Monday rises and responsibilities start to invade like an unwelcome army, defensive shields go up, recce parties are sent out for commando raids to children’s bedrooms, get dressed , eat breakfast, ride shotgun to the school gate drop them off just a whisker ahead of the bell, foot down, join the other crowd in line on the freeway, to stand in line for another day in the orange cubicle, yes , no. My imagination is on a thin razor edge staring at these screens. A razor, I could easily slit my throat accidentally on those sharp words that I read from customers and bosses, surely I’m just a whisker away from madness and mayhem, but it’s all held together by that cat! She makes the world make sense. She’s the all wise all knowing all seeing behind that cleverly disguised whiskered smile, that cat food breath smile, that sharp tooth grin, those claws that dig in as she reaches heights of pleasure in a feline version of an orgasm- I imagine.

During war it’s meant to offer some form of protection like a force field, a white band around your arm with a red cross, an insignia on a tent seen from above. They also supply food parcels to those in a prisoner of war camp. Letters from home, chocolate, clothing, rations. maybe there’s a secret message baked into the fruit cake that only officers have been given info to read.

When storms or flood or tsunami bring home devastation, Red Cross are ready to get in there at the relief effort, planes of cargo , volunteers ready to distribute aid. Hercules at 30000 chugging along with silver crates of life-giving donations. It’s cold out in the hold at 30000, keep in that nice little compartment up front. The rear door will not be folding down this time, only on arrival… unless the airport is unserviceable. people with shreds of hunger tearing at their insides, their goose pimpled skin shivering in the cold will have some relief tonight. Maybe there’ll be a riot, if there’s not enough supplies- will common sense prevail…..

Sure there’s this small dark cloud that seems to be attached to your shoulder and follows you all round the office and every now and then you turn around to face it, you grab hold of the bugger and it becomes jelly and changes shape slips out of your fingers, it almost laughs at you don’t it? It jangles a set of keys about the promise or not of the future and then deposits them in an empty milk urn and shakes them around and around sends them rolling down an incline and that sound fills your mind that endless incessant chatter and jangling of this beast known as worry. Here it comes again, this time it’s a twister with a pointy tail that wants to weave a wake of destruction through your Bhuddist calm center- don’t bite, don’t give it the pleasure, focus on the big picture the beyond the now and you’ll get there. Throw it back in its face, challenge it… ‘Is that the best you’ve got?” stamp on it like it’s the beginning of a forest fire, for sure enough if you let that little demon out of the glove box he’s gonna fill, up the whole car….

With the window open in my room above the street and the fan swivelling and whirring behind me, even then I sense it, the temperature drop- maybe ten degrees, and the smell of the sea fills the air- it usually comes in from the ocean, yes…… On the horizon of my hearing- is that a rumble of thunder, a complaint from the sky from the driver of the steamroller as he clashes with the maid of the bedsheet world? She wants to get all the corners tucked in nicely and he wants to obliterate every thing. Grumbles and curses in anger he does, and their full scale domestic begins. She throws a saucepan into the sky he shouts back a swear word, a sweep of her lightning broom washes the sky in ultra white , he cracks and crevasses in a Rio Grande crack and it goes on for a time. Bearded clouds of old man grey haunt the air hanging like Christmas decorations and then there’s rain, or sometimes preceded by hail..

On the tin roof it’s like a scurry of ants , a sweep, a knock , a prescience and then those drops click and clack away until it seems that a dam has been opened somewhere up there and it’s pouring down on us, though sometimes I have seen it come sideways. Once again that smell of the sea trapped in the clouds is released, All the heat trapped in the tired tar is released and that smell of trapped dirt and grime fills the air. Gutters swim in torrents of water and abruptly it might be over, just a brief cry from above, sometimes it goes further, but it’s like a spa bath for the soul, knowing the relentless press of humidity will soon abate. Open all the windows in the house to let those cool breezes wash and filter over our tired bodies, renew us….

Inside we self consciously ignore each other- strangers who have to ride for 8 floors! I think of what might be in this week’s class. My assignment is neatly typed on two A4 pages, whether I get to read it is a matter of chance and fate. The upward push of the elevator halts at five, doors open to a window of activity, some type of office with large TV screens with play backs of sports events – might be a news room. The doors glumph closed. And my souls feel the upward nudge, the fight against gravity, the almost floating sensation as we rise to Eight. A jar and we stop, a bell sounds as the doors once again concertina and wait for me to alight. It’s our second week here – they had us in the main building but somehow chose to move us. Now, we have a weird pillar a third way into the room so the desks and sightlines all have to work around that – strange! The first week here none of us could find the darn room – it had no number.

