The White Room

So you liked the room did you? not much of a space, but its mine, well it isn't is it? I borrowed that as well. Feel like a hermit crab sometimes, burrowing into other creatures discarded ideas and using them.

You can stay for a time if you wish, as long as you go when I say. I'll pick up something, and talk about it, you'll listen. I'll hold it in my hands, let the light dance on it, and occasionally you'll see what I mean.....no, not what I'm saying, that's different, that happens in the sound; meaning comes by listening to the silences.

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I heard a clock ticking the other day. They seemed to be much louder when I was younger; markers of time, giving you permission to take another gasp. Reminded me of the sounds in my grandfathers room. He only had one room; well he had a kitchen, but he couldn't manage the step, and I never got to see his long journey to bed, he went there alone when the house was silent, shifting and ticking.

He had a tiled gas fire that hissed like an untuned radio, and on it were a pair of twisting fake oak candlesticks, never used; and the clock. A woollen rug lay on the floor. My father sliced off the tassles, he said they were dangerous and would trip up Grandpa - the only circumcised rug in Christendom.

On Thursdays we had tea there, ran over the road to Ringrose's to buy the custard slices from the bakery whilst Mum gingerly removed the five day old ham from the fridge and cut off the staler edges. From the pantry behind the gas fire came the cheap cut glass bowl filled with tinned peaches, the jug of evaporated milk, laid onto the table in front of the gas fire. On the edge of the table, like a household God stood the radio, on top of the mats. I only ever remember Jimmy Young speaking on it, and the recipe for Today.

There was a cribbage board. Polished. We played for hours together in the afternoons. I cried when he gave it to me for my birthday, and so did he.