Tea-Soaked Nothings

Originally published in It Was All a Zine, June 2021

All the small towns of England. All the short walks into fields sown with seeds of doubt, primed to sprout. All the bodies buried amidst mossy soil and roots of trees engraved with the names of lovers not so much star-crossed as crossed by stone-clad proximity. All the murders of crows and real-life stuff, Crimewatch with no-one watching. Old Jimmy says he didn’t do it but get him drunk enough and he might just change his tune. His fourth wife says she saw nothing, the third says otherwise. All the whiter-than-white weddings, high-stakes banter and bludgeoning. All the vehicles parked in unlikely places and impotent anglers philosophising analogue zeroes into ripples. The ghost of a ghost of a high street does its weekly shop in the ghost of a market town’s market. All yesterday’s one hit wonders playing out to today’s ears clogged with loam and fog. Rotting cupboards of rotting things, pig swill and hogwash. All the church fêtes and falconry demonstrations and kicks to the head with long-term damage. He’s a good lad, she’s a good girl. Folk football and cheese rolling and the putrid farts of cows. Renowned local curtain twitchers all agree: he’s a wrong ‘un, they know by the way he only rarely puts out the bins on Tuesdays. All the parody and violently-gripped vague prejudice, converted outhouses and ideas of masculinity tied up in the back of pick-ups. All the immaculate conceptions and aborted imaginations. All the invertebrates taking advantage wherever advantage can be found. The land loves poetry, the people not at all. All the hard livers with hard livers, the codgers and coffin dodgers, that woolly eared pack down the Woolpack pulling the wool over their own eyes downing pint after pint. All the mulch and fungus, gangrene, pus and fingers in many pies. They say Terry was born lucky and that Sheila was born with the evil eye spying through binoculars on the scene plus black cats unbalancing milk bottles on the doorstep. All the local artists’ mediocre watercolours, folk football and beat the shit out the donkey. Sheila wrote letters to the local rag about the local hospital but it shut down anyway, taking the library with it. All the inevitable. All the ailing campaigners for real warm ale with scabs in it who don’t want any of that continental rubbish. All the declined cards and schoolchildren fucking perilously in canal side shrubbery. Every last skull and crossbones in every copse and every bullied animal. Sentimental artefacts hung on necks, ashes next to television sets. All the fatherless kids and kidless fathers smoking rollups hunched against a cold that is there even as spring meets summer. Jenny and Dave ran off to the big city and were never heard from again, Sue and Graham sucked dirt early doors, bike totalled on a blind corner by the emaciated phantoms of boy racers. All the tea and cake and domestic abuse and local lads gone good as well as bad, very bad. All the puddles used as mirrors and underwhelming headlines about local businesses while fear-scented carnage rumbles all around. Karaoke and witch trials every Friday night. All the charity shops and callous disregard and agricultural subsidy. All the distant car alarms, potholes passionately cared about and graves left untended. All the horror within beauty and beauty within horror. All the small towns of England.