Paul J Penton – Songwriter

Mrs White in the Library with the candlestick, that was my guess last time I played Cluedo. Formless bits of plastic that trot around a board at the beck and call of the dice. The rope, the dagger, the pistol and other implements all contributing to the mystery that needs to be unraveled, like the mystery of where the hell did we put the candles when there’s a power blackout. If you know there’s one coming, yeah, you can prepare yourself and get all the stuff out…. I know there used to be some in the third draw down in the kitchen-easy, but the next dilemma is where would I find a match? Do we even have a torch we could use? 

So in that third draw down, the one that has a little nick in its travel as it folds out of the wood panelling  there are a couple of waxy tapered candles, so next time I have a box of matches I’ll throw them in there too, so, in the dark I just feel my way to the draw along the stainless steel sink and will know that light is available. Thinking about it too, there are some Fat candles that have somehow waddled onto the mantlepiece lately just over the kitchen fire, the one we never use, the one that holds that black recycling bin, usually half full of clinking bottles of expired alcohol and cereal packets. The trip out to the real recycling bin is made once a week, the smell of old beer and wine drifts up as it’s carried down the echoing hallway,  a clatter and a clunk as the empties merge into the blue bodied bin.

I had to improvise a little while ago, at someone’s place. In the end we used an egg-cup, no elegant round worked piece of frosted glass or silver, with leathery drips of wax down its sides. No, an egg cup. The match was waved under its base to get a few congealing drips of wax to free themselves and then the butt was sealed in there, functional, useable, practical. When the flame burns it flickers and moves about in unseen drafts of wind it forms shadowy outlines on the wall that come and go with the flicker of the candle…….