. It beeped in recognition of my organic nature. It all feels a little odd, I am quite nervous. I don’t want to be as they are probably using some tech to track my moods and nervous will attract the attention of security. Supermarkets didn’t have the best reputation when it came to robot security. I know that was a while ago but I don’t want to tempt fate.

The shelves are well stocked if a little chaotic. There isn’t much need for order, the robots here identify things by scanning for tiny coded chips. You can put stuff anywhere and they can find it. The semblance of order is only for the odd human who comes here. It is pretty obvious people don’t come here often. At the very end of the store is a robot sitting at an old style till and I think that is where I will have to go to pay. Meanwhile I dodge everything around and about me.

When I get to the till, I have to switch the robot on. Thank goodness there is just a big green button in the middle-this is lowest common denominator tech.  It whirrs into life and speaks slightly mechanically. Asks me how I am? How are my children? I have none. Surely it should have registered that from my allocated parking space. I think this is very old tech.

I put things on the counter and it begins to slide and scan them. And it smiles ridiculously at me. I smile back. I am paying with my device I think. I have no idea if it will work. I pack the stuff back into the trolley. There are no bags, of course there are no bags, why would we need bags. Mostly my groceries are delivered to the side door and put directly into the fridge and the cupboards-I think. This usually happens when I am out or in the shower or some other time. I have no idea where most of this stuff goes or I guess if I even need this stuff. I am just shopping because the device said I needed to shop. It was going to send me a list but it hasn’t arrived. I guess there is no connection. That was clever, perhaps the house sent it to the car and the car didn’t bother passing it on to my device in my bag. In any event I am just buying random stuff.

I am guessing. The machine at the till is beeping and the beep is getting longer. Then it just stops. Typically, absolutely the machine just stops. I look around me. There is no one here to help. What do I do? There isn’t another human on site. I look around for an alarm button, anything. Actually I don’t really want supermarket robot security. I do the obvious thing. I just reach over, hold the button down and switch the robot off. Some things never change. Then I switch it on again. Reboot. It then tells me I will need to start again, so I put it all back on the other end of the counter and it starts processing it again. I keep watching it. I don’t want to do this a third time. I try to remain calm but I am edgy, I know that.

Suddenly a second robot is there looking over my shoulder. It has security written on it. It starts reading its protocol. This is just a random check that they do on humans who enter the store to check that they are not stealing. I have been selected for checking etc etc. I am the only human in the store so it makes sense that I would be selected although it’s all a bit creepy. I try to maintain calm, these robots are not the best programmed machines. I am meticulous, methodical and calm. Somewhere I can hear two robots crashing into each other.

Really I just want to be out of here and never do this again. Both robots are smiling at me now and there is panic in the pit of my stomach. I can’t explain it. They are making me uncomfortable. The lights are flickering. I keep putting my groceries into my trolley. Really!  Could this robot get much slower. My smile is literally plastered on now. I am sure they know. Know what! There is nothing to know. I haven’t done anything wrong. The connection between my house and the supermarket is lost. I am not stealing anything. I am just doing a manual shop.

My palms are sweaty. I think my breathing is getting faster. I need to stay calm. These security robots can be a bit, well eccentric. It is watching me. I am trying not to rush. I am putting things that I am not sure that I need into my trolley in a measured way with a smile on my face. Plastered, glued, stuck onto my face. I want to run but I must shop. I must stay calm. They are both looking at me. The till robot is finished and I have to pay. It rings up the total. I don’t even look at it. I rummage in my bag for the device. I am making a mess of it. Where is it? Why is it not at my finger tips. Was I too over eager on an item? Did I put something in before it scanned.

I have no idea. I am so hot and so worried. I keep smiling. I want to say something but what. I pass me device over the machine and payment is accepted. I want to run. I seriously just want to run. They are both staring at me, smiling. I hate this place.

‘Have a nice day’ they say in unison. I am creeped out and I leg it for the door. Before I am even in the car, I am being asked about ‘my experience’ so ‘we can make it better for everybody’. I hit the go button on my car. OMG why does the ‘go button’ look exactly like the self clean button. I look for cancel. I can’t find it. I do the survey whilst the car cleans itself. I am leaving more water and detergent in the car park as I finally head for home. I never want to do that again.

Mood Teeth

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

My teeth are now a luminous yellowy green which apparently somehow reflects my mood as read by a chip implanted into my gums which somehow figures out how I am feeling by the flow of blood to my gums or something. Actually I am not sure how it works…read more

I look in the mirror and try and concentrate really hard. How am I feeling? Slightly panicked if I am honest. Maybe confused. Annoyed. Frustrated. There isn’t one word to cover it. I look at the app, I scroll through all the colours-there is no colour for slightly panicked. There is for frustrated, a sort of apricot. Apricot? Why-who gets this? There is annoyed but there is no combination of the two- no frustrated and annoyed. I look at my teeth. They appear in the mirror as a sort of lemony green glowing mess–well monstrosity.

I thought ‘mood teeth’ would be fun. At least I did at some point. I think I’d had-Ok I definitely had too much to drink. I remember my mother’s tattoo. She got it on a similar holiday when she was young. She hated it. It was a mermaid with large –well larger than life upper body parts. Cartoonishly big. She had no idea what possessed her one drunken evening to get a ‘mermaid with oversized boobs’ tattoo. She regretted it always. She wore a very covered up wedding dress so no one would see it. She had it removed eventually.

No tattoo for me, I’ve got mood teeth. It’s hard to explain if you haven’t seen them. It’s an implant in your gum-at least I think it’s in my gum and it somehow changes the colour of my teeth according to my mood. It’s a fabulous idea and when it’s done properly it’s wonderful. It’s very popular with celebrities. I tell myself these things over and over as if somehow at some point that will make me feel better.  I have not had the best version of mood teeth. I am not even sure how much I paid. Or how I paid. I guess it will appear on my bank statement soon and I can be even more horrified than I am now.  

My teeth are now a luminous yellowy green which apparently somehow reflects my mood as read by a chip implanted into my gums which somehow figures out how I am feeling by the flow of blood to my gums or something. Actually I am not sure how it works. The brochure I have is in Spanish and I am too scared to download the English version. I should just buy a Spanish speaking chip and implant it behind my ear then I could read Spanish. But I think this might be the last of my chip implant experiments. I might leave it to the younger generation. That is exactly what my mother is going to say. You’re nearly thirty and you’re getting chip implants like a 15 year old. She has a point.  No more chips for me. Next time I will just go for good old fashioned teeth colour, its like nail polish only for teeth-isn’t that the tag line.

