Canonical

  • Adventures in success

    I made my own path to Wimbledon and back. Got to keep moving through the aches and pains. Calves, shins, hamstrings, soles. I stopped only for water and Fridge Raiders chicken from a Tesco. It’s still hot but there are more clouds today, thank God.

    I get back and I down a Ramune in bed. From inside I smell petrichor it’s unreal, so I flip open a deckchair and sit in the garden, praying for rain, then the heavens open. The sky is piercing bright, I close my eyes, honeycomb orange. Loud music in my ears, I have ideas. The rain relents, a cat coming and going. My T-shirt is damp now, but I’m going to stick around.

  • Communion

    In the beginning I was christened. Then I was confirmed. 

    My parents ran a Christian camp for teenagers. Every summer meant worship, games, Bible talks and the annual trip to Alton Towers.

    Years later, I was old enough to go without them. I read the Bible for myself. I prayed. I believed. I remember the warm blanket of certainty.

    When I was 17, my philosophy teacher introduced us to empiricism. I found The God Delusion in the college library and started asking questions I couldn’t unask. I felt guilty.

    (I still listen to Blessed Be Your Name sometimes.)

    Last month I went to my mate’s ordination. When the bread came to me, I took communion.

    I don’t know what it means yet.

  • Car crash romance

    There were three chairs lined up against the wall in the school chaplain’s office. He’d taken me out of a lesson to talk about something.

    “Take a seat,” he said.

    I chose the middle one.

    “It’s funny — everyone always picks that one.”

    Then he said: “So, tell me about these poems you’ve been writing.”

    Shit. Someone had told.

    I was 15 and struggling with a break-up with my first love. For reasons unclear to everyone except the wounded boy at the keyboard, I had started publishing poems about the ordeal on MySpace, where anyone from my state school in Bolton could read them.

    The chaplain asked me to explain the meaning of a poem I’d titled “Car Crash Romance”. My finest work to this day. It was about heartbreak, betrayal and death. I don’t know how he managed to keep a straight face as I explained that the catastrophic car crash was a metaphor for the whole thing.

    If stanza is Italian for room, please get me out of this one.

    “I’m sorry,” I said, my face burning. “I’ll delete them all.”

    “Well, you don’t have to do that,” he said. “I’m concerned about you more than anything else. I just want you to know I’m here if you want to talk. My door is always open.”

    I deleted the poems when I got home, determined to avoid the limelight of the middle seat for the rest of my school career. Then I closed my laptop, got into bed and stared at the ceiling.

    I was embarrassed. Ashamed. I decided I would never write about this kind of shit again.