In my Life

Dear Chroniclers,

whilst Fetlock was dusting down the Library the other day he came across a rather precious photographic album. The good man, recognising its significance, fetched it out for me.

Here's an entry from it, and I wonder if you may recognise the ill-proportioned Churchill look-alike sitting up to do oratory duty before the assembled masses. It's none other than your very own apprentice horologist, spun back in time to a lost world of candy-box coloured innocence called childhood.

Fast films

The colouration in question results from an early example of Kodak Ektachrome slide film which, from research and conjecture, I believe to have been a staple in my late father's camera-bag. In its time Ektachrome was reputedly the fastest film available to the amateur photographer. Unfortunately, whilst a marked improvement on what went before, the colour-reproduction of the initial version fell somewhat short of modern-day standards.

There remains, however, a certain charm to Ektachrome's warm and mellow tones that not even the most extensive digital colour palette can quite reproduce. It's like wallowing luxuriantly in a Sunday afternoon bath and recalling the summery days of youth.

In the dark

I have fond memories of standing beside the Captain in his Dark Room - a rather grand name for what was in fact a converted outside toilet, mercifully stripped of its former fixtures. I recall the exotic scent of strange chemical substances and a dim green light, which was the only source of illumination in this small, damp hideaway. I suspect the Captain came here to escape the icy clutches of the Black Dowager.

There was a huge enlarger on the bench opposite the door. It was here the Captain would stand, deciding where to crop and burn his photographs. I loved to watch him fetch out a sheet of virgin white paper and place it underneath as he reached up to focus the lens. A moment or two later the exposed sheet would be transported across to the developer tray and dunked into its first wash of chemicals.

Developing

Amidst the swirling, pungent waters, strange shadowy forms would begin to appear on the surface of the paper. Within seconds they would take substance, bold black and strong in contrast. And as my beady child-eyes peered up at the bench the Captain would seize the sheet in a pair of tongs and transport it across to the second tray - a bath of fixative - and thence into a deep Belfast sink with the cold-tap turned open wide.

What magic!

In the Picture

On the rare occasion, the Captain would even allow me to press the shutter-release button, usually after his camera had been secured firmly to a stout tripod and focussed on the subject matter in hand. For the most part, however, my place in his photographic life lay on the other side of the lens.

He took many pictures of the family in his time here, sadly all too many of them disappearing during the regular purges instigated by the Black Dowager to remove as many memories of her late husband as possible.

Rescued Memories

The photograph above was taken on slide-film, the Captain's preferred medium. I rescued it some years ago from the bottom of an old, battered crate tucked away in the darkest depths of a garage. It came as part of a package numbering some three hundred or so similar items, many of which were showing pronounced signs of deterioration.

Thanks, however, to the miracles of modern-day technology I was able to arrange for the best of them to be scanned onto disk, following which I spent many a happy hour in the company of our trusty PC and an early version of Photoshop Elements.

It was truly a fascinating process cleaning up the raw scans - dust was removed, photographs cropped and levels tweaked. The best part of all was looking at a distant, but familiar world through the eyes (or more correctly, the lens) of the Captain. Do you ever long to see things a different way? Then try taking a real close look at a familiar picture and see what it tells you about the person who captured the image.

The shelves fill

Those childhood forays into the Dark Room served me well; in time they set me on my own photographic journey. It started in my twenties when mrs electrofried bought me my first camera - a Fujica STX-1, if you're really interested!

This marvellous instrument taught me priceless lessons. Aside from a simple electronic exposure meter everything else was manual - no zoom lens nor automatic focus, no wind-on nor self-loading mechanisms. Simplicity taught me everything and I have a number of images captured on that camera which bear favourable comparison with photographs I've taken with much more sophisticated, and expensive equipment. One or two have even graced this meandering blog.

Over time the shelves have filled. When I last counted them, there were one hundred and twenty three albums in all charting the history of my own family. And that's not including the albums I make up every Christmas for our children - they each have one to represent another year of their lives.

You see, I so much want them to have precious dreams, not some dusty cast-offs consigned to the darkness.

