To and From a Room

  It's quiet, and that's normal, but I can't stop myself, I have to check, and as I lay my hand upon the middle of your back and hear you mumble something, I whisper my usual sorry and roll away carefully.  I have to get out of this loop. I fell asleep after wearing myself out writing a script for the last broadcast on the radio given in the event of, well I don't even want to write it here. Suffice to say, the broadcaster can hardly get his words out, fails totally in being reassuring, and after breaking down completely, puts Sailing By on. It makes me cry.  Evidently that's all that was required to make sleep come and I enjoyed a short, deep, dreamless sleep which was a relief because I don't get much of that these days.  I know I'm not alone. We seem to have a world wide sleep deprivation epidemic, blamed on everything from phones to food. Hardly anyone mentions the terrifying atmosphere of hate and fear that surely no-one is immune to. So as I lie as sti...

   It  was an old trick, to force a ' difficult ' tenant out who was causing a nuisance to the landlord or their management company by making repeated requests to have things like the toilet fixed . I was familiar with landlords and the way the worst of them behaved sometimes and so had more than a little sympathy with Vanya, who just wanted a decent place to live and bring up her little girl.  The upshot of the meeting in the room that day was that I gave the keys back to Ms X who gave them to Vanya, so allowing her access to the bathroom facilities in return for Vanya picking up Ms X's post and keeping an eye on everything for her who now had a long term arrangement to live somewhere else the other side of town.  Ms X's supreme kindness touched me deeply and my own tiny gesture of taking a few provisions, although gracefully received, now felt somewhat clumsy and insignificant, even egotistical.  But I trundled home happily nevertheless. The feeling that ...

  We'd met quite some time ago now, The Owner, ( who I really ought to stop referring to in that manner since it is not only inaccurate, her being a tenant, but she herself would be offended by it since she's not the owning kind and so, I think from henceforth I shall call her Ms X ) . It was at the local offices of the Citizen's Advice Bureau, which, miraculously, were still operating from the attic rooms of some once elegant but no longer Edwardian house at the bottom end of town where all the dentists, chiropractors and solicitors etc who couldn't afford better accommodation or a richer clientele existed cheek by jowl with badly managed houses of multiple occupation, minority religious or political groups, independent pizza and kebab joints, and obscure interest groups who met on a monthly basis, where Ms X and her kind hearted, gentle mannered assistant, performed a perfected double act involving the assistant treating each person who walked through their door with ...

  Finally having lugged and bumped the shopping trolley up the stairs after searching in vain for post in the box in the dark hallway the light being broken once more and despite the house smelling faintly of piss and cooking, it being eerily silent, I paused and mopped my brow.  I decided not to knock on Vanya's door first because, weirdly, I could see light coming from under the door of The Room, so I tapped politely on it's shabby timbers and stood back with some trepidation as I heard someone rattling at the lock from within to open it.  Vanya greeted me with a faint smile and ushered me inside. I trundled in with my unwieldy baggage and said a cheery Hello! to the Owner of The Room, who was sat at the table with a pile of papers and an open lap-top infront of her. She greeted me with no smile and no surprise, but gestured me to join them at the table on a stool.  There was an extra heater blasting out hot air and Vanya's toddler was asleep in an old buggy with a...