where i left off...

March 8th came and went and still I'm trying to finish my first draft. Instead of one deadline, now I have a few, scattered here and there and making a great deal more sense. I do have a table of contents of sorts, with the bits that need finished adorned with a tick next to them. There are a lot of ticks. 

In the meantime, I've been to France with some mates. We ate, drank and were merry: wine, beer and inordinate amounts of VEP Chartreuse. And whisky. It was colder than anyone ever expects France to be, and I shall long remember the violent flurries of snow that came and went in the space of a minute while we walked along the vines in Puligny-Montrachet. 

Part of me is still hungover.

London's welcomed me back with rain and gales, in some sort of poorly executed impression of Scotland. The cat's been delighted to see me though, and I can hear his strange snores from the comfy chair as I type this. 

 

Buy my book. Please.

be de plage

There was this one night in France. It was the first night. We sat around a table, dinner finished, tasting some wines and chatting about whatever. We were the last ones in the restaurant. It wasn’t bad, as seaside *** hotel restaurants go. The colour scheme, with its luminous orange napkins and waterglasses, may have been ill-suited to January. The orange may have clashed somewhat with the battle-ship grey upholstery adorning the chairs, but the food was decent and the wine list good. My bavette was chewy, but bavette is supposed to be a bit chewy. 

I was tired but relaxed. I think we all were.

I watched him walk through the door. Fashionable and drunk, with exaggerated movements of all limbs. I knew he was English, though his look had a Gallic edge to it. I could see the barrage of profanities swelling inside, seeking some poor member of staff to pour forth upon. As he entered further into the restaurant, someone at my table recognised him and called him over. We all shook hands. He wasn’t quite sure whether to speak in French or English. He swore the restaurant was shit. Told us we needed to go to this place.

‘The B de Plage, man. I’m sure there’s something funny going on there. Must be loads of coke in the toilets. It’s the place to be. What are we drinking? More fucking Grenache?’

‘Syrah.’

‘More fucking Syrah, then. I’ve lost the key to my room. I think I left it at the B de Plage. We’ve got to get there. It’s the place be.’

We sipped our glasses as he patted his pockets again and again, looking for the keycard to his room. Every few seconds there came a shit or a fuck as he failed to locate it.

‘So we’ve got to get out of here. Got to go.’

‘Go where?’

‘B de Plage.’

‘It’s the place to be, apparently.’

‘Yeah, but there’s something on going on in the toilets. Have you seen my key?’

We all fancied a beer. The sober one of us offered to drive. Where to go?

‘B de Plage.’

We piled into the rental. My search for B de Plage on google maps failed. The one way system of Le Gau du Roi confounded us; we wound up driving in all manner of circles. Drunken directions erupted from our guest from time to time. Often just ‘no, no, no... it’s just over there’ or ‘I’ve no fucking idea where the fuck it is’ and often 'it's by the fucking beach, obviously, it's the B de fucking Plage'.

Doubt spread among us. It became Cortez’s city, or de Leon’s fountain. We aimed for the beach, and frequently missed. Still my map showed no prize. We were driving blind, guided by a howling drunken lunatic whose ravings could well have been that of the ancient mariner for all we knew. All attempts to apply logic to our course failed. We hit the same roundabouts and took different exits, only to find they led to the same places and yet more roundabouts. The rental car took some speed bumps a bit too fast and we hooted as the car leapt; cringed when the undercarriage simply scraped along.

Another circuit and we admitted failure. Decided the ancient mariner had imagined it in a booze-tinted haze. The car pulled up to the hotel and as we tumbled out I heard him say,

'I found it.'

'What? The bar? It's not fucking here, is it?'

'My key.' 

He wandered inside, sanctuary rediscovered. We decided to drink on the beach under the stars. The January air was mild and the sea lapped quietly at the sand as the constellations twinkled and we drank our wine. 

Glasses empty, we wandered back to the hotel, into the empty lobby. One of us picked up a black business card from a table covered in fliers and such things for local venues.

There was a gold 'B' emblazoned on it, and, in smaller text beneath, 'de plage'.

It existed.

late nights and shallow graves

We sat around a wooden table in a bungalow in the suburbs. 

I don't know how many glasses of red I had, but there were four bottles on the table and only three of us. The Doors played through the speakers while I topped us up using the the careful precision of a drunk. My friends rolled cigarettes as the grey light brightened through the window. Like the glasses of wine, I've no idea how much they smoked but the room looked as though a low fog had rolled in. The cat joined us for awhile, but left when our chat got bad. 

I sipped the nth glass and we spoke about the future and old times and explained just what we were all doing wrong to each other. Beads adorned the doorways whilst old beermats adorned the doors themselves. A lifetime or two's accumulation filled the house with bygone trinkets and energy efficient bulbs cast it all in a sepia light. 