When I run my tongue along the top of my gums I can feel the implant. I am sure that is not right. I am going to have to go to the dentist to have it removed. She is going to laugh. It is going to cost a fortune. Meanwhile my teeth sit there –luminescent, while I am too embarrassed to leave the house. I did go to work Friday but it was a disaster. They were a sort of purple brown to start with but it got worse. On Friday, mid-meeting as I was presenting they cycled through the entire colour scheme. I could see the audience just sitting there watching my teeth. No one wanted to say anything. People were embarrassed for me. I was embarrassed for me. There are about 40 colours. In the end I just stopped speaking and sat down.  

After 20 minutes it stopped but I had to let someone else take over. What was I thinking? I am kind of hoping the chip will run out of power soon and I can have it removed. I am too worried to even search how long it will take. I am seeing my mother today and I know she will want me to go to the dentist right away. Improperly licensed mood teeth can cause serious damage to your teeth and your gums. I think there’s an ad just above the subway-government sponsored.

I just don’t know what to say to her. She is going to know as soon as she sees me. I try to think happy thoughts and my teeth turn orange and then sort of a dull purple colour again. This is not how it looks on screen.

I leave the house, determined not to smile at anyone. I am walking to the cafe. The woman who always walks her dog on a Sunday morning passes me. We always smile even though we don’t know each other. I nod at her today as if I am absorbed in something else. She smiles. I feel bad. Then as I cross the road, the driverless car stops for me and I notice the passenger. He is quite cute. I want to smile. I must not smile. He smiles. I look at the road and keep walking. An opportunity missed. It is 20 minutes of walking where I simply focus on showing no one my teeth.

My teeth on the other hand seem to tingle as if they are enjoying this. Humiliation. I look at the app, what is the colour of humiliation. I am not sure the colours I have are standard. They might be standard for Europe and not for the UK. Do they have different standards for mood teeth in Europe. I think they do. The names of the emotions on the app have all reverted to Spanish-that can’t be good. Can it? I vow to look up just how serious the complications can be.

I arrive at the café. I meet my Mum here every Sunday. We really should go virtual. I nod at the waitress as I go in. She smiles. I don’t. I feel bad. She looks at me oddly. I always smile. I want to say, I can’t I have ‘mood teeth’ and its not like the TV. They are malfunctioning. I couldn’t even post any social media photos of me after I got these. No one saw the end of my holiday. I have a long list of people messaging to find out if I’m ok. I haven’t known what to say. I have lost some followers I think, just through my silence. They went bad from day one. I am not even sure where I got them. I was too drunk.

I see my mother come in. She smiles. I don’t. She frowns. I try not to notice. She takes off her jacket and slips into the chair across from me. The waitress comes over. She is fast because we always order the same thing.

I mumble ‘the usual’ trying to make sure she doesn’t see my teeth.

My Mum looks really worried now.

She reaches across and takes my hand. Then I smile. It’s just a reaction, subconscious, quickly. I shut my mouth again. I see her eyebrows react to my teeth. I have no idea what colour they are now. She is staring. Just staring with heightened eyebrows, then she bites her lips and then she laughs. I mean she just laughs out loud. The whole café turns to watch as she screeches, ‘what have you done’ at me.

I sink into the chair and steel myself. I must not open my mouth until she is quiet and no one is looking. The waitress brings my carrot cake, and latte and I can see that she has seen my teeth. She is also trying not to laugh. I am like a bad social media story.

My mother collects herself. I want to remind her about the mermaid with the big boobs but I don’t.

‘I don’t think its permanent.’ I say. ‘It will stop working soon.’ I mumble more than say, trying to keep my mouth shut.

She nods and smirks. This is not the support I was looking for.

They’re not that bad’ stumbles out of her mouth as the frown returns. I know she doesn’t mean it.

‘What colour are they at the moment?’ I ask

‘A sort of reddy blue?’

‘You mean green?’

‘No I mean some of them are red and some are blue and some are red and blue and some are something else? It’s an interesting look.’

‘It’s a disaster’

‘A temporary one, perhaps a week at home.’

I look at my coffee. She is still trying not to laugh. It is worse than I thought. I have no idea what to do. I can’t go to work like this. I can’t hack it out of my gum myself, if I do that I might end up with permanent colouration.

It is a short cup of coffee. I go home and hide in my room. Tomorrow I will go to the dentist.

Legacy-she died in the night

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

Coffee cut with dirt or sand or embers. I think I can see an ember glowing in the bottom of it. Ember coffee. Tastes like-well, charcoal…read more

She died in the night, the old lady. I had learned to sleep through the moaning and perhaps that was callous. The younger one woke me. She must have been sitting there with her when it happened. I knew what had to be done. There is no ritual around burial.  There isn’t the time, the resources. One gone is one less mouth to feed. Still that will be scant consolation here, they only had each other. I think it had been that way for a long time. And now the dreaded ‘there is only me’. I have gotten used to it, been like that for too long to worry about the sentiment.

I groaned my way out of bed, which was wrong because I understood the urgency. The moaning had been endless and now there is no moaning and maybe someone is listening and maybe someone will come. And whoever comes here will be better fed than the people at the rubbish tip. I have had the spade in the corner for days and a second hand knife I have been sharpening. I went to bed dressed, we all do.

Between the two of us we heft the body downstairs, carrying it between us. Into the slush and mud that was the ground floor. I don’t think the flood is ever receding and we will need to move inland. It is just a fact. Hundreds, thousands, millions, billions have faced this dilemma everyday for what must be half a century now. Maybe, maybe not that long. It is ten years since I abandoned England the first time, no I think -it can’t be that long. It would make her so much older now, so long without her. So much I can’t remember. I am alone. I tell myself that. It does not bear thinking about. No one will carry my body like this. There is no point in sentiment.

When did the water start coming in? Who knows? I don’t think there was a specific date. There probably was for some cities. I vaguely remember a headline about Miami sinking into the sea, but maybe it was Shanghai or Denmark. I don’t think Denmark was a city, it all eludes me now. The facts are irrelevant. It’s all just gone.

We carry the body between us. Sloshing through the mud in the darkness. The road –well the water that is flowing between the houses where the road once was, is only lit by fires from inside open buildings, buildings with no walls, or only a back wall or side walls but not enclosed. They aren’t proper buildings. They open onto the street. Mostly they are built just a foot off the ground, this allows them to stay open when the floods aren’t too bad. It keeps money or its equivalent flowing in whatever the weather. They call themselves ‘cafes’ but they are nothing like the cafes I remember. Some of them have fire all night. These light our way. But it is still dim and dark. We move quickly and quietly.

