when the days turn rainy, and we turn the heat up high, I don't mind being here at work. the place begins to feel cozy and the crackling old papers seem rich and interesting again.
on afternoons like this Barry starts to tell stories. recounting histories of his bawdy, renegade past. this is the setting where I've heard his tales of piracy and solidarity, hand-shakes from long-passed anarchists and ribald loving outside the reggae club. today it's one about the coalminers strike in '84, when everyone was so poor they took to stealing from the grocer and capturing dinner-fated sheep from pastures outside town, taking them home for discreet slaughter in the bathtub. (plainly a recipe for hijinks.) and then a tale about his father letting out a fleet of pigeons on the A10, accidentally, who swarmed confusedly and crashed into the windscreens of motorists driving fast up the middle of England.
all of us half his age and less than half his wildness titter and laugh, and the rain patters down on the skylight.