there is a certain moment
between one day finished
and anything else starting
where there is a blank, a break and anything i do is off the record
and what do i do?
wait, mainly.
Tuesday 9 November 2010
Tuesday 2 November 2010
Low-rent Body Disposal
We found bones in our garden. If you’ve lived in the sort of houses I’ve lived in, you’ll understand why this didn’t surprise me. Decades worth of tenants, each staying there just a year - not knowing anyone there before, not talking to the neighbours. Strangers connected only by the old tea stains we leave for each other on the wall and the half truths estate agents tell us about each other and the house.
You could have told that from the house itself, actually. Holes in the floor that admit the slugs who come in and squat with us. Cloth-eating maggoty things in the sofas. A roof that only stands up to rain that doesn’t try; because every call to the estate agents is greeted with sympathy and empty words rather than action. After all, we’re renting a cheap house; we’re not important to them. It has to suck, so there’s some inducement to work harder and get a mortgage.
And on to the garden. Enmeshed and matted patches of grass that ate all attempts at gardening tools, just as they’d eaten the bones that we excavated from the vegetative cement.
Large bones. Really quite large bones. Of a size and shape that make the finder hold them up to herself and compare. And shudder. Pristine bones - grey from time outside, but uncut, ungnawed, untouched. Bones, in short, that raise questions.
I lived with artists. Not installation artists, but the sort that find the existence of fuse boxes a revelation. I showed them the bones I found.
‘Oh yeah,’ they said ‘we found those a while back.’
‘And you didn’t wonder what they were doing there?’
‘Yeah, but we didn’t know how to find out, so we didn’t think about it.
... if it’s human remains, can we name it?’
So, for all your serial killers out there reading - and I want you to know, I value your demographic - may I suggest disposing of bodies in low-rent household gardens. They’re private, so no walkers or inconvenient dogs - us tenants aren’t allowed to luxury of animal companions. Noone stays here long enough to tackle the Triffids in the garden and install plant beds, or even nooks. And when the bits rise to the surface, you can rely on lassitude and sheer incredulity to prevent anyone doing more than making an exhibit out of them or setting up an ‘identify that bone’ competition in the corner at parties.
Archeologists and doctors consulted at the latter thought probably sheep humerii, and possible a rib. Or a human scapula. The case is still open.
You could have told that from the house itself, actually. Holes in the floor that admit the slugs who come in and squat with us. Cloth-eating maggoty things in the sofas. A roof that only stands up to rain that doesn’t try; because every call to the estate agents is greeted with sympathy and empty words rather than action. After all, we’re renting a cheap house; we’re not important to them. It has to suck, so there’s some inducement to work harder and get a mortgage.
And on to the garden. Enmeshed and matted patches of grass that ate all attempts at gardening tools, just as they’d eaten the bones that we excavated from the vegetative cement.
Large bones. Really quite large bones. Of a size and shape that make the finder hold them up to herself and compare. And shudder. Pristine bones - grey from time outside, but uncut, ungnawed, untouched. Bones, in short, that raise questions.
I lived with artists. Not installation artists, but the sort that find the existence of fuse boxes a revelation. I showed them the bones I found.
‘Oh yeah,’ they said ‘we found those a while back.’
‘And you didn’t wonder what they were doing there?’
‘Yeah, but we didn’t know how to find out, so we didn’t think about it.
... if it’s human remains, can we name it?’
So, for all your serial killers out there reading - and I want you to know, I value your demographic - may I suggest disposing of bodies in low-rent household gardens. They’re private, so no walkers or inconvenient dogs - us tenants aren’t allowed to luxury of animal companions. Noone stays here long enough to tackle the Triffids in the garden and install plant beds, or even nooks. And when the bits rise to the surface, you can rely on lassitude and sheer incredulity to prevent anyone doing more than making an exhibit out of them or setting up an ‘identify that bone’ competition in the corner at parties.
Archeologists and doctors consulted at the latter thought probably sheep humerii, and possible a rib. Or a human scapula. The case is still open.
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