In The Night Factory

Out of my window there is an obstructive square block of green taking up fifty percent of my view. It is the Sky scraper of hedges, the monster of home gardening. The house to which this solid block of weed mass fronts is only of secondary importance to the overshadowing monolith that reaches up to its first floor windows. This chopped and chiselled prickly wall is presently being given a short back and sides by a team of landscape gardeners. Two trucks are needed for the clippings. Huge industrial saws and a giant sucking hose attached to a battery pack for collecting the bits. The men dwarfed by their task. Just giving it a light clipping. I was thinking that they might want to chop the whole thing down. Perhaps they would need permission to do that though. The next door neighbours to be evacuated to safer housing, that sort of thing. They must need a construction crane to clip the top. I have never seen it done though and it always seems to appear quite neat and tidy. I can imagine it done by the occupants holding giant shears out of the upstairs windows. They could be growing it big in order to cut it into an extravagant shape to impress in a hedge competition? It has a small front garden and they can’t fit many cars behind it, the rest of the garden laying bare. Perhaps it costs less to shave it down occasionally than to have it chopped down. I’m not looking forward to the day that they decide to chop it. I could’t stand all the upheaval. To suddenly see the image of that house and those people and their windows facing me would make me feel as though I had an audience watching me all the time, through the large door windows that run along the side of my lounge! Presently I have a cosy forest green view, a blank space to hide behind in the morning when I get up and have to open the curtains. Everybody mentions the hedge when they visit my flat: “My god, what’s that?” when first entering the room facing.

The figure of the hedge looms large in this small town, overlooking all the houses near by. The day it is finally sawn down will seem like the end to an era. I have grown comfortable with it. The security it gives me. Allowing me to wander about my flat while not being self-conscious or effected in any way.

# posted by Neil @ 12:25 pm

The cost of working in a job. What is it worth? What price do I pay for treading the daily mill in the office or whatever? The cleverest disguise or ingenious strategy cannot protect me from the accumulating forfeit charge. The depletion of my self esteem does not enter their account by direct debit once a month, it is not televised. The true knowledge of it is waiting for me in the car at the end of the working day, glad to be in my own space again. This accumulation of particles cakes the outer casing of the brain. I open my pockets to it. Give everything and then what change do I get given? The money which I gain I save or spend on things external. What is my proper activity, my real reason? I have a flat and furniture, DVD player and mini disc system. Then I must be satisfied. My watch is ticking faster now than before. The manager is pressing with growing frustration! They know you don’t want to do it. Your face doesn’t fit. You don’t belong here. We all know it’s only a matter of time. I bet you’ll be glad to get out of here.

It’s good to do something you like. Even if it means throwing away the things that hold most meaning to you. Do it in your spare time. You get holidays! See it as a hobby, a part time activity, secondary to your main job. Just do it now and again, when the feeling takes you. It’s difficult to concentrate I know and you feel very tired most evenings, yes, but that doesn’t matter. It’s not really important. You work more than the set hours as that is what’s expected. My god you earn enough money! I now have enough money to be able to rest in the evenings and weekends.

The snow is swirling outside as if it were blowing about inside one of those artificial air tunnels at medium strength. Viewed from my small rectangular window the particals look like bits of white sand being thrown about by the force of the sea current. The distance fields are obliterated by the blizzard mist. The grid of roads below lies quiet and untouched save for vehicles with company signs on them, fog lights on, eating the dots along their pac-man trail. The doors are shut to the rest homes, abandoned for the day: breading grounds for future employees: tax payers, cigar handle moulders, book sleeve laminators, carpet cleaning chemical distributors, deep sea diving insurance salesman, tropical fish installers, animal cell cleaners, underground bus drivers. A plane (I cannot see) swooshes past the flat, making a sound like an oncoming nuclear explosion, first the force of the blast, then the burning heat. But no, it went, and back to quiet again. Industrial tourist advisers, reality TV show instructors, theatrical street sweepers, humorous ticket collectors, miming helicopter landing signalman.

# posted by Neil @ 2:29 pm

People are constantly asking me where do I find time outside of my regular comics to do other things like bar work and driving taxi cabs.

I tell you my friends its not easy but I try to keep the dull and repetitive work going when I can even when I'm cabbing till the early hours. Some people call it an obsession but really there doesn't seem to be anything else at all that I'm good at. I occasionally get comics posts to pay my way and keep the social off my back.

