Sussurationi - part 1

Don’t get me wrong – I’m a homebody but I do like to visit other places. Even I get restless from time to time and I wouldn’t like you to think the only pleasure I get nowadays is lying around here listening to the tiny sounds that creep and rustle round my skull. No, when it feels right inside my head, I start one of my meanderings. House calls, if you will. Whimsical flittings. Call me nosey, but I’ve always had a maudlin fascination about other folks’ lives, what they get up to behind their oh-so-secret doors. The clandestine huddles and fumbles down dark alleys, the furtive exchanges of drugs, grubby cash, kisses,sordid secrets, guns. In short, life as it is lived on an inner city estate such as this. It’s a cess pit of a place, this estate. It’s like planners had a meeting, handed round some hallucinogenic drugs just before the tea trolley rolled in, and once they were good and out of it came to a joint (forgive the pun) decision to see which of them could draw up plans for the most hideous, dangerous and desperate few thousand acres. The winner would get to live there. Yeah, like that would happen.

To be fair – because I do like a sense of fairness – not all the estate is past redemption. There’s a rather elegant bridge that connects two of the largest tower blocks. The blocks themselves could stand proud against any of the post-Communist social housing apartments anywhere in Eastern Europe, no kidding. Think secure prison, then add 20 storeys. The lower floors sometimes have a pitiful few window boxes, with straggling nasturtiums or grey coated ivy wandering down the panels, as if trying to escape. Hard luck, ivy. We’re all prisoners here.

Anyway, the bridge. It’s painted green, well it was once. Now it’s black with the filth of years of traffic. Its arches are rather lovely though, and the ironwork trellis is a joy to behold; not that anyone bothers to behold anything round these parts, unless it’s wrapped in chip paper, half naked or has a headline with “celebrity” on it. Someone chucked themselves off the bridge recently, I can’t remember who exactly but they landed on the flat pallet of a passing lorry. What are the chances? They could have had themselves an unexpected trip across the Channel and ended their days somewhere sunnier, but as it happens they broke their back and spend their pain filled days looking at a hospital ceiling.

Re: Sussurationi - part 1

I move on from bridge admiring, past the kids’ playground where there are rarely more than a couple of children, sometimes with a parent, more usually on their own. Parents round here have a naïve trust in the safety of their offspring - either that or they’re past caring. The funny thing is, none of the kids ever seem to come to harm; it’s always middle class families whose children go missing, get messed up by paedophiles, have road accidents, have you noticed? Maybe it’s true what they say about the devil looking after his own. There’s a small girl now on the slide. As I approach she slips down the chute very slowly, her shoes firm against the sides in case the G-force hurtles her off into space or something. She’s wearing a thin red cardigan, totally inadequate on this cold day, and pink leggings which bag at her skinny knees. When she reaches the ground and prepares to mount the steps again I see that she’s wearing sparkly mock grown up shoes with a small heel. Now that can’t be right, surely? She can’t be more than seven. I smile. She totally ignores me as if I don’t exist. She perches for a minute at the top of the slide in that little cage thing and I see her pinched young-old face and know just what she will look like when she’s grown up, and just what her life will be. Sometimes I could weep, I really could.

There is a surprisingly beautiful statue in the middle of the estate. It stands outside the small group of shops and is surrounded by a tiny chain link fence that presumably was put there to deter climbers and vandals. It didn’t seem to occur to whoever placed the fence there that, unless you’re an elf, a small step over the top would place you inside the perimeter. Still, I guess it’s the thought that counts. The statue is of a mermaid, which couldn’t be more Incongruous considering we must be, oh, at least 50 miles from the nearest ocean. She half sits, half lies across a smooth blue grey rock and holds a marbled conch shell in one raised hand. On her face is the most heartbreakingly wistful expression of sadness and loss, although her granite lips are half open, ready to smile I feel. Her head is to one side as if listening for the welcoming sound of the surf, and her hair flows softly across her shoulders and covers her breasts. Well it would have to really, otherwise you can imagine how that would be defaced. I’m pretty sure she’s pining away. The statue reminds me of those heart wrenching newspaper articles showing beached whales floundering hopelessly miles from deep ocean, and doomed inevitably to perish, deprived of their natural home. The odd thing is, the statue remains pristine, well, not counting the odd pigeon dropping. Nobody has defaced her, which is odd don’t you think? I mean, a half naked beautiful female? I like to think that the pensive beauty of her face moves passers by and causes them to perhaps think for a moment about – well, I’m not sure what about, I’m just glad she’s unmarked. She has an oblong plaque by her bare feet which just reads “Susurration.”


I have a particular liking for a certain corner of the park, half a mile up the road. It’s just a scrubby triangle of churned up grass and weeds surrounded on two sides by rusty railings and on the other by what the council laughingly called a lake. It probably was a lake once, before the mutilated trolleys and condoms and other detritus clogged up the fountain and the ducks gave up and flew elsewhere. Such a shame. I mean, what’s the matter with people today? Nevertheless, there’s a certain beauty about that small portion of the park. I think it’s the privacy, and the fact that even the dealers and gropers don’t frequent it, so I have it to myself when the fancy takes me. I sometimes spend hours just sitting by the scummy black, oily water. I don’t know what I’m waiting for if I’m honest, but something about the dank, mysterious smell coming off the surface holds me there.