I take the old woman’s body now. She is bent over with grief. The reality is sinking in. I have the old woman over my shoulder. I look around, wary, aware. I try to make the thing I am carrying look less human, more small. The ‘cafes’, they never close, they are a refuge. They are dotted along the main road.  People sleep there, live there, eat there. It isn’t like before. People are looking out, walking past us, seeing what we have and looking the other way. No one cares. There are no rules here.  They know we must hurry.

We take the main road even though its where we are most likely to be noticed. Its also where its most likely for someone to intervene if we need them. Even now people baulk at the idea. They don’t like it and sometimes they will come to your aid. Plus if I have to fight myself I’d always rather there were witnesses. I don’t like doing death in dark alley ways, I always feel it is dishonest. Deceitful. It feels like a crime, death out here in defence of a human body would feel justified, reasonable. Even though it is only hunger that will drive our attackers.

We are taking the body to the end of town, there is a rubbish tip there, which is constantly burning. It is not mined the way the plastic mountains are. It simply smoulders and smokes all day. It burns endlessly, who knows when it was set alight. When I say burns, there are no open flames, just constant trails of smoke into the sky and lumps of embers on the ground. Its alight but only in the summer does its flames streak out into the sky.  Its on slightly higher ground, or its made the slightly higher ground, who knows which. It smoulders even in the rain, its long peel of smoke drifting into the air on even the worst of days. It burns underground somewhere, away from the weather, there are glowing coals on top, its like a volcano only made of rubbish. Its immense, its hard to get across to anyone the size of the thing. They have slid into towns before, these burning ember trash mountains. I remember hearing about one once. There is the rubbish of a whole civilisation there smouldering away in a pit that was once landfill. It’s delightful aroma covers the town some days, but I think we are all used to it. Smoke inhalation is a better way to die than the belly.

We are going to burn the body. It is better than the alternative. We could sell it. But there is some semblance of humanity left here. My advice is don’t buy from the local butcher, and certainly don’t buy from someone who offers you meat in the street. It might be dog, it might be rat, it might be something else.

It is no secret what we are going to do. We are going to dig her a hole and put her in and hope she is burned to a crisp and inedible by morning. I have a shovel, it is unlikely the people by the tip will have one so I have to dig deep enough so that it is hot enough that they will not be able to retrieve her. I will guard it for the night. It is the least I can do. She will need to go and mine the plastic mountains tomorrow anyway.

I can see the smoke in night sky, its just darker than anywhere else. There are no stars shining through it. The tip has tracks running through it. We walk on through it and stop randomly. There were footsteps behind us. I could hear them but I didn’t turn to look. There seemed to be only one set or two at the most. She sits. I put the corpse of the old lady on her lap. She is crying softly. I guess this was her mother, maybe her aunt. I’ve no idea, I never asked. Can’t even remember how we came to be friends. Details don’t matter, survival does.

 I dig, not as quietly as I’d like but I dig. In the greyness beyond I can see one or two people, sitting, watching. That is why I will stand guard. I dig slowly at first to give her more time. Then I realise that soon that there will be too many people off in the greyness and there will be no chance of defending her. I look at the hole, just off the side of the track. I can see glowing embers at the bottom. Not enough oxygen for flames. I take the body myself and push her away as she grabs out at it. I shove it in to the hole I have dug and start to pile ash and dirt on top. I do it quickly. Its at this point that we are most vulnerable. I am watching them out of the corner of my eye. At least I am watching the darkness, shapes in the darkness and the shapes in the darkness are not moving. Its hard work in hot conditions.

I pile in embers. I would like to see flames but I know that won’t happen. I hope she is watching my back a bit. But I can hear her sobbing, a sign of weakness I’d rather not have. I keep working. I can see them edge closer. Movement. I stop.  Look around me. They are still far enough away. She does not look up, crying into her sleeve. If I shout they will take that as a sign of vulnerability. I pile more embers in on top of her. She will cook slowly and then eventually be burned to all hell. Just a charred skeleton. The odd thing is if you have ever seen a plastic belly victim burned, the plastic just melts into a gooey pile and sticks to the skeleton. You can always tell a belly victim that way. The skeleton usually the spine, the plastic is melded on to it. Sometimes you can even still see a glint of colour. It is not pleasant.

I have covered her now, well and good. I stand beside it. Put my shovel into the ground, stand there, looking formidable. These people are hungry, well you’d have to be wouldn’t you. I don’t begrudge them food, just not this food.

She waits with me. As the dawn nears, I send her home. I know she won’t be there when I return, she will have gone to work. There is no time for mourning here.

I wait and watch the sunrise. I am hungry too. I am thirsty. I would love a coffee. The sun is getting hotter, water and coffee. I stand guard. One of them approaches. Dirty, ragged. Probably that is how I look to. She holds out a cup. I can smell coffee, not real coffee. Coffee cut with dirt or sand or embers. I think I can see an ember glowing in the bottom of it. Ember coffee. Tastes like-well, charcoal. I know what this means. The woman under the ground, her daughter, these people, they took me in. This woman in the ground, roasting, she is my friend. I made a promise. I did not mean for her to be cooked, but to be charred so she had no nutrition left to be taken. Dignity.

I look at the woman offering me coffee. How long since she ate? She isn’t that old, maybe she has children. She reaches out with the coffee. I tell myself I have lines I will not cross. It’s just that I constantly surprise myself as to exactly what they are. They are never where I think they are. She is dead. No one will know but me.  My hand, it moves up. Reaches out. I feel the warmth of the cup. I take the coffee. I stand and drink it, wondering just how much plastic I am ingesting in this one cup. The woman who gave it to me has the belly too. I can see it. I know to them every second counts but for me, another piece is broken. Another taboo overlooked so humanity can survive.

I don’t finish the coffee. I throw it out onto the ground. I can see the look she gives me, aghast at the waste. I am careful to make sure the dead ember stays in the bottom, even as I throw away the rest of its contents. Maybe she can use it again. Maybe its a sentimental ember. I don’t care anymore. I drop the cup. I don’t care enough about anything to hand it back. I grab the spade and walk away.

There was almost nothing left of her anyway. They will be gnawing at bones. I hear the scuffle behind me. Someone is digging. Someone is hungry. She will be cooked nicely I think. I wander home, I wade through water. I wished the world were different. I wished I was different. I wished I could make different choices. None of us is better than another. Tomorrow I will let her have a day off and work the mountain myself. The day after maybe I will think about the Med, about crossing it, about going over the sea, about different choices.  

