Category Archives: Bella Basura

The Eye of Alice the Leper

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First, they took the newly- identified Leper to the burial ground and laid them in an empty grave, a Priest performed a Requiem Mass and earth was thrown onto the Leper’s head.

Then the whole Parish processed the Leper to her new home, where this Mass of Separation, spoken by a priest, was performed at the site of the leper’s hut.

 “I forbid you to ever enter a church, a monastery, a fair, a mill, a market or an assembly of people.

I forbid you ever to leave your house without your leper’s dress, and also shod.

I forbid you to wash your hands or to launder anything or to drink at any stream or fountain, unless using your own barrel or dipper.

I forbid you to touch anything you buy or barter for, until it becomes your own.

I forbid you to enter any tavern; and if you wish for wine, whether you buy it or it is given to you, have it funneled into your keg.

I forbid you to share house with any woman but your wife.

I command you, if accosted by anyone while travelling on a road, to set yourself down-wind of them before you answer.

I forbid you to enter any narrow passage, lest a passerby might catch the affliction from you.

I forbid you, wherever you go, to touch the rim or the rope of a well without donning your gloves.

I forbid you to touch any child or give them anything.

I forbid you to eat or drink from any dishes but your own.

I forbid you to eat or drink in company, unless with lepers.”

*****

I look out the open door of my hut at the grey morning rise. There is no sunrise, just grey.

I look out the door of my hut, open doors are good for dispelling miasma. Though I am charged to close my door if anyone comes near, and I must stay downwind, on account of the movement of miasma. I must ring my bell.

I am alone here, and that’s fine. It is hard to be alone, but easier than shuffling downwind or giving them leprosy. Giving them leprosy is the worst, even if it’s only the fear of leprosy.

I am alone here, Alice in her leper hut. Do I have a cat? Yes, I have a cat. Greymalkin, I call her.

And she isn’t afraid of lepers, no cats are. Lepers have rats and scraps, just like anyone. Why would a wise cat fear a leper.

I did not join the lepers in the Lazar House, I do not live in company in the Spital. I prefer it out here, beyond the fields of the Leper Hospital. Alone I watch from my leper hut, as the lepers work the strips of the Spital Fields.

There is a Leper Chapel at the side of the Spital, where the good lepers hear the mass. And there is a Lychnoscope, a Hagioscope, a Squint in the wall, where guilt-ridden towns people, leaving alms for the allieviation of the suffering of lepers, cross themselves and cross back into town.

I too have a squint, by the side of my door, I take alms in exchange for visions. I am a leper, and so closer to death, for me the veil is thin, I can see those who will die within a year, and those who are already dead.

In the autumn when the lepers have brought in the leper harvest, and the fields are bare, the town set up a fair on the Spital Fields, trading and gaming and whoring, late into the nights.

And they queue at my closed door, when the fair is in the Spital Field, Parish people wait in turn at my Squint. They pay me alms for visions, to spy out the dead and soon to die, I see them all with my leper eye.

In those autumnal nights when the raucous crowds are thronging, out there I see you, Dodie Disease-Monger and Lizzie Leper-Maker, drunk on sack, skirts hitched high, dancing in the stubble. I see you, I know you and your works. You eyed me, now I eyeball you.

Return the evil to the evil-doer.

You are in the leper’s vision, now I see you with my leper eye.

There is a chapel hardby the Spital where the good lepers hear mass. But I stay away, I am a leper and worse, for I am a leper with visions. I see my own demon gods in the dark of my leper hut.

I am an outcast, even among Lepers.

Unexpected in October

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Recent recording of a piece I first posted a year ago.

Unexpected in October – recorded reprise – Eulogy for Scott

If I can make a landscape for a dream, let it be this place. Some day soon the winter will fall, but this afternoon in this garden the sky is still clear and brazen blue, the wind still rustles in the leaves not yet turned and birds chatter on in deep greenery, insects still flutter in dappled shade. The sun still warms my face, the grass still growing under my feet, a squirrel climbs to the highest waving branches where glossy green ivy leaves entwine, waiting for the year to pass on. I close my eyes, a tranquil moment for the dead and dying, held in trance-like waiting, the sun still calls my eyes to the sky. I don’t want to lose this moment, I don’t want to go indoors, but the chill air rising creeps up my spine, a flying crow caws overhead, the wonder is breaking, broken by a growling jet that cuts the sky in two. Some day soon the winter will fall again, but now, today, this afternoon in this garden, summer still lingers on, and hope is still strong. If I can make a landscape for a dream, let it be this place.

Word of That Week

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“Metastasised” They said.

That week it was a new word for me. I had to google it.  It means the spread of cancer to distant parts of the body. I’d never heard it before.

And now, I’ve heard it three times in a week.