A Challenge

And with that thought in mind, here's a challenge this week for my honoured guests at the House of Electrofried. Get out a picture you really like, look at it and then type a few lines in the comments box to share it with others.

Until the next time we meet,

my very best regards

electrofried (mr)

A Peace of Time

Dreams of Prague

Stories from the Apocalypse - Splintered

A beginning

We dance endlessly round the fire in celebration, sparks to the bright midnight, holding hands and watching it burn up. In the flickering light, he's out there, watching over us.

Exit

... spinning silently into darkness, across space and time.

The Procession

It's pitch black. I hear a car pull up the drive. Voices, yes voices at last - the voices of Madeline and Eugene. They're coming for me and there's no escape. My fate is silence, but what did I ever do to deserve this?

Scraping at the front door with keys and laughter and the lights go on. I shrink from light. It blinds what little's left of my sight. The sound of their laughter comes again, tumbling into the cottage, taunting me, and here we are, the three of us together, one last time. But what's this they're carrying into the kitchen - a bag of nails? No, a toolbox!

They come close, and as the last of my sight slips away I sense a metallic glint below. Consigned to darkness. Eugene unlocks the box, pulls out a screwdriver, Madeline reaching for the bundle of keys hanging on the hook. I'm opened and they're at the fixings, scrabbling at the screws that twist and turn into me. A spiralling shaft of pain. One by one, until finally I'm undone and hanging loose.

Hands reach up to bear me off into the cold, night air. Warm hands that hold me aloft, carrying me out across the garden, into the field and my body is lifted higher still to the summit of a pyramid pile of sticks and branches and staves and shattered box-card rubbish. I rest there for a little time as a carnival procession of dogs circles around the stack.

I smell the petrol, see a spark ignite. Flames lick up the pyramid, but I feel no pain now. Just waiting for release as the heat burns. Waiting for my body to char until, at last, I'm ....

Time Comes

"We gotta burn this down, Gene. Now!"

Returning

It's the one thing we don't like about the cottage. ... well, I guess it just has all those strange old memories. We never really did get the kitchen sorted properly after it all happened, so now it's time to do something about it. I know what's got to go, that ugly old thing.

"Gene, go fetch the toolbox - we're going for a ride!"

We load up the back of the carrier and make out of town, the traffic beginning to thin as night folds over us. It cuts quick this time of year. Soon be Christmas, another year without him. It hurts - I can't make out for sure quite why I should miss him so. Those long nights alone, dreading his coming awake in the morning beside me. Miserable.

I drift off to sleep as Gene drives us there, nightmares twisting down the road after the carrier. I see Seth through the door, blood pooling out and I'm powerless to move. Paralysed, I watch as he comes toward me, his hands reaching for my throat, dragging me in. I see splinters in his hands, bloody splinters. Desperately, I cry out to break the spell.

Missed

One day, please ... I miss them so.

A certain emptiness

It's lonely here, swinging endlessly to and fro on my own. Sometimes they come back to visit and I half recognise faces and voices, distant memories of the smell of fresh-cut lamb cooking in the kitchen and dogs rushing past me out into the garden.

How quickly the children grow. I nearly caught hold of them a moment ago. How much I want to hug them in my arms again, hear their laughter. But they twist and turn away, out to the garden too in chase of some autumn leaves. One day I'll take them in my arms and draw them close.

Remembrance of Seth

I couldn't believe it when Eugene walked in, it was just like he was a doppelganger. Weird. One door closes and another opens. He said he'd just moved in opposite, and his eyes twinkled like I remembered Seth's. Twinkled, like when I first met Seth and he was this ... this gawky bundle of teenage energy and dreams and soft flaxen hair. Where did he go, damn him?

It was just another weekend at the cottage, but I couldn't take it anymore. I just couldn't take it. The kids said nothing, helped me mop up the mess, and all the time that bloody door swinging in the wind.

We got most of it up but there was one patch by the mat we couldn't shift. Pretended it was floor polish, pulled the mat across it and hoped it would go away. It never did.