Alone in the coffee shop

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

Am I waiting for someone else? If not, I am taking up space. If they leave it long enough perhaps I will get up and leave and they can give the table to someone else a duo, a two-some. Not a lonesome. I look at my phone. I look at the menu. I am not waiting for anybody. I will not leave. It is a battle of wills…read more 

I am sitting in the coffee shop. Just me. Alone. At a table for two. They are very busy. I can see, it has been noted. They keep looking at me. Am I waiting for someone else? If not, I am taking up space. If they leave it long enough perhaps I will get up and leave and they can give the table to someone else a duo, a two-some. Not a lonesome. I look at my phone. I look at the menu. I am not waiting for anybody. I will not leave. It is a battle of wills.

They serve those people first, that couple that had to squeeze onto that table in the corner when this one has more space. Why didn’t I sit at that one? That table is the one no one really wants. That table is probably made for people who are alone.

They sit there scrunched into a corner, on a table meant for one. She is pretty, well made up-maybe not pretty without all the help. He is rugged, handsome, proud to go out with someone who can use makeup to improve themselves that much. Lets just call it considerably improved for her sake. I notice his shoes, they are brown. No, those are what you call tan- tan shoes, fur lined. Fur popping out over the top. The right shoes for snow. He is Mr Right shoes for snow. Maybe he even knew snow was coming and bought them especially. They are clean and shiny, like he has walked from the car to the coffee shop but in a very masculine way. A swagger. He has swaggered here. You can see him in the car park, pressing the button on the car key very hard. Deliberate. Manly. Lock those doors. Get over yourself it’s just a car key. I want to say that out loud but I don’t, because who knows if that happened, perhaps he drives a Citroen. All that machismo and still drinking a soy latte. It’s a miracle he isn’t wearing aviator sunglasses.

My boots are old, tatty, holed and worn through-the wrong shoes for snow. Hers are grey, with some tassel ties and speak of effortless class and elegance. Just not sure which class or what level of elegance. Higher than mine though. They match her jumper. I match nothing. Nothing I wear matches me. But I still have a better table. I have the table they want. I have the sort of table a tan shoe, grey boot, soy latte couple should have. And I am not giving it up.

Another couple stand in the door waiting, as if I should leave. I will not leave, if they don’t serve me soon I will make a scene, but I will not leave. This is the problem with real cafes over virtual ones-you can’t easily add tables in ‘manual cafes’. You can’t just hit ‘tab’ and double the size. But I don’t like being on my own in VR. I don’t think its as safe as people say. I think they might be sucking out my brain. Here in a real café no one knows anything about my brain. I could be thinking anything and probably I am.

I sit firmly on this chair. Its like I am attached to it. I am staying on this chair. This is my table. I will have coffee here. I will not be cowed. The waitress finally comes over. She does not make eye contact. I do not make eye contact. Neither of us is the winner. Yet. I order. I spend time on each word as if she is not quite up to taking my order. As if she might not understand what I am saying. It is a game of power and I have the table. I end with ‘Please’. That surprised her. She thought I would be grumpier on account of being alone and speaking slowly. But I am polite. I smile.  I am triumphant. She turns and walks away as if nothing has happened. But it has happened. I have kept the table and the couple by the door must wait and the two over there in the corner must huddle into the wall to eat their oversized meals and their funny soy coffees in their perfect shoes.

I sit there reading a book, a book written in French. Ha. Another victory. I can’t speak French. I don’t speak any French except the French I have learned with the free app on my phone, which is 424 words, which is almost none at all because whilst I recognise those words as French I barely know what they mean. And I have no idea how to say them.

I sit there reading a book written in French but I am just looking at the pages, hoping it seeps in. I think that even though my clothes don’t match, the French book makes me more sophisticated than grey boot woman and tan shoe man. Their shoes are right for the snow but they have no French books on their table as they scrape their elbows on the wall eating their farty baked beans breakfast. Crumpled up in that tiny corner at the tiny corner table. I luxuriate in the vast expanse of table before me. I know they aren’t looking but I am sure they know. Everyone knows. I have this table. This table is for me alone. And it has two chairs, count them, two chairs.

I have this table and it is mine. The coffee comes and the tea cake-it is slightly burned –should I send it back? Is it deliberately burned? She apologises for the delay but not the burned-ness. What should I do? Do I mention they are burned? Plus they are small. These are hot cross buns really, not tea cakes. Is that deliberate? It is a game I cannot win. ‘Pick your battles’, that is good advice. I ponder for a moment. Thinking on my chair, that is what I am good at. Let this one go. Its not worth it. You have the table, you have space. I let it go. Perhaps I will take more time and order a second coffee except. The coffee is abysmal. It is always abysmal but I like the ambience here. Although it is missing ambience today because there are so many people. The waiting couple have gone now. I smile. I have the table. It is mine.

I eat tea cake. I sip coffee. Grey boot is laughing. Tan shoe is smiling. They are happy. Squished into a corner. I could not be happy in that corner. Perhaps I should do my eye brows like her. Would tan shoe man notice me if my eye brows were like hers. Do you suppose he likes her for her eyebrows. Do you suppose he likes her at all? Maybe not. Maybe they are breaking up. I finish my tea cake. I sip my coffee. There is no hurry. I have the table. It is mine.

I notice the hair of the woman in front of me. It is grey with pink through it. She is stylish too, but the woman with her. She is not a style queen, reddish hair and a blue top, with a hideously over done face. But that pink hair, I love that. I might leave when they leave so I can tell her. But I might not. I didn’t come here to spread joy. You can over-joy you know. I look at the spacious table before me, at the free chair, I don’t need to spread joy. My presence here is disrupting the natural order of things. I like her hair but I don’t want her to see my boots

There is another table free now. Another couple come in. An old woman and her son. Maybe her son. Maybe her lover. You never know. He goes to the bathroom. She sits down. She has a purple hat. It is knitted. I have a blue hat. I have had it for 20 years. It is a ‘gnarly dude’ hat. Which is not a thing, it always reminds me of mutant ninja turtles. It makes me happy. I think of turtles, mostly ninja ones when I put it on. Hats that make you think of turtles –hats don’t come better than that. Ninja turtles are such a good idea. We should have more ninja animals. All of these thought run through my head as I take up space at this table. I will not be hurried. This table is mine.

