They had been waiting all day for night’s desolation and now it was time. The feathers had fluttered since 2.42pm when Benjie had been hit by a car. The tyre had pasted him to the road and took part of him, rolling, to a driveway in South Norwood. His blood had oozed out a short while later and ants had fanned away from him, out of respect. People at the bus stop turned away, suddenly strangely saddened, despite the plague that the living Benjie had symbolised to them. His pecking, scratching and scavenging had earned their disgust and they talked about him even when he was close enough to hear them. In reality Benjie held a mirror up to them and somewhere deep they knew how close their lives were to his. In front of them the wind cut through the heat and brought distress to Benjie’s right wing, which spread in the air as though about to take flight. His family had been incapacitated with confusion. They surrounded him in disbelief and horror and a few jabbed at gravel, mistaking it for food. A car then rounded the corner and they flew, wailing. The heat bore down upon the bird, beginning to heat and cook it. The blood seeped into the tarmac and the air was thick and sickly sweet.
Tag: london
Chapter One
On a still, silent street it hunches under a dim lamppost. The light drops, rounds the figure’s back and falls to a puddle at its feet. Around, a few lost and wandering rays find their purpose in a deadlock with thickening wisps of mist. A lorry passes; first felt, then heard, then seen. In its dumb trance it turns right at the lights and will shortly become part of the conveyor belt to Dover. To take steps closer is for it to fade from monochrome filter to a palette of sepia and watery pigments. The sky, deep, dark blue with dreams and nightmares is moon and star-less. There is no room for them tonight. The weak, burnt orange of the lamp barely picks out the grass a few metres away. A fly draws patterns in the light while it sleeps. The silhouette bobs and shuffles from foot to foot in giddy excitement. Dribbling and demented from the pleasure of it all, soon it will have the compulsion to remove its cloak. But then with squinting uncertainty it could be carved of onyx. Some small steps closer. Chisel in grip it scrapes a vertical line off a sign, now in view, reading ‘PUTNEY HEATH’. The procedure has the precision and solemnity of a holy ritual. It stops, panting, and some time passes in gargoyle lifelessness before it cracks and crumbles to begin with the same measure on the horizontal. At last the chisel takes its final peel upwards, stripping stark black from naked white and leaving the question mark of an empty space behind. Suddenly the street is deserted. Only the fading clash of chisel on pavement remains. The lamppost stands over it, reluctant in its revealing and unable itself to hide. Its only offering flickers for the letters ‘PUTNEY HEAT’.
My Intoxication Reason
(This is a creative piece based on my original review in The Independent – http://www.independent.co.uk/travel/uk/the-intoxication-season-at-kew-gardens-review-not-enough-drugs-refund-please-9782377.html)
I often describe myself as “all or nothing” and it’s a relief that I’ve never been challenged on it. I have no real experience of what it is to be “all” anything. I can verge on the Facebook Stalker, a no-text-reply can send me down Worry Street and I have to make sure I swim a round number of lengths in the pool. I have an unnecessarily anxious and obsessive approach to life but it hasn’t thus far been coloured by a period which I’ll need to sit down and tell you about over a tea, somewhere quiet. When I was 13 I did get caught stealing, though. It was a bit of a stupid thing to do – run out of a shop when you’ve been walking on the wild side and expect it not to draw attention to you. The shop assistant took up the chase, brought me back and asked me to hand them over. I’d been playing a bit of a game for the past few months along with most of Year 9 so it took a few seconds to understand her. Then, the first hot, heavy realisation of being in big trouble was ladled over me and the poxy elastic bead bracelets bulged as I withered. My right jean pocket USB-connected to my heart, thumping in tandem. I gave them to the glowering woman and agreed to pay while my friend who I’d left in the shop stood next to her, full pockets, holding her breath. A long, uneasy period followed, stemming from the belief that I’d in fact spent years being bad. I told my mum everything I’d ever done. A particular worry was that for years she’d given me £1 for two 40p bus journeys each day and I’d spent the remaining 20p on sweets. If this was one of those wordy tricky maths questions the answer was that I was a stinking thief. It was a label I wore for a while and a similar approach spilt onto other teenage experiments. One cigarette and it would all be over, I’d be a Chain Smoker, shifty and unrecognisable, most likely on the run.
Possibly those hardened criminal days led me to construct thick, solid walls of rules as I got older and it felt safer that way. When I started out in the creative world I frantically layered on a few extra layers of bricks. It’s rife with naughtiness. When a figure in the public eye gets outed for leaked drug using photos it’s an irrational empathy aligned to the moment that I got caught – “But everyone else is doing it too!” I’m a panicker, stressed about what it is to be alive and what best to do with limited time in this strange, great place. Manic about not messing up, defined by my own labels and now with what I’d describe as a consuming strictness, the manifestation of which being that I drink far more than I should at a house party full of dabblers. The next day, they at the pub, eating a Sunday roast, feeling fine and rosy. Me, greeny-grey, in a long and intense embrace with the toilet bowl.