Contre Jour

This feels so good. My arm's not stiff anymore. Sure, there's some residual pain down my side, two thin sets of gouge marks, but who cares. He's gone now - just swinging there. Nailed! And I'm free to step out into this new joy.

I bet he thought he had me there, caught in his wooden embrace. But not now!

I laugh and laugh and laugh as a pack of dogs race in to greet me. The kids aren't far behind, and with them comes Madeline.

Madeline. She's silhouetted against a late afternoon sun, its rays streaming through loose gaps in her clothing, flowing out to reach me. I smile and make my entrance.

"Hi there, my name's Eugene - just moved in opposite."

Touched

... and I feel his touch as he leaves me swinging.

The separation

So here I am, screwed, just as I always wanted. But now the pain comes in waves as I sense him kicking out against the grain. This shouldn't have happened, this should never have happened. I thought we were going to be locked together, permanently.

But no, he's pulling against the grain and every sinew in me hurts. His form is bowed and poised, ready to pull free. Oh no - it's splintering!! I can feel him step out the door ...

Dreaming Again

Is this for real, or just some sick dream in the back of the carrier on the way to the bonfire? Why are the dogs so restless?

I look up and see Gene behind the wheel, he's humming some tune to keep himself awake.We seem to be on the way to the cottage once more, but I'm racing miles ahead of the carrier. All those leaves we scooped up together with the children, building up the pyre and now we're lifting that sick, ugly bloodstained door on top.

So just where did Seth go?

Cut

No escape - sealed. I bang shut.

Mounted

I get out the toolbox. The set of hinges I bought last weekend are there on top, waiting to be fixed. I like their shiny, metal glint - I need something to hold it all together right now, keep it all fastened in place. Permanently.

Madeline and the kids are out for the afternoon with the dogs on some country rambling blackberry-hunt adventure. Alone in the cottage, it's so quiet now they've gone. I lay out my tools on the kitchen floor and start to undress. A pile of discarded clothing and I reach for the sharpened chisel.

My leg is so stiff I can barely feel it touch the grain of my skin. The chisel digs in and shaves off some flesh, a neat rectangular groove. The tape-measure confirms some more has to come out and then it's done. I raise the chisel again, this time to my left arm. The grain is thinner here so it hurts some. A gush of blood onto the floor until the sap rises and seals over the wound, and now there are two neat slots waiting.

I fix myself. Seconds later the hinges are in and I'm up in place. Swinging.

Strange Behaviours

Why should a man pick up a brush and start to varnish his left arm? Seth's skin is an ebony bridge drying in the sun, stiffening.

Entrance

It' s a pin-prick, some loose irritation. I caught it on the back-door on the way out to the garden, chasing after the kids.

Holding my hand to the light I see a splinter digging in, piercing the flesh between the second and third fingers of my left hand. It seems to be burrowing in deep - the entry wound has sealed and a black tunnel leads towards the vein. Seeping.

I sense a hardening as it takes possession of me. Grain spreading out across my arm. I feel ...


...wooden.

My Beautiful Friends - Gallery 1

Fear and Loathing in the House

Dear Chroniclers,

another rainy Saturday passes at the House. The Hounds have been walked, reallyfried has visited and mrs electrofried continues to struggle with the alien life-form that arrived in her Christmas stocking, courtesy of Cook, just a few weeks ago.

The lights of doom

The alien in question, if fading eyesight serves me right, goes by the inexplicably mis-spelled name of "Sonny, the DVD recorder", the words writ large in letters red, black and bold on the carton in which it arrived. And now, unpacked, it sits skulking in the corner of the TV Lounge.

The little green flashing lights that illuminate its fascia refuse stubbornly to co-operate with either the complementary remote-controller we found secreted amongst the wood-shavings at the bottom of the carton, or our own sturdy, valve-operated teak-clad edifice of a TV set. We are, dear Chroniclers, currently at something of an electronic impasse.