I deposit myself on a chair, half of us are here, some random questions from last week are thrown at the teacher, all of us hold our precious bundles in our fore-thoughts like we’re rocking a baby to sleep, will I get a chance this week? It’s an all ages affair, retirees, a girl just out of school……

Pricks of water ping away at me, at my bullet proof skin, in this environment at least. Head under, like my hair and face is being wrapped in kling wrap and I reach to the right. A purple bottle of Andrew Collinge with a push down dispenser. Lotion forms a puddle in my palm, I smell a fake berry type of aroma on its way to my scalp where I move the mixture round in buffing circles, surprised that I still have a full head of hair. It seems greasy and gluey as I circulate. I let it sit while the soap does a world tour of my body, it is perfumed more like a woman and reminds me of her place. Now I tilt my head back beneath the flow and relish in the moment of this cascade that still flicks tendrils of pleasure. I weigh this up with the thought of turning the taps off and stepping out, The cold air will bite at any exposed part and the towel is small. It’ll have to be a military procedure, a commando raid of the toweling to get me rubbed down as quickly as possible…..

In this day and age of pasteurised, hydrogelized , detasterised milk products it was easy to find in the open freezer section. The hum of motors behind the facade working at full tilt sounding like a tug trying to pull a tanker into the dock, the motors trying to push away the hotter air that held the supermarket atmosphere in stasis. The creams sat in blocks, two thirds the way along, standing like an army ready to explode out of the gates and march toward the check outs. They were ready for anything, but she needed them in the battle of the pavlova.

How could she have forgotten? All that preparation, the separation of the clear slimy egg white from the bulging yolks. The oven heated like a furnace – the oven mit just slightly damp, almost burning her hand removing the pav, and when she went to dress it – no cream! She had passion fruit with their wrinkly skin, the peppermint crisps in green metallic foil jumpers, but no cream.

She weighed up which type and in the end the whipped won of course, she didn’t fancy the prospect of standing for minutes while the beater ground down the cream and her ears, or the slight electrical smell of the motor mixing with the aroma of crushed peppermint crisp. Another click of fingers in her head confirmed it- Whipped.

She waltzed the staves of the shelves and lumped the basket around, other last minute items sang their notes . At the checkout a symphony of digits met in cyberspace as she picked out her numbers via electronic banking. Her life work was once again diminished….

The brick opens and its turn to page 243 exercise one. Probabilities and deviations. Take n+ the first number you thought of and now make it into a graph. I imagine the vector trajectory to be the flight of a shell dispensed from a Leopard tank, like the one I’m building at home. I’m up to the part of adding ‘weathering’ it’ll be a nail file in the top of a tin of Humbrol enamel paint, letting that sweet toxic smell fill me for a few seconds – then adding it to a thimble of turpentine and randomly washing it over the pristine model in lazy mop strokes. I could possibly work out the probability of where it might land or the probability of Jeannete Dekoning saying no if I ask her to the disco this Saturday. At this age there are so many probabilities and possibilities but it’s just not realized, all these choices that lay before me. If only I’d known the minefield I was laying I might have calculated the probabilities a bit better and paid more attention to that brick. So now it’s breeze through half asleep pretend I understand and think about more important things like leaving home getting a job, anything to get out of this place – away, away. The probabilities for success with my attitude unfortunately skewed.

The door closes and it’s just me and the package which I stroll to the kitchen. How many births has the elongated kitchen table been privy too? To many to count now. The implements draw clatters open, I rummage among the potato mashers and wooden spoons for the scissors. Upended they do a cesarean slide along the sealing tape on the top and sides. This part is the ritual, the equivalent of the first coffee of the day or the one puff that starts a chain of smoking my way through another day- except I don’t do that any more! Hands hold tight to the smooth white sides holding it as if it’s a cloud about to slip out of my fingers, the sharp edge of the scissors make light work and like a jack in the box the sides flip up – I almost hear the baby wailing. It’s resting inside a layer or two of styrofoam packaging, little pink wings that have softened the blow of labour, the long gestation in the belly of a seven four seven in the dark, and now, in my hand, birthed and free at last is a 40 Gigabyte sound library for ‘supereior drummer’. Like a proud new father a flush of excitement runs through me and I can’t wait to rush up the stairs and share this with the Digital Audio workstation. We’ve been planning it for weeks – how could I forget- the incessant tracking on the internet, the anticipated moment of delivery……

[hopefully I don't sound like too much of a techno nerd!]

Second life, I need a second life- I need an avatar to lead my second life because this life I have a large sign hanging off my forehead ‘FULL’. Yeah I need that second life- just change my virtual money in my virtually empty bank account for some of those Lyndon dollars and buy me an island somewhere- nice. Could I become lost if I donned goggles and wore a body suit, a body suit that snuggled next to my skin like a girl on a cold winter night, sexy body suit and gloves and sensors as if I am put inside an underwater sleeping tank, cut off from this reality to explore another inner dimension. Senses fooled by the illusion, could I be living in a Pandora world, would my face be blue would I grow a tail? What happens if I fall over a cliff- do i die of fright? Does this mean I might be able to be a virtual concert pianist If I choose? Sitting on a stage before thousands tapping out Bach suites and preludes- as if! Like all things their will be a good side and a bad side – the next evolution of animated computer games holding a super bazooka rifle feeling it kick and the smell of the propellant as the grenade launches for the target across the street – a car blown into the air – innocents surrounding it torn into a hundred bloody pieces, some will live for the thrill………