I like taxiing at night because if I get caught doing it in the daytime people might gossip and I don't want the family to find out! The streets are so quiet what with everybody drawing comics on their own in their rooms these days; it's easy to get found out. Only just the other day a man was in court being charged for not carrying a comic characterisation of himself inside his wallet. That was in the Planet funny papers I read that.

I tell you, I was having a chat with my friend Jimmy the other day and we were both criticising this country for its lack of interest in public transport. Nobody bothers to go out anymore! Who needs a taxi? They're all too busy drawing and reading comics and graphic novels. I mean the taxi trade and other old occupations such as bus drivers, street cleaners (who needs to clean a clean street, nobody goes out!). I sometimes wish everybody was a whole lot more outgoing like in America, they got a whole transport industry over there. If things persist as they are I think I'm going to emigrate, go where my taxiing skills are more appreciated. OK, there are some small self employed (unlicensed) taxi cabers floating around out there - er, me being one of them, but will the transport system ever take off in this country, who knows. You do see some taxi's riding around with what look like passengers in the back but it's always foreign owned firms!

Oh I dream of one day getting a passenger, maybe a chatty sociable person who simply has to get out of those extreme, creativity inducing, conditions. Get away from the monotonous job of developing panel after panel and drawing the same characters again and again. He or she could maybe risk a breath of fresh air and act as if they're briefly sauntering into the back streets and hey presto, into the back of my cab! I have one of those new silent electric running engines. So lights off and round the corner we go. Even If the client stops there and gets off to rush back to the building it would be something, a bit of taxiing, I gotta keep it up. Anyway, back to my room to carry on with the comic. They are supposed to come out quarterly. Drawing materials are handed out now on social benefit. Prime Minister Groening is now on a record third term in office. The way things are going I’m thinking of taking up pizza delivery!

# posted by Neil @ 3:02 am

A room was strewn with old clothes ready for the jumble.
Tea stains gathered on the tinted glass of the coffee table.
The settee, worn from years of uncomfortable sitting.
Armrest, a fixed wooden block showing through the thin corduroy worn from years of lying with head nested into the corner watching a late night film or the final of some eagerly awaited sports occasion.

All quite, quiet! Hey, shut up you! The javelin is launched and tares into the evening sky, flying dangerously near the crowd, hanging in the air for eternity then turning to spear the damp ground.

Shades of muddy brown make up the rectangular form, covered in sparkling grey dust.
Turned stone dead with only Nineteen Eighty Three programmes left static inside the fish-bowl. The ribbed front a primitive instrument to be raked over with a Kitchen spoon.

The rich ruby red/brown texture of the carpet scouring knees while trying to navigate around with the bright red and white toy car. Running it through the tunnels and around the coasters, vroom, vroom.
The jeep is better and can go over the metal strips in the carpets.

The papers would be spread out at various angles and piling in parts to cover the books. Loose shards of paper are pointing up and casting shadows across the floor. The jam jar forming a crater of balanced pages. Reaching up towards the hanging glass light shades which refract the light into a hundred pieces across the white sheets of paper strewn about.
Peering at the round knobs fixed to the side of the imitation teak record player: A smeared plastic coffe coloured see-through lid protecting the multiplayer turntable holding an imbedded tape player with microphone attatchment, never used. The thin red dial of the radio tuner lights up then the top vinyl disc slides down the metal pole and begins riding the turntable. Wooden camels of various sizes gather at the foot of the stereo deck, an oasis of sound. The DJ clicks into action, introducing the top forty run down, shouting out through the interference for a while and then stopping with a sudden thump! The electric buzz popps, the light bulbs flash once and turn off. The room fades to black.

The net curtains shake as the sound of the door is heard slamming hard! Footsteps? A moving shadow is projected across the flowery wallpaper in the hallway.

# posted by Neil @ 2:10 am

"Right, see you later then"

"OK then.” His mums’ voice shouted from the kitchen. “Where are you going again?”

"Oh, uhm, just going for a walk. It seems like a nice day… you know."

"See you later then"

"Right see ye."