A matter of no little import

Having made discrete enquiries of the local Trading Standards Office, we are lead to believe Cook may have acquired the wretched thing via some dubious bartering at a recent Little Wittering car-boot sale. Rumour has it bottles of cheap Turnip Gin may have exchanged hands.

Worse still, we suspect from the "Made in Slovenia" label sellotaped loosely to the bottom of the devilish instrument, that we may be in possession of what might politely be described as a grey import. Certainly, Cook has previous form in the dark world of counterfeit consumer-goodery. Two previous convictions stamped on her "Care in the Community" order bear witness to this - as she took great pride in telling us some little while ago, having just entered indentured service with the House of electrofried.

So it appears likely, despite our careful nurturing of the florid-faced woman, that she has made a return to ways of old. And whilst we're on the subject, Fetlock the Butler was not entirely impressed either with the Louis Vuitton handbag and matching sock-suspenders that were his Christmas Box lot from Cook this year.

Puzzling Instructions

Back to our TV Lounge, and the silvery machine continues to remain a Sphinx-like electronic mystery - not even the hieroglyphics of an accompanying instruction manual can unravel its arcane inner-workings.

If truth be known, the booklet is as impenetrable as "Sonny" itself. It speaks in strange, acronymic tounges of "HDD" and "SLP", it reels off bizarre algaebraic formulae such as "DVD - RW/DVD - R" and "DVD = R DL" and then, to top it all, it contains perplexing entreaties to select a pattern from "A" through "E" according to our input jack.

So far as mrs electrofried and I are concerned, we have no input jack, at least none of which we are aware. And even if we did, we would be loathe to entrust it to the vagaries of a Slovenian grey import of uncertain jurisdiction.

A spring in the air

Had it not been for the interjection of Fetlock's feather duster, then matters may have rested there - a sullen, uncommunicative object glued to the floor of the TV Lounge. Not unlike our own, darling teenygoth, come to think of it. But no, our faithful retainer sprang into action earlier this Saturday morning with unexpected alacrity!

He was stationed at the time by the front door to the House, talking to the spot-encrusted delivery-boy from Mrs Puri's 24/7 Balti'n'Booze Emporium, ("Chicken Vindaloo and super-strength continental lagers our speciality"), the poor lad being the latest victim of his ongoing attempts to master the art of casual English conversation. Hearing mrs electrofried's plaintive cries of despair as she locked swords once more with the combined might of "Sonny the Sphinx" and the unintelligible instruction manual, Fetlock broke off talks to make haste toward the TV Lounge.

His parting words to the frankly bewildered youth were,"Mi lahko daste kak ne prospekte o Bledu in okolici v angle ini?", which roughly translated means, "Could you give me some brochures about Bled and the surrounding region in English?" And with that cryptic observation, he scooped up his trusty feather-duster in one hand and made his way down the Hall.

Fettled and dusted

Fetlock's mastery of the feather-duster is a thing of beauty and a joy to behold. Quite who schooled him in the ancient art of dust-removal, or indeed, why, remains a mystery to us all - but something for which we in the House are eternally grateful. Suffice to say that even the most Herculean of domestic-cleansing chores (to wit, the annual spring-clean of the living quarters allotted to young teenygoth) are no match for the electrofried's Butler extraordinaire once he in full flight.

And in full flight he most definitely was this morning. Fetlock appeared at the door to the TV Lounge, feather-duster clenched tightly between his teeth, and promptly proceeded to leap, ninja-like, the length of the room.

"Do not be fretting, electrofried mrs." he pronounced, duster to the ready.

"Fetlock curing it, he will!"

It was all over in a flash. The duster bobbed and weaved its way across the fascia of "Sonny the Sphinx" until at last it yielded its treasure. A secret compartment slid open to reveal a tray into which DVDs should be placed. To our astonishment, its crude plastic mouldings contained not a silver-circled disc, but rather a badly decomposed turnip.

Fetlock assured us this was quite standard practice in more rural areas of Slovenia, where mass-produced consumer frivolities are often put to good use in storing the winter essentials. The turnip duly removed, he bowed deeply to the lady of the House before making his way back down the Hall.