Every so often the staff glance at me as if to see if I am finishing. Then this table that has one person can be used as a table for two people. Never mind that the two that just came in are sitting at a table for four. That it seems is acceptable. It’s a double standard-a pun, but true nonetheless. They are wasting two seats and I am only wasting one, nonetheless they will be served promptly. They are not looked down on, there will be no apology to them for the time it has taken to get things. They are different to me. They are together. I am the worst of all things. I am alone. At a table for two. I see the waitress look at them, she is thinking what I am thinking. The woman with the pink hair is getting up to leave. I am not getting up to leave. Not yet. I will not be telling her how nice her hair is. That is a sad thing. But I must keep my table for a bit longer.

Grey boot and tan shoe are getting up to go. It must be uncomfortable in that corner, no matter how much you like the other person. He is attentive, she is attention seeking. They make me want to vomit. Soy latte, if a latte doesn’t have any real milk is it really a latte? I think not. If you eat a meal squished into a corner with no elbow room, have you really eaten out? I think not. Might as well have eaten on the sofa at home and avoided the risk of scuffing your shoes.

I finish my coffee. But I wait. I wait until grey boot and tan shoe are replaced at their table. Pink hair and blue shirt are also replaced. It is full again. I wait until someone else is standing waiting for a table, another couple, waiting to see if I am leaving. I am leaving. But in my own time. It takes an age to get my book into my bag. A long time to put on my coat. A time  where I am hovering at my seat. Somewhere between still here and leaving and nearly gone. My first tentative step away from my table.

The couple can’t move too fast, what if I go back. Order another coffee.  I pace slowly to the counter to pay. I have won. I know behind me they are slipping into chairs, one warm and one cold. I smile sweetly at the waitress who does not make eye contact but looks at my hat. Yes, that is my hat and I wear it publicly. I take the change from my ten pound note. All coins. What does that mean? Is that a sign, all coins? Don’t come here and take up one of our tables again. If that is what it meant, it is lost on me. I will be back. I will be here again. I will not be cowed. I have won.

The Grammar police

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

I keep looking behind me but the problem is hear in front of me. Did you see that, I used the wrong one, the wrong spelling of it. Another act of rebellion. A moment when I did something you aren’t allowed to do anymore. They will call it a mistake, in a report somewhere. It was no mistake. It was deliberate, deliberative-there’s a word you never see now, can’t even use it in that context, who cares, it was a deliberative act. ..read more

I try three words, any combination. I pulled them from the dictionary. It is a manual dictionary. You know what I mean? It has pages, real pages, paper. Have you ever touched paper? Do you know what paper is? Look it up? No don’t look it up. They might be watching you too.

 It was hard to find a manual dictionary. Hard to even find a bookshop with real books. They don’t like you to have dictionaries. Dictionaries are powerful things. Especially old ones. You can find out stuff, stuff you aren’t supposed to know. They can tell you about the past, about the past of a word, about what it once meant. They can tell you about a time before a word even existed. The dictionary I have, the manual one, is old I think. It doesn’t have the word ‘email’ in it. Which means? You know what it means? There was a time before email. A time when ‘email’ did not exist. How did people communicate then? I don’t know. I thought they told us, email is the oldest form of communication there is. But the word ‘email’ is not in my manual dictionary. I huddle over my screen. I know someone, something, somewhere is looking at every word I right. Don’t tell! I used the wrong right, right? Yes? These words are just going out into the ether, but the ether is always watching. Collecting information. Informing. This machine is an inform-ant. I hyphenated when you shouldn’t. I must be careful.

I think there was another way of communicating before ‘email’. Those are radical words, revolutionary words. A revolution sent out into the ether.  ‘Verbal’! That’s a word I found but I don’t know what it means. I think it means ‘spoken’ which is about speaking but I am not sure what speaking is-but speaking is not emailing. I thought before it was, that when I was emailing I was speaking but maybe I wasn’t. I think I’m not. Emailing and speaking-they are not the same. I know that now. I have a dictionary. I fling a question into the ether-my fingers fly over the keys-what is speaking? But there is no answer. Only music comes back at me, notes and sound and melody. Noise but not words.

They think that if they can control what words mean they can control what words we use. We all write in Code, their code -but I have a dictionary. I wonder what it means ‘to speak’. The music comes from the ether, from somewhere inside the machine.

I type in another random search of three words. Three random words taken from my manual dictionary. Then I click on image. The images are random. The search engine does not understand what I am asking it to look for. That is my point. A random three word search. They don’t know everything. There are endless possible searches with my dictionary. If I do enough of these all in a row they will find me, but if I just do two at a time, every so often, I will go under the radar, or the data mining. I just have to be careful. I can make it work or not work just by carefully choosing three words. I type in three more random words, I don’t know what they mean. More random pictures.

I don’t want them to know everything about me. I want some control. I want the algorithm to be confused by what I am doing but not confused enough to report me. I don’t want anymore stupid targeted advertising. There is no opt out. The privacy policy is not an agreement, it is a rule, a law. There is no internet without agreement to the privacy policy. I sign up or else I am no longer part of the world. I am not the only one. Confused. Confounded. Annoyed. Three words I would not type into a search engine in a row because they would know then. Why do you think dictionaries are so hard to find? Bookshops are illegal aren’t they. Why would you need a bookshop when every book is on the internet? Why? Fair point but you still don’t need to make them illegal-do you? Why? What about competition? Maybe every book is not on the internet, just the ones they want us to read.

Bookshops are illegal because? Because they have a different viewpoint. Now you are getting the hang of it. Because they can’t know which page you’re up to and if they don’t know which page you are up to, they can’t know how much you know or what you are thinking. They can’t tell you what to think and when to think it when you are turning the pages yourself. A book is a means of being autonomous- without the ever watching eye of a machine. A book does not collect your data. It does not store your thoughts. A book asks nothing of you but that you turn to the next page. What if you don’t want to finish a book? You can do that-with a manual book you can do that. What if you are a bad citizen and don’t read the book in a linear way. What if words haven’t always meant what they say they mean. Because I want to know the history of words. I want to know what they once meant because I need to know how they gained control of the conversation. Because even now this is their conversation. My words, their machine. My thoughts. Their data.

I sit here typing, looking over my shoulder as if they are coming, but they are not coming. They are already here, in the machine in front of me. I try not to panic. I want to type in three more random words, but that would be dangerous. At night, when I am alone, I flick through this dictionary. It is from 1984, I know that year, it means something but the dictionary doesn’t tell me what.

