Graduation Day (Part 1)

I will never forget the joyous excitement on my father's face as the post dropped through the door that morning.

We had all gathered around in the dining room to see him return from the hall, chest puffed out in a mixture of presumptuous pride and nervous bravado. He was frantically rifling through the small stack of envelopes, and when he came across the item we were all waiting for, he tossed the remaining circulars and advertisement catalogues on the dresser, clearly oblivious to the tutting reprimand of my mother's. His big kindly face turned to where i sat across the room. His cheeks had lost their usual ruddy glow, and I knew immediately that he was as nervous as I was about the contents of the letter he grasped so tightly in his thick fingers. The sudden realisation that we were now equals, even in such a small way, made me feel so uncomfortable, that for the first time in my life, I couldn't look my father in the eye. I looked to one side of him, then deeply into the dark shiny surface of the dining table. I felt positively sick.

"Are you ready, son?"

His voice was unusually soft, not the confident boom I was so used to. It was strange, and my sisters stopped giggling as if they recognised it too. Without looking up, I felt the expectant gaze of four sets of eyes fixed on the top of my head.

"Dad, can't I just open it myself? It is addressed to -"

"Edward, come on!" My mother cut me off. "Sorry. I know you're nervous, we all are. But it's tradition, your father's waited a long time for this."

I just nodded, eyes still fixed on the table top, and started picking at the loose threads of my jumper-sleeve. She was right, and nothing I could do would change it. I took a small consolation in telling myself that this tradition would die with me, and that when my own son was in my place, I would grant him the right to learn his fates in life in privacy.

I looked at the envelope still clasped in my father's hand, and although I couldn't properly read it without my glasses on, I recognised instantly the Roegate crest, stamped in thick navy ink, that peered out from under his thumb.

My father had indeed waited a long time for this day. I was destined to become the fifth generation of Simmonds sons to attend The Roegate School for Boys, and had been for the entire eleven years of my own life, not to mention the years of many lives before. In our family it was a big deal to be set on the path of becoming an Old Roegatian. The tradition decreed that on the day the admissions letters arrived, the father of the house would open it, and relay the result to son in the company of the whole family; so far it had always been good news. Grandad Simmonds had read my father's letter out this way, and my father said he had it on very good authority - on exactly whose I never found out - that his own grandfather had done the same, and as a reward had bought the eleven-year-old Grandad Simmonds cigars.

"I'm ready, Dad. You can open it now." I lied; I wasn't ready at all. I leant my forehead on my folded arms, purposely hiding my face, and felt my breath fogging on the tabletop with the tip of my nose.

A wave of prickly cold spread across my back as I listened to the envelope being torn open. My father practically fumbled the paper out of it; his nerves had made him clumsy handed. Labouriously unfolding the letter, he began scanning over the letter out loud. He spoke in hushed erratic syllables, and as they grew louder with each disconnected phrase, each one seemed to raise him slightly farther from his seat as if he were being invisibly winched out of it.

"Dear Master Simmonds... thank you for attending... am pleased to inform you... da-da-da-been ACCEPTED INTO ROEGATE SCHOOL FOR BOYS AS OF SEPTEMBER 1st 1961!"

I looked up to see my father beaming at me across the room; flushed with obvious pride, the ruddy glow was back in his big cheeks, and his eyes twinkled like mad. For reasons I didn't understand at the time, it made me cry and laugh at once.

"I knew you could do it!" He began laughing hysterically. "I knew it!! Knew, knew, knew it!"

His dark red hair flapped wildly across his face as he beamed in turns at my mother and I. Normally it remained perfectly in place, combed back away from his face, but this letter had brought out an excited animation in him that my family had rarely, if ever, seen. It made my laughter overtake my tears. He span on his heels and ran from the room, his shoes echoing against the floorboards as he sprang up the hallway and back again, appearing in the doorway frenetically thrusting himself into his black overcoat. He looked like a giant startled chicken.

He swooped excitedly on my sisters, gathered them up in his arms, and theatrically planted a kiss on them both; they giggled coyly and buried their faces into either side of his neck.

"Girls, say well done to your brother. He has achieved a great thing today!" He turned to me; "I'm really proud of you, son." It embarrassed me, but knowing I had made my father so happy made my insides burn with pride.

Setting Charlotte and Lydia down, my father whisked a huge green scarf around his neck, and the girls scampered to my mother's side. She looked tiny. Her slight face was pale, and she smiled distractedly at them both and then at me. There was a strange sadness in her eyes, one that I had noticed a few times before but had no understanding of; her weak smile did little to betray it. She pulled her ever-present white gown tightly against herself, and stared into the garden, a shadow of the woman who had been so snappily forceful with me just moments before.

My father leant down to her and laid a kiss on her pallid cheek. Clapping and rubbing his hands together, he left for his surgery, whistling loudly as he went down the hallway.

"Today is going to be a good, good day!" he proclaimed, before swinging open the door, stepping outside and clattering it shut without looking back. I craned my neck around the doorway of the dining room to watch him go, but caught only the blurred glimpse of his burly silhouette through the frosted glass. I could almost feel the smile on his shadowy form as it slipped from view, and in the silent rush of cold air he left in his wake, I immediately missed this new vivacious side of him that had filled and enlivened the house that morning.

That was the last time I saw my father alive.

* * * *(MF)* * * *

OK, I'll do exactly what you tell me... not.