Re: Sussurationi - part 1

Days do drag though, here on the estate. I mean, what is there to do? All the shops in the precinct are boarded up and defaced with ungrammatical insults and patently impossible gynacological contortions.

We had a cinema many years ago, and well attended too – that went the way of the shops and seems now to be the meeting place of God knows what lowlife no-hopers, who lie around on the mossy steps shooting up or whatever they call it. Quite disgusting, in my opinion, but as nobody ever elicits my opinion it’s pretty academic.

I’ve wandered many a grey mile when I’m feeling restless; over to the depressing and unimaginative maze of identical boxes with identical cars parked on gravel drives. Past yowling and nervy cats, alongside pumped up dogs whose rib cages stand out like xylophones as they strain at leashes. Oh, those dogs! How they hate me! I wish I knew what it was about me that raised their hackles. I love animals, always have done, I wouldn’t so much as tap them on their leathery noses to discipline them. Their owners now, that’s a different matter; I’d string them up, those lardy, ugly snaggle toothed youths with their ridiculous mis-spelled tattoos and their bullet shaped heads. The men are as bad! See, I have a sense of humour. Still, I do like to walk their streets, smell the stink of humanity, inhale the canine stench of their pets. I keep myself to myself though. I’ve no desire to attract attention.

Come dusk, the estate takes on a different, less down at heel aspect, as leaden skies bleed into black, and the malformed trees and straggly hedges take on a kind of mysterious beauty. Well, they do to me. Call me a romantic if you like, I don’t mind. I’ve always liked dark places where you can blend in, and ugliness is hidden. One of the areas I really, really like is the north wall of the old manor house which lies about half a mile along one of the side roads, set well back from the road and guarded like Fort Knox against, well, against us locals. I guess when it was built it was surrounded by verdant fields with the occasional cow and liveried gardener. Now it sits slap bang in the middle of this hell hole of a new town , turreted, ageing and splendidly misplaced like Miss Havisham’s wedding cake in a Gregg’s window. Ooh, that’s rather good, don’t you think? I do have my moments, but there’s never anyone around to show off to round here. Anyway, the north wall of the manor house is wonderful. It’s absolutely covered with thick dark green and shiny ivy which seems to be infiltrating under the eaves too – and is going to be a real headache for the owners one day. It’s partly hidden from the grounds by huge conifers which line the drive, soldier-like. I’ve spent many an evening just leaning against this living, rustling wall. It’s quite easy to reach the house if you know how, and the security system’s rubbish if you know what’s what. They have dogs too, but they don’t bother me. Not that I’m up to anything dodgy, you understand, I just love this quiet place against their wall. I love feeling the roughness of the stone, the tiny cracks where the mortar’s been eroded. I like to imagine the generations who’ve lived there, who planted that innocuous little ivy sapling that grabbed hold so tenaciously to the lowest stone, like a newborn baby’s grip on its mother’s finger, and started its climb up to the eaves. If I close my eyes when I’m standing there, I can almost hear echoes of laughing, and sometimes sobbing, shouting, horses kicking up the grit on the drive.

Re: Sussurationi - part 1

I never see any signs of life though, and the high windows are always heavily shrouded in curtains. Those sorts of people don’t exactly spend their evenings hanging out of the casements on the lookout for their old man to stagger home from the pub, or keeping a sharp eye out for pond feeders nicking their wheels.

So – this is how I spend my days and evenings most of the time. I don’t remember anything else really; this is my home, my retreat, my own modest patch where the dank, green things live, where corruption and decay exist hand in hand and where a graceful mermaid straining for the siren call of the sea shares space with vile graffiti covered shop fronts.

I’m not alone though, despite being ignored by most passers-by. There are others like me, thickening the moist air as we brush past each other, bringing with us a sense of otherness, ephemeral companionship of a sort and causing those who live here a brief shiver, a clutching of thin coats as we share their space. We are the druggies who died white limbed and hollow eyed while thin blood clogged our syringes. We are the neglected old people whose families were too consumed by their social media websites and their screaming brood to bother with. We’re the rail thin teenage girls sleeping in doorways, the alcoholic who stinks and has beer cans thrown at him for sport. We’re the lonely, the dispossessed and the forgotten. As for me, I’m the one who loves the mermaid.

As dusk deepens into night there is one more place I have to go, and where I’m truly at peace and the creeping and rustling inside my skull is my own siren call. Third row from the gate, fourth one across, plot 18 under the sweet earth.

Re: Sussurationi - part 1

The State of the Estate, it depends what is done with with ones basic training, and what allegiances are formed. Its probably best to fly solo, if full detachment is to be achieved, further down the line, still, semi detachment is good enough, "Lest we Forget".

Re: Sussurationi - part 1

That's a beautifully written series of descriptive pieces about something horrible and ugly.

As I read, I could see the scum on the water, hear the wood and stonework quietly crumbling, and smell the decay and desperation.

Well done.

Re: Sussurationi - part 1

Very good .

Re: Sussurationi - part 1

No idea what that means in relation to my story but I'm sure it makes sense to you.

Re: Sussurationi - part 1

This is remarkable, as is all of the stories posted by Eccles. I wonder if there is more to come? The role of the outsider has been celebrated here.

Re: Sussurationi - part 1

I'm hardly an outsider - I've been on this forum for a few years now!