Leggings: bad nites - bench

Night falls: the old man and the young boy are back. I can hear the clattering upstairs. The shrill white noise starts up earlier than usual. I'm irritated as I've just laid down for an hours rest. I jump up and wave a large piece of card around and scream at them just below speech: “Turn that off!” I'm beyond being polite about it.

 

The boy says brightly, “We're doing her tonight, aren’t we?” He's happy to be doing it. “Brought my gun, and I'll fire right in.”

“Yes,” said a younger man, “Like I showed you last time.”

“Then I'll do it too.” said the old man, “Then it won't be just you.”

It's a happy party atmosphere. The time has come.

“She'll be dead then” declared the boy, “I'll have done it!”

 

I've had enough of them, so I write for a bit. Dislocate my thoughts as much as possible, as they feverishly copy down my poetic thoughts: so everyone gets a poem about a bench today. I'll post the poem on it's own.

 

When I've had enough job searching to be thought to have reasonably looked for a job. I go to bed.

Eventually I sleep until about 9:15am when I wake up to loud engine noises and raised voices. Apparently it's time to give away stuff again. I wonder if it's from the garages where they store things for people who look as if they've lost their homes. Sometimes they don't come back.

 

The young woman is feeling a little high, and she squawks merrily to her Mum? “She's asleep isn't she so we can just carry on. The will says since she has so much we can just give it all away!”

“Hang on,” I say, “All you squalid lot have left me with is job seekers allowance per week. So that's all you can reasonably give away. That only applies to that one will.”

“It applies to all you got?” she says sharply, “And we're executing the will.”

 

There is a silent pause where we all consider.

“You're saying that I can only give away job seeker’s allowance per week?”

“Only one job-seeker’s allowance per week amongst your claimants. That what I've got, because of you no one would really consider employing me. You've capped my prospects by your actions.”

They take notes on who I'm applying to, mind reading me as I apply. Then they talk to them.

 

“I've already given away more than that!”

“Then you are in the unfortunate position of going out and getting it back. Or stopping altogether until the quota for each week has been met. If you've exceeded the will limit, then you have to go get it back.”

She says some very rude words. She's a bit below the national average.

 

“Oh one more thing. As a job seeker I'm allowed to keep presents so if any come. You cannot take them. If it were money, then I'd have to declare that, if they were presents or gifts in kind, I can reasonably keep them. You should not be touching that.”

“Look the will says,” she says, “You have too much!” She's getting upset. I have her.

“I have the job-seeker’s allowance each week. If I go for a job, you're straight there to make some kind of complaint about me. If it's not actual you make it seem likely, you're good at spreading the truth.”

 

'Well the will says...”

“Job-seeker's allowance is too much. I hear you. It's very hard to live on. Why don't you try it. I don't want you to do any will for me. You're not my choice.”

Another woman interjects, “We're alright as long as she doesn't knows the will writer is still alive.”

“Then it's totally illegal anyway.” I point out firmly and get up. There is rain slicing down thinly.

 

They retreat to the radio show to debate the point. I wonder if its a Christian radio show. They like to appear good. I don't listen to the radio much, there isn't a lot of signal in the flat. Perhaps a legal eagle out there, who can insert some law into this mess. Explain to them that if my name is mentioned in a will, I'm entitled to a copy of the will in my hand a choice of who does the will.

…..................................................

 

“You're not human,” she squawks finally. “You have no legal rights!”

I reach into memories - “I think I was defined as such for the intellectual rights case. The one that sent you lot into orbit, from whence you were not to come back unless my agreement was obtained.

I never gave any agreement, I wasn't asked. I don't know who did. The HO should have given me a way out of the country, only I have no money anyway. Since any will left to me seems to have been misappropriated. I'm feeling a little sour.

 

I have the feeling that they are Auditors ( in Sir T. P's sense) who arrange the universe nicely and ration out everything. So that they all have the same, without exception. That doesn't mean us; we all go without. So imaginative creative people such as I am are an anathema to what they stand for. We stand out, we make things, we think, we sort out thoughts and design. It can't be transferable – the way we do this – it's enough to make them hate creatives forever.

 

I tried to write a poem, this time just for practice before I try the guardian's poster poem page, it's limbering up time. I wrote about a bench, I find the garden soothing to the senses. I hear them squawking around, and the writing is being copied. I wonder if there is now a lot of garden bench poems being sent around or used as homework. It's so cool to be a poet. People think you clever.

Also poets get more sex. I've never been sure of the last. Perhaps a psychosocial study would sort it out.

 

A local girl's been around again: explosive, loud threatening, apparently her name is Rosalind J. Lee and she's the poet. I wonder if she was the McMunas lookalike from the forum library, demanding the book from the receptionist. I only hear her voice screaming away. I'd love to speak to her and see her poems. I've thought about using other names such as the one I registered with at Oxford, only my daughter wanted me to be proud of my poems etc, and insists that I use the name I have lived under since I went to stay with the Lee (was previously something else) family. I wonder how long she's had the same name? She lives down the street, so one day we'll no doubt meet and talk it over.

 

I slept last night, no nightmares, only for a few minutes a vision of butterflies as if on a hospital screen, and when they were pulled aside a picture of a man sitting in a garden, his head turned. I wonder if it's one of Cranage Hall's old children's ward where I helped paint the pictures. I'm not very artistic in wall paintings. While I write this, the mindreaders are at me again, repeating my thoughts as I write them down.. I hate mindreaders to bits. There is no where left in Norfolk for any decent writer to work. Most of the writers and poets are unable to tell what is happening. This is an indecent assault on me. I have no privacy left.

 

This morning when I woke up, after 9am, late for me, rested, and well. God must have protected me for they played on with their horrible white noise. I heard one of the radio hams intoning grandly,

“so and so is out, Rosalind advancing twenty paces...”

What makes them think that I am playing a game? I was taught never to play gypsy games with the la remnants of the special forces. Especially not with the estates, and any inheritance. Not that I ever got any. It's such fun being the girl born with the golden spoon.

 

Later in the garden a great commotion: funny for this place, a man looking for a poet. Guess who?

She doesn't live here. He sees me and says I do live here. This is an odd place to live, did she get me mixed up with the spare Rosalind J. Lee.

 

There are over 50 more spares across the country. Perhaps I should go back to Panacea (my parents? originally used an old fashioned spelling yet it pronounces as I spell it here) or Circe (I was loved for this one) or be Elizabeth Alice who stood in the garden and called the birds down.