Ceci n'est pas une batte

Fog smooths the edges of everything.

Two ochre approaching orbs, blurred, approaching resolve themselves into parallel cyclists' sodium lights. They pass, ghosts, and are gone.

The only clarity is a bubble of visibility, my two-metre halo.

All outside is confusion. Muffled. My bubble travels with me. Its membrane is viscous; looming obelisks enter and transmute into dog-walkers. They, too, are gone.

There are non-sounds as I pass through these vignettes: a dog's bark being sucked away from the world; the reverse reverb of a motor car; the dopple of a bawdy ambulance shout.

I walk, trepidate, self-consciously, shoulderly shuffling the bag on my back.

The sun, if it ever existed, has long given up the day. No scrawny rays to fight through the briny mist now. Occasional expressionist chroma splodge above, burnt-out blobules of streetlights straining for purchase. But theirs is a frozen fire, forever stilled.

I am a tourist in time, in this awful coccoon that shrouds me.

A long wooden handle pokes out of the bag and taps me on the neck. Intermittent reminders that once the world was here. That once I was in the world. I am starting to mix up the concepts. Maybe I am floating. Maybe the ground is moving beneath me. Nothing is of my volition.

Can an absence exist?

Can anything?

Is nothing...

Is nothing?

___

There used to be a railway bridge here, but now it only exists in split-seconds as I pass. Bricks form ahead and fall behind. But I can never reach them, and if I stop, the bricks stop too. I am in a weird, wrongly-wired computer game. I look above my head for gold rings to grab, but find nothing but dead air that burns my eyes. I look away.

Did I really walk this way not an hour ago? My mind tells me yes and unreliable paintings of shimmering clarity of purpose flash past somewhere. I can't map them onto where I am now, even scrunching up my eyes tight, my fists too, my body. But those edges aren't sharp anymore.

There are none in this bruise, this pustule I inhabit.

The fog is a heavy giant's exhalation, trapped in a mausoleum.

The handle pokes at me again.

Behind and through this portentous miasma a distorted rectangle is created for me, by me, with me.

I decide it is a bench, and I ooze down through the foulness until something happens and we meld.

I reach for the handle. Its power shudders through me as I do.

A rough handle, rubber half-perished.

Time snaps.

____

I remember now. This handle is attached to a cheap cricket bat. One that was once an integral part of life and laughter and a different bubble, a happier one, a clearer one. One in which the road ahead was clear with certainty; with our certainty that the future would be our triumphant present, in time, in time.

And the past? Well. That was a triumphant present once, too.

No linseed has ever toughened this cheap, seaside plywood, and the scars show. There are no imprints of leather smacked through deep cover for a four before tea. It was, in fact, the Spank Records cricket bat, and specifically Jon Hall's cricket bat.

I assume he started wielding it because of the manager in Spinal Tap, the best film of all time. That manager, Ian Faith used to wield one, menacingly, saying that 'having a solid wooden implement in your hand can come in quite useful' in the world of Rock n Roll. We loved Rock n Roll. We loved Spinal Tap. And Jon loved his bat.

I don't think anyone got twonked on the head with it. And certainly no televisions were smacked into satisfying oblivion, sparks and explosions and all that. We couldn't afford that kind of thing. All the money had been spent on hugely expensive promo CDs in metal boxes, postage for hugely expensive promo CDs in very heavy metal boxes, and phonecalls to journalists to try and convince them to review the album that had come as a promo CD in an expensive, hefty metal box.

Which we did quite well at, as it goes, not that it made all that much difference to sales. 

Sales!

Ha!

So the bat came in useful in other ways. Here is the front of the bat:

As you can see, Jon has written, in his very clear and tidy script, using his favourite, expensive gel biros: 'This is a CRICKET BAT'. That's helpful isn't it. Some text is missing that used to be atop a sticker by the looks of it. I am pretty sure it said something like 'it is for writing on, taking messages, ordering things for delivery and bonking people on the clonk.'

The other writing on there is an autograph, faded but still discernible:

To Jon
Best Wishes

Tony Platt

Tony is a brilliant bloke and worked with huge names like AC/DC, Bob Marley, Toots, Maiden, Motorhead, Samson and many others. Jon and The Relatives met him in a pub in Liverpool and from that meeting he ended up mixing a Rellies single plus, I think, recording something with 28 Costumes. Memories are hazy. I forget.

One of the main reasons I have hazy memories is more evident if we consider the reverse of the bat.

You might note that there are a couple of things crossed out on this side. I can't make out what used to be written there, although I can hazard a guess, but I am not going to share that one just yet I don't think. Nothing sinister, folks. Also you can see my crotch in this photo plus my Guardian newspaper as I am a snowflake left-wing remainer loser.

What is still reasonably readable on this side is:

BOOZE

And a mobile phone number for the 24-hour alcohol delivery chaps. This was pressed into action on too many occasions when we'd all run out of beer and reached the stage where we could drink all the beer in the world if only we had more beer and RING THE BEER MAN GO ON oh I'm not doing it I did it last time and then I notice that every other giggling fuck has raised their feet off the floor so I'm the only one touching the ground so that's the rules and I have to order, slurring, a 24-pack of Foster's or Carling or whatever shit was available. 

The bat tells me that it cost £21. (It might be £25, or £24). 

In those days I think a crate of Carlsberg or Hofmeister or whatever shit the is it illegal I don't know let's not tell anyway 24-hour delivery people had access to and you didn't ask too many questions anyway.

We'd be asleep, or close to it, when the knock would come on the door about two hours later. And we'd still have to pay the men for the warm, sickly, unwanted fizzy amber crap. Manfully, whoever was still at least half-compos mentis (or a quarter), would give it a good go. All the joy'd've gone out of the experience, though. And soon it'd be stinking, snoring bodies with sweat steam rising and mixing with stale roll-ups and the farts of musicians and record label people and tour managers all with varying approaches to personal hygiene.

And now, nearly two decades later, Andy had done one of the most Spank Records-esque things for ages and spent shitloads of money posting this cheap piece of plywood to me. It cost way more than the bat was worth. But the bat was not a bat, of course. It was the lightning rod, the centre, the nexus of another time bubble.

This was the power.

___

There was a slurping sound as I deconjoined from the metal bench. I could not walk down the path that was no longer there. I could not loom inside my bubble, a man, unshaven, black coated and cricket bat in hand. If anyone else existed, if they crossed this membrane; who would I be? I knew. But the image was not a pleasant one.

I replaced this sacred sword as best I could in my backpack scabbard, and I squinted into the lowlands of undersea Shropshire.

At least, I assumed that was where I was.

It is hard to tell, when you carry your bubble around you wherever and whenever you are.

That is, if anyone ever is. Or anyone ever was.

It is impossible to know.

How do you measure an absence?

The sentence makes no sense.

Ceci n'est pas un batte.


____




Addendum: I've studied the writing on the front and I think it's actually me, trying to ape Jon's script. He must have left the room cause he wouldn't enjoy me scrawling in my clumsy hand with his excellent special pens. But the sentiment is the same; I just recorded it I think.