I sat down in the kitchen, paused the washing up, poured myself a glass of tequila. Tried to understand why the interviewed novelist on the BBC Radio 4 arts show had chosen to use that word, that big awful stupid bloody word, to describe her creative process.

I mean, writers do understand the impact of words, writers do grasp how to use the esoteric power of words, that’s the magic of spelling.

I wondered what self-defeating disgust she was expressing against her own art.

“Metatasised” she said “the characters simply metatasised into the internal drive of the narrative arc…”

I switched the radio off, gulped at the tequila, trying to drown the word in drunkeness.

I’m familiar with “frequency bias”, I’ve heard of “selective attention”, I’ve wikipediaed “confirmation bias”. Over and over again.

The second time that week that I heard the word “Metatasised” was from some second-rate TV celebrity. He was making a pre-emptive denial on YouTube, in advance of channel 4 running a damning exposē of his misogynistic abuse of his co-workers. “Metatasised” he said, “the media metatasised my open promiscuity into very agregious accusations…” he blustered in vain. The channel 4 documentary cut him down anyway, in spite of his invocation of cancer.

“Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon – a cognitive bias refering to the tendency to notice something more often after noticing it for the first time” As if Red Army Faction hijacking, kidnapping, bombing and assasination, as if violent delusions of terrorist revolution, was simply a psychological repetition of a re-repetition. Over and over again. As if a terminal diagnosis could be just clever hyperbole.

“Metatasised” He said.

Earlier that week I had sat with my friend in the clinic at Addenbrookes. That’s the first time I ever heard the word in my life.

“Metatasised” the oncologist said. He said my friend’s cancer had Metatasised.

=============

Bin Day

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It vaguely caught my eye a couple of times and I thought it was one of tribe of black crows with white-flecked wings that inhabit my street. But it wasn’t, it was just a discarded black bin bag enjoying a bit of freedom in the Bin Day afternoon.

I think the crows are naturally black, but are developing white flecks on their wings. The crows are turning white, feather by feather. This colour change is possibly due to vitamin and mineral deficiencies, leading to loss of the melatonin in the feathers. Of course the creatures are malnourished, they are urban crows, they are surviving on trash, eating from bin bags. Left over ultra processed ready meal gobets and soiled cat litter pickings a plenty.

From my window I have watched the crows dunking cigarette butts into puddles to rid them of their paper skin, then gobble down the puddle soaked filters like a delicacy.

Then it catches my eye again. The free range black bin bag in the street shudders across the road, like a flurry of ferrets, back and forth in the wind.

And again, contorting into a hunched half torso straddling the white line down the middle of the tarmac.

Wet grey rainy bin day, twilight afternoon midwinter, the crows warily eye a stray black plastic bin bag waddle to the kerb, finally settling down in the form of a metalic grey arrow headed dragon child, curled in the shade of next doors toyota, his squamous wings and gills rhymically fluttering in his sleep.

The Passing Tale of Rimmer and Moomy

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His nickname was Rimmer, sometimes just Rim. I don’t know why he was called that, thankfully I only met him a couple of times.

The first time was when his girlfriend invited me out for a coffee. The girlfriend’s nickname was Moomy, I only went the once. I only went the once because Moomy simply couldn’t stop talking, speaking loudly and rapidly, barely comprehensible in her non-native English. I don’t know what was wrong with her to be so aggravatingly and pointlessly vocal, some said it was an undiagnosed mental illness, I think it was cocaine. To be honest, she did look like a cokehead, and she was self-absorbed, overbearing and boring enough to be on cocaine.

Anyway, Moomy invited me out for a coffee through the friend of a friend, and she brought Rimmer along because he couldn’t be left on his own at home, I don’t know why. Moomy was relentless, rambling, arse-achingly dull. Every once in a while Rimmer, whose voice was booming and plonky, would start pontificating himself, like when one disturbed barking farm-dog sets off all the others aroundabouts. Moomy would indulge Rimmer a little, allowing him to run his mouth for a few minutes, then she would shut him down “No minding if him, he just autistico” she would shout and continue with her own tediously incoherent monologuing.

I never went for coffee with them again, between them they made me feel socially violated.

It took me a week to wash them out of my head.

The only other time I spent with Rim Rimmer was when Moomy had flown home to have her anal glands expressed, I think that’s what she said. She said “I cannot NHS fucking stupid. In my country dentist make all anal glands for sixty euro. In this fucking country NHS you wait five years on list for down there is same relief. I no fucking wait for NHS. I go my own country is better than fucking England.”

So Moomy was away for a month or so and she was furiously messaging my friend to visit Rimmer, have drinks with him and check he was okay. The friend, horrified at the thought of spending a whole evening alone with Rim had insisted I come along too.