I hold it. I want to suck all the knowledge from it. What did all the words mean once. Before them. Before the little green line appeared. Why don’t they mean that anymore? Who changed it? Who made the rules? Who forbade words out of context? When did the phrase ‘grammatical offence’ first appear.

I take a breath. I look at the screen. The images are random. No one can possibly know what I meant because I meant nothing. It will register in a report somewhere but not often enough, not yet, for me to be a ‘submersive’ –but according to the dictionary, that means underwater-they have it wrong. It’s the wrong word, and I know, its subversive. I am subversive, not submersive. How did they get that wrong? I have read it. The book is open on my knee. Its that sleight of hand, that slight of hand, the subtle changes that have made all the difference. It means something different today to yesterday and you can never keep up with it. Our words used against us. What does it mean to speak? What is a voice? More than a point of view? A sound? A noise-that is not musical. How odd.

I am a radical, a rebel. I want my life back. I want my beautiful words to tumble from the page and to mean what I want them to mean. I hold the dictionary. The history of words, where they started, where they come from. Words are power. When did we hand over control to the spell checker. To the green line that dictates grammar. I won’t do it. I can’t do it. The sound of the keys is the only voice I have now.

I keep looking behind me but the problem is hear in front of me. Did you see that, I used the wrong one, the wrong spelling of it. Another act of rebellion. A moment when I did something you aren’t allowed to do anymore. They will call it a mistake, in a report somewhere. It was no mistake. It was deliberate, deliberative-there’s a word you never see now, can’t even use it in that context, who cares, it was a deliberative act. A rebellion amongst a million typed characters. I am a rebellion- another one. They will definitely be watching now. I must be careful. This is foolhardy and foolish and folly and a lot of other ‘f’ words.

I pull my coat close around me. It is cold here. I let my fingers glide over the keys. I think of other mistakes I could make. Other words I could use. Half sentences. Improper phrases. Bad grammar. I know they are watching. I must be careful. What if I just wrote a line of solid ‘j’s. What would happen then. Would they break down the door? I clutch the dictionary close to me. I know there was a time, before, beyond the machines. Nothing is forever. The time, it will be again, I hold the past here with me and as long as someone does, there is hope.

I look in the mirror-it is not me

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

We can never tell each other how much we know. It’s a pact between all commuters everywhere…read more

I look in the mirror. Its me. I close my eyes. I reach out my hand. I find the button-a groove in the smooth surface. I should have bought one that was voice activated or at least changed the setting using my phone before I came to look in this mirror. I gently push the button in.

I open one eye. There I am, my image reflected back at me in the mirror. Except its not me. It looks mostly like me, but it’s a better version of me. Its an avatar. I have it on all my mirrors, a filter, so I never see what I really look like.

Except the button on this mirror doesn’t seem to be working. It won’t stay on my image, it constantly reverts back over night and when I come in here in the morning, there I am. Really me, what I must really look like. I close my eyes tightly whenever this happens and switch to the virtual me. The me with filters and ‘adjustments’, the me that I am sure is really me because that other me-I don’t want to look like that.

This can’t be healthy. I put make up on the virtual me, well I put it on the actual me, but in the mirror it goes on the virtual me. It looks a bit rough, I hit another button and the whole image is smoothed over and the makeup on the image in the mirror is perfect. I have no idea what it looks like on the actual me. I don’t care. I head for the train station. Its still dark. I walk and no one can see.

No one notices if my makeup is badly applied. No one notices me at all. That is how commuting works, same people everyday. Same seat. Same bags. Same coat. New coat. She has a new coat. And no one notices anything at all ever. I know these people, their habits, their smell, their conversations on phones. I know there lives but not their names-sometimes their names but only accidentally because I overheard. They probably know me too, but we can’t let on. We can never tell each other how much we know. It’s a pact between all commuters everywhere. A tacit agreement that even though we know everything we will pretend to know nothing. Except she has a new coat. I look down. That is not my business. It is not relevant to my life. I can not notice that.

I don’t look up. I just look at my phone. I put it on mirror. It just has an image of me. Always, Never actually me. Well yes me, but me with filters.  My makeup is perfect in that image, my ears are smaller, my mouth more rounded. I tell myself I look like that and there is nothing to contradict me. Nothing at all.

I go to get my coffee. I am wearing a scarf. I look at the ground. I don’t want to be noticed.  I have a takeaway coffee. They know my order, I send it by phone, I don’t even need to make eye contact. I have paid for it by phone. I just swipe my phone at the collection station and its released to me. I don’t have to see anybody. More importantly nobody sees me.

I get to work. I go past the kitchen. There is someone in there so I avoid it. I go to my cubicle. I take the lid off my coffee cup and sip it. Sweet, bitter delicious coffee. I switch on the machine, really can they not set it up so that I can do this from my phone before I arrive. It hums into life. I slip into lifelessness. I look at the Inbox, the news. I think about my first meeting. 9am slips by. I look at my phone, at the image on my phone. It is a good image. I have a meeting at 10am. I decide not to go in person but to send a virtual me.

I know that since I am in the office I should not do this. It is technically against the rules but I do this. The image of me, it is I think-better than the real me. The virtual me goes to the meeting. I see the meeting on my machine, I say things. I sound good. I look good. I huddle over my machine. Sooner or later they will ask why I am never there in person.

I finish my coffee at 11am. I always take ages to drink it.  I need the bathroom. I cannot go to the bathroom. The bathroom has mirrors. The mirrors in the bathroom are real. Real mirrors with real reflections and they cannot be changed to show your image, your avatar. It is really you. You cannot avoid seeing them. I need the bathroom though.

I grab my scarf. It looks odd. I know it looks odd, I pick a time, 11.21am. I am bursting now but 11.21 is not random, its too early for an 11am meeting to have finished and passed the time when anyone with an 11.15 will be going to a meeting late and too early for anyone going to an 11.30. I have this. I can get to the bathroom with my scarf and no one will see me. When I get to the door, I can wrap the scarf around my face and I won’t see it in the mirror-well maybe just the eyes-but the eyes are very close-aside from the colour. Did I mention that my avatar has different coloured eyes to me.

I look out from my cubicle, there is no one. I make a break for it. I see someone. I have misjudged it. 11.22 would have been better. I walk on by and pretend not to see her. I am here now before the toilet door. I wrap the scarf around my face and go in. I can only see my eyes. I focus on what I have to do. I focus on the taps when I am washing my hands. I do not make eye contact with myself. All the glimpses I get of me are accidental or peripheral. That person, she is not me. I am the image on my phone.

