Venn Diagrams

Now where did that come from?  Surely no one can ever have had dreams disturbed by Venn bloody diagrams in those dark hours?  Oh, now I remember, that was it, wasn’t it?

And I know what each of these circles was, and those bits of overlap; and that bit in the middle, the one that crackles and spits and fizzes when you bring them all together.  And it all comes tumbling back.  Sleep, it will return, soon.

There was another journey, the hard slog north.  Too many times the road signs were blurred.  Hayfever, that must be it.  And there was that moment cresting the first rise when an island jumped off the palate in front of me, bathed in sunshine; and where I knew there was a man out walking on his path, and I was off again.

But the cramps.  It was the left hand at first, just passing Runcorn as I swept round, north, where I wanted to go.  The last time had been at Charnock Richard, southbound, and both feet had gone together.  It may have been the price at the pump but I dismissed it, for I live with cramps, something that happens because of all those steroids, that cocktail of inhalers.  But they had been missing for a few days, for some reason or other.

Must have been the Welsh air, or the rain, the mud perhaps.  I was reminded that the rain was warmer further south as soon as I opened the car door, ten minutes before the school bus arrived and The Urchins run out, desperate.  Desperate to be first to the wii controller.

Hadn’t thought of them on your jolly had you?  All the time thinks I, all the time.  I wrote about them and spoke about them.  It was that herbalist’s gunk; that’s what started it.

Anyway no cramps for days.  That’s one to chat through with the doc.  Move to Wales he’ll say; probably just anxious to get me off his list.  But there were none, interesting that.  Venn Diagram that one.

I’m still trying to explain the state of those trousers, that shoe released from the goo.  Good mud it was, thick and oozing, squelching upwards between the toes, splashing ever higher and washing off, leaving just a trace behind, a wee memory, just a hint of a bog.

Hell, bog; myrtle now.  That’s something you definitely do not want in your dreams, but there’s only a couple of us might understand that.  Myrtle; I must be home.

But there was one chuckle on that long and solitary road, just as I was belting out East of the Sun out of tune with Diana.  I’d started with some gentle piano, from Jarrett and by the time Paulo’s pencil was filled with lead the asthma had taken the voice away, though few may have noticed the difference.

I passed a few motorbikes, unusual as that was in itself for most times they roar on by.  But these were different and one had a sidecar, an open one with just a little fairing on the front.  You don’t see them often.  They used to come with a scarf, horizontal, like Biggles.    But it was, a dog, one of those big German Shepherd type things, with a pelt like a bear; sitting up, staring all around, smiling.  Probably singing along with Diana.  Ears alert and turning.  I checked my door mirror but it had no goggles.

One other thing.  That book thing that arrived serendipitously.  Well it’s radio too it seems, a reading.  And I’m going to end there, without those two new buttons that speak of reflection and craft, for I have a plane to catch and must leave all this behind.  So off you go now, get out there……..