I suddenly felt ill.

I suppose it had been creeping up on me unawares…

Having received the first jolt, the question that went through my head was its source...either from inside or outside? The second thing that went through my head, a split second later, was an exocet tumour...

“You don’t look at all well, ducks”, said a little old lady, sitting near me in the pub.

I was a local and, as I was sitting in my usual place, everybody, knew who I was.

“God, whatever’s the matter with Harry?”

“Too much of the bent arm, I’ll be bound.”

“Gor blimey’, he’s gone all peculiar and the top of his head has blown off!”

The landlord, Matthew Shakewell, had by now left his favourite spot behind the bar, where most of the money changed hands, and scowled at the mess on the carpet. Apparently it was OK to.litter his precious carpet with beer swill and dog-ends, but this was the limit...

“Clear that up!” he snorted, pointing...

I couldn’t move and, as they told me later, I stared sightlessly straight through him as if he was dead.

*

The pub was pulled down not long after, to make room for a cathedral - the one which they still talk about in history books. My son’s O Level course left an opening for it sometime between 1650 and 1712, in case it later became significant as a catalyst in the onrush of reality. But as it didn’t, my son said he was unaware of its existence, let alone its significanace.

I told them they built it upon my bones, as an epitaph to the books I never wrote.

“Why didn’t you write them, old man?” he asked me.

“Cos I had my head blown off in the first world war.”

*

I came to......suddenly.

The landlord had gone back to the bar, smirking as he pulled pints, watered down with the produce of his own benders.

The dear old lady was knitting with the long stringy bits that had erupted from my head.

And my son was sitting in my customary place in the pub grinning too. Everybody thought it must be me,

But I was off somewhere building cathedrals in the clouds for a God who did not believe in his own existence and even less in ours.


(published 'Inkshed' 1988)