Day arrived and still we drank and chatted, though the pauses became longer and themes shifted with rambling fluidity. The ashtray filled with the scrunched ends of rollups. 

We finished the wine and gathered our things. I was in the kitchen when she discovered the cat. It had died on the porch, in a pool of its own urine. Less than an hour before it had sat on my lap as I scratched its ears. Shortly after that it lapped fresh milk from its bowl. And then it died, ears scratched and full of milk. It wasn't her cat. It was her flatmate's cat. Her flatmate was on holiday in Portugal. 

The other guy and I offered to dig a grave. It was the least we could do. She was upset. He and I were trying not to laugh. It was horrible and hysterical, and there was nothing more we could do than dig a grave and try not to laugh. 

We found a spot shaded by trees and set about it with a shovel and spade. There were roots everywhere, and we were drunk. It was slow going. I nearly took my toes off a fair few times. The earth wouldn't break. Before long we were sweating. The hole didn't seem to get any deeper. Birdsong rang out and the odd car drove by. Eventually we got it dug.

She put the body in a bag and noticed that rigour mortis had set. She lay it in the hole and while we helped to fill it in, she did most of it herself. Then she disappeared inside for a moment, returning with a bottle of silver tequila. Her eyes were red on her pale face. We swigged straight from the bottle and took a moment to pour some over the freshly-filled grave. 

improving moods and sea mammals...

The seals seemed happy. I think they might even have been frolicking. 

We sat out on the deck of the beach bar. I had a beer. The others had drinks of more than one ingredient. Mixers, spirits, fruit - that sort of thing. 

I kept it simple. 

I don't always. 

The clouds hung low but the breeze didn't chill. It was mild. The deck heater helped. 

And a little further up the beach, the seals seemed happy. They frolicked. One slid from one pool to the other, slipping into the water with barely a noise. The other posed, flexing on the high wall, aware of us watching. He looked awkward when he changed position, uncomfortable out of water. After he posed he dropped into the water with a belly flop and a tremendous splash. 

We laughed, for a moment, before he shot like a bullet into the other pool, as graceful as his friend. 

Between their escapades we talked in relaxed tones. The banter ranged, but nothing deep. The shallow questions, tame and easy. No urgency, nothing pressing, no weight of the unspoken suspended in the air. No deeper than the seal pools, and just as contained. No need for the wild, just to unwind. We sipped our drinks and decided it would be a quiet one. 

It isn't always. 

They quieted down, their evening play complete. We finished our drinks and wandered out into the still night.  

disc

I bought a frisbee this morning. It's purple. I don't own many purple things, unless you count red wine. And that varies, really. Several shades of red and purple, depending on its age and grape and all manner of variables. But some of them are definitely purple. Grenache tends to have a purple hue. Pinot Noir not so much. 

I bought the frisbee because they never tend to last the winter months. I don't know what happens to them in the meantime. Lost in a season of disuse. I wonder if there's some graveyard of winter frisbees; some dilapidated pile of multi-coloured discs dusted with a fine layer of snow that will never melt. It's an odd thought, I suppose. 

Though I've had odder. 

Last night the wine flowed along with the beer and the whisky and the gin. The guitar strummed and many a string broke. The Guinness tasted good, as did the Springbank. Our banter drifted along happily. The bar was hot, but not too hot. We never waited long to get served. 

I caught a pretty girl's eye and then, later, she caught mine. There was nothing in it. Just noticing, being noticed. 

We got home, three flatmates, in time to open a bottle of wine and finish a bottle of whisky and banter more. Heavier this time, deeper. We paused occasionally to watch drunks wander home, clad in ball gowns and black tie. Placing bets on the couples, watching the spats, laughing at the hapless. We may have been as drunk as them, but we'd won already. We were home. Memories and the future both thrown onto the table, talked about loosely, as we were loose. 

This morning my flip-flops slipped on and my face felt a touch numb. 

I remembered summers, stumbling down to the beach. Heads pounding, maybe a tad dizzy. We'd throw the frisbee around like lunatics. Diving catches, great leaps, acts of heroism for girls that weren't there. The sky so blue and the sea cold and inviting. The pop of the first beer bottle opened rang out and we'd take a break, slick with sweat. We'd try to remember the night before. A night like last night. Then the disk flew again and we'd fall, rend the skin from our limbs on the course sand close to the water. 

Breathless, bleeding, soaking, we sat again and sipped. Hangovers evaporated, sweat stung the eyes. We clinked bottles and cursed work and weather for making life anything but that; what we had then. 

So I bought a frisbee this morning.