But now here’s the arrival of Kew Gardens’ ‘Intoxication Season’, at a time where I’m reassessing my approach (to the ‘softer’ drugs which are regularly up for debate as opposed to the more obviously life-wrecking and devastating ones. When it comes to those I’m fine with a Pass Go). We all want or intend to have a life free from the pain of dependancy but a long time of saying “no” without hesitation has gone too far the other way. It’s had more dangerous consequences than safe ones. I’ve felt suffocated thus on impulse behaved stupidly. I’ve been back at school and immature, stunted proper thought and the considering of my options as an adult. Even if the answer does end up being the same, isn’t it vital to manage and understand the journey in order to feel secure in the destination? The title ‘Intoxication Season’ was alluringly vague, its subheading on the programme being ‘From everyday to class A, mind-altering plants and fungi are here…’ Here for me, I deduced. ‘You’ll discover just how potent plants can be… step into a mind-blowing world’. All very exciting. And workshops too? How would they put interactivity in those without a bit of testing? Indeed media coverage confirmed just that. I was led by the promise of regulated experimentation and the surrounding controversy was my gavel – I was SOLD! Never had an online purchase been conducted with such speed and efficiency. This morning I went to Kew Gardens to explore mind-altering natural plants and my god, I was allowed!
It started to rain as I walked through the gardens but a wet dog afro would not quell my inner childish excitement, nor weigh down my skip. Noting that I should be calmer, more responsible and a little prepared for what lay ahead, I opened the programme. The unfunny irony of it! After delving into my past, after scraping out my behaviours and motivations, each of the four weekends had been allocated a drug – alcohol, cannabis, magic mushrooms or coffee. And of course, I had come to learn all about the intricacies of coffee. The world’s greatest morning pick-me-up could tuck me back into bed when it came to it as a talking point. Yes, if anyone tried to take one away from me they’d be wiping it off their face but this was a stimulant I was down with. Things were not going to plan, a feeling emphasised when I bought a mood-improving three quid cup, only to discover that around the corner they were giving the stuff out for free.
Alright, it was coffee. But what kind of coffee? The kind we’ve never heard of, from somewhere high in the South American mountains where a sniff would send me spinning? Bypassing food experimentalists Bombas and Parr’s guarana tasting (at an extra fiver on top on the £15 entrance fee, I decided to later raid Whole Foods for it instead, this surely wasn’t The Testing…), I headed to the first of the four daily talks. This was less a wild session of caffeine-injecting, more an informative talk titled ‘Coffeenomics’ by Head of Operations at the International Coffee Organisation, Mauricio Galindo. He talked about the coffee trade throughout history and the impact of climate change on production and the market. It was interesting and concise with big facts dotted throughout – the global coffee market is worth $174 billion?! Two billion cups are drunk daily and it’s the second most consumed beverage in the world (I wondered what the first was for quite some time, the shame). Now I was doubly resentful of the ‘Intoxication Season’, first for being inconveniently educational and second for making me feel silly, at the back of the class chewing gum and swinging on my chair, only to realise half-way through that the lesson was actually worth listening to. The class could have been separated into two groups – the Loopholers and the locals. At the end a few people enquired about roasting their own coffee. It was Kew, after all.
Onto the tasting, of the Robusta and Arabica blends. We heard about deforestation to meet demand and the impact of external influences on farmers’ livelihoods while we sipped. Both were pretty delicious and I was now less of a petulant child and thankfully more of an adult, nodding and questioning. Even when it comes to something as seemingly harmless as coffee, we still have our options, there’s a debate to be had and a responsibility to find out the impact of what we are consuming. Next to the tent was another, flaps down and zipped. Was this the mystery-shrouded tent of experimentation, darkened, quiet and herbs abound while a white coat with a scribbly clipboard was serious and encouraging? Of course not. Instead, with flaps as shelter from the pissing rain, two ladies in mackintoshes were hot under the collar about the mad world of fungi. I waited for them to make the first move in case it was indeed a front for something a little different. The closest it got to magic was the pun on the sign outside which read ‘Magical Mushrooms!’ I was unamused.
Last stop, the Princess of Wales Conservatory. It never was going to be a password and secret handshake kind of a place with a name like that. We were instructed not to touch, for here lived The Drugs. They grew in neat little bushes behind name plaques with accompanying notes on their hallucinatory properties. It was a strange experience, reading and looking up at the mischief-maker just behind. A bit like going to the zoo and not being able to stroke the flamingo or tickle the monkey. I wasn’t the only one who had gotten the wrong end of the pipe (sorry). My favourite messages in the Comments Book were “Not enough drugs. Refund please”, and “Cheaper in Brixton x”.
It wasn’t that I expected to be plied with Class As and left to go running around the flower beds and scaling trees but I expected a lick of a mushroom or a chew of a leaf in the name of science. My hopes were dashed but the trip was good and thought-provoking. It resonated that the impact of even the simplest of choices must not be underestimated, their vibrations being felt thousands of miles away in another world. What impressed the most though was the contrasting approaches of different societies and cultures towards the same subject. Alcohol is prohibited in many of the cultures in which the use of (many highly dangerous) plant substances is commonplace. Here we drink with relish and abandon, regardless of the three million alcohol-related deaths globally. Then there are the Dutch and their weed. I am now developing another risky consideration: I may get my first tattoo. Possibly, ‘Think carefully, for yourself’. But I haven’t decided yet.
Sarah Lamptey 