I look at the time, 11.27, just in time for the 11am meetings to finish and for early birds to the 11.30 to be on their way. I hide in the toilet cubicle. 11.30 passes. 11.35. 11.37. I will go  at 11.38. At 11.38 on the dot I fling open the toilet door and race for the exit. I nearly bump someone over in the rush. I mumble something to her. Sorry maybe or excuse me. I try to avoid panic, I can’t breathe. Is that panic or because the scarf has been covering my mouth for 20 minutes. I don’t know. I can see my cubicle. Head down, I march towards it. I see my chair. I reach out for it, grab it, slam myself down on it. I unwrap my face and bend over my desk. I have made it. No one saw me, at least not the real me. Next time I will send my avatar to the toilet.  It was not always like this. There was a time before this. Before there was a better perfect me, that existed as a picture when I am flesh and blood.

Everyone is concerned

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

In reality I live on lentils and quinoa, in VR I indulge in cake and cake, and well cake. I mean wouldn’t you. The sensation of eating it without the actual eating of it…read more 

Everybody is concerned. I get that. But I am not concerned. I will do the same thing today that I have done every Saturday since it happened. I will go to the café and sit across from my mother. We will have the same conversation that we had last week. It will be almost word for word.

It is a virtual café, so I will sit here in a chair in my kitchen with my head set and in theory she is sitting in a chair somewhere far away with her head set on. We are sitting in the same virtual reality though, so I will be able to see her and she will be able to see me. Or at least a version of me. The version I had made for VR is so close to me that you can barely tell.

I picked this virtual café because I liked its décor. There will be the same people talking in the background, the same people going in and out. I will order the same coffee and feel the odd sensation of drinking it, of reaching out to pick up and cup and take a sip, and knowing it is not real. Yet still feeling the cold porcelain, the warm milk. I will scoop the chocolate sprinkles off my cappuccino and my body will think I have eaten them. I can fool my brain into thinking I have had a coffee now without ever touching the evil stuff. It is ecologically more sound as well.

But I am not here for the false coffee or even the false carrot cake-the one with double thickness icing, all that sugar and not a calorie in sight. Sometimes I follow it with chocolate cheesecake. I do love virtual reality. In reality I live on lentils and quinoa, in VR I indulge in cake and cake, and well cake. I mean wouldn’t you. The sensation of eating it without the actual eating of it.

Anyway I am here in VR for my mother. My sister says it is wrong and I must face reality. I say I am not ready. I have lived a long way away from my mother for a long time. We have had virtual coffee in the same virtual café for nearly three years now, since it first become available. She had an image made of her which was quite true to life, if a little younger than I remembered-but hey who doesn’t. I have several images of me that I use in VR and none of them is quite true to life although the one that sits across from my mother is very close and was very expensive.

It’s odd this VR thing, because it can’t put us physically in the same room, but we are in a seemingly three dimensional space and it is very like she is in the same room. The image is her but not quite her. We can see the same thing, hear the same thing. It is hard to explain, because they could project real images, but no one does that anymore, everyone is touched up just a bit. I met my previous boyfriend in a VR café, there are such places and when I finally met him in person he was barely recognisable. It didn’t last.

Anyway my mother, we sit here every Saturday in the same virtual reality. I order the same kind of coffee and she orders tea. I eat carrot cake and she moves a chocolate slice around her plate as if it was real. I can see the sadness in her eyes, I don’t know why she did that. She could have had happy sparkly eyes or even tiger eyes. I think she was trying to tell me something. Those are not her real eyes. I know she and I are using images because she does not look like this anymore. It is always the last one I use. My sister says I need to spend more time in reality. I tell her this is my reality. She says, there is a truth and this is not the truth. She is far away too.

She sometimes calls me on the phone, refusing to turn up to a VR café, tired, she says of indulging my fantasy. I need to come home she says. I need to see it for myself. She sends me pictures. I delete them. I am not ready I tell her. I am simply not ready. She says you can never be ready. There is no ready, it has just happened and I must deal with it and the argument goes on. She sent me vouchers for therapy –I can use them anywhere apparently. She sent me a link to a therapy app. I have not used any of it.

Now that there is Virtual reality, I fail to see why I can’t exist in it in some form, why my mother can’t exist in it in some form indefinitely. Even though she is gone.

My sister tells me it is a recording, something I made and paid for before she was gone and that sitting there every Saturday isn’t going to bring her back. She says VR is not reality and I must face reality. I say it is reality, just of a different kind, she gets exasperated and I hang up.

I know that she is trying to get copyright of my mother’s image in VR so that she can stop me using it. I know that she is trying to do this. But I have copyright over this last recording of the two of us sitting there together, of our conversation, and because it happened, because it is a real conversation that happened and I am in it, I think she can never win.

She says I have to accept my mother’s death. I say that every Saturday I sit across from my mother and we have coffee and cake and we chat. I know it is the same conversation but it is as if she is there in the room. It is her voice. It is her image. And I am there and she smiles when she sees me. And she is warm, and we laugh at the way she orders the chocolate cake but never eats it and we laugh at how much I love carrot cake in VR but never eat it in real life. She loves that I always scoop the sprinkles off my cappuccino. We talk about me, about family, about my job. Always the same conversation. How is my life going? Is he the one? Would I have kids without a man in my life? We talk about big things and small things. It is the last conversation we had, it is the last conversation we will ever have. We have it every Saturday, over and over again. I know she is gone, I know. But I am still here. Sitting across from here, willing life into her. Drinking coffee, eating cake and I see no reason to accept otherwise.

Would you take a Neon-man home?

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

But where would you take a neon man for dinner. You can’t take him to just anywhere-for one thing he probably needs a continual power source and also what if you go somewhere with bigger neon than he has. That would be embarrassing…read more

We hot-desk. I still sit at the same desk everyday. I get in early. I leave my heels there over night. I don’t care. At least I didn’t until recently. I can’t even remember when I first saw it. We aren’t that high up, the 9th or 10th floor and there are windows, well of course there are. Floor to ceiling and we look across at other buildings. Of course we do.

I don’t even know why I was looking out the window. It makes no sense. I can see several buildings from where I am, and this building is nothing special. Its no different to the others, except, well one day. On this one day, at least when it started, there was a neon outline of a man, taking up the whole window. On the inside not the outside. Its not a huge window, I mean its not small either. It’s a window, probably average for a window, I mean its floor to ceiling with a strip of something separating it from the window’s either side, but its not massively more wide and tall than the other windows. I’m talking too much. Overthinking it. It’s a window, you get it’s a window.