We arrived at Rimmer and Moomy’s flat as late as politely possible, he showed us to the sofa, and quickly poured us what he called “cocktails” pink gin and tonic in full pint glasses, it looked like he was going to really stretch the evening out. “There’s more where that came from, plenty of drinking here” He shouted as he sat himself down at his computer desk, his chair back facing us. The interesting thing about Rim was, that without the controlling influence of Moomy’s constant verbalising, he himself was an insufferable monologing bore. For two hours, which is when we finally managed to get away, Rimmer spoke incessantly into his computer screen, although I think he thought he was talking to us. The first thing he said was “Back in the day we would make proper cocktails, we made molotovs and let them off in bus shelters”. My mind was boggling, I wish now that I’d been recording him on my phone, then I could be sure of what he actually said. Anyway, here is my undoubtedly unreliable recounting of his speech.

Back in Barn Hill where he grew up, a village outside the city, the teenage Rimmer and his school chums regularly raided a disused factory where there were abandoned explosives. They would drain jam jars full from pierced steel drums of unspecified flammable fluids, priming them with readily available noxious household poisons. They would combine and mix and prime and refine these little glass bombs, then they would take them to bus shelters at night and put a match to them. Rimmer’s friends would crouch in safety behind the bus shelter glass, while he would boldly ignite the jam jars and run. Sometimes the explosions were terrific, shaking the bus shelter to it foundations, sometimes the young men were deafened, ears ringing and leaking blood for days, sometimes he barely got behind the safety glass before the detonation. And sometimes nothing at all happened, and they would walk back home, despondant, leaving the dangerous jam jars behind in the bus shelter for children and dogs to find the next day.

And that is The Passing Tale of Rimmer and Moomy, and why I hope to never see them again.

Grandmother Punk and the Housing Inspector

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A Play for Voices

Narrator:In the crazy woman’s filthy flat the new temp from the Council Inspectorate Office was struggling with the old girl’s misconception about him. She seemed to think he was an actual inspector, a surveyor, even. She was asking awkward questions about her  
Crone:plaster condition, waterproofed inner coat and the cracked ballbearings.  
Narrator:Did she actually say cracked ballbearings? He wasn’t sure. He blustered through the memorised set response  
Temp:I need to reiterate that I am only conducting an audit of the property  
Crone:Like the domesday booke
 
Temp:You’ll need to report any repairs to the council  
Crone:An inventory of all King William, Arch Duke of Cambridge and Normany’s, newly acquired lands and posessions.  
Narrator:He hadn’t really been listening. His mind had been elsewhere. On the slow puncture in his back tyre. And the cycle pump.  
Temp:The fucking cycle pump.  
Narrator:He blustered  
Temp:Reiterate…I’m only conducting an audit…report repairs to council…  
Crone:And the installation of the new front door, three years it took them.  
Narrator:She had to have her letter flap hanging off before they lifted a finger. Who would be so low as to steal his shitty cycle pump any way.  
Temp:I need to climb up into your loft hatch  
Narrator:He said. Back on Script now. Check the loft. Check the CO2 and smoke alarms.Photograph the boiler. It wasn’t her that done this to the bathroom.
  
Crone:the paint just started falling off  
Temp:Was there mould?  
Crone:Mould? Was there mould? There was so much mould I had it coming out my ears.  
Narrator:Three house calls back the back tyre had completely deflated. That’s when he noticed some fucker had nicked his cycle pump.  
Crone:I didn’t even need to do any stripping, it just came off in my hand.  
Temp:Reiterate…conducting…report…council  
Narrator:He flustered as he thankfully backed out the front door, She said  
Crone:don’t forget to close the gate, I don’t want the cat getting out

Short Tale Shrew

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The flash fiction below was first published as an honourable mention on the flash fiction website Short Tale Shrew back in 2016.

Film Night at The Rebirth Convention

Body Limits - Bella Basura 2023. Photograph taken at Marina Abramovic exhibition at The Royal Academy
Body Limits – Bella Basura 2023.
Photograph taken at Marina Abramovic exhibition at The Royal Academy

The Delegates gathered, waiting for the ‘Samsara in Cinema’ event. Ouspensky sat broodingly alone, contemplating Ivan Osokin. A few rows behind him The Gautama and The Christ boisterously contrasted resurrection and soul-migration. In a hot-tub, left of the screen, naked therapists breath-worked their birth-traumas. Classically reincarnated deities – Mithras, Persephone, Taliesin, Vishnu, Baldur – sat rapt as the houselights dimmed. The crowded auditorium hushed as the diminutive figure of the Dalai Lama edged onto the stage. “My favourite film” He said simply. And the screen sprang into life, illuminating the film’s title “Groundhog Day”.