Day 257 - a black hole
To put it in the common parlance 'shit just got real.' If that phrase has a flippant air then it is unintended and unwelcome, I just don't know how else to put it. Likewise what do you say to your best friend, your constant travelling partner of the past 6 months, when they call to tell you they are being deported? Do you say "It'll be alright.", 'cause it won't, certainly not now, maybe not ever. What words soften the blow of accusing eyes delivering a fast-track conviction, how do you comfort a person become a...criminal in the blink of an eye? You only need have an immigration official cast an eye over your passport to know they are not from an organisation to be crossed, be you on the border of Australia or Zambia. A sullen, unflinching seriousness must either be rigorously instilled in them or else the recruitment process heavily selects against individuals displaying more than a ounce of levity. Withering stares are their weapon, suspicion their sixth sense. I can't imagine the feelings that must course through a person pulled aside at customs, knowing that they had something to hide. How difficult it must be to conceal your body's reaction to the stress, sweat pin-pricking the brow and palms, the face flushing red or draining white, words tripping over each other and tumbling from your mouth like passengers from a sinking ship. The ache in your stomach as fear closes its grip around you. Maybe a small voice inside desperately clutches at ration, meekly insisting that this is all an inconvenience of routine, an unlucky hitch to be politely passed. Perhaps the immigration officials say the same, reassuring you of the weary banality of their task, the box-ticking formalities before you are on your way. Do they mean it as a slight kindness or a cruel trompe l'œil? They probably take you to some anonymous room few travelers will lay nervous eyes upon, magnolia'd to nothingness, the walls dripping with portent. There would be questions I imagine, innocent and probing, scripted to subtly unwrap your story and peel back your deception. To see through the hand close to your face. You are all in, your current life the wager, the stakes never higher. And then it is over, now there is merely the admin of tearing you from dreams and happiness, a heartrending reset. And...and...nothing, enough, this disrespectful conjecture has gone on longer than I intended. I can no better put myself in this position than I can that of a man in the dock shuddering at the crack of a judge's gavel. But since that dark day I've felt a kind of ethereal detachment or impotence that I've failed to allay or, perhaps worse, adequately express. And for that I am sorry. Hoping things will work out for the best without actually doing anything to influence their course is building a house on the shifting sands of serendipity. And for that I am sorry. That you aren't in the only place in the world that you want to be. For that I am truly sorry. I miss you man.
Pub review They say: "We came for a skittle on a Saturday night and they were very welcoming but you know how you hear about lizards ruling the world, the barstaff had a very lizardy look. Make your own mind up!" --Craig Savage 4/5 I say: 'The place where everybody knows your name' The claim is painted onto the wall and doesn't seem so outlandish on this chilly Tuesday night as there is no-one in the pub to know my name or not. Dry January? I can't imagine that's a thing around these parts. You don't keep over 30 pubs in business with virtuous gestures like that. It might be a Tuesday thing. Per usual I try to find a quiet corner with my beer, surely an easy task in an empty pub? Not so. Speakers hang from every nook and carpet the space in a thick fog of sound. It isn't even the usual autotuned pop/R&B dirge being vomited into my ears. That stuff I can confine to a background hum. Instead it's the pre-match commentary for the Brighto
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