Today the world, or at least my little sceptered part of it, finally went insane. In an age where street violence, war, crime, unemployment, homelessness and corporate greed are ever more commonplace, you would be forgiven for thinking that at the very least, the festive period is a time for peace, goodwill and charity. In the most part you'd be right, at least I'd like to think so. Yet today saw the climax of one of the most distasteful and cynical pseudo-rebellions in my (admittedly rubbish) memory, and it has left in it's wake a horde of deluded plastic revolutionaries trumpeting about what a marvellous and oh-so-clever coup d'etat they have pulled off by sticking it to the man.

I am, of course, talking about the incredibly tedious Rage Against The Machine vs. X Factor battle for Xmas number one.

While I am no fan of the manufactured pop-pap karaoke "talent contest" that is the X Factor, I can't help feeling a little depressed at the thought of thousands upon thousands of British people seriously believing that an expletive-riddled Rage Against The Machine record is a more suitable choice for Christmas number one. Hardly the stuff of festive cheer.

However, the part of this crazy situation that disturbs me the most is that the super worthy charity Shelter is being almost hijacked and whored around as some sort of scapegoat by the RATM "fans", and thrown in the faces of those who oppose their views whenever they are challenged. Don't get me wrong, I'm ecstatic that Shelter has benefitted from extra cash, lord knows they need and deserve it. But I can't help wondering how many of these people would give them anything if it didn't give a convenient excuse for their unfortunately very see-through puerility. Call me cynical, but I am guessing far less than bought that teenager's tantrum of a record. And a sad state of affairs that is.

Rather than intelligently registering displeasure at the herd-like mentality of X Factor aficionados, the RATM camp has only served to show the world that they are equally akin to sheep, just a less sugary, more foul-mouthed flock. And if they really liked it that much, why have they not already owned it for the 17 years it's been out?

If like me, you don't dig the X Factor, you don't HAVE to buy Killing In The Name: it's OK to think both are crap, however unpopular this view seems to make you. But if you must spend money on a cause this Christmas, why not give all the money to Shelter instead of buying either? Maybe if all those who honestly yearn for change did that, something genuinely amazing could happen. Just a thought. Merry Christmas.

Yours,

J Swike

Waiting Games

I took my seat upstairs in the empty coffee shop and watched across the soulless terminal, all scuffed white walls and industrial brushed steel, peppered with lit yellow signs that gave vague directions and sternly denied access at every turn. Sunday afternoon made the airport seem almost deserted, sleepy in the low, weak October light filtering across the runway through the giant tinted-glass windows. The air was different since the smoking ban; it smelt of stale espresso and disinfectant spray. A small grotto-like arcade entertained itself noisily in the corner, bursting with bright flashing lights and fairground noises that promised fun-filled distraction from the tedium of it's surroundings, but it was enticing no-one. Occasionally, it battled to be heard over announcements mumbled in several languages, all similarly unheard or ignored by the small crowd of people beginning to gather below. The coffee shop stirred as if woken by them all. Teaspoons and cups clattered and chimed on saucers like rain on discarded bottles, and the steamer spluttered into life, hissing and frothing like an erupting geyser with every order.

A line of people waited behind the steel barrier, leaning against it, necks craned in unison, all eyes fixed on the two small screens that relayed line after line of landing times. They looked like men in a bar watching the football. Some had bored children in tow, and they climbed and swung on the barrier railings, making the terminal their improvised playground. One small dark haired boy implored his father to watch him do cartwheels - "Watch this, Daddy, watch!" - and began flinging himself across the hard floor in a flurry of camouflage tracksuit and bright red shoes. His young but greying father nodded and approved, with distracted "Wows" and "Well Dones". He hadn't actually looked, he had remained fixed on the arrivals board along with all the others; but the boy hadn't noticed and he beamed with delight. Neither noticed the weary cleaner dressed in disposable plastic, who smiled, amused at their game as she trudged along the gallery above them, pushing her squeaking trolley laden with mop and yellow wet floor notices.

SSshhhh!!! Don't Tell the Pocket Book!!

So. I read today that no self-respecting writer should be without a blog. Luckily, I'm not particularly self-respecting; after all I know me, and it's not pretty, as many would probably testify. However, today I have finally decided that for a writer, a blog may be a good idea, so I am therefore stepping bravely into the modern world, and damn the consequences. Hell, I might even get a phone that does internet. But enough of the big-man talk.

The only problem I am having so far (and I do admit it's possibly a little early to be finding problems, even for a picky swine like me), is that i feel like I am cheating on my trusty little leather-bound pocket book. My scruffy brown companion has been with me everywhere over the last four months, helping document all my rambling thoughts, snippets of ideas and the records of the characters i have encountered then made snap judgements about on trains and in cafes. It has been soaked, scorched, dropped, thrown and shamefully even forgotten at times, but it has always been there, waiting for me like an obedient manservant. My Jeeves if you will. And now I've replaced him with a robot hoover.

He will never be truly replaced though (Great. I've personified it. I feel even guiltier now). What he lacks in modernism and readership numbers, he more than compensates in making writing actually feel like writing; he gives the unrivalled sense of pen on paper, the place where it all began for us as writers. Unless of course you are young enough to only remember writing on a computer, in which case, i have some shocking news: I spent 19 years of my life using a phone that had to stay plugged in to the wall. You kids don't know you are born. Anyway, I digress.

He will still keep safe all the little secrets and germs of ideas that I don't want anyone else to read, and best of all, he can't be beaten for portability. At least all the time I don't have a smartphone anyway. Maybe i'll hold off getting one of those for a while, actually. That way, I can have my literary cake and eat it after all. Which is good. Because I like cake.

So thats my first postcard posted then; and I enjoyed writing it every bit as much as the traditional way. Reading back, I have also discovered i may have a phone obsession, which I'm sure there is probably a perverted sounding word for somewhere out there, but that's a matter for another time.

Yours,

J. Swike.