It was odd. I mean. I guess. I mean I thought it was odd. I stumble over my words a lot. People say that I do. I am truly sorry.  A neon outline of a man, a man  outlined in a neon sign. Just the outline and nothing else. Just there. In the window of the building. The window I was talking about. It was just there. I mean the man and of course the window. Sorry I’m not explaining it very well. It was yellow. The neon man, he was yellow.  Which isn’t really odd. I don’t know? Would it have been less odd if it was orange or green or blue? I tried to ignore it.

But it was there all day and my eyes were just, drawn to it. I vowed not to sit there again the next day. But I left my shoes there over night and when I went back the next day, the neon man was gone. Or at least I couldn’t see him. So I sat there again. It didn’t seem like such a terrible idea. I mean even now, it was my seat. Like I said, we hot-desk, but I sit there every day. Then around 11am, there it was again, the neon man, yellow, in the same window. I looked around me, no one else seemed to notice, everyone else seemed to be working. I didn’t want to disturb them. I kept sneaking a look at him, luminous. He made me smile. To think I knew he was there and no one else had noticed him.

It was distracting then so I tried to ignore it, to avoid it, to not see it. Then when I looked again, there was someone standing within the outline. A real man. That was weird I thought. Five minutes later and the man who had fitted into the outline was gone. I didn’t know what to do. Its not the kind of thing that warrants a phone call to the police, but it was odd. I mean don’t you think its odd. A neon outline of a man in the window if an office block. Then a man stands there in the outline and then-he is gone and there is just the neon left behind. Maybe you don’t think its odd. Maybe its me that’s odd. I can’t know either way can I.

It was gone the next day. Or at least not switched on. I couldn’t even pick the exact window with any certainty. I was busy all day Thursday and a little sad. What had happened? Where had he gone? But Friday, Friday, there he was again. I was so happy. I was buzzing. No one else seemed to notice him or to care. I wanted to say something but what? What do you think about that neon man you can see in the window over there? Maybe they’d think it was an odd question. Maybe they wouldn’t think about him. I did think about him.

Maybe they already think I’m odd. This would make them think I am more odd. I think ‘odd’ is an odd word. But it does what it says on the packet, even if you didn’t speak a word of English and someone said it to you, you would know what it meant. Its one of those words that’s all in the tone and the facial expression. You know what someone is saying when they use the word ‘odd’. The world is not full of those words, there aren’t many. It is a word I love but am desperately afraid of. I live in terror of the hint of an expression of it behind my back as I leave the office kitchen.

Where was I? Friday, yes, odd, yes, Friday. He was back. Neon man in all his yellow luminescence. I wanted to talk about him. I would have talked about him, but no one met my eyes all day. I stood in a world of my own on the way home on the tube. I should give him a name. He should have a name-my first thought was Leon, but no I didn’t want a name that rhymed, that always lacks dignity. But a bit of alliteration is ok, I settled on Norman-Norman Neon. It had a ring to it. It flowed. You could introduce yourself using that name at a dinner party and everyone would know you were in sales, probably electrical goods or medical supplies. Smooth talking Norman Neon. I liked him. Underneath the impeccable natty suit were tubes of light gold, he was well dressed, he talked a lot but he only truly lit up when I was in the room.

 Then I thought, Norman and I, we should have dinner. But where would you take a neon man for dinner. You can’t take him to just anywhere-for one thing he probably needs a continual power source and also what if you go somewhere with bigger neon than he has. That would be embarrassing. You need somewhere quiet and atmospheric although not too dark because you can’t have him lighting up the room for everyone else. He would be great in a club, kind of like your own personal strobe but more low key, perhaps we could just skip dinner. I wonder if you put neon on your sofa if it scorches it?

I missed my tube stop thinking about Norman. I had to remind myself that he wasn’t real. The thing is I kind of liked him. I liked him a lot. I could hear myself laughing with him as we walked home to my flat, laughing because Norman was better at killing insects than any man I ever met. He could zap a fly with any part of his tubular body. I could see myself chatting to him getting a kind of low level buzzing in response. He has a kind of gruffness to that buzz that could keep me awake at night. I could see him sitting on my couch. Bright yellow, lighting up the room. I would never need to change a bulb again.

I thought about him all weekend. It was ‘odd’ –that word again. By Monday I was desperate. When I first got to work he wasn’t there and I was crushed. But then there he was again at 11am, yellow and luminous and brightening my day. Filling my dreams with walks in the park and I don’t know –just the idea of having your own personal light source. By Tuesday I was in love. Norman and I were –well it was destiny. But Wednesday-Wednesday-I will never forget Wednesday. He wasn’t there on Wednesday, like the lover that ghosted you. He was just gone. I was heart broken. I couldn’t concentrate. Where was Norman?

I went home. Sat on the sofa, drank hot chocolate, watched TV and well I cried. Thursday. Thursday. There was no one I could talk to. No one I could tell. I just had to act as if nothing had happened. But Norman, Norman was gone. There was still no Norman. He was gone and I had to face it, maybe forever.

It was Friday that I resolved to find out. To go there. Directions are not my thing but I figured out the building and where I thought it should be and off I went. And. Well. Love is weird. I could see the building. I had come slightly the wrong way and ended up at the back of it and not the front and there was a skip. I. You understand. It was destiny. There he was. In the skip. Abandoned. A strange outline of a man. All neon. Tubes of light, dulled by lack of electrical current. So. I. I took him. I tried to ask. There was no one around. I just. I took him. I didn’t go back to work. I got on the tube and took him home. I called in sick for the afternoon, said I had fallen and hurt my ankle. I plugged him in. I lit him up. It was an amazing moment. There we were for the first time, me human and him neon. It was a beautiful moment.

And now, now we are together. And everything is fine. I plug him in. He lights up the room and it is how its meant to be. We watch TV.  And everything is fine. I have searched the internet, there is no one like me. I get that. I am ‘odd’ truly ‘odd’. It is a good word. I savour it when I look in the mirror sometimes. I smile slightly at the faint glance as I leave the office kitchen, the one that says they are about to use that word. Sometimes at work- I talk about Norman as if he a human. When they ask me for a picture, I show them a picture of my neon man. No one ever knows what to say. I look at them –all flustered-reddening. Trying to think of the words, how to say, that isn’t a, he isn’t, you can’t, its not. All those sentences they can’t say. Odd, how they stumble over all those words. And Norman and I –we are happy.