A Change Of Clothes Is As Good As A Holiday

Next week I'm going to Thailand.

Not actual Thailand, the Thailand that involves airfares, accommodation, visas and suitcases.

No, the Thailand that is chai tea and yoga and fisherman's pants. Deep breaths and leisurely dinners. And humidity. I might use the heater for that. Then put the fan on, to get a nice imitation tropical breeze. I won't get much sleep, tossing and turning in the heat, but hey, that's the authentic Thailand experience. I'll be sweaty and awake in the wee small hours planning adventures and hoping that lizards don't crawl over my feet when I'm not looking.

I'll eat pad Thai and meat on a stick and drink coconut juice through a straw stuck in a plastic bag.

Out and about I'll meet all sorts of wonderful, interesting, adventurous types. We'll scheme over tall glasses of fresh juice and lament the price of wine. Then get buckets of some beverage that smells like lighter fluid, which we knock back then we'll pull out the most inappropriate dance moves in the middle of the street, which we'll have forgotten by the morning, and never see the photos, because so-and-so lost their camera in all the excitement and such and such was all fingers and thumbs and couldn't get a clear shot on his iPhone.

Should we bump into each other while I'm on holiday we'll laugh at the coincidence of this chance meeting, against the odds, all this way from our regular, routine lives. We'll laugh, then sit under a palm tree on black sand or yellow sand or white sand that's hot underfoot or cooled from the shade of a cliff face, rough from pieces of broken shell or sand that runs smoothly between your toes as if through an hourglass - you decide, this is all in your head, after all.

A change of clothes is as good as a holiday. A change of pace, a cup of chai tea. A few deep breaths.

Can you smell the street vendors fare? See orange robes out of the corner of your eye? Feel the rush of the unfamiliar, what's around the corner, over this bridge, beyond the walls of that temple?

I'm about to get up now, away from this mesmerising screen. Close the door behind me. Step out into what is known and not known, both imagined and real. Any second now I'm going.

I'm not going to look back.

To The Far, Faraway Towns

There are stairs. A lot of stairs. It seems like the house should have ended long before it does, the narrow, dusty corridors, carpeted and enclosed keep taking you up and up towards the habitually grey sky. A window here and there lets in light, filtered through the clouds, through panes of glass that could use a wash, or be replaced all together.

You've been here so many times. Memories blur. Do you really remember what it looked like? Was the bathroom tiled back then? The couch? Was it there, or perhaps...? The TV is new, definitely. The place almost looks lived in. Almost.

You're back on the stairs now, the final almost vertical leg that takes you into the roof, where there are piles of old carpet, flaked wall paper and other things you try not to trip over on your way to the double doors, smudged with finger prints that might be a decade old. Or older.

You've reached the top now, you can't go any further and you slide open the double doors that stick and jam, forcing you to squeeze through a gap that's almost too narrow to allow you to pass.

But you pass, you're at the top, and there's nothing between you and grey slate tiles that slope down, down, down towards the narrow lengths of grass separated by grey stone walls and fruit trees.

The church spire pierces the sky to your right, children in bright red pullovers scream and chase at it's base.

And over the rooftops you can see it, those few familiar shapes that tell you where you are, the life sized Monopoly board, just an hour away, if you've long legs and you're willing to sweat a little. From here you can trace the toy like skyline with a finger, looping up around The Eye, and down, up and down.

It's been too long, and you want a gin and tonic to remind you, a little bottle of duty free Bombay Saphire as fresh as the air your grandmother always said was cleaner up here, here by the Heath, under the church spire with the fruit trees and bushes out the back providing the filling for crisp crusted pies.

She'll be ringing the bell about now, if she still does that. You wouldn't know, it's been too long. Is there still a bell? The smell of porridge in the morning, the crackling of bacon under the grill? No longer do the petulant miaows of the ginger cat cut through the morning's stillness, you know that much, no more gentle buzz of an electric razor, grey hair collecting on today's copy of The Times.

But you can hear them all these sounds, arranged in a strange nostalgic harmony, first the sound of the big brass bell, accompanied by staccato outbursts of hot fat under flame, a tune in the key of feline chimes in, syncopated with the eerie echo of those now unused appliances.

Oh, London, you're going to have to stop calling.

Or I'm going to have to start leaving the phone off the hook.

The Faint Smell Of Burning

I'm playing with fire

and not in the way

I like to, late in the night at parties;

hot wax dripping

a faint smell of burning

and thin wisp of silver smoke.

This is the other kind of fire

that'll singe the eyelashes

clean off your face

without any trace

of flame.

I know you're using me.

I'm not sure what for,

just yet,

but I'm sure I'll find out.

You've got your uses

too

and I'm trying to think of you

as something more politically correct

than a "palate cleanser"

cool

and neutral

bookended by dishes

deliberately ordered.

Worked well, all that time ago.

And you've always got to go and bring it up,

don't you?

Hot cold clammy and sweating

confusion

late night disappearing act

a thin wisp of silver smoke

late at night

something's still burning

and if I squint I can just make out a

thin wisp of silver smoke

and the faint smell of

burning.