My biggest mistake

All appeared to be going well at this juncture. "Sonny the Sphinx" was now primed and ready for action, its flashing green lights duly compliant for the first time since its Christmas unveiling.

So why or why, did I elect to carry out the programming?

Cream teas and "Rain"

I might have known it would all back-fire with hideous consequences.

The Very Reverend Giblets, our encumbant at the Church for the Terminally Bewildered Anglican, chose to pay a passing visit to the House this same afternoon. As cruel fate would have it, he was accompanied by several parents of good-standing in the parish, their assorted offspring all regulars at the Youth Group run by mrs electrofried and I.

With teenygoth gagged and secured discretely out of sight behind the aspidistra, Cook was duly despatched to the kitchens to make up some light cream teas. Meanwhile, as mrs electrofried assembled the expectant parents around the TV set, I duly loaded up "Sonny the Sphinx" with an uplifting but thoroughly modern Christian DVD (such things do exist) called "Rain" by the rather splendid Nooma team.

"Let's show you the sort of things your children are watching with us on Sunday evenings."

Having effected the introductions, mrs electrofried, gesticuled in my direction to press the Play button. Little did I realise there were in fact two Play buttons. I hit the one for the hard-drive and made my way back to the sofa as these words from my dearly beloved rang out across an otherwise hushed room:

"Electrofried, what on earth have you done???????"

Mint Hotel madness

I really should know better, but ever since my teenage years I have been a closet affecianado of the works of the sadly deceased Hunter S. Thompson. His classic, "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas", has long been a favourite of mine and it would have been churlish not to have recorded the film version when it was aired a few days ago on terrestrial TV.

Those familiar with Thompson's drug-raddled journalistic style will no doubt recollect the infamous scene from the book when Dr. Gonzo checks into the Mint Hotel heavily under the influence of mescaline. Terry Gilliam's faithful interpretation of this vision from Hades saw a group of astonished parents nearly choke on their scones and jam as "Sonny the Sphinx" spluttered into action.

A now silent audience watched in disbelief as a hideous tableaux unfurled on the screen before them - Mint Hotel patrons transformed by the evil drug into rampant, reptilian blood-letting monsters. You could have heard a pin drop ...

Banished to the Tower

The Youth Group seemed strangely quiet this weekend. I hear rumours our tenure as leaders may shortly be coming to an end as once more I've been banished to the Tower...

... and all I have to keep me company are the flashing lights of "Sonny the Sphinx" and three months worth of the omnibus edition of "Eastenders"". I shall keep a stout heart as I complete my penance.

yours as ever,

electrofried (mr)

Inside the Horology Factory

Stories from the Apocalypse - Fly

Oh my, I hear a crash and now the lights go dim .... so what am I going to do?

Guess the kid was just chewing on a sweet. A garishly-wrappered chocolate kiss-curl sweet and when I first saw his flaxen hair I thought, "I remember that face". I followed him down the road - he was skipping and singing a low song, some kind of nursery rhyme chant. I stopped in my tracks when he looked up at me. And there I was, frozen in time.

The kid smiles and holds up the wrapper. It bears a series of pan-toned images of a grinning child who consumes chocolate and blows bubbles into the air. One of them breaks free and drifts up, a hideous bubbled reflection that breaks open in the air, coating the candy-wrap in white stickiness.

The kid smiles a second time, drops the paper on the ground and walks away. As mysteriously as he comes, he fades from sight. So what's this candy-wrap stuck to the pavement? I go up to it and circle, endlessly round and round and round the white helix. Mesmerising. And time becomes a loop.

I guess the fly gets there first. I notice it just before the kid disappears from sight, circling around his head before it breaks off a loose buzz-bomb pattern to go investigate. The stickiness.

A fly crawling across the helix in search of sweetness, just look at those legs! I get down on my hands and knees to examine it. Eating the dust while my head cradles the cracked pavers, I see black crystalline rodding. Coxa, femur, tibia, tarsus ... all carrion-juiced and callaphora. The fly is there and sucking up the trail. Will it lay its eggs here, right here on the candy-wrap pitch?