David closed the door and the framed glass window clattered inside its wooden frame.
He walked away scuffing his feet onto the sidewalk, shoes clobbering the ground, the sound echoing in the quiet Cul-de-sac, wearing jeans and a black t-shirt. The grey slabs of concrete, kept clean and dusted, drew a heavy white outline against the pressed black tar of the pathway. He walked quickly to the end of the road wanting to get as clear from the zone as possible. The end of the road was knocked off by a concrete posted fence hammered into the edges of the school field opposite. The patchy grass was worn from the daily scrapings of the local children. The posts stood seven feet tall but the jump was manageable due to the edge of the street being raised and two feet from the top. The webbed posts pressed to the edge. Just the right height for David to jump down comfortably. After a brief pause worrying about the height and the impact of his feet on the ground he took off and landed with a ground shuddering thump. Looking around he saw a stile in the corner over which he planned to cross and walk across what he remembered was a farmers’ field in the distance. He remembered being too afraid to cross into the field as a child even though other boys did and came back with exiting tales of scrumping apples from the nearby orchard. The orchard was now an extension of the Brent Hill housing estate. It was now lawned and walled off. Pleasant kids now resided within organised confinements playing with bright shiny toys and parents who called them in with soft pale skin and polite friendly voices.

He just wanted to walk and not think, just smell the air and get away from things a bit. He had come visiting his mother and her husband Eddie but the more time he spent in the dense atmosphere the more he gravitated towards the windows wanting to be out there. Strange how just walking out of the front door brings new life to body and mind. Stressed out by piles of neatly folded and stored clothes, ornaments displayed in nice order, careful talk about jobs and money. The mock furniture and low hanging lights that seemed placed to knock into his head as he walked around, pacing up and down. He didn't want to sit and have a ‘discussion’. He could feel a headache coming .

David walked in a straight line towards the style, making a diagonal route across the field, walking past the football posts, eyes gazing at the white paint flaking off the warped angular wooden structure. Walking over the bare patches of earth where studs had scalped the grass and had laid bare smooth craters of dry mud he spied ants scurrying around and diving down into the cracks where his fingers prodded.

Memories of knocking footballs against the post, of leaping and headering crosses, of a by now idealised sense of childhood when he had time to play.

The clouds were smudged like dabs of margarine across the blue sky. Nothing moved but a distant plane, the small toy figure squeezing a curved white line of paste into a semi-circle shape.

Trudging through the long grass in the corner of the field, the tips standing as swords charging in a wave of green reflections.

David stepped over the old wooden style with no problem, his long legs swinging over and managing to avert the prickly hedge. Up there at a higher level he caught a brief glimpse of a gathering of trees in the distance.

# posted by Neil @ 2:01 am

A break from comic, panel mania! The rumble of Fennesz and the smooth symphonic fluctuating sounds now coming out of my aesthetically placed speakers on the wall. The grit and grazing. Is Herbert Missing? I don’t know! That piece of metal there and this electrical interference here. An orchestra of grainy tubers. Now an elephant enters with an incredibly stuffed nose: A low pitched snortle carrying on for ever. It makes me want to get all my old black vinyl records out and listen to them with that old piece of fluff on the needle scratching around. Now I’m entering a factory with motorcyclists revving and rolling around those spherical cages you get in some circuses. The purr of a lion merges with the low roar of a B52 plane. The tone when the phone in unhooked, Super Feedbacker. Somebody has turned the electricity off slowly and now back on again. Now he’s trying to imitate some sort of drum riff by rubbing match-sticks together? Then licking stamps and sticking them on hundreds of envelopes one after the other at incredible speed! Inter-cut by ripping of sellotape. Now a tweeting bird being slapped against a table until it loses its’ song! Rubbish being piled into a aluminium tube and placed in the back yard wearing slippers made of kitchen foil. The inter-stellar noises of the next door film studio Star Wars remake is making watching the TV while flicking the channels very difficult. The light sabres are finally switched off! A frog now turning the dial of the phone loudly while a giant bee bangs itself against the living room window. It is now dieing and dragging itself around the floor, its intermittent buzz causing the wood built house to start burning and crackling. I must make some tea and I drink it so loudly that it drowns out every other sound. The garden dogs are barking. I must try and find out what it is that is in the next street. The tank is still rolling. Now the bees are in my head and filling up quick! What pleasant sounds.

# posted by Neil @ 10:28 pm