Malls Mire

Malls Mire was dark and murky and brackish. It stood between Prospecthill Circus and the Polmadie marshalling yards just down from ‘the Clenny’. Why it was there I don’t know and I never knew anyone who did. We just knew that kids seemed to drown in it on quite an alarmingly regular basis.

Thing is, if you’re a mum or a dad and you tell your child not to do something, they will almost certainly do it. “Don’t go near that Malls Mire” my mum would tell me when we were up visiting my Granny who lived in the flats, but sure enough that’s where I’d go. There were always loads of kids at the edge of the mire and you can bet they’d all been told not to go there.

The Mire drew you to it like some sort of malign force. It was dank and evil, stagnant and deadly and it was irresistible to us young kids. ‘Dares’ were dared and the weak were bullied towards its edge and threatened with a dousing. The braver lads made rafts and ventured out in it.

Then you’d hear on the grapevine that another little kid had been taken by it. Rumours abounded that there was a ‘monster’ in the Mire that gobbled up little children then spat them out for the ambulance men to deal with. The whole thing was very sinister.

Eventually, they covered it over, concreted the whole thing, and it was eventually forgotten about. But at night, as the trains speed through Polmadie Marshalling Yards and the wind blows back toward the high flats, oh, it would break your heart!

A Grown Man Crying

It was the fact that she’d bought a telly that really brought it home. They’d agreed months ago that they spent too much time gazing at one of these and, now that they were splitting up, one was back, and, not only that, was now sharing the bedroom with her whereas he was palpably not. He was consigned to the front-room couch until he could – it was hoped, speedily – find alternative accommodation. He could hear it up there with her, slightly blaring ‘Good Morning Britain’ or some such.

He had been replaced by a noisy box.

He ended up in a room above a restaurant run by a Dutch couple. Kind people, he (and she, the estranged, strangely) was a witness at their wedding in Rock Ferry. Quite often they’d pass up to him a lemon merengue pie (no idea why it was always a lemon merengue pie). There was a communal living room where he’d sometimes chat with a bloke that worked in a margarine factory. Somehow he thought he’d never eat margarine again, but he did.

She got a job way down on the south coast, on her own admission ‘to be as far away from you so that we don’t keep getting back together’.

I think also it was because she couldn’t stand to see a grown man, crying….

He bought a TV of his own.

Seagulls and Shivering

May you never know the bugbears an addiction to the strong-water brings. It is no joke. All that you have built you will watch crumble inexorably around you as you flounder in alcoholic despair loyal only to the contents of the bottle that brings this state of affairs about.

Phone calls, excuses, lies, admissions – post lies unopened, important matters fester and slumber only to re-ignite in your consciousness in some awful future when one is scarce prepared or equipped to deal with them. Usually, this is in the darkest middle of a rainy night when the rain runs down the walls because the bastard seagulls peck at the fixings on the roof (or so you’re told by untrustworthy roofers who are taught to lie convincingly as part of their apprenticeship.)

To be plagued by seagulls at the seaside! For seven years I hadn’t even noticed them, they just blended in with the noise-scape. It’s only when they start breeding on the roof next to you that you realise what noisy, greedy bastards they are; like half a dozen Jimmy Cagney gangster-birds right next to your ear six months of every year. Try drinking to escape them and you’ll end up toxified on your bed, forced to listen to their constant yowlings and the mewling whistle of their offspring attempting to imitate their yakking parent’s. 

It’s as if they’re laughing at you. Your fevered, fetid shiverings are funny to them as they peck at your window, eyes filled with dumb malice. You try to sleep but your mind has rat’s tails running around it. You can get no peace and you kid yourself that you’ll feel so much better with the dawn but you won’t. This will take days and days before any semblance of health returns, mental or physical.

Just to get out of the house you will wander the streets looking shabby and bent; maybe it’s even raining, even worse warm and bright and the seaside streets will be filled with happy folk, just to mark the cruel distinction between you and just about everyone else in the world. They will be sweating through the exertion of games and lust, you will be streaming toxins from your very blood. 

Probably best, the rain. Keeps the bastards indoors.

I am becoming misanthropic to an almost obscene degree. The world is a play but it is poorly cast – there are more and more people that I would gladly see drown in the sea. Indeed, quite often these days about the only thing that even vaguely cheers me up is the thought of imminent environmental or nuclear cataclysm. I’m actually glad Trump is in power and not some sane liberal who’s not stupid enough to jeopardize his or her own well-to-do life-style. I’m hoping Trump goes for his place in history, regardless of the fact that there maybe won’t be anyone left to record the event.