It stops. For a second I think it's flaxen-haired and looking back at me, then the fly returns to its helix. Sucking up to the sweet spot at the centre of all things, oblivious to a world spinning around it. I watch it for hours as the sun begins to sink behind us, burning a deep cinammon glow to the summer air. Time for sleep as day one ends.

Early dawn and I'm out once more, pounding the beat. Sure enough it's there, the paper-wrap, stuck to the pavement and not even the morning breeze is going to free it up. It's there for the duration. But what's this? The fly's gone and in its place a creeping spider. It's stalking the helix. I can't believe this, it's stalking the helix! I watch it, hair on end and eyes aglint, the legs scurry in slow-motion as it traces out the stickiness.

And there's no sign of the fly, not a trace - just disappeared into the ether like the flaxen-haired kid. Now there's just a pregnant Buddha-bellied arachnid down there, crawling around and around and around. I get down on my hands and knees again. The early-morning sun has yet to warm the ground and the flags cold-kiss my cheek. I'm candy-wrapped now, staring at this waxy square of garish coloured paper and the streaks of stickiness radiating from the centre. Drawing me in.

The sun rises inexorably. I hear in the distance the first of the traffic as it begins to cut a bloodied swathe into the dawn bird-chorus. It gets louder and louder, swelling as the cars and trucks and cycles and buses and pick-ups and hot-rod day-time madness roar through thick, dark clouds of sulphur-scented vapour. It's rising up to form a low feral moan, punctuated by the dum-dum beats of passing pedestrians as they pound out the pavement towards the candy-wrap.

It's as if I'm invisible. They walk all over me as I lie flat to the ground staring at the spider.

Eventually the traffic begins to thin. I take the chance to grab a break, a short, sharp, shot of morning tannine, and then it's back to my station, this time armed with a deck-chair. I set it up to the right of the candy-wrap and get out my book. No-one's going to walk over me now! I turn the pages. One, two, three, four as words and pictures spring out and draw me in. They draw me to a pot-bellied dark star diamond of flailing legs that scurry endlessly around. Laying eggs in the dying dust of day two.

The bluebottles hatch first. They're there to greet me the next morning, feasting on the body of the fallen spider. Maggots tearing out the heart of some open system circulation in tissue sinuses. Special venous channels. Dead arachnid. This is the next chapter of my book as I sit and read in deck-chaired isolation, the thundering pedestrians breaking each side of me as I turn pages. Turning pages! The crawling maggot brains sucking out the sweetness absorbed by the spider, taken from the fly that crawled the helix. Round and round.

A third sun and it's back to the chair. A spider hatching and the arachnid rises - a myriad of scurrying legs sewing the soft white maggot wriggles against the garish-coloured wrap and where there was once stickiness is now the heaving mass of callophora cadaver. Oh my! I can't look away, nor can the passing stream of pedestrians. They look, too.

When we stop to observe, then time stands still and we're both frozen. Glance up for a second from these lines and see my tap, tap, tap ... ping. Let me offer you a candy-wrap and invite you deeper into the helix white stickiness blur. Do you really want to come this way? A flaxen-haired child stares out, a halo of flies around his head. Day four beckons.

They all saw it in front of them. The heaving mass of insect life and now the birds descend, shutting out the low feral-moaned traffic. Feasting on the spider that ate the fly that went round and round a white spiral, candy-kiss curl. The birds are here! Winged and graceful they descend in slow-motion patterns, cutting through the air to pluck off the arachnids one by one. A silhouetted eagle circles, high - overhead. It counts off the day and now.

Where did that fox come from? This morning, this fifth morning when I come to plant out the deck-chair it's looking up at me. A rictus-grin corpse beside the still sticky wrap. Perhaps it's come hunting for an angel-flight - the birds have long since gone, but I can see between the white-teeth grimace a solitary bloodied feather. How I wish the eyes would close; when I sleep they come to me, eyes open and staring. I need some tea real bad and I unwind the stopper of the vaccum-flask. I need to read my book too, so I uncork the pages. But still I feel the cold lupine stare from somewhere deep within. I can't shake it off, even when the waiting sun comes.

And then the first crash. Day six and it wakes me from bright midnight dreams. Crashing metal and screams and then ... just silence. It's that half-way place between night and day, the time where we dance briefly before the clock begins to tick once more. The time of possibility. And now I awake, bleary-eyed, to fetch out the deck-chair.

The wheels still spin as I take up post. The windscreen lies cracked before me, a head rising up stiff and bloodied through it to salute the new day. Was it the stickiness that brought the fly to feast on spider, that took the birds that caught the fox, that brought this .... That brought this driver to stare at the candy-wrap spinning and take his eyes from the road, to crash.

I set out the deck-chair once more, as blue lights descend, spiralling out into the warming Summer air. A flaxen-haired child accompanies the procession, around his head a buzzing halo of flies.

I hear the mounting as day seven arrives. Sucked into the sweetness, one driver after another, just molten metal and ramming up against a blue-lighted wall as fly becomes spider and is eaten by the bird plucked out by the fox and metal hits metal taking out the power-lines and now.

The lights grow dim ... so what am I going to do?

From the Morning

Strange Days

Dear Chroniclers,

it seems an age since we last met.

The Christmas decorations have all been packed away, the tree long since dismembered, its skeletal spine consigned to rot in some darkened Anderson shelter out back of the House and life returns to what passes for normality ....

... except for the low feral howl emanating from deep within the inner sanctum that is electrofried's music room.

Three Presents

So did Christmas bring what you truly want? Now the tinsel has gone it's time to reflect on three different and very special presents.

So would you help me unwrap them all over again?

The Doors of Perception

It was there to greet me on Christmas morning. A neat box wrapped in gold paper placed lovingly beneath the pine-scented bowers of our family tree.

It contained a set of remastered CD's that took me way back to the spinning psychedelic haze of a red-brick University discotheque. Songs that sparked and burnt their way indelibly into my consciousness - songs that spoke of love and lust and death and strange deeds on an Indian highway.

Some music to open the Doors of Perception.

The Call of the Darkness

I spent many an evening after Christmas closeted alone in the music room, the sound cranked up high and drinking in the memories of the past. In my mind I danced on fire across a glistening Student Union floor, entwined in the embrace of my lover. Together we flew as one into the night.

Answering the Dionysian call.

Riders on the Storm

Was it chance or some strange sleight of hand from the Master Horologist that brought the muse from the past alive once more?

Shortly after Christmas the second present fell into my lap - a scented visitation. Turning over the pages of a magazine I chanced upon the tour itenary for "Riders on the Storm", the vestigial remains of a once great band that had opened the Doors for me, and many more besides. Plans were made, tickets purchased.

And so came a night of great magic, once more with my love entwined to the music. We danced on fire as it intends. The two original members of the band looked professorial and skeletal by turns, but how the majestic sound still sparked! Two men lost and found amidst the dignified splendour of a dying Dionysian call.

There is a sad and deeply beautiful feral cry that rings out from this music. The place where darkness and light intersect and the human condition is revealed. I hear it ring out each night as I return to the music room in response to its siren call.

An album opens

But what of the third present?

Over the Christmas break we paid a familial visit to the icy house of the Black Dowager. As ever, she was intent on expunging the memories of the past, but for once this gave rise not to pain but an opportunity for healing.

For some reason the photographic albums lodged in the bottom of her bedroom cupboard were causing her a problem that needed to be resolved. Rather than despatching them to oblivion I was given permission to root around. I emerged with two glittering prizes.

For those who have read "The Captain and the dirt-kneed schoolboy" may I share just one diamond-day jewel - the black and white photograph that appears above. It's a bear-hugged portrait of the two of us lost somewhere in time. And it bears the sweet smell of myrrh that one day will embrace us all ...

And with that thought in mind, may I wish you all a very happy New Year!

yours as ever,

electrofried (mr)

Minstrels' Gallery